“Okay then.”
“Congratulations, Ms. O’Donnell. You’re the proud new owner of a French pastry shop.”
She was still standing there in shock when the front door opened without a knock.
Dillon’s voice called, “We brought a donkey,” and the celebration began in earnest.
Tessa, Dillon, and Makayla had not, in the end, brought the donkey, which disappointed Lily so thoroughly that Tessa had to promise her a private audience with Loretta tomorrow by way of reparations. But they had brought the brisket, and Makayla brought her fiddle.
Hank showed up with a salad and Madison, who barely made it through the door before being towed by Lily toward her bedroom to inspect the current arrangement of stuffed animals.
Supper was loud and joyful. Grace sat at the head of the table in her own small home with more people in it than it had held in five years. Somewhere between the brisket and the second pie she stopped keeping track of who needed what and just let the noise and happiness wash over her like warm water.
Reno fetched the third pie from the kitchen and set it down in front of Grace, as far away from Hank as the table could let him.
While everyone else razzed Hank about his endless appetite for pie, Reno leaned down over Grace’s shoulder and murmured, “What can I do to make this evening better for you?”
She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Nothing. This is perfect. Everything and everyone is perfect.”
And it was. For the first time in a very long time, her life felt full to bursting with family and friends, love and laughter. And she knew with a certainty that went all the way to her bones that absolutely nothing else mattered if she had all those things.
She didn’t know how it had happened, but out of the wreckage of her life, something whole and beautiful had blossomed. It had just taken a lawyer-turned rodeo clown-turned lawyer, to come into her life and nurture the seed of happiness planted in her heart for so many years by Liam.
Reno had brought sunlight and joy back into her world and Lily’s. He’d let her grow wild and free in whatever direction she wanted, and he loved her just the way she was. She couldn’t ask for more.
She knew all her WoWS sisters considered themselves pretty darned blessed to have found another wonderful man in one lifetime who loved them and their kids to the moon and back.
But she was pretty sure she was the luckiest one of them all.
Want to spend a little more time with Reno, Grace, and Lily, see who proposes to whom, and find out how Lily reacts? Access an exclusive (and emotional) bonus scene featuring them in my note to you at the end of this chapter.
…and now for a sneak peek at the next yummy hero in the Cobbler Cove series in
A FAMILY FOR HANK …
* * *
The courthouse smelled like every government building Hank Steele had ever sat in—old wood, floor wax, and coffee that had been sitting in a pot too long. He didn’t know a blessed thing about architecture or interior design, but even he knew this courtroom was stuck in an unfortunate furniture time loop dated to about 1973.
As a rule, he only wore ties to weddings and funerals. But he’d worn one today to the custody hearing for his daughter.
Madison sat beside him at one of the two tables in front of the judge’s raised chair She was fourteen and in the midst of a growth spurt, all gangly limbs, sharp elbows, and awkward smiles around her braces, which were almost ready to come off.
Her hands were clenched in her lap, and her stare was fixed on the bailiff’s empty chair. Hank gathered she had no interest in looking across the aisle at her mother seated beside her attorney at the other table.
Not that he blamed her. He wanted nothing to do with his ex-wife either.
Reno looked cool as a cucumber beside him, as if he’d already won the case. But then, he had three precisely labelled folders of information waiting to be entered into evidence in front of him, each one more damaging than the last to Lorraine’s case.
“You good?” Reno murmured to him in a voice that wouldn’t carry more than three feet.
“Yep.”
Reno’s mouth quirked into a not-quite smile. “Then try looking like a guy who’s good.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he snapped under his breath. His daughter’s entire future rode on the next hour. He had to protect Madi from Lorraine and get custody.
“Your tie’s crooked,” Reno said, mildly. “Need me to straighten it?”
