Page 115

His eyes held mine.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I turned my hand over and held his properly. "When you find the ring, and you're down on one knee somewhere you planned, with your better speech — my answer will still be yes. I just want you to know that. So, you can stop worrying about it."

A long breath left him.

"I wasn't worried," he said.

"You were a little worried."

"Marginally."

I stood up from my chair and crossed to him. He pushed back from the table to make room, and I settled in his lap. His arms came around me immediately, warm and solid and certain.

"I love you," he said against my hair.

"I love you." I turned my face up to his. "Pre-proposal and all."

He kissed me.

Slow, and sure, and unhurried, the way you kiss someone when you have all the time in the world.

Finally he lifted up.

"How's your head?" he asked, seriously concerned.

"It hurts. I think I need another orgasm to cure it before we go to the sheriff’s office.”

He burst out laughing.

Epilogue

Adam had been talking about the open house for three weeks.

Not obsessively. Just enough for me to know he cared. Then two days before the day, I started to care. Then I started to care enough that I was obsessing on how many different types of cheeses should be on the cheeseboard. I called Chloe.

Problem solved.

The first guests arrived at four. It was kind of mellow. Too mellow if you asked me. We definitely needed sangria. Lucky for Adam, I had all the fixings. Now, I’m not talking so much sangria that some of the rugs on his gorgeous hardwood floors would get stained, just enough that there would be more laughter. Loud laughter.

James was in his element. He had appointed himself official greeter and dinosaur ambassador and was currently explaining to Lettie from the Down Home Diner that the Ankylosaurus was technically more heavily armored than a tank.

Everybody loved James. How could they not? He was also explaining it was going to be his birthday next month, and what presents he wanted. He wasn’t doing it in a greedy way, it was just a part of James; if something came to his head, it came out of his mouth. The kid still killed me.

I wondered just how many people in Jasper Creek were going to give him presents, and when Adam was going to notice what he was doing and put a stop to it. Of course, he’d never seen my niece in action with her swear jar, where she forced any adult around her to pay up a dollar for a swear. I think her college fund was well past five thousand dollars.

Renzo and Millie were in the corner near the window with Ford and Ruby. Little Grandma was installed in the best chair in the living room with a glass of sweet tea, surveying the queendom she had personally built. And she was mostly right.

Angelica arrived at five with her brother Malik, his wife Farah, and two of their three daughters in tow. She looked like she was genuinely off-duty, which was different from her performance-off-duty, and I was one of about six people on earth who could tell the difference.

I crossed to her immediately.

"You came."

"I told you I was coming." She hugged me, then held me at arm's length and looked at the faded mark above my eyebrow, which had mostly healed but still made people who knew wince slightly when they noticed it. "I'm going to need the full story."

"Later." I looked past her. "It’s great you brought Malik and his family. I didn’t know they were in town."