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Her smile was slow and sweet. “I’ll eat in my room. Let’s watch a show afterward. You need a little bit of privacy.” She spun away, waving over her shoulder as she hurried down the hallway. “But for God’s sake, don’t go crazy in the kitchen,” she called right before she closed her door.
My cheeks were still hot when Noah arrived a few minutes later. When he wrapped me in his arms, I breathed him in, thanking the universe and the stars that I hadn’t screwed this up too badly.
By the time he drew back, joy and need were spinning through me. “Quinn said we couldn’t go too crazy in the kitchen,” I said breathlessly.
Noah chuckled. “Smart girl. Now let’s eat.”
We sat at the kitchen table and ate together. I savored every second of the quiet simplicity of the moments. When Quinn came out of her bedroom to join us to watch a show, I was curled up against Noah's side with his arm around my shoulders and Matilda napping at our feet.
EPILOGUE
Noah
Christmas Eve – the following winter
I reflexively checked my coat pocket. For perhaps the fiftieth time in the past hour, I confirmed it was still there.
“Do you have it?” Quinn whispered, loud enough that the very whisper itself echoed in the foyer.
I cast a warning look, albeit a bemused one, at Sasha’s daughter. “Yes, I have it.”
“I’ll be right there!” Sasha’s voice carried to us from the hallway upstairs.
Quinn tapped the toe of her chunky black leather boot on the floor. “You know,” she said as her eyes arced around the foyer and down the hallway, “you need to step it up on furnishing this place.”
I chuckled, arching a brow as I looked back at her. “You don’t say?”
Quinn, who looked so much like Sasha it was startling sometimes, nodded as she pushed her glasses up her nose. “Yes. You don’t have anything other than a coat rack in here. You need like a table and maybe a rug or something. This could be a room itself. I’m just grateful you got a bed for the guest room.”
I grinned. “You know, we don’t live here,” I pointed out.
Since last Christmas, Sasha and I had actually come up here for a few weekends. Suffice it to say, we didn’t use that time to furnish the house. We had other things to do. Sasha had pointed out that dating a single mother wasn’t glamorous, which turned out to be true, but dating anyone who had a life wasn’t glamorous. Occasional weekend getaways gave us a little freedom. Quinn was an awesome kid—the best, as far as I was concerned.
“How about we go to that furniture store in the next town over? Pretty sure they’ll be closed for Christmas Day, but they’ll probably be open the day after.”
Quinn’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, that’ll be fun.”
A flash of trepidation stole through me. Quinn liked things bright, and I didn’t know if my siblings, who technically had a say since we jointly owned the house, would have an opinion on that. I dismissed the concern quickly. They’d all welcomed Quinn into our family, and honestly, most of us could only make it to this house periodically.
At the sound of footsteps, I glanced up to see Sasha descending the stairs, and my breath seized in my lungs for a moment. She always looked gorgeous, but tonight my anticipation had me on edge. Everything felt sharper, including how beautiful she was. Her hair was down, which was rare. Sasha was a practical woman, and I loved that, but it was nice to see her hair loose on occasion.
She wore fitted jeans with low-heeled leather boots paired with a cream silk blouse and a bright blue silk scarf. Her lips were shiny, and I wanted to kiss that lip gloss right off.
I knew any PDA would lead to Quinn snorting. So I made do with sliding my arm around Sasha’s waist when she stopped beside us. “Are we ready?” she asked.
“We’vebeen ready,” Quinn said with a sly grin.
Sasha didn’t even bother reacting to Quinn’s comment. She was a master at not engaging. All things considered, Quinn only occasionally gave us too much attitude.
Sasha turned and snagged her coat off the coat rack by the door. As we walked out into the crisp winter air on Christmas Eve, Quinn commented, “Noah’s going to let me start furnishing this place.”
Sasha’s eyes widened when she glanced at me while we descended the front steps.
“Wedoneed some more furniture. We’ll see what we can find,” I said easily.
We drove into downtown Haven’s Bay. Our small hometown was spruced up for the holidays. There were wreaths mounted on the streetlights and holiday lights glittering on the big tree in the town green beside Main Street. Most of the homes and stores had lights strung along the rooftops.
I smiled to myself, recalling our Christmas tree shopping venture just the night before. We’d let Quinn pick, and she decided we needed to take the most forlorn-looking tree. “To make it feel better about itself,” she’d said.
