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He looks down at me. “What are you thinking about, baby?”
“I was thinking about convenient places we could hide in to start the real celebration, Dev.” I press against him with a smile, making him grunt my name.
He grips my hips, pushing me further into his huge, hard body, clad in a jaw-dropping tuxedo. “God, you drive me crazy.”
I sigh. "I hear you. You’re evil. You know what your cologne does to me, and yet, you still practically showered in it tonight."
He chuckles. “You know what your…everythingdoes to me, but I don’t see you trying to help me out. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I wiggle my eyebrows. “That you know I make you suffer, but you’ll be grateful for it later?”
He smirks at me. "Ditto," he whispers, and then his lips are on mine.
Champagne fizzles, and flutes clink around us as we dance under a canopy of twinkling amber-colored lights. Devon’s large, protective hands are on my hips as he twirls me round and round on the perfectly manicured lawn, the orchestra playing some romantic, uplifting song from the Seventies that my fiancé swears is the very song we danced to that night that I still can't remember clearly in that drab, little bar.
It doesn't matter that I can't remember, though. I still can be grateful that it happened.
I stand on the balls of my feet and swing my arms around his bulky neck, my head lying on his muscular chest. “I love you so much, Dev.”
I feel his chin rest on my hair. “I love you too, sweetheart.”
As the music changes, a waiter interrupts us, thrusting a silver tray at us. Only there are no champagne flutes on it, but tiny shots in bright, fluorescent, gaudy colors in stark contrast with the refined and sophisticated atmosphere of this night.
We both look around and spot our friends standing in a group, cracking themselves up at their own silly joke.
“Thank you, no,” Devon says to the waiter without looking at him, his eyes shining down on me.
“We’ll pass,” I confirm, my arms pulling him even closer.
“We’ll remember everything about tonight, Lynn,” he murmurs tenderly.
I nod and kiss him. “We will, love. Everything and forever.”
Epilogue 2 Part 1
DEVON
Six months after that…
We have just left the crispy-cold wind of Boston’s last days of fall behind and are now boarding my private jet. I smirk to myself when I notice that as we make our way to our seats, everybody is smiling, but of course, not the birthday girl.
No, my beloved Lynn has been sulking for days now.
I should stop torturing her and spill the beans on the little secret that’s driving her crazy, but I just love to see the fire flash in her steel-gray eyes, and since we got together, we get along so well that I rarely get to see it, let alone stoke it.
The past few months have been crazy-busy workwise, not only for the guys and me over at Welton Inc, but also for all the ladies. Just this morning, we closed the deal on the very exhausting merger of two companies and the subsequent acquisition of the resulting corporation. My Lynn’s been following a huge case that involves two international companies and has been forced to keep jet-lag-inducing hours to accommodate her clients almost daily. Jane got a particularly challenging group of students in her class this year, and maintaining order during her lessons has become increasingly difficult and draining for her, and my little sister just started shadowing Tony and dipping her toes into some serious business deals and has been stressing out about every single aspect of it.
On top of all of this, our wedding day is set for five months from now, and whether we like it or not —or even want it to be, really—it’s going to be a freaking three-ring circus as, according to my family —and my board of directors — nothing else would do for the VP and CEO of a worldwide company. We’re all going nuts with the arrangements already, no matter how much we delegate. So I figured, since in two days my fiancée turns twenty-eight, it would be a good moment to just take some time off, recharge the batteries, be together, and take our minds off of things.
I talked with my sister and our friends, and they all thought it was a great plan and were convinced it would please Lynn. It did.
Then Sookie had the idea to keep the details of our travel arrangements a secret from Lynn. I thought it would be fun to surprise her and went along with it, swearing everybody else to secrecy, but my little tigress didn’t like it one bit and has been trying to wring the truth out of me ever since I told her we were going to leave for an extended trip.
I thought a tropical holiday was just what we needed to find the strength to face head-on the stuff that will start coming at us with the arrival of the winter, and so consulting my friends, we decided on a tour of the Caribbean Sea and its islands.
My jet will land in the Dominican Republic later tonight, and we will spend several days in Santo Domingo. Then we will take a cruise around the Antilles with a fully staffed and equipped private yacht that I rented for several weeks, ending our holiday with a jaunt in the Barbados Islands, last stop Bridgetown and then homeward to Boston aboard my jet again.
I take my place and slump against the seat a little, stretching my legs in front of me and reaching for Lynn’s hand. I bring it to my mouth and pepper it with kisses.
