AllFreeNovel
Share Us
On the other hand, it may not be the best way to kick off my bright new future.
I have a job. I have manuscripts to publish.
And best of all, I have the guys.
EPILOGUE
“You’re being awfully quiet, baby,”Levi says, taking my hand.
His touch snaps me out of my reverie, where I’ve been staring out the window of Wyatt’s SUV for the last hour as we drive towards his cabin somewhere north of New York city.
I didn’t even ask where we’re going. I don’t care. All I want is to have a weekend away with the guys. Shit’s been heavy lately, and we all need a freaking break. In fact, Ralph, the coolest boss in the world, recognized that, God bless him, and suggested I take a couple days away from the office.
You know, all a boss has to do is be a little nice, not over the top, but pleasant and decent, and he earns himself the kind of loyalty assholes like Cameron think they can bully out of their employees. He never learned that’s not how it works. You can’t demand respect. You can’t scare people into it. You have to earn it. And it’s not hard, not really. Just be a civilized human being and don’t shit on people. Too bad the man never figured that out.
Oh, Cameron. The man is the very definition of a bad boss. Pure cruel evilness, personified. Now that he’s gone, we employees at Empire Ink Press, in addition to being massively grateful he’s out of our hair, are in heavy-duty recovery mode, starting to trust ourselves and each other again, that’s how beaten-down we were.
With Ralph at the helm, I’m sure we’ll get our confidence back quickly, and stop flinching every time we’re called into a meeting.
Nobody knows where Cameron went. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since the day Wyatt fired him. Nobody cares, either. Setting up your top literary client for failure is not a good look, and New York publishing won’t forget that for a long time, if ever.
Ralph was always my ally, it turns out. Cameron had been pressuring him to spy on me, but instead he made stuff up to protect me. Ralph assured him I was always looking for new romance writers to work with, and that I had several in the pipeline. That I was good at my work, and he should be happy to have me on the team. Ralph saw potential in me and did what he could to protect me. And now he’s my boss. How fucking awesome is that? He even gave me a raise and a better cubicle, right outside his office. If I stand and crane my neck the right way, I can see into Ralph’s office and out his window into the office building next door. It might not sound like much but it’s a one hundred percent improvement over what I had before.
Actually, everything in my life has seen a one hundred percent improvement. I didn’t even know that was possible.
I stay with the guys most of the time now, so Daisy has pretty much taken over my apartment. She and her new guy, who has turned her into a total bookworm, are making a go of their dog-walking business. While I don’t think they’ll make a killing, they can pay their bills, and actually have more dogs to walk than they have capacity for. They’re talking about hiring other walkers, but are inclined to keep their operation small and simple. So, they’re raising their rates. And people are paying them.
They came across a rescue puppy the other day and guess who took the little guy in? Wyatt! He’s a cute little tank of ababy dog and when he runs around Wyatt’s place, he slips and slides on the concrete floors. Wyatt’s getting rugs to help the little guy out, but it is a damn funny thing to see—a hyped up puppy skittering across the floor so fast he ends up right on his ass. As one might imagine, he has no end of people running to pick him up when he does, and Wyatt yells at us that we’re spoiling him rotten.
We just ignore him.
Wyatt’s doing a great job running Empire. Turns out he learned a few things back in his dot-com days, the most important one being letting smart people do their jobs without interference. He keeps an eye on the numbers but lets industry experts like Ralph do their thing. It’s already showing in our revenues, he tells us, but when he gets into the details, my eyes glaze over. I don’t get all that profit and loss shit, and I probably never will. I’m more about finding the next great romance writer.
We got a lot of publicity from the Ryder Night debacle, which has actually turned out pretty well for Empire. We are getting tons of book submissions from agents and authors who want to work with us, more than we ever did under Cameron’s reign. Success begets success, as my mother always says. Levi’s fame and new novels have really put us on the map as romance publishers, so I am seriously busy. I love it. I get to read romance day and night. Well, except for when I’m with the guys. Then, I’m living it. I never thought my life could be like a romance novel.
Then there’s my mother.
After her last insult of the romance genre, I ‘pulled a Ralph’ as I like to say now, and sent her a box of romance novels to read so she’d shut the hell up about them. And you know what? She read a couple and told me she liked them. Turns outhistorical romance is her jam, especially those hot ones with beautiful virginal women and handsome rakish men.
Go Mom.
Her wedding is coming like a freight train, and while I have not been able to get out of wearing the floofy maid of honor dress she’s forced on me, I get to bring all the guys. She doesn’t understand how I’ve gone from being dateless to having three men I want to bring to her wedding, but she’s so caught up in her own stuff, she hasn’t asked much. She will, eventually, and I’ll tell her the truth.
That I’m in love with three men who are also in love with me. She may or may not understand. Same with other people.
Nothing I can do about that.
I just hope this new guy my mom is walking down the aisle with makes her happy in a way none of her previous husband were able to. Now that I know what it’s like—to really love and be loved in return—it’s something I truly hope she gets to experience. It’s not easy to find something like this, and when you do, you need to realize how damn lucky you are. And hang on to it.
Which is not easy.
We must be gettingclose to the cabin because Wyatt has turned the SUV off a paved back road onto a bumpy, rutted-out one. I grab the ‘oh shit’ handle by my head and use my other hand to grab the seat back in front of me. The puppy, snuggling at my feet, is whining, having been woken out of a long nap.
Jesus, I hope the cabin is not as rustic as this freaking road is.
Turns out, I have nothing to worry about.
The dirt road we’re on twists and turns for a couple miles when it finally opens into a field of wild flowers, and I feel like I’m in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy sees the Emerald City.
