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“I know,” he said and went toward her. “I figured action was better than promises. It took me a while to move.” He held out his hand to her. “Your dad . . .”
“I know,” she said as her fingertips touched his. “He’s sorry for what he did, but he’s in awe of your cursing.”
Tris gave a half grin. “I described what he could do with his building in very precise, anatomical terms.”
She stepped closer to him. “Nell is depressed because we both left her.”
“I needed to sort out my life first,” he said, then held out his arms to her. “Jecca, I love you.”
She went to him and kissed him with all the longing she’d felt for six and a half weeks. She’d thought she was never going to see him again—and she’d seen how empty her life was without him.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, his lips on her ear.
Jecca started to say yes, but there was a collective hiss around them. They had both forgotten the other people in the room.e iv>
Turning, they looked at the women, and all of them, including the two women behind the window, were looking at Tristan expectantly.
“I guess I better do this right,” he said, “or I won’t have any patients left.” He went onto one knee in front of her.
“Jecca, will you—Oh, wait.” He fumbled in the pocket of his white coat and withdrew a little leather box with Kim’s distinctive design on it. Jecca drew in her breath—as did all the women.
Still on one knee, he opened the box—and every woman bent toward it. This time a little gasp went up.
“Is it okay?” Tris asked as he moved it around so they could all see the ring with the big three-carat diamond. There was a universal nod of approval.
“Jecca, my love,” he said, “will you marry me and live with me wherever you want to? Whither thou goest . . . That sort of thing?”
“Yes,” she said.
He put Kim’s ring on Jecca’s finger, then stood up and kissed her.
Jecca kissed him back—and held her left hand out so the women could see the ring.
“Happy?” he whispered against her lips.
“Sublimely so,” she said.
“Still afraid?”
“Not anymore. I love you, Tristan. With all my heart.”
“I didn’t think I could love anyone as much as I love you,” he said and kissed her again.
Epilogue
It was 9 A.M., light was peeping through the hotel curtains, and Jecca was snuggled against Tristan. When she saw the clock she jumped. She had to get to work! But then she relaxed and smiled. It was the morning after their wedding, and this afternoon they were getting on a plane to fly to beautiful, luscious New Zealand for their honeymoon.
She couldn’t help but think how good it was that she didn’t have to get up early to run downtown to some dirty warehouse to go through hundreds of bolts of fabric. Tris said she tried to make her job sound onerous, but the truth was she was enjoying every minute of it.
She’d laughed because he was right. She genuinely loved her new job. It was especially nice that her background in the tool business had put her a step ahead of the other young people trying to learn the trade. Jecca could not only use any machine put in front of her, but she could also fix it when it broke. She’d become the darling of the men and women who were far down the ladder from the lofty designers. Because she was so popular, she got all her questions answered about things like how to best insert a piping around the armscy so the raw edge was hidden. She’d soon learned to show a design to the workers first and was told what was too time-consuming and therefore too expensive to produce. As a result, the designs she presented to e iv>ains, Mr. Chambers were always cost-effective.
For all that Jecca loved what she was doing, she knew that Tris hadn’t been happy with his new practice in New York. He never complained, but she found out that he’d spent a lot of time on the phone with Reede consulting about patients in Edilean. And when he went “home”—Jecca thought of the place that way too—he spent most of his time making house calls.
The first couple of times they went back, Jecca felt the people of Edilean—his relatives, that is—watching her. It was a bit creepy until Nell told her what was going on.
“They say that you met Uncle Tris when his arm was broken so you’ll expect him to spend all his time helping you put on fashion shows.”
That was such an
