Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Ashley

ONE WEEK LATER

“So wait…you’re married?!” Zoe shouted over the music, laughter, and chatter at the bar as she stared down at the rock on my left hand.

The ladies and I were all seated at a corner booth in Southern Comfort while Harlan, Miles, Declan, and Nadia’s date, Will, were playing pool. The place was crowded, and there was an extra celebratory atmosphere in the air because it was New Year’s Eve. There were novelty hats, streamers, confetti, and banners adding to the festive atmosphere.

“Yep.” I nodded my head up and down.

“You’re married ?!” Daphne emphasized in disbelief.

Zoe pointed accusatorily at Nadia. “Did you know about this?”

Nadia cringed as she lifted her hands from the table in mock surrender. “Yes.”

“She did, but I swore her to secrecy.”

I quickly caught the group up on how the entire sordid affair unfolded. Everything from soup to nuts, from our first meeting at the bar in the hotel to working for Mr. Stick Up His Ass, to finding out they were the same person, to the indecent proposal, to our secret ceremony, wedding night, ten-week marriage, and Christmas Day divorce/declaration of love.

Once I’d filled them in, both Daphne and Zoe just stared at me for several seconds, neither saying a word.

Finally, Daphne concluded, “Wow…that’s…romantic.”

Even though I was biased, I did tend to agree with her.

“It really, really is! Congratulations!” Zoe hugged me.

“I’m so happy for you!” Daphne got in on the hug, too.

When everyone sat back in their seats, Zoe took a breath. “And, since we’re sharing news, we were going to wait until after the new year, but…” She reached into her purse and then held up her hand. “I’m engaged.”

“Since when?” Nadia grabbed her hand and yanked it across the table to check out her ring.

“About a week before the movie premiere, when we went to New York, Miles proposed.”

“That was months ago! Why didn’t you tell us?!” Nadia demanded.

“It didn’t feel right to say anything before the premiere, and then I didn’t want to take any of the attention away from Daphne and Harlan’s big day. And then there was Christmas, so, we just decided it would be best to wait.”

“Congratulations!” Daphne lifted her glass in cheers. “To happily ever afters!”

I raised my glass and clinked it with my friends. As Daphne asked Zoe to fill her in on how Miles popped the question, I noticed beside me Nadia’s mood shift. Typically, Nadia was the boisterous, outgoing, funny one of the group. Right now, she looked like someone had just run over her dog.

“Are you okay?” I asked under my breath.

“Yeah, it’s just…I thought I was going to be married with kids by now.”

“Really?” I’d always thought Nadia enjoyed her single life. Out of our group, she was proudly the ‘Samantha.’ She loved dating. Never took any relationship seriously. I’d never heard her mention she wanted to settle down. “I thought you loved dating around.”

She sighed. “I just do that to bide my time.”

“Bide your time? Bide your time for what?”

“For him.” She downed her drink, which if I was counting correctly, was her seventh of the evening.

“Him? Who’s him?”

“Growing up, there was this guy, and we?—”

“Oh, they’re passing out champagne!” Zoe clapped as she stood and grabbed two flutes that were being passed out and handed them to Nadia and me. “The countdown is coming.”

We all slid out of our booth and joined the men at the pool table before walking out on the back deck as a group. I barely made it within arm’s length before Declan reached out and pulled me into him. He nuzzled his face into my neck as he tightened his grip around me. “Hello, wife.”

“Hello, husband.” A wide smile spread on my face. My cheeks hurt from how much I’d been smiling over the past week. Declan had stayed the entire week at my house. We’d gone over to have dinner with Stella, Fred, and Dorothy a couple of nights and babysat Mason and Luna once to give my sister and Hank a break. Besides that, we just stayed in and did newlywed things.

Declan wasn’t giving up the business, but he wasn’t going to run it the way his grandfather had. He wouldn’t be traveling six months out of the year anymore. And he was going to work remotely and only go into the city a few days every other week. He was also going to be promoting Hannah and several other employees to positions that would free up a lot more of his time, so he didn’t have seventy-hour work weeks.

Part of me was afraid that he was making too many changes too fast, but he assured me that he’d never been so happy. Stella said the same thing. She said that I brought the light back into his eyes, which she hadn’t seen since he was a little boy.

As we waited for the countdown, I heard a gasp beside me. I turned and saw Nadia staring across the bar. All of the color drained from her face like she’d seen a ghost. I followed her gaze to see what she was looking at. The ‘ghost’ in question was a very tall, very sexy, very square-jawed, and dimpled man I’d never seen before.

“Nadia, who is that? Are you okay?”

She continued staring ahead, and when I looked back, the man was gone. Before I could say anything else, Will, her date, said something in her ear, and she shook her head and took a large swig of her drink, then started making out with him.

I nudged Zoe in the arm and gestured to tall, dark, and mysterious. “Who was that?”

“Who was who?”

I tried to look for the man who had disappeared. “The guy Nadia was just staring at like she’d seen a ghost.”

“I don’t know.” Zoe shrugged as Miles wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him.

As we waited for the countdown to start, Declan asked, “So, wife, do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”

“Well, I already found a man who looks at me like Clyde looks at Bonnie.” I smiled up at him.

He leaned down and whispered against my ear, “And it doesn’t hurt that he’s hung like him, too.”

I laughed as the countdown started.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…”

Declan’s arms squeezed tighter around me.

“…five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”

The room exploded in cheers. Declan claimed my mouth in a dizzying kiss as he dipped me back. When he straightened me back up again, we clinked our glasses, and he took a drink of his. I brought mine to my mouth but didn’t drink it. I didn’t think he’d notice. No one else had the entire evening. I’d been going to the bar and ordering cokes and water and nothing with any alcohol. I should have known that Declan wasn’t like my friends. He noticed everything.

“What’s wrong?” Declan’s brow furrowed.

“Nothing.” I smiled.

“Why didn’t you drink?”

When I was getting ready to go out, I realized I was a week late. So, when I went over to borrow Skylar’s shoes for tonight, I grabbed a couple of pregnancy tests that came in the four-pack she hadn’t used when she found out she was pregnant with Mason. I took them right before we left. They were both positive. I didn’t know if it was too soon to tell him since I figured I had to be four weeks along since I’d gone on antibiotics before the Christmas party.

“We can talk about this later.” I patted his chest.

“Talk about what?”

“Nothing.” We hadn’t specifically spoken about having kids. I knew that, in theory, he wanted a family. But I had no idea when he wanted that to happen.

His expression darkened. “Are you sick?”

“No.”

His whiskey stare intensified as he stared down at me, and I knew that he was not going to let this go. He wouldn’t be able to even if he wanted to. That was just how his mind worked.

As fireworks exploded above our heads, I rose up on my tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “I took two pregnancy tests before we came here, and they were both positive.”

I lowered back down on my heels and looked up at him, waiting for his reaction. I didn’t know if he was going to be upset because this wasn’t planned. I knew that with his OCPD, he needed things to be planned. When they weren’t, he felt like his life was out of control.

I braced myself not to take whatever his response was personally. He was allowed to have feelings around this, even if they weren’t positive. He lifted his hands and cupped my face.

“You’re pregnant?” he repeated.

I nodded.

“I love you,” he whispered against the top of my head. “I love you, wife.”

“I love you, husband.”

He leaned down and kissed my mouth, then my nose, and then my forehead before pulling me into a tight embrace. His arms surrounded me in safety, in protection, and in love .

THE END