Epilogue
T here wasn’t much Zeke Carey liked more than a good wedding.
Belinda had been muttering about missing the exchange of vows since she’d heard it was happening, but Zeke wasn’t particular. Just give him the happy couple—especially if one of them was a son of his—and a little bit of a party, and he was good to go.
He had such a good time in the old lodge that night that Belinda had to warn him to settle down.
“You don’t exactly look like you’re at death’s door, do you, while you’re out here two stepping like a fool,” she told him.
While two stepping along with him.
But he took her point. Though with three sons down, he had to admit that he was feeling his oats.
“I hope you’re ready for what’s next,” he told her as they walked from the center of the makeshift dance floor. He made sure to look like he was holding onto her, as if he needed her to keep him upright.
Belinda shot him a look, her eyes dancing. “Don’t you threaten me with a good time, and Zeke Carey. I let you lead the way with Alice’s boys, as was only right and proper. But now? It’s time for me to tag in.”
And when she looked into the crowd of people and indicated Boone over by the food table, talking intently with Sierra, as always, Zeke laughed. And then laughed even harder when she turned in the other direction to find Knox in a loose group of folks who didn’t know, yet, how much they would miss being so young and so beautiful. Though to Zeke’s eye, Knox looked like he was going out of his way not to interact with that pretty new doctor.
“This last year of my life sure has been interesting so far,” Zeke drawled.
Belinda turned back to fix him with that same look of hers. “I suggest you make certain to stay healthy, my love. Or you will wish this year really was your last.”
He was still laughing about that when he wandered away from the party, and down one of the hallways toward the bathroom. Zeke had always loved this old lodge. He and his Alice had come here while the Stark grandparents were still around to run it. He thought of her as he walked, because he thought about her always.
But specifically here. On a night like this, when they’d gone ahead and married off all three of their sons.
He saw the bathroom down one corridor but he turned the other way, stuck his hands in his pockets, and let his memories lead him down the hall that was less cared for, maybe, than the others. But he could still see the care that had once been put into the worn wooden floors.
And there were still those pictures on the wall. He smiled and looked more closely because if he wasn’t mistaken…
He found the picture he was looking for, small and easily overlooked, there on the wall with so many others.
Zeke looked at it and smiled. Then he reached out to touch her pretty face.
His Alice. His sweet, lost Alice, young and bright and wreathed in smiles.
They’d come here on their first anniversary. Zeke had saved up all year to make sure that they could splash out. They done it up. They’d stayed in a fancy suite and had eaten their meals in the overwhelmingly quiet and glamorous ballroom, too upmarket for a cowboy and his lady. Or it had seemed that way to him at the time, anyway.
Alice hadn’t been able to stop laughing, certain that at any moment someone would see that she was using the wrong fork and toss her out.
Afterward, they’d walked in this very same hallway, holding hands and talking about all the gorgeous things their future would hold.
“Some of them came true, my love,” he told her now. “Some of them you got to see on this side, but I know you’re watching from where you are. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
And for a perfect moment, Zeke was sure that he could hear her laughter once again. It rang in him like bells and he felt his eyes go damp, because he was always so afraid that he would lose even that. Even such a sweet memory as the sound of her laughter.
He let it wash all over him. When it was done, he nodded his thanks, leaned forward, and pressed a kiss to the dusty old picture of the two of them.
“We did it, Alice,” he told her gruffly. “We married them off and I’ll tell you, they’re all as happy as we were. It’s your turn now. You make sure they get more time than we did. You make sure of it.”
When he made it back to the ballroom, his wonderful Belinda was waiting for him. She took one look at his face and wrapped her arms around him.
“Had to have a talk with Alice about our great victory tonight,” he said, a little more gruffly than he intended.
“She’ll take it from here,” Belinda replied, because she’d always known, his Belinda. She’d always understood. Alice didn’t haunt them, Alice was a part of them. Alice was everywhere and that took nothing away from his and Belinda’s life or marriage.
It had only ever enhanced it.
Like right now. “She’ll take it from here,” Belinda said again, nodding, as if she was already strategizing in her head. “She’s on baby duty now. Making sure they’ll come in healthy and happy.”
“That’s assuming Harlan ever decides to spill the beans,” Zeke said dryly, because it would take a blind man to miss Kendall’s condition at this point. They all lived on a ranch, for God’s sake. They knew a pregnant female when they saw one—
But they’d tiptoe around it until the happy couple was ready to share. That was the right way to handle it, Zeke knew, though he couldn’t say he liked it.
“Maybe you haven’t met your oldest son,” Belinda was saying, with that smile of hers. “He makes caution look reckless.”
Zeke laughed at that, so hard that heads turned. Belinda swatted his arm. “You really have to act more sickly.”
“I’ll try,” he promised her.
But not tonight. He let his gaze move around the room, finding his sons and his beautiful new daughters-in-law. He looked over to his youngest son, and wondered if he might be the one who handled his own business before Zeke got around to it.
He doubted it.
Because the first thing on his agenda was the enduring problem of his and Belinda’s first child. Dependable, long-suffering, deeply loyal to a fault Boone.
Belinda and Zeke agreed. It was high time for his dance around that pretty Sierra Tate to end.
One way or another.
The End