Epilogue
Ivy set down the obscenely heavy box with a gasp. “Remind me again why we thought moving the week after finishing a book tour was a good idea.”
Harrison set down two identical boxes labeled Books in the opposite corner of the room that would become her office. “I believe there was some plan for hitting up the spa once we actually got everything off the truck. Also something about wanting to get as far away from cities as fast as humanly possible because you couldn’t with all the people anymore.”
“Okay, yeah, I did say that.” She’d known she’d be stressed to the max after the book tour launching Enemy of Silence, so going more or less straight to their new mountain hideaway had been the obvious choice when choosing a closing date for the house. She’d had visions of unpacking fast, then luxuriating in the quiet. But she’d underestimated the chaos of combining households and moving four hours away from Nashville. “But where the hell did all this stuff come from? I swear, it multiplied like tribbles in the truck.”
“Perhaps a better question is how it is we all ended up being your manual labor? You could totally have sprung for movers, Miss Seven-Time New York Times Best Seller,” Sebastian griped.
Ivy blew him a wink and a kiss. “But then I wouldn’t get to see your pretty face.” In the nine months since she and Harrison officially got together, she’d gotten to know his friends well and enjoyed razzing them at every opportunity.
“Besides, you’re getting beer and pizza,” Harrison reminded him. “What more does a man need?”
“I’m not sure there’s enough beer in the Ridge to make up for all these boxes of books,” Porter groused. “How many are there?”
“Forty. Ish,” Ivy admitted. Maybe closer to fifty, but who was counting?
“Who the hell needs forty boxes of books?” Ty asked, adding two more to the stack.
“Two cohabitating writers.” When he just sent her a flat stare, she hunched her shoulders. “What? Don’t look at me like that. They’re research.”
“I’m looking at you like that because I’m pretty sure the entire forty-ish are all yours.”
She looked to Harrison for some backup but he just crossed those massive arms and grinned. “He’s not wrong. Almost all mine are digital.”
On a huff, she folded her own aching arms. “I’m a writer. Therefore, I do not have a book problem.”
“Would the same apply if you were a liquor store owner with half the contents of the store in your house?” Sebastian asked.
“Books are not a controlled substance.”
“Maybe they should be.” He easily evaded the throw pillow she snatched up from the loveseat.
“Troglodyte!”
His laughter echoed all the way down the hall.
Shaking her head with a reluctant smile, Ivy flopped down on the loveseat, glancing around at the three full walls of built-in bookcases and imagining them filled with colorful spines. It would be glorious. Perhaps not quite on the scale of the Beauty and the Beast library she’d lusted after since she was a child, but it would be hers. Theirs. Part of the home they’d chosen to build together.
The other half of that home joined her on the loveseat, tugging her in close. “We’re nearly done.”
Ivy eyed the mountains of stuff. “Your definition of done and mine are vastly different.”
“Well, the truck’s nearly empty, meaning we can feed and water the help and kick them out, the better to christen our new house.”
With a hum of anticipation, she snuggled in. “We should establish an incentive for unpacking.”
“Like a naked incentive? Miss Blake, I do like the way you think.” He leaned in to kiss her.
“Hey, the last boxes on the truck aren’t going to move themselves.” Sebastian let the ones he carried land with a thud on the pile next to the loveseat and shot them a meaningful look.
Harrison cheerfully flipped him off and took Ivy’s mouth in a smacking kiss.
“Get a room.”
“We bought several, thanks.”
Sebastian shot his own middle finger over one shoulder on his way out of the room.
Ivy watched him go. “We really need to get him a woman.”
“Pretty sure Deanna would volunteer for that position. She was eying him pretty hard while we were loading the truck.”
“She’s absolutely in a Look-Don’t-Touch phase, and definitely not into the idea of long-distance.”
“Her loss. But they’d probably kill each other anyway.” Harrison hefted himself up. “We’d best get back to it.”
“I’ll be along in a minute.” Ivy slipped her phone from her pocket and opened up the browser, refreshing the page she’d been checking all day.
“Are you looking at the USA Today Best-Seller list again?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t know why you keep doing that. My book is not gonna be on it.”
In the months since Stormamageddon, he’d finished up the quartet about Coop’s military service and begun a new series about life away from war, as a peacekeeper out on one of the far-flung frontier planets. Their release dates had been only a week apart, and Ivy simply couldn’t get over how hands-off he’d been. Once he’d published the book, let his mailing list know, he was done, mentally moving on to the next book as he traveled with her on the two-week book tour her publisher had arranged. But after he’d been outed as the grumpy lumberjack in her dedication and dragged on stage for one of the morning shows she’d been interviewed on—to the absolute delight of the audience—Ivy had gotten an idea.
The page loaded and she began to scroll. “You never know.”
And there it was. Number ninety-seven. The Remains of Yesterday. Ivy shrieked and began to dance. “I was right! See? See?”
She shoved the phone in his face.
Brows drawn together, he took the phone from her hand and stared, his expression slowly morphing into shock. “I don’t…How?”
She bit her lip. “I might have shared the video from our clip on The Breakfast Club with my fans and totally pimped the book. And put together a Facebook ad campaign for the launch.”
At the time, she’d felt delightfully sneaky, hoping she’d be able to surprise him. But now, she couldn’t read his reaction. Would he feel like the success wasn’t really his? That hadn’t occurred to her until right this moment when he wasn’t jumping around and celebrating as she thought he should.
Lowering the phone, he stared into her eyes. “Why?”
She resisted the urge to knit her hands. “Because you deserve it. The book’s amazing. All I did was tell people the honest truth about that. Because I believe in you.”
He slid his hands into her hair, tipping her face up so she couldn’t look away. “I love you. I love that you’d do this for me.”
She waited, the tension in her belly drawing tighter. “But?”
“No buts. No qualifiers. I just love you. Thank you.” He brushed his lips over hers once, twice. A sweet gesture that had her melting against him in relief.
“I love you, too. And you’re very welcome.”
Sebastian’s voice cut in on the moment. “If you two are done playing kissy face, the only thing left on the truck is this ridonculous bed you bought. It’s gonna take all four of us to move it.”
Harrison let her go with a grin. “Priorities.”
As the love of her life headed back outside, Ivy couldn’t help but think how life was strange. Strange and absolutely perfect.
* * *
Choose Your Next Romance
You knowwe’re getting another of this band of brothers, right? Next to fall is Sebastian. His match is a power house of a woman who’s going to challenge everything he thinks he wants. Fans of my Misfit Inn quartet will love What I Like About You for the Reynolds cameos, Athena and Logan’s wedding, and, of course, Ari.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of grumpy soft for sunshine romances.