Epilogue
Noah
Christmas Eve – the following winter
I reflexively checked my coat pocket. For perhaps the fiftieth time in the past hour, I confirmed it was still there.
“Do you have it?” Quinn whispered, loud enough that the very whisper itself echoed in the foyer.
I cast a warning look, albeit a bemused one, at Sasha’s daughter. “Yes, I have it.”
“I’ll be right there!” Sasha’s voice carried to us from the hallway upstairs.
Quinn tapped the toe of her chunky black leather boot on the floor. “You know,” she said as her eyes arced around the foyer and down the hallway, “you need to step it up on furnishing this place.”
I chuckled, arching a brow as I looked back at her. “You don’t say?”
Quinn, who looked so much like Sasha it was startling sometimes, nodded as she pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Yes. You don’t have anything other than a coat rack in here.
You need like a table and maybe a rug or something.
This could be a room itself. I’m just grateful you got a bed for the guest room. ”
I grinned. “You know, we don’t live here,” I pointed out.
Since last Christmas, Sasha and I had actually come up here for a few weekends.
Suffice it to say, we didn’t use that time to furnish the house.
We had other things to do. Sasha had pointed out that dating a single mother wasn’t glamorous, which turned out to be true, but dating anyone who had a life wasn’t glamorous.
Occasional weekend getaways gave us a little freedom.
Quinn was an awesome kid—the best, as far as I was concerned.
“How about we go to that furniture store in the next town over? Pretty sure they’ll be closed for Christmas Day, but they’ll probably be open the day after.”
Quinn’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, that’ll be fun.”
A flash of trepidation stole through me.
Quinn liked things bright, and I didn’t know if my siblings, who technically had a say since we jointly owned the house, would have an opinion on that.
I dismissed the concern quickly. They’d all welcomed Quinn into our family, and honestly, most of us could only make it to this house periodically.
At the sound of footsteps, I glanced up to see Sasha descending the stairs, and my breath seized in my lungs for a moment.
She always looked gorgeous, but tonight my anticipation had me on edge.
Everything felt sharper, including how beautiful she was.
Her hair was down, which was rare. Sasha was a practical woman, and I loved that, but it was nice to see her hair loose on occasion.
She wore fitted jeans with low-heeled leather boots paired with a cream silk blouse and a bright blue silk scarf. Her lips were shiny, and I wanted to kiss that lip gloss right off.
I knew any PDA would lead to Quinn snorting. So I made do with sliding my arm around Sasha’s waist when she stopped beside us. “Are we ready?” she asked.
“We’ve been ready,” Quinn said with a sly grin.
Sasha didn’t even bother reacting to Quinn’s comment. She was a master at not engaging. All things considered, Quinn only occasionally gave us too much attitude.
Sasha turned and snagged her coat off the coat rack by the door. As we walked out into the crisp winter air on Christmas Eve, Quinn commented, “Noah’s going to let me start furnishing this place.”
Sasha’s eyes widened when she glanced at me while we descended the front steps.
“We do need some more furniture. We’ll see what we can find,” I said easily.
We drove into downtown Haven’s Bay. Our small hometown was spruced up for the holidays. There were wreaths mounted on the streetlights and holiday lights glittering on the big tree in the town green beside Main Street. Most of the homes and stores had lights strung along the rooftops.
I smiled to myself, recalling our Christmas tree shopping venture just the night before. We’d let Quinn pick, and she decided we needed to take the most forlorn-looking tree. “To make it feel better about itself,” she’d said.
A few minutes later, we sat in the parking lot at Emile’s. “Now,” Sasha said as she looked over her shoulder at Quinn. “We’ll be back before nine o’clock. You’d better be here.”
Quinn let out a put-upon sigh. “Of course, I’ll be here. You know the people who own this place. I’m sure they’ll text you if I leave.”
We were dropping her off at a small holiday gathering organized by the town’s theater group. Quinn had gotten involved with her high school theater program in Boston and made a few friends through a regional traveling theater program. One of those friends happened to be from Haven’s Bay.
“I know,” Sasha said, her lips pressing in a line. “We’ll go have dinner and be back later. Have fun.”
Quinn leaned forward and kissed her mother on the cheek before climbing out of the car and jogging across the parking lot. She waved, and the sound of the holiday sleigh bells on the door jingled as she disappeared through it.
“Let’s go have dinner.” I backed up and rolled slowly out of the parking lot.
“Am I too overprotective?” Sasha asked as I drove the short distance to Bay Bistro.
I shrugged. “I don’t know that any parent can feel too overprotective. I think all you can do is try to find a balance. It’s the best you can hope for.”
A short while later, Sherry was beaming at us as she filled our wine glasses. “Should I leave the bottle?” she asked.
“Just a glass for me. I’m driving. Do you think you can finish that bottle yourself?” I teased with a glance at Sasha.
Sasha rolled her eyes. “No. Just one glass is good for me too.”
After we ordered our food, my heart was thudding rapidly, the sound of it echoing in my ears. I’d told myself to wait until dessert, but I was too restless to relax.
I made a quick decision, sliding my hand into my pocket. The small velvet box warmed as I held it loosely in my palm under the table.
“Sasha?”
Her lashes swung up, and she held my gaze. I usually managed to have some eloquence, but I couldn’t seem to do this any way other than bluntly. “Will you marry me?”
Sasha’s mouth fell open in a pretty O, and her eyes went wide. “What?”
This time, I remembered to bring the ring out from under the table and open the small box.
SASHA
I stared at the ring—a simple platinum band with a row of sapphires along one edge. That alone had tears stinging my eyes. Because he remembered that Quinn worried about conflict diamonds, and as a result, so did I. Because when you were a mom, it was an endless experience of vicarious worry.
I swallowed, trying to calm the emotion threatening to catch me in a riptide as it rushed through me. “What?” I repeated.
Noah’s eyes held mine, his gaze steady and sure. “Will you marry me?”
I pressed my palm to my chest, almost fearful my heart might beat its way out. “Are you serious?”
“I’m so serious I even asked Quinn about it,” he said somberly.
I gasped. “Oh, my God. Yes! Of course, yes!”
I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing and almost knocked my wine over when I moved from my chair and all but threw myself into his lap.
Noah, because he was that kind of guy, reached over to steady the wobbling wineglass with one hand as he wrapped his other arm around my waist and held me close.
“For a second there,” he murmured, his lips near my ear and sending a hot shiver through me, “I thought you might say no.”
I lifted my head, immediately ensnared in his ebullient gaze. “Not a chance.”
He slipped the ring on my finger. Just then, Sherry appeared by our table again, a smile on her face and her eyes absolutely beaming with joy. “Is this what I think it is?”
I lifted my hand, and she inspected the ring, oohing and aahing and then offering us a bottle of champagne.
“We’d love the champagne, but can we take it home?” Noah asked with a gleam in his eyes.
“Of course, but why wait?” Sherry asked.
“Because we’re picking Quinn up after this, and she’ll want to celebrate with us,” Noah replied.
Sherry slapped her palm against her chest, her eyes going misty. “Oh, you are a good man.” She squeezed his shoulder and then gave us our privacy.
I kind of forgot we were in a restaurant when I leaned up and kissed Noah. When I drew away, he murmured, “We do have an audience, you know.”
My cheeks flushed. “I was already a scandal here. A kiss isn’t going to make it any worse than getting pregnant when I was in high school.”
He chuckled as I slipped off his lap and returned to my chair.
Later that night, we refused to let Quinn have any champagne. “Really?” she pressed.
“Yes,” Noah said firmly.
“Let me see your ring again, Mom.”
She sat at an angle across from me on the big sectional in the living room. The Christmas tree lights twinkled over by the bay window, and a fire flickered in the fireplace as I leaned over to show her the ring again.
She bit her lip, her gaze a little bashful when she looked up at us. “I love it.”
“Thanks for giving Noah your blessing,” I replied.
“Well,” she said when she leaned back and brushed her hair off her shoulders with a flourish. “It was necessary. Now, I have a show to watch. Can I go upstairs?”
“Off to your room,” I said, laughing when she leaped up from the couch.
Matilda followed her up the stairs. Noah had set up a TV for her in the guest room upstairs the last time we came here with her.
I leaned into his shoulder. “All that power is going to go to her head,” I teased.
I felt his shrug, and then he leaned over to dust a kiss across my lips. “So what? I love you, you know.”
I looked up at him, once again feeling the hot press of tears at the backs of my eyes. Apparently, having a man I loved ask me to marry him turned me into a water fountain.
“I love you too. Are you sure? I mean, I come with a teenage daughter included, and it’s not always easy.”
“I don’t care how complicated it gets sometimes.”
I fell asleep on Christmas Eve, thinking I couldn’t quite believe my luck.
Waking up on Christmas Day, one year after our first week here together, was too good to be true.
My old hometown, which I’d run from as though my very self was on fire, leaving my scandal in my wake, had become my favorite place to visit.
We’d already made new memories. We had more to make this year.
I hurried down the stairs, my smile almost an ache of joy when I found Noah in the kitchen making coffee. “Merry Christmas,” he said as he turned.
Thank you for reading Noah & Sasha’s story - I hope you loved it!
Ian & Jane find themselves stuck together in Haven’s Bay when a winter storm blows in. Jane was the quiet, book-ish girl in high school. Ian was popular and paid so little attention to his little sister’s friend that he barely recognizes her.
Maybe he didn’t recognize Jane, but now Ian can’t keep his eyes off of her. Being trapped in the house with her only fans the flames of his desire.
Turn the page for Ian & Jane’s story - a swoony, opposites attract, snowed-in story!