Epilogue
Maisie
One Year Later…
Ihold a forkful of pie to Wyatt’s mouth. “It’s a new flavor combination. Pineapple and peach with a coconut and brown sugar crumb. What do you think?”
He takes a bite of my pie, and I watch his face closely as he chews.
“Well?” I ask, impatient.
He takes the fork from my hand, picks up the pie from the counter, and walks away with the whole damn thing.
It’s not the first time he’s done this.
“You can’t keep doing that, Wyatt!” I yell after him as he walks out of the kitchen. “That’s a tasting pie, not a grab-the-whole-thing-and-disappear-into-your-workshop-with-it pie. I need opinions on taste and texture.”
“No need.” He waves his fork at me without turning. “This is perfect.”
I look for help from the three alphas eating breakfast at the dining table.
Knox shakes his head. “It’s not worth fighting to pry it out of his hand. He nearly took my eye out last time.”
“He’ll lock his workshop door again,” Hunter adds. “And that lock is secure. I kicked it twice, and he just laughed.”
I look to Elias.
“Sorry, beautiful,” he says with a sympathetic smile. “Man is crazy possessive over your pies. That’s not a fight anyone can win.”
With a sigh, I slunk over to the dining table and take a seat.
Or I try to.
My seven-month pregnant belly always gets in the way.
Elias saves me from toppling off my chair by sliding his arm around my waist and hauling me into his lap.
I don’t even fight him
In fact, I sigh, then I moan when he gives my lower back a firm massage that feels like nirvana.
“That’s it,” I moan. “I’m never moving again.”
“Then we will live on this dining chair forever.” He presses his smiling lips against my forehead. “There are worse fates than my beautiful mate stopping me from getting up.”
Finding out I was pregnant was one of the happiest days of my life. My alphas were happier than I was and started planning a nursery for our baby before I’d called my sister to tell her the news.
Oh, and we bought the farmhouse.
Given how settled we were here, the landlord knew the old farmhouse he had loved too much to let go of would become a new family home we would love as much as he and his wife had.
“Are you sure you feel up to today, darlin’?” An unexpected voice comes from the kitchen doorway.
I crack my eyelids open, sliding my gaze to Wyatt leaning against the doorframe with a fork in hand and a truly scary lack of pie in the pie pan. “You were gone for less than a minute. How?!”
He happily licks his fork. “It’s good pie.”
Knox eyes the pie, starts to get up, and immediately sinks back into his seat when Wyatt clenches his fingers around the fork and glares at him.
Knox shoots me a knowing look. “See? Dangerous. He’d stab me in the ass if I try for the pie.”
Yeah, I do see.
I lean my head against Elias’s shoulder, my lips twitching as I desperately hold my laughter in. “You mean again?” My voice cracks on the last word.
I clap a hand over my mouth, my body shaking.
Hunter’s chuckle starts off a chain reaction, and we laugh over the raspberry and dark chocolate pie with a hint of sea salt that started a war in our kitchen five months ago.
Wyatt was like Gollum with the ring. I had to run to the bathroom before I wet myself laughing.
I came back, wiping tears from my eyes, to all the chairs on the floor and Wyatt standing triumphant on the dining table with said pie, holding everyone back with a fork he hadn’t been shy about using on Knox’s ass.
Months later, I still have vivid flashbacks to Knox’s half-yelp, half-scream, and I just start laughing.
I should’ve known from Wyatt’s possessiveness over the pie that it was one of my best ones. Knox was right that eventually locals would start making the thirty-minute drive from town to demand pie directly from me. That was the pie that did it.
It was also the pie that sold out in five minutes, made Nico’s Diner go viral when tourists passing through Rios had a slice and blogged about it, has had a constant stream of orders from locals for months, and is the first pie that I’m having stocked nationwide in a grocery store chain.
‘The Chocolate’ put Maisie’s on the map, and my business hasn’t stopped growing ever since.
No one is prouder of me than my biggest cheerleaders, the four men in this room. They are the reason I have a dream life I never imagined, and no one in the world loves me more than they do. And I couldn’t be prouder of them for everything they’ve achieved.
When our laughter dies down, I hold my hand out to Knox, who takes it.
I move onto his lap, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and kiss him. “Sorry I laughed when you got stabbed in the ass with a fork.”
He smiles against my lips. “Laugh as many times as you want, beautiful, if it means I get more kisses like this.”
I start to get up. “We’re going to be late.”
Knox keeps a firm hold of me. “You sure you’re up to this, baby?”
“This is a big deal for you. I wouldn’t miss today for the world,” I say.
I feel all of them watching me, quietly concerned.
“This is a big deal,” I reassure them with a smile. “And I’ll be mostly sitting down anyway.”
For the last few months, I've spent my mornings manning the front desk of their new construction company’s downtown office. They just won a massive contract, so we’re throwing a party to celebrate, and Nico is catering it for free despite us telling him we’d pay.
My business has slowly grown, but theirs exploded.
They spent years building connections and gaining a reputation for fast, high-quality work.
Now that they've settled, they have more job offers than they can accept. And with them hiring more staff, I only manage their front desk for a couple of hours in the morning, then I come home and bake until it’s time to meet them at Nico’s for lunch.
We always sit at table five, and I swear no table in that diner laughs as much as we do.
“Anyway, I’m the one who should be asking you if you’re up for this,” I say to Knox as Hunter and Elias continue eating their breakfast, chatting among themselves while Wyatt eats more pie standing in the kitchen doorway.
Knox is learning architecture remotely. He doesn’t just want to build houses, condos, and apartments; he wants to design them.
“I’m good,” Knox says with a sweet smile.
And because I knew Wyatt eventually would, he shares the rest of the test pie. Then we grab our bags and coats and head to their big party to celebrate what we all hope will be the first of many million-dollar contracts.
The last year has been full of so much love and healing. We’ve met each other’s families, we’ve started two successful businesses, and we’re growing our family in Rios, a place we fell as deeply in love with as we did with each other.
Our happily ever after was never in doubt.
THE END