Epilogue
Five months later
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The minister nodded to the groom. “You may kiss your bride.”
Wilder didn’t need to be told twice. He lowered his head and touched his mouth to Beth’s, lingering for just a moment—sealing their vows, promising his heart.
Then they turned to face their guests, and the bride lifted her skirt just enough to show off the cowboy boots she’d donned beneath her wedding gown.
There were chuckles mixed in with the applause then, and the happy couple joined hands to exit along the aisle of their makeshift outdoor chapel—pausing first at the front row of chairs so the groom could take his now ten-month-old son from the boy’s grandfather.
As Beth and Wilder mingled with their guests, she couldn’t help but reflect on how much had changed in her life in just six months.
And although she still missed her sister every day, she took comfort in knowing that Leighton lived on in her little boy, who demonstrated more and more each day that he had his mother’s happy disposition and his father’s effortless charm.
Those traits had been on full display as he enchanted the guests who’d come to the Ambling A for the wedding of his biological father to his maternal aunt.
And there were a lot of guests. In addition to Wilder’s immediate family and all the distant Rust Creek Falls Crawford relatives, there were Daltons, Traubs, Stocktons, Joneses and O’Reillys.
Beth had heard more names today than she could ever be expected to remember, but she was happy to be starting a life and raising Cody in this close-knit community—even if it meant a wedding reception far bigger than she’d ever anticipated.
Thankfully the whole day had been planned with meticulous attention to detail by Vivienne Dalton, who continued to circulate to ensure that everything went according to plan.
Her only failing was an inability to corral Hunter’s seven-year-old daughter.
Wren kept returning to the chapel to practice walking down the aisle and tossing flower petals, in preparation for her very important role as flower girl when her daddy finally married Merry in only a few more weeks.
After a delicious meal—interrupted by countless toasts to the happy couple—the bride and groom shared their first dance.
As the song drew to a close, the rest of the guests were invited to join them, and Beth was pleased to see each of Wilder’s brothers on the floor with their partners.
Even Finn and Avery were dancing, having enlisted Max to keep an eye on their beautiful three-month-old daughter, Mabel.
Of course, the proud grandpa was happy to have his arms full of babies. And Wren, finally satisfied that she’d had sufficient practice being a flower girl, was helping mind her younger cousins.
When the bride and groom took a reprieve from dancing and returned to their table with Cody, Beth found an obviously old but beautiful jewel-encrusted book beside her bouquet.
“What’s this?” she asked, as Cody reached out to touch the sparkly stones on the cover.
“My brothers believe it’s Josiah Abernathy’s diary,” Wilder said, and proceeded to give her a brief history of the book and the writer’s forbidden love affair with a mysterious woman.
“But why is it here?” she wondered.
“They’ve been passing it around for months, claiming it carries a love spell or something like that. I guess they’ve decided it’s our turn to experience its powers.”
“All true,” Merry confirmed, as she joined them. “But there’s more—a note hidden inside the cover confirmed the mystery writer as Josiah Abernathy and his girlfriend as Winona Cobbs.
“Even more shocking,” she continued, as the rest of Wilder’s siblings and their spouses gathered around, “is that their baby girl wasn’t stillborn, as she believed. Beatrix was taken away and given to another family to raise.”
A revelation that led to much speculation about whether it might be possible to find Beatrix after so much time had passed.
“This is all very fascinating,” Wilder said, speaking quietly so that only his bride could hear him. “But what I really want to know is when we can steal away from this party.”
“You’re not having a good time?” she asked, surprised.
“The wedding was great,” he acknowledged. “But now, Mrs. Crawford, I’m more than ready to start the honeymoon.”
She tipped her head back to smile at him. “I like the sound of that, Mr. Crawford.”
As if on cue, their wedding planner stepped up beside them to ask, “What are you still doing here when the honeymoon suite at Maverick Manor is waiting for you?”
“We’re on our way,” Wilder said. “We just wanted to thank you for giving us the perfect day.”
“Well, I did have a little help from Mother Nature,” Vivienne said, gesturing to the sun setting against a cloudless sky. “But I’m happy to take credit for all the rest.”
“If only you’d had as much success as a matchmaker,” Logan said to her.
“I think I did pretty well helping you and your brothers find your perfect matches.”
“What are you talking about?” Xander asked. “We found our own matches.”
Vivienne smiled. “Did you?”
The brothers exchanged puzzled glances.
“I might not have introduced Logan and Sarah, but they met at my office,” she pointed out.
“And Xander and Lily only got together because I’d set up a date between Knox and Lily, then Knox rushed to marry Genevieve because he didn’t want any part of Max’s scheme.
I also knew Finn and Avery would be perfect together, even if I didn’t know they’d already found one another, and it was because they were getting married that Hunter decided to hire a nanny and fell in love with Merry. ”
Wilder nodded his agreement. “It looks like you did have a hand in five out of six matches,” he said to Vivienne.
“I might have found someone for you, too,” she told him. “Except that you managed to find your perfect match without any help.”
“Actually, I found him,” Beth said, making her husband smile.
“Five out of six is an impressive stat,” Finn acknowledged. “But still short of Max’s target.”
“And nothing less than one hundred percent is ever good enough for Maximilian Crawford,” Knox remarked.
“I think I could make a case for six out of seven,” the wedding planner–slash–matchmaker said, nodding toward the dance floor where the groom’s father was slow dancing with the woman Wilder recognized from New Year’s Eve.
“Who’s that?” Beth asked, because she hadn’t been at the party at Maverick Manor.
“Estelle, my former boss,” Vivienne told them.
“I thought she moved to Phoenix,” Lily remarked.
“And then she came back. She said she enjoyed the more temperate climate, but planning funerals was as depressing as hell.”
“Dad seems completely smitten with her,” Logan remarked, apparently baffled that such a tiny woman could have captivated the larger-than-life cattleman.
“She’s got a personality equal to his own,” Vivienne assured him.
“And Max is so happy with the way things worked out for everyone that he’s agreed to honor the terms of our original contract.
As a result, we’ll be able to fix the roof at Sawmill Station and invest more money in the Thunder Canyon operation.
Plus, with the way business is booming, I’m thinking of hiring extra help in Rust Creek Falls, too. ”
“What kind of experience is needed to work in the wedding planning business?” Beth wondered, her curiosity piqued.
“Are you looking for a job?” Vivienne asked hopefully.
“I am,” the bride confirmed. “And there are no teaching positions currently available at the local elementary school.”
“Do you believe in happy endings?”
Beth looked up at her new husband, and the love that filled her heart to overflowing shone through her eyes. “I do now.”
Vivienne smiled. “That’s a good start.”
Cody apparently thought so, too, because he clapped his hands together.
Wilder’s chuckle drew the little boy’s attention to him. Then Cody reached his arms up toward his daddy and said his first word: “Da-da.”
And Beth thought that was the perfect ending to a perfect day—and a very happy beginning for the start of their life together as a family.