Epilogue
Nine Months Later
“What the fuck?”
“Ben! Don’t swear where he can hear you,” Elle admonishes me.
“Have you seen my dog?”
“Oh…” she stops short and looks at Jedi.
“Yeah, oh,” I grab Jedi’s collar and he tilts his head up. He’s smiling though, in that dopey doggy way he does, his tail is thwacking against the floor. He’s pleased as fucking punch. I use the hem of my t-shirt to scrub at the paint on his back. All I do is smear it even more into his fur, and get it all over myself. I look up at Elle, her lips press together, trying not to laugh.
“Jesse, get your little butt out here.” I look over at Dawn’s youngest son. He’s peeking out from behind the doorway to the dining room. After a few seconds, he comes out, his hands clasped behind his back. “Jesse, do you think the dog wanted to be your canvas today?”
“Uh… yeah?” he asks, his brow scrunching .
Elle perches on the end of the sofa, watching me. I’m not sure what she thinks I’m going to do, but she is waiting to see how I handle this. Jesse is old enough to know better than to put paint all over an animal, so he’s going to fix the problem.
“You’re going to clean him up,” I tell Jesse, straightening up but still holding Jedi. Last thing we need is him running amok getting paint everywhere.
“Like a bath?” Jesse’s eyes widen in excitement.
“Yeah, but not the kind you have in mind. Come on, outside, the both of you.”
“Be careful,” Elle calls out, but Jesse has already bounded down the steps and jumped two from the bottom.
I glance out to make sure he’s landed on his feet and not his head. Last thing we need is another Greenwood offspring breaking a bone today. Jedi hops straight after him and the two of them go running across the lawn.
“What are you going to do?” Elle lifts a brow in amusement.
“Hose the pair of them down.”
“Ben! It’s far too cold to do that. You’ll make him sick.”
I give her a look. “That is the best way to teach him.” I don’t wait for her to respond and head outside after the two children . “And I’m not stupid,” I call back. “I won’t hose the kid. Just the dog.”
“Yeah, hose me too, Uncle Ben. Look,” he holds up his hands. He’s covered in paint up to his elbows.
“Elle, check the dining room,” I laugh.
But fuck, kids are a pain in the ass. Fortunately for everyone involved, we’re at my house in Mystic, not Elle’s pristine apartment in New York. I make quick work of cleaning Jedi, who thinks it’s a game, and bounces all over the place, trying to catch the water in his jaws, leaving Jesse squealing with laughter.
Despite not wanting to hose the kid down, he ends up soaked, as do I. As cute as it is watching them, it doesn’t make me eager to create one myself, no matter how many times my mom asks when we’re going to have a baby. Elle hasn’t raised the issue either, so we’re on the same page, I think.
Once everyone is clean and dried off, we settle back in the living room.
“How bad?” I ask Elle. She’s made snacks for Jesse and has a handful of treats for Jedi. We watch as the kid hops on the sofa, picks up the remote and turns on the TV, shoving a carrot stick at his mouth. Jedi snaffles his treats then jumps up, licks Jesse’s face, tries to steal the carrot, which the kid relinquishes way too easily, then lays across him like he’s a dog bed.
At this point, I don’t care if he sits in front of the TV till his parents get back. He can’t cause any shit there.
“It’s water based, so it cleans right off,” she says.
“What time are Dawn and Tom coming back?”
“Dawn said they’ll be a couple more hours. He’s had all of his x-rays. They’re just fitting the cast.”
“How long has it been?”
Elle bites her lip to hide another smile. “Forty minutes.
“Sh…crap.”
“That isn’t much better,” Elle swats my ass.
“I’m sure he’s heard worse,” I mutter.
I go check out the dining room while Elle sits with Jesse and am happy to see it doesn’t look as if there is any damage. Elle has even put away all of Jesse’s paints and toys in the little bag Dawn all but threw at us, as she ran back to the car in a blind panic. Elle left the two pictures he drew on the table to dry. I peer at them. They’re about as easy to interpret as the art Elle has hanging on her walls in New York.
Despite what Elle told me, I text Tom anyway to find out how Logan is. I’ve been around enough kids with broken bones, growing up with four brothers, so know what it’s like. Terrifying initially, painful as all hell, but I’m sure Logan will be ecstatic when he comes home with a cast .
We hadn’t got the full story before they dumped Jesse on our doorstep because both of their parents were away. At least they took Imogen. A five-year-old I can manage. A baby? Not a chance.
I walk back into the living room to find Elle sitting with the two boys. She is alternately tickling Jesse, then Jedi and they’re all laughing.
Okay, fuck. That makes my chest ache. The more I look at her, the more I see it written all over her face and I breathe out as I lean my shoulder against the doorframe. Whether or not we’ve talked about it, I know she’s thought about it. She dotes on Imogen whenever we’re around Dawn and Tom, which is a lot.
Especially since the whole six months of the year in Mystic thing fell by the wayside pretty fast. Elle is mostly in Mystic these days. She heads back to New York when she needs to meet with her agent, or Kevin.
She does events in the city too and has even had a few awards ceremonies. She forces me to tag along to those, but I don’t mind, especially when she won one award. I’m so proud of her.
I converted one of the spare bedrooms into an office for her and she disappears in there all hours of the day and night, writing. Again, that doesn’t bother me, because when she’s writing a spicy scene, she always comes into the bedroom panting, soaked and ready to jump me. I’m yet to turn her down, even knowing I have to get up at the crack of dawn.
I still can’t believe I got her to come back to Mystic with me.
Of course, it didn’t happen overnight. She came back for Acer’s funeral. That was tough on all of us, but I was glad I could be there to support her. My family rallied around her, all of them knowing and loving her as much now as they did then. She’d made Jared sweat, though, which was hilarious.
Before he headed off to start his freshman year at NYU, Frankie became a big part of her life, too. The kid was pretty cool, and he really enjoyed spending time with Elle, hearing all about his father. Claudia did an amazing job of raising him and he is great with his little brother, despite their massive age difference.
We never set a timetable, or schedule, on when she’d be back home, here. We just played it by ear, but it didn’t slip my notice that more of her things were showing up here, and the New York place was becoming somewhere she only went to conduct author related business.
We ended up having dinner with Jesse before Dawn and Tom arrived with a tired, yet excited Logan. He ran through every detail of what happened when he fell and at the hospital, then got everyone to sign his cast with a sharpie Elle produced. Despite Dawn’s protests, it would look horrible with scrawl all over it.
“You should get Jesse to paint something on it,” I comment.
Dawn looks suspicious, but despite the trouble he got into, I’m not about to rat Jesse out. When they leave, I grab a beer for me and a glass of white wine for Elle, then head into the living room. She is curled up on the sofa with her Kindle in one hand and her phone pressed to her ear.
“The forecast is good. It’ll be cold as hell but great weather for fishing,” she says, setting her Kindle down and taking the wine with a grateful smile.
I love how she understands everything there is to know about the fishing business these days. She isn’t a silent partner. She takes great interest in everything that goes on there. It could have pissed me off, but I’ve found I like her input, and when she shows up to help.
I sit beside her and put my hand on her ankle, lightly stroking her bare skin as I flick on the TV. I keep it muted as I find a hockey match to watch. I have one ear on her conversation though, knowing she is talking about a booking. And I suspect it’s Jenna she is talking to.
I’d done a lot since finally getting our name on the ownership of the company, growing the commercial fishing side of the business, getting us bigger and better contracts, further afield .
Elle came along and got actively involved when she heard we were losing charter bookings. Not just us, but the other local businesses. And she didn’t like it. She hated Daley Radcliffe from Day Away with as much passion as I did. When he met her, he’d treated her like a second-class citizen, looking down his nose at her, making fun of her ideas because she is a woman.
Big mistake. She made it her life’s mission to rid Mystic of Day Away. I had no clue how she intended on doing it, but having a girlfriend with connections turned out to be one of the best things that happened to George’s.
First, she invited Kevin, Jenna, and Izzy from her literary agency to come visit town. That got them interested in fishing and they’d gone out on the boat with Rex one afternoon. He said they all had a ball, doing more drinking and laughing than actual catching anything, but told them they were welcome back any time.
The next time, Jenna showed up with the lead singer of BreakNeck. We’d all been sworn to secrecy and, despite the air of excitement, it turned out Adam was a pretty down-to-earth guy. He was a little uptight about making sure Jenna was safe and had security with him, but even that guy was cool.
From there, it’s snowballed. Adam brought the rest of the band out a few times and they all became proficient at fishing, enjoying the time to just relax in each other’s company. When Daley caught wind of the celebrities in our midst, he tried to lure them to his bigger boat.
The drummer of the band knocked the wind right out of his sails, especially after agreeing to have a tour of their boat. He all but said it sucked the life out of the pastime and he’d sooner hang out on the smaller, more authentic boats.
All it took after that were a few social media posts from him, talking about how amazing this fishing town is, together with the people who treat them like family, and taught him how to fish.
Things blew up from there. We didn’t have the equipment or time to manage all the bookings coming in, so Elle took it upon herself to speak with the other businesses along the river about pooling our funds and creating one big charter company that everyone had shares in.
She funded a sizeable chunk of it, using Acer’s money, so her dad’s legacy remained on the water. She became CEO, but we all share the business and the profits. Every single person agreed because it meant seeing the back of Day Away. We bought three boats, one small and one medium for bigger groups, between us. We employ more people from town to run the charters and Daley fucked all the way off with his tail between his legs.
“Sure, I’ve held the bigger boat. It’ll fit you all on and we can get some food and drinks sorted, no problem.” She wiggled her toes as I ran my hand over them. “I draw the line at strippers.”
“The fuck?” I mouth at her, but she shakes her head with a smile.
“Yeah, I know, but if Jordan has anything to do with it,” she laughs at whatever Jenna says. They make a few more arrangements and she hangs up, dropping the phone onto the coffee table and taking a big mouthful of wine.
“Strippers?”
“Adam is having a small family-only party. It will just be the band, their dads, and brothers. They want a full day of fishing. Adam asked if you wouldn’t mind skippering for it.”
“Am I able to?” she will already know the answer to that. She wouldn’t ask if I was busy.
“Yep, plus it makes it easier as there are no NDAs required. Should be fun.”
I nod. “About those strippers.”
She looks at me, and it’s enough to make me hold up my hands in surrender. Not that I meant it. Strippers and fishing boats did not mix. Especially in March in Connecticut.
“Big day tomorrow,” I say. “I’m gonna go to bed.”
“It’s like nine thirty,” Elle points out .
“Yeah, well, I’m not planning ongoing alone.” She has already put her wine glass down, so it’s not at risk of going all over the floor when I jump up, grab her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder, causing her to squeal. She’s stopped protesting, though. She likes it when I go all caveman on her. And given the day we’ve had, she deserves a little worshipping.
I wake her the next morning wearing nothing but a smile and holding a cupcake with a candle in it.
“Happy birthday, babe,” I grin.
Elle eyes my nakedness, then sees I’m holding the cake. She laughs and welcomes me when I kiss her, then feed her some frosting from the cake and that starts a whole other kind of celebrating that has us writhing and panting together.
We shower and change, have a quick breakfast, then I slip on Jedi’s leash and take him for a quick walk while Elle has her morning phone call with Kevin. They’re gearing up for a book release in the next month, so are spending a lot of time going through everything associated with it. Even though it’s her birthday, she tells me deadlines can’t be ignored.
I run some errands and make sure everything is set up for after. When I get back, Elle is at the dining table with crap spread out all over the place. Her hair is up in a messy bun with a pen sticking out of it and she’s wearing glasses. I don’t usually need to wear mine, but do on occasion if I get a headache, but she’s been wearing hers more often. They make her look sexier in my book.
“Hey, what are you doing? We have plans.”
“We do?” she looks up, the tip of another pen in her mouth.
I’m distracted by how sexy she looks, but shake it off. “Yes, come on, you can get back to this later. We’re out on the boat at four for your party, and I want to take you out first.”
“Out where?”
“It’s a surprise. ”
She grins. She already told me she hasn’t really celebrated her birthdays so much over the last few years. So I want this to be a good one. And that does not involve working.
“Better than you naked with a cupcake?”
“Well, let’s not go crazy,” I wink and duck out of the dining room.
A little over half an hour later, she’s dressed warm and bundled up with a scarf covering her mouth, a hat covering her entire head and gloves the size of oven mitts. She is adorable.
We walk through town, and I tell her my brother’s news. Lewis is going to be a dad again, for the fifth time. She seems happy and says she can’t wait to see Natalie. As we wait to cross the street, I pause and look at her.
“What?” she asks. Her cheeks are rosy and her eyes bright. She is different from the woman who came back to Mystic all those months ago. So determined to get in and get out, an air of sadness about her, even though she would never admit to feeling that way. She’s blossomed from being back here. Although I do like to think I had a hand in that.
“How do you feel about kids?”
“I like them,” she says.
“Yeah, I know you like them. I mean… Us, having them.” Okay, so I’m going there when I thought I wouldn’t be.
“You offering to impregnate me, Daniels?”
“Well, we have fun practicing. But, you know, we’re not getting any younger.”
She slaps my arm, but her huge gloves and my padded coat severely dampened the impact. “I guess,” she says slowly, a little frown on her face. “It’s something we should at least see if we feel the same about. Do you?”
“I mean, I like the way things are right now. I just got you back and I’m enjoying that. But I wouldn’t say it was off the table. In the future. ”
“That is good enough for me,” she says, hooking her arm through mine.
“Okay, good.” I lean over and kiss her. And then I kiss her some more, because she tastes like cherries and her mouth is soft and warm and I think about other things she could be doing with it.
“We’ve got an audience,” Elle says after she pulls back and peers over my shoulder with a giggle. She pushes her face into my neck.
I turn her a little and see Ev watching us. I roll my eyes and kiss Elle again, extra hard for good measure, then take her hand and cross us over towards the Mystic Sweet Shop. Elle gives a happy laugh as we go inside. Rachel is already there waiting for us, with our favorite ice creams, together with a chocolate truffle cake in the center of a small table at the back, reserved for us.
Elle smiles as she unwraps herself like my own personal gift. We sit down and I look up at Rachel as she winks before turning away.
“This is great,” Elle lifts her ice cream from the cone holder and takes a long, slow lick, looking at me over the top of it.
“Jesus,” I groan, shifting in the chair, making her laugh. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Well, I know a way I can suffocate you,” she lowers her lashes seductively.
I just stare at her for a few long moments until she laughs and takes another lick of her ice cream.
“Anyway,” I fidget in my seat. “I got you a couple more gifts,” “
“Ben, you’ve already given me enough.”
“Yeah, but a lot of those things were for me, more than you,” I grin, thinking of the leopard print matching underwear set and the mini vibrator for us to use later. “Plus, you really couldn’t open them up in here.”
“Damn right,” she nods.
I feel around under the table and take the bigger of the two boxes and pull it out, handing it to her. Rachel put them here for me earlier when she set up the table. She pulls away the gift wrap and ribbons and opens the box, her eyes lighting up at the huge cashmere scarf that is almost as big as a blanket. There is also an envelope that has tickets for an art gallery showing in New York.
“Figured you might want to see some more of those finger paint pictures,” I laugh.
Elle rolls her eyes, but leans over and kisses me. “I love it.”
“One more,” I say, my heart pounding. I lean down, but the present isn’t there. “Fuck,” I mutter and get off my chair, crouching down to look.
“What’s wrong?” Elle asks, picking up a truffle and putting it into her mouth.
“Rachel!” I shout. She turns with a smile, about to shout out, but I hold up my hands. “It’s not here.”
“What?” Rachel comes over. “I put it down there. Are you sure?”
Now she is on her knees looking as well. Elle leans over in her seat and looks under the table too. She can see I’m frantic about the missing gift, and straightens up and looks around. I can’t fucking believe this. Rachel is turning around, looking all over.
“Oh wait, is this it?” Elle gets down on her knees and crawls under a small table behind where we were sitting. “We must have kicked it over here when we sat down.”
I stand up and move over, just as she sits back on her heels with the small box in her hand. She looks up at me as I stand above her.
“Well, this is different,” Rachel laughs as she turns and walks away, leaving us alone to this fucked up turn of events.
“What?” Elle asks, looking at the box.
When the realization dawns, her head snaps up to look at me. She is down on one knee while I’m standing frozen, looking at her holding the ring box.
“Damn it.” I close my eyes and let my head drop. When I open them again, she’s smiling at me. I sigh with a shake of my head. “You’re going to use this in a book, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”