Epilogue
Six months later, Amelia and Leo were married. The morning of their wedding day, Amelia found herself surrounded by her girlfriends, her sister, and her mother, reclining in a luxurious hotel suite as she sipped champagne and got ready to become Mrs. St. James.
The air rang with laughter and easy conversation, happiness filling Amelia from head to toe. At first, her sister had been totally against the marriage. Maggie had come back from her honeymoon to the news that Leo and Amelia were together, and she’d actually brought a fireplace poker to Amelia’s apartment, shaking it menacingly at Leo.
Amelia hated that they thought so little of Leo, but he just put his arm around Amelia and kissed her temple, telling her to be patient with everyone. It would take time, he told her, to show them he’d changed. He acted like he deserved their derision, which made her so angry she wanted to scream.
It took a couple of months for everyone’s opinion of Leo to truly improve. Every time Amelia heard a comment about Pestilence, she grew apoplectic, which seemed to amuse Leo. Eventually, he reasoned, people would understand that he was more than the reputation he’d encouraged. And if they didn’t, they weren’t worth the time or worry.
Amelia was less Zen, but her sister did finally come around. Camilla and Lucy had already been convinced by his initial proposal, what with their soft romantic hearts swaying their opinion without any encouragement from Amelia. Apparently, he’d banged on Camilla’s bakery door and begged to know where Amelia was when he hadn’t had any luck finding her at her apartment.
Scarlett seemed happy for Amelia, but she did lament the fact that Amelia would never experience a true slut phase. Joking, mostly, Amelia thought.
It was fast. Amelia knew it, Leo knew it, all their family and friends knew it. But six months had been enough for Amelia to realize that she didn’t want to live without Leo. Six days had been enough.
Now, as they all helped her get ready to marry the man she loved, her family and friends knew just how important Leo was to her. They knew that he was hard-working, loving, and utterly devoted. Amelia even caught her sister sighing when she saw Leo tuck a strand of hair behind Amelia’s ear.
“Oh, look!” Lucy waved her phone around. “They’re saying Meredith’s trial date has been set.” Cora’s real name was Meredith Brown. Her name and picture had been splashed all over the local news for three months straight after her arrest.
“Did they ever find her accomplices? Didn’t they find evidence that there was a whole operation?” Camilla leaned over Lucy’s phone to look at the article.
“Was there?” Amelia tilted her head. “I never heard about that.”
“You were too busy making cow eyes at your fiancé,” Scarlett said, grinning. “Not that I can blame you.”
Amelia stuck her tongue out at the florist, who laughed. They’d grown close over the past six months, and Amelia appreciated Scarlett’s no-nonsense nature.
“Yeah, they had shopfronts on all the major online stores like eBay and whatnot. Look.” Lucy tapped her phone, then spun it around to face Amelia.
It was an archived version of a website, where dozens and dozens of items were for sale. All of them stolen. Very few of them recovered by the police.
Eyes wide, Amelia scrolled through the images and shook her head. “She seemed so nice. I can still hardly believe it.” She scrolled some more, then frowned. Her eyes bugged. “Wait.”
“What?” Scarlett leaned over to look.
“These candlesticks. These were in Mrs. Gordon’s house!”
“Your neighbor?” Maggie frowned, a tube of lip gloss held halfway to her mouth. “Didn’t she die?”
“No, she disappeared.”
“What, like Mob-style?” Camilla’s eyes were wide. “She’s swimming with the fishes?”
Amelia laughed. “No, just moved out all of a sudden. There’s been a young couple living in her old place since May.”
“One of Cora’s aliases was Gordon,” Lucy said, filling up her champagne flute, utterly oblivious to the wide-eyed stares everyone gave her.
“ What .” Amelia sat up.
Lucy met everyone’s gaze, frowning. “Yeah. It’s in the article. Just click the back button and you can read it. Gordon, Fitz, Rossi… She used all kinds of names.”
Amelia stared at the candlesticks on the screen for another moment, then turned back to the article. “Holy crap,” she breathed. “Cora’s sister was my neighbor. And wait!” She pointed to a grainy CCTV image of a man. “That’s Mrs. Gordon’s grandson! She kept trying to set me up with him!”
“Your neighbor…” Scarlett whistled. “Life in Stirling isn’t so dull after all.”
“Enough about thieving old ladies,” Amelia’s mother said, swatting her hands at the phone. “You need to get your hair and makeup done. We have two hours until my baby gets married, and I won’t have her dreaming up conspiracy theories when she should be celebrating her marriage. Up! Come on. Get in the chair. The makeup artist is just coming up the elevator.”
Laughing, Amelia complied. She gave Lucy her phone back, head still spinning about her grouchy old neighbor. She’d lived in Amelia’s building for years. Had they been using it as a base of operations? She had so many questions!
Meeting her mother’s gaze in the mirror, Amelia grinned. She could ask those questions later. For now, she was going to get married to the man she loved.
Along with the hair and makeup artists, Nadia appeared in the suite’s doorway. She squealed and greeted everyone, hugging Amelia tight. “It’s so perfect! I poked my head into the reception room, and everything looks amazing!”
Amelia laughed along with the other woman’s positivity. Over the last few months, they’d had a number of double dates, and Leo was quickly becoming Fred’s unofficial protégé. Amelia, for her part, enjoyed Nadia’s company. The other woman was utterly without guile. Nadia loved the finer things in life, but she appreciated simplicity too. She was just as likely to gush over a taco bought from a street vendor as she was a Michelin-starred restaurant. She loved her twelve-million-dollar ring, and she proudly displayed the blazer she got on sale for twelve dollars. It was hard not to love her.
“Leo’s spreadsheet must have helped the whole wedding planning process,” Nadia noted. “I was so impressed when he finally sent it through!”
Amelia grinned. “I may have helped with that.”
“Amelia is absolutely feral for a good spreadsheet,” Scarlett noted, popping a tiny hors d’oeuvre into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and said, “It’s unnatural.”
“You didn’t seem to mind my spreadsheets when I was helping you put some order into your shop’s accounts,” Amelia nodded.
Scarlett just winked. “I didn’t say being feral was a bad thing. Or being unnatural, for that matter.”
“Amelia, sit still,” her mother barked. “That hair isn’t going to style itself.”
Smiling at her mother’s bossiness, Amelia settled. She was pampered, plucked, and groomed, and finally slipped on her wedding dress. It was an elegant silk dress with long sleeves and a small train, in a subtle off-white ivory color that made her skin look vibrant instead of deathly. Her veil was embroidered with scalloping along the hem to match the sleeves and neckline of her dress. When she slid it into her hair and looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes glazed with tears that would surely mess up her makeup.
Camilla beamed at her in the mirror. “Leo is going to lose his mind.”
And he did. When Leo saw his bride walk down the aisle toward him, he couldn’t help the hand that rose to hide his trembling mouth. His heart hammered, his throat worked to clear its obstruction, and his legs turned to jelly.
She was so gorgeous, and she was all his. When her father handed her over and he finally got to take her hands in his, Leo could hardly see through his tears.
“You look beautiful,” he whispered.
“Not so bad yourself,” she whispered back, squeezing his fingers.
The ceremony was a blur. He said his vows into a microphone and thought they went over well, but the memory was vague. All he remembered from it was the light in Amelia’s silver eyes, and the shimmery pink on her lips as they curved into a blissful smile.
When they shared their first kiss as a married couple, Leo thought he’d died and gone to heaven. It wasn’t possible that a guy like him could’ve been so lucky. It was too good. He’d never deserve this kind of joy.
But all he could do was take it day by day, shed his past identity, and be the man he wanted to become, for himself and for Amelia. His goddess. His love. His wife.
Camilla placed the top tier of Amelia’s cake on its pedestal and let out a breath. The cake was decadent chocolate with raspberry filling and rich Swiss buttercream icing. She’d spent hours crafting and decorating it to Leo’s and Amelia’s specifications. They wanted a simple enough cake, but Camilla took pride in her work. She arranged fresh flowers on the cake boards at every tier, then took a step back.
Her hands trembled as she curled her fingers into her palms. Wetness gathered in her eyes, and she didn’t even know why she felt like crying. She should be happy for Amelia. She was happy for Amelia. It was just… There was a lot going on!
The stress was getting to her, and now that Amelia’s cake was done, she could cross one thing off her list.
“It looks incredible, Camilla,” Leo said behind her.
She turned and smiled. “Only the best for my besties.”
Leo approached and put his hands on her shoulders. His green eyes were solemn. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you properly for telling me where Amelia was that day.”
“The day you proposed?”
“The day I got her back,” he replied. His hands squeezed her shoulders. “Thank you.”
“How could I say no to those eyes, hmm?” She grinned at him. “You looked so pathetic. Like a puppy who’d just gotten kicked.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughed. “I wasn’t that bad.”
She leaned in and hugged him tight, then pulled away. “The way Amelia talked about you after she got back from the retreat, I knew there was more to you than met the eye, and I knew you’d be great together.”
He swallowed thickly, nodding. “Thanks, Camilla.”
She had the impression her words meant a lot to him, and she smiled. She shouldn’t be worried about her own life’s problems; those would get sorted out eventually. She was here to celebrate her friend’s wedding to a truly great man.
Leo gave her a sharp nod, then turned for the door. Camilla took a deep, cleansing breath and squared her shoulders in preparation to follow.
She froze when he said, “Why do you have an air mattress?”
“Oh, I, um… It’s for…a friend.”
He spun around, frowning. “What?”
“Okay, it’s for me.” She grimaced. “My landlord didn’t renew my lease, and with the rental market the way it is… I didn’t have time to buy an air mattress earlier and I remembered when I went to grab the flowers from Scarlett’s place, so I ducked into the hardware store. I meant to drop it at the bakery before coming here, but…”
Leo frowned, eyes narrowing for a moment before growing wide. “Are you sleeping at the bakery?”
“It’s temporary,” Camilla rushed to explain. “And it’s fine, really. I’ll shower at the gym, and there’s enough room at the office to fit the air mattress, so it’s no big deal. I’ll be finding a new rental as soon as possible, Leo, so—why are you looking at me like that?”
“Come with me.” He grabbed her wrist and tugged her forward.
“Leo! Stop! You just got married! You should be dancing with Amelia! Or greeting your guests.”
“Amelia’s primping before our grand entrance, and all our guests are drinking and nibbling happily in the bar. I don’t need to be anywhere.”
“Still. Don’t worry about me. Go do…wedding things! I need to go up to Amelia’s suite and make sure she has everything?—”
“Amelia’s fine. She has this event figured out down to the minute, with the spreadsheets to prove it. She’s sending me a warning text exactly five minutes before I need to be by her side for our entrance.”
“Leo, let go of me.” She tried to sound stern, but he was utterly immune.
He marched her down the hallways of the hotel, from the kitchen all the way to the cocktail lounge. There, he stopped in front of the knot of groomsmen who laughed and chattered boisterously. Leo cleared his throat.
His four groomsmen—Marlon, Cormac, Archer, and Emory—looked up at him.
“Leo!” Archer exclaimed, smiling wide.
Leo gave him a short nod, then turned to his brother. “Marlon. This is Camilla.”
Marlon was a great beast of a man, with thick, coarse hair and a full beard. His features were strong, his brow low over beautiful, deep-set hazel eyes, his jaw strong and square. If Camilla were honest, she’d admit that he was a little bit scary and a little bit thrilling.
He arched a brow and said nothing, his eyes flicking over to Camilla and back to Leo again.
Leo nodded once, like that was all the communication required. He reached into his pocket as he spoke. “Camilla will be taking my old room.” He pulled out a set of keys from his pocket, clipped off his car fob, and slapped the set into Camilla’s hand. “She’s moving in with you, starting tonight.”