Epilogue
WALKER
Six months later
My phone rang in my pocket as I was settling Callie and the cakes into the passenger seat of my SUV. “You got them?” I asked her, pointing to the box.
She pressed her wee hands to the top of it as she vowed solemnly, “I’ll protect them with my life.”
I gave a huff of amusement, wondering where kids picked that shit up. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, wee yin.” As I closed her door, I pulled out my phone. It was Mum.
“Walker,” I answered, as I rounded the bonnet of the car.
“I know. I called you.” There was amusement in her voice that relaxed me. It had taken a while, but it finally felt comfortable between us.
“Everything okay?” I swung into the driver’s seat.
“Just calling to wish you good luck.”
I glanced down at Callie and the cake box. “Thanks, Mum.” I’d told her the other day about my plans, and she was pleased for me. And desperate to make up for lost time. “You and Dad are still planning to visit next week?”
“Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it. Your dad says good luck too.”
“Tell him thanks.” The reconciliation with my father was a bit more strained. Unfortunately, I think I’d inherited being too hard on myself from him. While I’d forgiven him for the past, he hadn’t yet forgiven himself. His gruffness wasn’t about me, and I knew that because I saw myself in him.
“I’m on my way there now.”
“Okay, I’ll let you go.” I heard her sigh nervously for me. “Let me know how it goes.”
Maybe it made me an arrogant bastard, but I wasn’t nervous. I was 99.9 percent certain I knew how it would go.
Callie chattered excitedly about the day’s upcoming events.
When she began talking a mile a minute about possibly becoming a big sister one day, however, I questioned letting her eat so much of the leftover buttercream from the cupcakes.
The subject didn’t bother me. But her mouth was moving worryingly fast.
“Can we pass by the front of the bakery first?” Callie asked as we drove down Castle Street.
Sloane’s rental agreement with Arrochar and Mac ended two months ago, and since I was a man who knew what he wanted, I asked Sloane and Callie to move in with me.
Sloane was all about living without regrets these days, and she’d said yes.
It surprised me how quickly I adapted to the feminine invasion of my space.
How I barely blinked when a new cushion appeared on my sofa or a pointless candle showed up on the coffee table.
My ordered tidiness required compromise with a preteen around.
Callie left homework, books, her laptop, schoolbag, shoes, and hair accessories lying about … I found them everywhere.
And I liked it.
Almost as much as I liked seeing Sloane’s makeup scattered on my bathroom counter and her nightdresses and cardigans hanging from door handles. Despite having her own professional kitchen now, our home still always smelled like a baker’s kitchen. I found flour in the strangest places.
And I liked it.
It felt like a home now instead of a house.
We drove down Castle Street, slowing past the bakery that Sloane would be readying to open in half an hour. A couple of villagers already hovered outside, peering in.
The new signage on the front window read Callie’s Wee Cakery. Suffice it to say, Callie was over the moon her mum named the bakery after her. And the villagers were over the moon that, apparently, for the first time in forty years, they had somewhere they could buy fresh bread.
I guided the car left down one of the side streets that would lead me to the back of the bakery where we could park.
With a tiny percentage of the money Sloane’s father had left, we’d transformed the store on Castle Street.
Restored the kitchens and bought everything Sloane would need to run it.
Since a bakery would mean extremely early mornings for her, she’d decided it would only open three days a week.
She would make up the rest of the days taking outside orders as before, but this time she could bake them in her new professional kitchen.
Not that she needed to. Sloane’s father had made more cake as a litigator than even I could have guessed.
She was independently wealthy, and if she invested wisely, spent wisely, she would never have to work another day in her life.
But that wasn’t Sloane.
Thankfully, however, my hardworking woman had also hired two shop assistants to help run the front of the store.
Pride filled me as I got out of the SUV and rounded it to help Callie.
Not only had Sloane dealt with the stress of the upcoming trial against her stepmother and ex and his friend while trying to launch a business, she’d attempted to make life as normal as possible for Callie.
And I realized Callie was where Sloane drew her strength.
It was awe-inspiring. The woman amazed me.
How one person could carry the weight of what she had to carry and do it with such optimism and hope, I’d never know.
She looked at me like I could save her from anything, but the truth was, she saved me.
Every damn day.
“Ready?” I asked Callie as I took the box and she clasped her hand in mine.
“I think I should ask you that, eh?”
My lips curled. The longer she stayed in the Highlands, the more she was picking up a wee Scottish inflection from her classmates.
Striding into the back of the bakery, we discovered Sloane arranging fresh loaves of bread onto a tray to take out front.
“We’ve made space for it!” one of Sloane’s shop assistants called from the store.
Sloane looked up to answer and caught sight of us.
Her face split into a wide grin. “I wasn’t expecting you guys until opening.
” Gaze dropping to the box in my hands, she rounded her long steel prep table to bridge the distance between us.
The kitchen gleamed like a shiny new penny, except for one section where she was working on decorating a cake.
Along one wall were a few cakes in varying degrees of decoration, which I knew were from outside orders.
Ovens were lit up baking fresh pastries to refresh the ones she’d already set out front.
There was flour on one of her flushed cheeks and tendrils of hair loosening around her face from her ponytail. Her apron was also covered in flour.
She looked happy. Beautiful.
“It’s going well, then?” I asked as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me.
“Well, we haven’t opened yet, but yes.” Sloane leaned against me, even as she hugged Callie into her side. “What’s in the cake box? You’re not buying from a competitor already, are you?”
I shook my head at her teasing and held the box out to her. “Just a congratulations cake we baked.”
Her eyes widened with delight. “You guys baked for me?”
“We tried.”
She was more excited about that than I’d expected, and I felt the first wave of nerves hit me. All right, then. Maybe I was only 98 percent sure of the outcome.
Sloane took the box and laid it on one of her prep tables.
When she flipped the lid, five badly decorated cupcakes surrounded a sixth in the middle.
And in the middle one, instead of a giant chocolate button propped into its messy buttercream, was an engagement ring. The single diamond caught the light, and I watched Sloane’s face as she zeroed in on it and gasped.
As soon as I’d seen it, I knew it was the one. It was a simple white gold diamond solitaire. Not fussy. Understated. Beautiful. Like the woman I wanted to wear it.
I felt Callie squeeze my hand and looked down at her. She gave me a bolstering smile. Before I released her hand, I squeezed it back and stepped forward to take the ring out of the cake. Sloane gaped at it like she’d never seen a ring before.
Removing it, I wiped the buttercream from the band. She turned to me, big gorgeous brown eyes searching my face, stunned.
I took her left hand and slid the ring on her ring finger without preamble.
Sloane gawked at it as it winked and glittered under her bright kitchen lights. Then she looked up at me. “Was there a question?” she practically squeaked.
My smile came easy. “I’ve loved no one like I love you, Sloane Harrow. I couldn’t live without you now.” I rubbed my thumb over the ring. “And I want your promise that I won’t ever have to.”
Suddenly, she laughed, delight bursting from her every pore as she reached up to clasp my face in her hands. “That is such a Walker Ironside way to propose to a woman.”
Wrapping my arms around her, drawing her close, I demanded, “Is that a yes?”
“To your nonquestion?” she teased, and then laughed harder at my scowl. “Yes! Yes, I will marry you!”
Her cries drew the girls in from the front of the store into the kitchen.
They erupted into cheers of congratulations when they realized what was going on.
But I only had eyes for my now fiancée. I kissed her until heat flooded my limbs at the realization she’d agreed to be mine forever.
I had to release her before things got inappropriate.
A weight hit us, and we looked down to find Callie, arms around us both, jumping up and down. “Does that mean we can change our name to Ironside?” she practically yelled at her mum.
“Aye,” I responded firmly as Sloane said, “Well, it’s the twenty-first century, baby girl, so we can keep our name if you want.”
I cut her a look.
Her lips twitched with amusement and then she nodded down at Callie. “Yes, since apparently Walker hasn’t joined us in the twenty-first century, we can change our name to Ironside.”
Callie pumped her fist in delight while I tickled Sloane under the arms in retaliation.
“Oh, Walker, don’t!” Her laughter rang off the bakery walls as she squirmed in my arms.
I didn’t stop until she was gasping with giggles. Finally, when she’d had enough, I stopped and cuddled her into me. Tears of amusement gleamed in her eyes.
“I hate being tickled,” she complained even as she grinned.
“I’ll need to remember that next time you’re restrained.”