Epilogue One
LILY
The damage to Knox’s gorgeous fairy-tale cottage was not as bad as it could have been. The fire department got the flames under control before they spread from the garage, leaving the rest of the house mostly undamaged, aside from the lingering smell of smoke.
When he heard what had happened, Aiden Winters invited us to stay in Winters House until the repairs were complete. We packed up our things—again—and took up residence in the grand estate.
I was a little overwhelmed, to be honest. I wasn't used to having a cook and housekeeper.
I don't know what I expected the Winters to be like.
I'd met Charlie, so I should have had an idea, but I still thought they'd be, I don't know, cold.
Pompous and self-important, like Trey's parents, but more so.
That much money. That much power. How could they be anything but?
Aiden Winters was a little formal, but really, they were like any other family, just with a bigger house. A much bigger house. Winters House is massive. I've stayed in smaller hotels.
Adam and I were fish out of water twice over—living in a new city, with a family we didn't even know. The Winters provided more than enough entertainment to ease us through that awkward first week in Atlanta.
Aiden's great aunt Amelia was in her eighties, but she was a hoot.
His sister-in-law Sophie, also Amelia's nurse, did her best to keep Amelia in line.
That first night, Amelia snuck a cookie under Adam's broccoli and a fake cockroach under mine.
It didn't take me long to figure out that not much kept Amelia Winters in line, even Sophie.
Everyone loved having a child in the house again. They spoiled Adam rotten, the older family members—mainly Aunt Amelia and the housekeeper, Mrs. W—aiming raised eyebrows at the younger Winters women.
Aiden's girlfriend, Violet, was about to start graduate school. Kids were not in her plans yet. Used to dealing with Amelia and Mrs. W, she just aimed a raised eyebrow back and ignored them.
Sophie, on the other hand, flushed and looked away. I had the feeling Gage and Sophie Winters were working on a new addition to the Winters clan.
Knox didn't waste our week at Winters House. The first day he tracked down Charlie and sweet-talked her into taking on his garage renovation.
Charlie had given Knox an arch look. “I'm sitting on a flip that's already running behind, racking up expenses every day I don't have it back on the market. I'm not giving you the family discount.”
Knox had only shrugged. “I wasn't going to ask for it. You work hard enough as it is without doing it on the cheap. Can you fit me in or not?”
Charlie's lips quirked up. “You know I'll fit you in. What do you want to do? I'm thinking three cars and a bonus room.”
“That's why I came to you, Charlie.”
Charlie and Lucas figured out a way to turn the two-car garage into three, adding a bonus room above, as well as a guest room on the first floor that Charlie cleverly tucked away behind the kitchen.
Knox hadn't been kidding about turning his current guest room into another kid's room.
I don't know how they did it, but, based on the sketches, the house wouldn't look any different from the front.
The side with the most changes faced the woods, and none of the additions would disturb the whimsical look of the place.
Knox wrote Charlie a check. I peeked at the zeros and handed him a check of my own. I was no freeloader. Knox tore it in half. “I let you pay off Leanne Gates.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and he held up a hand. I glared at that hand but let him talk.
“You wanted to use the money from Trey to pay off Gates, and I didn't argue.”
He hadn't. It seemed fair, using Trey's ill-gotten gains to settle the threat they'd caused.
Knox went on, “Put the rest of that money away for the kids’ college fund. I take care of my family.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sexist much?”
Knox shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at me, thinking. I wasn't sure I was going to like what he'd say when he was done.
“Lily,” he said finally, “I don't want you to feel trapped. You want to stay home with Adam, and we want to have more kids, right?” I nodded in agreement.
I did want those things. “Keep your money.
Put it away or spend it however you want.
Keep it as a nest egg and we'll use it for the kids’ college, or we won't use it at all. Okay?”
I nodded, words stuck in my throat. I couldn't imagine ever feeling trapped with Knox, but I loved that he was determined to make sure I never would.
“Did you call your mom?” he asked, changing the subject.
“She said anytime is good.”
“Then let's go to Hanover. We have time while Alice gets kindergarten straightened out for Adam and Charlie's working on the house.”
“Can you leave again so soon?” He'd been away from the office for three weeks while we were at the cabin, unable to work remotely because of the isolation.
“I'll bring my laptop. The semester's started, so your dad can't come here, and Adam can miss the first week of kindergarten. We need time with your parents. Anyway, Axel is bringing Emma and my mom to Atlanta. They'll have him to pick up my slack, and—.”
“—you'd just as soon not be here when your mom shows up,” I finished for him.
Tsepov was still missing. He had his money and he had his Faberge box. So far, he hadn't made any moves against the Sinclairs. Just that morning, Axel had called to tell us there was an attempted coup of Andrei's operation.
Apparently, his people weren’t impressed by his obsession with revenge, or his disorganized leadership. The coup had failed, but barely. Axel didn’t like the instability in his hometown, so close to his wife and mother.
The Sinclairs were circling the wagons, and while I knew they felt better having their mother under multiple layers of security, they were dreading her return to Atlanta.
We stayed in Atlanta for a few more days, Knox organizing his responsibilities so he could leave again, me getting Adam set up with a pediatrician and delivering all his paperwork to Alice, who was taking care of getting him into kindergarten.
She was back at work, seemingly managing the entire universe from her desk, though Cooper—according to Alice—was hovering like a mother hen.
Knox and I made final decisions on fixtures and colors with Charlie and helped the pool guy stake out the location for the small lagoon-shaped pool Knox insisted we have in the backyard.
I signed a contract with a realtor in Black Rock to put Trey's house on the market and hired a company out of Bangor to pack up everything we'd left and ship it to Atlanta.
We hadn't heard a thing from Deputy Dave.
Knox's threat to send Tespov after him must have done the trick.
The day the moving company showed up to start packing I braced for a call from Dave or the Black Rock police, but there was nothing.
Soon enough, the house would be sold. Then Dave, and Black Rock, Maine, would be behind me.
We spent two weeks in Hanover with my parents. To my shock, my mother put Knox and me in the guest room and Adam in my old bedroom with only a slight harrumph from my father. We horrified my mother by showing off my newly acquired sugar-laden baking skills.
It sounds silly, but I think my chocolate chip cookies went a long way to winning over my father. It was a little late to be overprotective considering he'd thrown me out years before, but I finally realized his glares and pointed questions were his way of telling Knox he hadn't made the cut.
One taste of those chewy, decadent cookies, packed with real sugar, and he started to melt. That's what happens after decades of sugar-free carob hemp bars. My mother only complained a little. Having her daughter home and a grandchild to spoil were more important than her anti-junk food edict.
Eventually, it was time to go back to Atlanta.
Cooper called threatening to fly up and drag us back.
Alice had Adam enrolled in kindergarten and he was eager to settle into his new life.
Knox's house—our house, as he kept insisting—was still under construction, but the work was isolated to the garage and the back of the house.
As long as we parked in the driveway, we could move in.
My Land Rover and all of our belongings from Winters House were waiting when we got back. Adam went to his first day of kindergarten with only the usual nerves at starting a new school. I'd worried that a new school would be one stress too many, but he rolled with it, eager to make friends.
Knox went back to work, and I did my best to get settled in. It helped that Knox's family and friends reached out to make sure I felt included. I saw Charlie almost every day when she stopped by to check on the garage addition.
At Sophie and Amelia's request, I brought Adam by Winters House to swim a few days a week.
Knox had somehow managed to get a pool contractor working while we were gone, but pools don't spring up overnight.
Amelia claimed that she needed the excitement of a five-year-old to keep her young, and Sophie seem to love having a kid around.
One afternoon I headed out to run errands, restocking Adam with school clothes since he seemed to have grown two inches overnight. Knox had offered to pick Adam up from kindergarten and I jumped on the opportunity to shop without a complaining five-year-old latched onto me like a barnacle.
Adam and Knox had hit it off from the first day, but lately, they'd grown even closer, whispering, then stopping abruptly when I walked into the room, going off every few days to do something together, just the two of them.
I didn't pry, especially not after seeing the way Adam bloomed under Knox's attention.
I arrived home not much before five to find the driveway mysteriously empty of construction vehicles, only Knox's SUV parked in front of the house.