Epilogue
GRACE
Two months later…
Garrett sat on the bench at the back of the shower, head tipped back against the tile, his good arm wrapped around me. I was straddling him, knees on folded towels on either side of him, riding his cock in our house. The water beat against my back, hot and steady, and steam curled around us.
“Fuck, yes,” he growled.
I was going to be so late for work.
But it was so worth it.
I rolled my hips and his right hand tightened on my waist. His left was on my thigh, fingers spread, but he wasn’t lifting me with it.
He’d kept trying for the first month, until I cut him off for a week, with a warning he wouldn’t heal if he kept it up.
The man rarely admitted his shoulder hurt, especially during sex.
“Garrett,” I groaned, as his lips found my collarbone.
“Harder, sunshine.”
“Oh, god, yes.” I planted one hand on his thigh behind me and wrapped the other around his good shoulder, moving faster, slamming down harder.
His eyes closed, and a groan escaped him—a little noise I filed away with all the other sounds I’d learned to pull out of this man over the past two months. The quiet ones when I ran my fingernails over his scalp. The rough ones when he came despite the pain he was trying to hide.
“I want to feel you inside me all day, Garrett.”
“You’re making me?—”
I pressed close to him, whispering into his ear, “Not yet.”
He gripped my leg with his left hand and immediately released it. The shoulder would never be a hundred percent. The scar was puckered and pink, sitting only inches away from one he’d received in Afghanistan. He’d sworn if he could heal from that one, he could heal from this one.
The doctors, however, had told him to expect a year of rehab, possibly more.
He’d grumbled about the timeline at every appointment and ignored about half of it, but he listened to the parts that mattered.
He sat when he needed to sit. He let me do the work when the work needed doing.
And today, that work was making my man come.
The pressure built and built, until everything crested at once.
As the orgasm hit me, his arm tightened at my waist, and he began to stand.
“Sit,” I gasped through the pleasure wracking me. “Fucking sit down.”
“Right there, I—” He found the bench again. His hips jerked up against me, and he finally came with a low rumble. “Grace! Oh my fucking hell, Grace.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he buried his face against my shoulder.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
“We need to go,” I eventually said.
“You’ll have to get off me first.”
“Not sure I can. I think my bones are jelly.”
“Fuck, I love you, woman.” He laughed and began standing again. This time, it wasn’t need and instinct; it was a ploy to make me stand up. He knew I wouldn’t let him lift me.
“I love you, too,” I said, as I stood under my own power. “But Vanessa’s totally going to kill me.”
“You’ll make it.” He rinsed the sex off himself, but bit his lip when he looked at me, letting his gaze rake over my body.
I took my turn for a final rinse. “I won’t if you keep looking at me like that.”
He reached past me and turned off the water. “Like what?”
“Like you’re considering round two.”
“I’m always considering round two.” He stepped out and tossed me a towel. “But I’ve got a meeting.”
We dressed in the kind of coordinated chaos that came from sharing a bathroom every day.
We’d gone halfsies on the three-bedroom place with the big yard and porch we’d talked about on the plane.
I’d used the money from the egg, and he’d used part of the ten percent I insisted he take.
It was close to Tristan’s, and as much as Garrett had pretended to be indifferent, I knew he’d fallen in love with the place at first sight.
I’d unpacked the kitchen first, and the spare rooms were a maze of cardboard boxes.
Actually, I’d wanted to unpack my books first, but Garrett insisted I wait until he was able to install a proper set of bookshelves for me.
So even my books were waiting for his shoulder to heal, but I refused to let him skip any step in the process.
My parents had been over for dinner a couple of times, and they loved Garrett.
We hadn’t told them all the nitty-gritty details about our European adventure in August, and definitely not about how the gunshot wound had happened.
Although my mother particularly adored Garrett’s story about locking me in the hotel room while he scouted the Tower of London.
She was as much a die-hard romance reader as I was, and she’d thought it sounded romantic. Separated from the moment by a couple of months, I could almost agree with her.
I drove us the ten minutes to my parking spot behind The Velvet Bean, where we parked next to Arthur’s SUV.
“Well shit.” Garrett did the awkward job of undoing his seatbelt with his right hand, since he was still using a sling every day.
He was supposed to wear it during the day for another month, and he did without too much complaint, which I’d learned was the truest sign he was still hurting.
Garrett didn’t comply with things he didn’t think were necessary.
He’d ditched the pain meds on day six. The sling was day sixty-something and counting. “Looks like they beat us here.”
“That’s your fault,” I said with a grin.
“You insisted on the shower.”
“I didn’t insist anything. You were hogging the shower when I got here!”
“I didn’t ask you to join me, sunshine.”
“Your face asked me to join you.”
He got out of the car and circled to my side, opening my door. He leaned down and gave me a quick peck on the nose. “My face doesn’t ask for things.”
“Your face asks for so many things.”
The Velvet Bean was humming when we came through the back door.
The kitchen smelled of fresh bread and pastries, while the front was full of coffee and chatter.
The morning light hadn’t reached the front windows, since the sun was still waking up, but the bright café lights fended off the morning twilight.
“Morning, boss.” Vanessa glanced up as she finished pouring a swan. “Your men are in the back corner.”
“They’re not my men.”
“They kind of are.” She flicked her gaze toward Garrett, who was already heading to the table where Arthur, Merlin, and Lance sat with their laptops and coffee.
I tied on my apron and let the morning settle around me.
The café had a rhythm to it—the hiss of steam, the low hum of conversation, the clink of ceramic on wood—and after two and a half years, my body knew the steps without thinking.
Check the pastry case. Top off the sugar caddies.
Wipe down the counter where the milk pitchers dripped.
Toby was holding his own. He’d been with me for two months now, and he’d stopped asking where things were about three weeks in.
Having the extra staff meant I wasn’t pulling doubles anymore, which meant I slept more, which meant I was a better person to be around.
Vanessa had pointed this out, and I’d thrown a sugar packet at her.
On my way past the photo wall, I tapped the newest addition for luck: Didi and Marcel Dubois in Marseille from 1943.
She was young and fierce, posing in a dimly lit kitchen with the man whose family had quietly waited for the egg to return to them.
Next to it hung the original sepia portrait of Didi in her velvet jacket that had given the café its name.
My grandmother, the Resistance fighter. The woman who’d hidden an Imperial Fabergé egg inside a costume jewelry box and hadn’t told a soul.
Because life’s too short to live a boring life, right, Didi?
The conversation with the jeweler had been the most interesting loose end for me to tie up.
He’d forced me to sit down and answer a million questions about the egg.
His query had apparently gone viral on the forum where he’d posted, and someone had claimed he was fabricating the story because an owner in Prague had just gone public with the egg.
Henri wasn’t selling it, but he was planning to take it on a tour of Russia.
Werner Kessler, Conrad Richter, and Dr. Brandon Caulfield were all locked up, but hopefully Henri would be smart enough to travel with security.
I grabbed a coffee pot and made a round of the shop. Mr. Kendrick was in his usual spot, the cozy corner near the windows. His newspaper was folded neatly to isolate his crossword, his reading glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, and his cup was nearly empty.
“Refill?” I asked, already pouring.
“Bless you.” He tapped his pencil against the crossword. “Maybe you can help me with this one. Nine letters. ‘France’s largest port city.’”
Two months ago, I might have known the answer. But even if I had, it wouldn’t have hit me square in the chest like it did today. “Marseille.”
He counted the squares, then wrote it in. “Perfect fit. How’d you know?”
“Garrett and I are planning a trip there.” I moved on to the next table, smiling to myself.
The bell over the door chimed, and Tristan walked in with Isabella. Izzy was in her nice gallery clothes, and I diverted to the counter so I could make her usual drink for her.
“Cappuccino, please.”
“Coming right up.” I joined Vanessa at the bar as she started Tristan’s latte. “You look good.”
“I look awake, which is a miracle.” Izzy studied me for a second. “You look good, too. Different good. Like you’re well rested.”
“Garrett’s finally sleeping through the night.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her eyes cut to Garrett at the corner table, and back to me. “Which also means he’s up for other activities?”
“Izzy!”
She winked at me. “Dinner Saturday? The four of us?”
“I’ll check with Garrett, but I think that works.” I finished her cappuccino and slid a to-go cup across the counter. “Tell Rhonda I said hi.”
She kissed Tristan and headed to her gallery at the other end of the block.
Vanessa had Tristan’s drink ready before he finished paying. He took it with him up the short steps to their table and dropped into the chair next to Lance, completing the Round Table group.
I made Garrett a fresh pour-over and carried it up to him.
Arthur was running the meeting, per usual.
They all had their laptops open, except for Merlin, who preferred a tablet covered in cramped handwriting.
The office renovations were still in progress because Arthur had changed the design, so The Velvet Bean remained their unofficial headquarters.
I didn’t mind. They bought a lot of coffee and food.
I set Garrett’s cup in front of him, and he gave me a wink.
As I poured a refill for Arthur, he said to the group, “I got a call from Samantha Ferraro yesterday.”
That got everyone’s attention. Sam ran Caine-Ferraro’s Fine Art Investigations in Brenton, and she consulted for the FBI on art crimes.
She was the one who’d put me in touch with Dr. Caulfield in the first place, and she’d been furious when she learned how my trip had turned out.
She'd come by to apologize once we were back in town, said she’d worked with him several times over the years, and had never seen it coming.
“What does Sam need?” Tristan asked.
“They’re taking possession of some items from an FBI black market sting.” Arthur added sugar to his coffee. “She wants us to review their security systems. Pretty simple job.”
“What kind of items?” asked Merlin.
He poured cream into his coffee and glanced at his laptop. “A batch of paintings and a seventh-century sword.”
Tristan set down his coffee. “A sword?”
Arthur frowned at him. “Don’t start.”
“A sword, Arthur. For Round Table Security.”
“It’s a job, Tristan.” Arthur sighed at Tristan with the patience of a man who was accustomed to the jokes. Of course, with a name like Arthur Penn and a father who owned Pendragon Security, he had probably been dealing with the jokes for most of his life. “It’s just a job.”
THE END OF BOOK 1