Epilogue Lila
Chapter thirty
One Year Later
My alarm goes off at six o’clock, and I’m already smiling before I even open my eyes.
There’s a heavy arm pinned across my waist, warm and muscular. Hale. I can tell by the scent of his cologne and the way his fingers curl like he’s subconsciously keeping guard over me even in his sleep.
His breathing is slow against the back of my neck as I reach out to silence my alarm. I’ve learned that he, more than the other two, sleeps like the dead.
Still, I’m careful as I pry myself out from under his arm. But just as I’m about to make my grand escape, he groans softly and reels me back in.
I giggle.
“You don’t have to get up yet,” he mumbles.
“I have an early meeting.”
His lips brush my bare shoulder, not quite a kiss, but burning with a casual claim nonetheless. “Busy bee…”
I twist as much as I can under the iron grip of his deadweight arm, my eyes adjusting to the dim morning light filtering through the gap in the curtains of his bedroom.
He looks so ridiculously good with his tousled hair and faint stubble that I briefly consider canceling all my meetings to spend the day rolling around in the sheets with him.
But duty calls.
“Unhand me, you scoundrel,” I whisper.
“Nooo,” he moans, shoving his face into the crook of my neck.
I giggle again. In recent months, I’ve unlocked a playful side of Hale that has surprised, unsettled, and delighted all of us. He’s quicker to smile nowadays, and I even manage to get at least a handful of chuckles out of him on a daily basis.
But it’d be selfish to think that I’m the sole cause of his happiness.
“I love you,” I murmur. “But if you don’t release me, I’ll have to call the fire department so they can pry your arm off me with one of those metal thingies you use to break down doors.”
“Are you saying you want to invite Old Bill into our bedroom?”
I wriggle underneath him, choosing not to justify that with a response.
He chuckles, but eventually removes his arm. I slip away, but don’t make it far before I hear him calling my name.
Glancing over my shoulder, I blush at the way his sleepy eyes drift up my naked body.
“What, you big oaf?”
Hale smiles. “I love you, too.”
I step back toward the edge of the mattress and lean over to kiss him. He attempts to pull me back into bed, but I swat at him playfully until he relents.
Slipping down the hall to the room that has been designated as my private sleeping quarters, despite the fact that I rarely ever sleep in there alone, I duck into my ensuite and let the shower steam clear all the sleep from my mind.
There’s a scandalous mark on my inner thigh where Hale mischievously nipped at me last night, right next to the fading bruise that Noah suckled into my skin the night before.
And as I shampoo my hair, I have to take extra care to work out the knots that manifested when I told Evan to pull it yesterday afternoon.
An entire year, and they still can’t get enough of me. Nor I them.
Life is utter bliss.
I turn off the shower and wander toward my closet to pick out an outfit.
Me and Lou will be meeting with a new client today, which used to be a novelty but is now becoming just another part of our routine.
We’ve even had to hire an entire staff to support the massive influx of interest in our services following the success of the Save A Hero campaign.
Humming to myself, I swipe on red lipstick, then flounce back down the hall. When I peer back inside Hale’s room, he’s passed out again. Which is good, because he was at the station until midnight, and then spent over an hour once he got home taking his time with me in his bed.
Noah’s room is already empty when I peer through the cracked door, so he probably left earlier than my alarm woke me to hit the gym. Evan and Leo are gone, too, headed to a Career Day at his school.
Our apartment was a treasure trove we happened to stumble across last month, and even though we’re still unpacking boxes and figuring out how to combine our four separate households into a cohesive living space, it’s coming together well so far.
It’s like this place was made for us. I knew it as soon as I randomly decided to attend the open house and recognized all the charming quirks and oddities of a converted historic dwelling.
There’s a separate section with two bedrooms perfectly situated for Evan and Leo, and then Noah gets the entire opposite end of the place to himself, while me and Hale have claimed the leftover rooms that branch off the main hallway.
So far, Leo loves living with four different parental figures, even if it is a strange situation compared to some of his peers at school.
He also still spends plenty of time over at his nanny Rosa’s place.
She will always be an important part of his life, since she was such close friends with Evan’s late wife.
I suppose there aren’t many normal aspects to this life I’ve stumbled into, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
***
Our new office takes up half of the eleventh floor of a renovated building in Midtown. It’s a fancy sort of place with floor-to-ceiling windows and decorative plants in the communal spaces. Gone are the days of mildewy carpet and furniture pillaged from the sidewalks.
When I step off the elevator, I pause to smile at the words etched into the frosted glass doorway.
Hartstrings Public Relations: Crisis Management & Brand Strategy
“Morning, champ,” Lou chirps at me when I walk in. She’s rummaging around behind the front desk, where our newly hired secretary is scheduled to start next week.
Honestly, I can’t believe we’ve grown to the point where we need a secretary.
“Morning, Lou!”
She gives me a knowing look, which I don’t understand at all.
“What?” I run my fingers through my hair. “Does my makeup look weird?”
“No, you look great.”
I glance down at my watch. “And I’m not late. It’s seven thirty-four. We still have twenty minutes until our client will arrive.”
“Nope. You’re not late.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Then why are you looking at me like that?”
Lou blinks innocently. “Like what?”
“Um, like I’m about to go walk into my office and be sent into cardiac arrest by a surprise confetti canon?”
“Why on earth would I hide a confetti canon in your office on a regular-degular Tuesday morning?”
“You tell me.”
Lou merely smiles blithely and turns back to her rummaging.
I sigh and continue on down the hall to the office with a little plaque that reads: Lila Hart, Co-Founder.
Right next door is, Louise Giovani, Co-Founder.
There are four other offices currently home to our new employees, and a few more we’re hoping to fill over the next year or so.
Because Hartstrings PR is growing rapidly, and it shows no sign of stopping.
Meanwhile, I take great satisfaction in the fact that Barry Pelavin is now officially a perpetual failure.
Shortly after former Councilman Banks lost his reelection campaign, an up-and-coming journalist named Ashley Crone—who was kind enough to warn me about the snakes in my camera crew last year—came out with a scathing exposé about his agency’s unethical business practices.
Last I heard, he left the city. I’m sure he’ll probably try to start over somewhere new, maybe Philly or Chicago, but at least he’s not my problem anymore.
With a satisfied smile, I push open the door to my office.
And instantly understand why Lou just looked like the cat who killed the canary.
“I wondered where you ran off to so early,” I murmur, shutting the door behind me.
Noah is spinning around in my desk chair, wearing gray sweats and a FDNY T-shirt. His hair is still damp from the shower, though, and I imagine he must have snuck over here from Station 47 before his shift was supposed to start.
On the desk in front of him is a large iced caramel latte with oat milk and a chocolate croissant. There’s also a little origami frog, courtesy of the new hobby he’s exploring with Leo in his spare time.
He stops spinning and grins at me.
“I knew you had a big day ahead of you, so I wanted to make sure you were properly caffeinated.”
“And sugared and carbed.”
He chuckles, pushing back from the desk and rising to his feet. In two quick strides, he crosses the space and lifts me off the floor.
“How much time until your meeting?”
“Not enough to accomplish whatever naughty thing is on your mind right now,” I reply.
He pouts, but then I’m kissing him. His mouth curves into a smile against mine. He spins around and sets me down on the edge of my desk, pushing up the hem of my pencil skirt so I can spread my legs enough to wrap them around his waist.
His tongue tangles with mine, tasting of spearmint toothpaste and the chocolate-y evidence that he mostly definitely took a bite of my croissant.
When he pulls away, I gasp at the sight before me.
“Oh, shoot.”
Noah frowns, which only makes the red lipstick now smeared all over his mouth look even funnier. He seems to realize what’s happened from what I’m sure looks like a disaster on my own lips and bursts out laughing.
“Don’t they make lipstick that doesn’t smudge?” he jokes, reaching for the box of tissues nearby and scrubbing at his face.
I laugh and nudge him away, going for my purse so that I can find my compact mirror and a wet wipe. “Sure, but I love this particular shade, and it just happens to be a smudge-y kind.”
“They don’t make that shade in any other, uh, formula? Is that what it’s called?”
“Afraid not.”
“Well, that’s not fair. How am I supposed to kiss the pretty woman I love so dearly when she wants to wear her favorite lipstick then?”
“Beats me, Dimples.”
I carefully swipe away the mess around the corners of my lips. Somehow, he definitely ended up worse off than me. I’ll just need to touch it up a bit and then I’ll be good to go for my meeting.
When Noah turns to me again, his lips are still slightly pink, which will definitely entertain the guys back at the station.