Epilogue
(2 years later)
“Hey.” Her voice floated through the air, snapping my gaze up to the woman in the doorway, a smile on her face, a look in her eyes that usually led to me clearing my desk with her body as I sprawled her naked figure over it.
“Hey.” A smile I could never fight when she was near, curled my mouth.
“What are you doing?” She leaned into the doorjamb of my home office. Most days my office was out at a building site.
“Just finishing up these contracts before we take off.” I straightened in my chair, stretching my back. Sitting behind a desk was my least favorite part of my job, but when you were owner of your own company, it was part of the deal.
Only a year and half old, my construction company had taken off. It was growing so fast that I knew I would have to hire more employees and possibly get a business manager. I liked being outside and building more than being behind the desk, but my past left me very hesitant to let anyone else step in.
“You know, I still haven’t gotten payment this month for my residuals.” She sauntered into the room, a coy smile on her face. “The business plan, the PR, the logo.” She arched an eyebrow, prowling around my desk in her tiny shorts and tank.
Fuck, this woman could undo me in seconds. A hum echoed in my throat as I grabbed her hips, pulling her onto my lap, her legs straddling mine.
“You think you deserve residuals?” My thumb rubbed her cactus tattoo, which turned me on every time I saw it, knowing our story was marked on her body.
“The logo itself gets you more work than you know what to do with.” Kinsley leaned into me, her mouth brushing mine, her hand tugging at the buttons of my jeans, getting my dick hard in a blink. “And now that Carter is working with you. You guys are a construction, landscaping porno for rich bored Hollywood wives.”
She wasn’t wrong. About any of it, including the logo. The offhand idea she had come up with that one morning in New Orleans more than two years ago was on billboards, magazines, bus stops, and TV. My workers all wore T-shirts with the logo, which got us more business.
Kinsley proposed the idea of hiring “hunky” men, her words, not mine, as my construction crew. Of course, I first went for experience, but in Los Angeles, there were more good-looking guys with excellent resumes than I thought. I hired women too. I was certainly not sexist or discriminatory, but I had no doubt the Hollywood-wife type liked a bunch of hot guys building her lavish she-shed.
Now that Carter had joined my team with his own crew, my business was flourishing so fast I could barely keep up.
When I told Kinsley I was serious about starting my own company, she hesitantly showed me a business plan she had come up with in one of her marketing classes. She was embarrassed because it was completely for me, but she came up with it when we weren’t together. Of course, I loved the idea she was thinking about me even when she thought the worst of me and didn’t think she’d ever see me again.
Two years together and we still couldn’t get enough, having sex every opportunity we got, sometimes so loud Carter would chuck a basketball at our window. Though they were as bad, I felt sorry for our other neighbors. They probably wished they had obnoxious college kids who threw loud parties instead.
After San Francisco, I let Kinsley decide where she wanted to go next. I would make whatever or wherever work. We went up to Seattle for a month, but the rain ended up getting to her. We traveled around for a bit and ended up back in Hermosa Beach.
The moment she stepped inside my house, Goat leaped up on the sofa like he had done it all his life, she grinned at me. “We’re home.”
Meeting Carter, Layla, and their pot-belly pig, Dog solidified it for her. Layla and Kinsley had become fast friends, and oddly both the pig and the dog loved playing together.
Kinsley ended up getting a job at a new boutique PR firm in Santa Monica. It was small but had a good list of clients, now including SB Construction. She loved it, which was all I cared about.
We had been working so much that we planned a two-week vacation, taking the RV on a reunion tour with Goat, visiting some of the places we did the first time and discovering new ones. Our destination was New Orleans, staying a few days before heading back. Kay was mad we weren’t coming up to visit, but I wanted this trip to be just about Kinsley and me.
Kay and Liam were completely happy for us. It took Kyle only a moment to accept his friend being with his younger sister, only threatening my life a couple of times to not break her heart, but Kasey still wasn’t my biggest fan. She was getting better, at least pretending she was happy that Kins and I were together. The gruff, tattooed guy she was dating, who was her complete opposite, seemed to chill her out. Loosen her up a bit.
But, after this trip, she would have no choice but to accept me, since I would hopefully become officially part of their family.
The ring was tucked away in my bag. I had no plan, though I liked the idea of proposing in New Orleans where we first got together, but who knew? Maybe between jumping out of a plane in Colorado or skinny-dipping somewhere in the Rio Grande, I would ask her to be my wife.
That was what I loved about us—we took things as they came, pushed and challenged each other, never staying in the lines.
“You owe me.” Kinsley’s voice brought me back to the present, her hands sliding into my boxers, her thumb rolling over my tip, forcing a grunt from my throat. Weaving my hands in her hair, I yanked on the strands, bringing her mouth to mine.
“I lost my checkbook.” I nipped her lip, my fingers dipping into her shorts. “Any other way I can compensate?” My fingers slid through her soaked folds, both of us hissing. “Shit, Nettles… already so fucking wet.”
“Smith. Noooowww.” She tore at my jeans as I tossed her up on my desk, yanking off her shorts and tank, spreading her legs. We never seemed to get enough, always so desperate for each other; it would take us two or three times in a row to calm down. There were countless times we barely got in the door. What was I saying? Several times we didn’t—on our lawn, against the shed in the middle of the day.
Kinsley and I were the story that was never supposed to happen, a sequence of events that shouldn’t have been, chances that could have turned a different way with a simple choice.
But as I sank into her body, with the feel of her around me and my need to be deep inside her, I saw our paths were destined for each other.
The nerdy baby sister who could see right through the smug bastard.
And owned his soul.