Epilogue
LUCY
Almost a year later, I parked the car in the forecourt of Kinlay Castle and George was waiting for me, his tail wagging so hard his whole body moved. It hadn’t snowed yet but it would, any day now.
I got out and bent down to hug him and accept a wet kiss. I’d been meeting a newly engaged couple on a nearby estate who wanted to hire me for their wedding next year.
The interior of Kinlay Castle had been decorated for Christmas to within an inch of its life and I could see lights twinkling through the windows and the fires roaring.
I’d sold up my Dublin apartment about six months before and had officially moved Lucy Collins-Ross Events to Scotland. And I was busy. I no longer pretended weddings didn’t move me. I’d actually cried at one groom’s speech recently. Thankfully Jamie hadn’t witnessed it.
I’d met Jess, his sister and loved her almost as much as I did him.
We’d both met the parents – his mother was cold, but I’d expected that.
And my folks were just happy that I was happy.
In fact, I was probably seeing more of them now.
My father had already been to Scotland that summer with his wife and my younger half-brothers and sisters and my mother had found a local silent meditation retreat centre.
My heart skipped a beat when a familiar figure came into view. He was in jeans and a fleece jacket and he looked rugged and masculine and sexy.
He came straight up to me with an intense look on his face that already had me wet with desire and lifted me up into his arms. I wrapped my legs around him and we kissed like we hadn’t seen each other in three years. It had been four hours.
When we came up for air, he pulled back. ‘God, I missed you. I’m going to lock you in here and then you can never go anywhere ever again.’
‘Ooh, that sounds positively controlling and not creepy at all.’
He grinned and let me down. I unpeeled myself from him. He took my hand. ‘Come on, let me show you what we’ve done with the walled garden.’
He was in his element working at the castle hauling it into the twenty-first century and we had big plans.
We were already renting it out for weddings and events – eventually this would become my full-time job, and he was already using it for students on the camera course he was teaching, for field trips – filming in the wild.
And, a TV production had been here to shoot a new period drama series and they were booked in for the second season.
In the walled garden, I made impressive sounding noises because what I really wanted was to reunite with my husband in a far more earthy way. And I had something to tell him.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Can you pretend to be interested?’
‘I love it, I really do, you’ve done an amazing job but – ‘ I broke off. I had collected something in the local town today. I took the box out of my back pocket and held it out. He looked at it. ‘What’s this?’
I opened it. It was a gold ring, plain, simple. I took his hand. ‘Jamie Ross, will you consent to keep being my husband, please?’
His eyes twinkled and he cocked his head on one side. ‘I’m not sure, can I think about it?’
I made a face at him and held the ring up. ‘Look inside.’
He took it and held it up. Inside I’d had the date of the wedding engraved and the words: When you look for me, I’ll always be there. Jamie & Lucy.
Jamie’s eyes were shiny. ‘I love it, Luce.’
I slid the ring onto his finger and arm in arm we went into the castle. I did manage to restrain myself from telling him the other news until later and it made him cry. In a good way.
Seven months later, our daughter was born on a bright summer’s day. We named her Callie, after her uncle Callum. And when Ellie was born two years later, she was named after Elvis. After all, he did officiate at our wedding. Kind of.
THE END