Epilogue
FINN
One month later
I've walked into the card room at The Retreat hundreds of times. Through the marble lobby with its gleaming, dark millwork. Past Bernie at the door. Under the lobby's crystal chandelier that's older than the club's liquor license. A hundred times, and never once with my whole life on my arm.
Darcy's hand rests in the crook of my elbow.
She's wearing a new dress and a calm I know better than to trust at a pub trivia night or a high-stakes card table, and when Bernie tips his head to her like she's been coming here for years, she thanks him by name as if she's known him as long as I have.
I told her everything about this club on the drive in from my place in the city. She literally took notes.
The card room door is open. Amber light, old scotch, and five of the richest men in Manhattan around the mahogany table. Wyatt is in mid-shuffle, holding court about something that's making Alec shake his head.
Darcy and I walk in.
The shuffle stops mid-riffle.
Damien's glass stops halfway to his mouth.
Alec turns his head and freezes. Brad frowns and sets down his scotch, which for cool and collected Bradford Hayes is a scream.
Gabe doesn't move at all, other than to quirk an eyebrow up, which is Gabe at his loudest. Half the deck slips out of Wyatt's normally sure hands and fans across the felt.
He recovers first. Wyatt always recovers first.
"Gentlemen." He rises, buttons his jacket, the wolf smile arriving at full wattage. "Remain calm. Bardot appears to have made a friend."
"Everyone," I say, and there's no showman in it, because this part I've been looking forward to for a month and I want it plain. "I'd like you to meet Darcy Gable. My fiancée."
Dead silence.
I had a whole bit prepared for this moment. I've been polishing it since Mattichogue. Standing here watching their faces, I let the bit go.
"Fiancée," Wyatt repeats, like the word is in a language he studied once and dropped.
"Fiancée," I confirm.
Wyatt sits back in his chair like a man absorbing news of a market crash, and I reach into my jacket, because there's no better moment than this one, and there's never going to be. The check has been in my pocket for a month. I unfold it and lay it in the middle of the mahogany like a losing hand.
One million dollars, made out to the fund.
"Gentlemen," I say. "I'm out."
The noise that follows is not dignified.
Damien is laughing into his glass. Alec is on his feet.
Brad says something that would require three apologies to Darcy.
And through all of it, Wyatt stares at the check the way other men stare at car accidents, and then the recalculation crosses his face in real time—shock to arithmetic to something approaching religious joy.
"Three million," he breathes. "The pot is three million dollars, and the bookmaker just paid in.
" He stands, raises his glass, and addresses the room like it's a shareholders meeting.
"This calls for a toast. To me. The last real holdout at this table, the future sole owner of the largest kitty in the history of gentlemen's stupidity, and the only man here with the constitution to finish what Bardot started.
To the winner, gentlemen. You're looking at him. "
Damien and Alec exchange a look over their glasses. Neither of them says a word. They don't have to. I've seen that look from the other side of it now, and it says the same thing it said when I was the one toasting: God, I hope we're all there when it happens.
I salute Wyatt anyway, cheerfully. He can have the pot. I know something he doesn't know yet about how good losing is.
I drop a kiss to Darcy's temple, then bring her forward for introductions before the table can reboot, and this is where I get to watch the thing I've been waiting a month to watch.
"Damien," she says warmly, taking his hand. "So nice to meet you." And then, gently, like it's the most natural thing in the world, she reaches up and brushes a stray dog hair off the shoulder of his four-thousand-dollar jacket.
Evidence of Willow's pet menagerie dispatched, Damien looks down at his shoulder, then at Darcy, and the most feared negotiator in Manhattan visibly surrenders on the spot. "A pleasure, Darcy."
Her smile smoothly moves away from Damien. "Hello, Alec. How are you liking Sedona? I've always wanted to see the red rocks."
"They're..." Alec pauses, and I watch the man physically decide to say it in front of us.
"Honestly? There's something about them.
Calming. Ella says the whole valley has an energy all its own.
I used to give her hell about it, and now I'm the one dragging guests up to the overlook at sunrise.
" He shrugs, caught, missing his fiancée so obviously it's coming off him like heat. "It got me. What can I say?"
"It got him," Wyatt says to the ceiling. "The man had to be medically ordered to relax not that long ago. Now he's waxing woo-woo over sunrises."
Darcy laughs. Alec grumbles into his glass of club soda. I watch as Darcy then gives Brad and Gabe each a warm hello, a handshake, nothing performed. I watch Brad's careful nod and Gabe's unreadable one, and then she turns to the last man standing, saved for the end like dessert.
"And that leaves you, the infamous Wyatt Reed. Finn's told me so much about you."
"All of it slander I promise you," Wyatt says smoothly, bowing over her hand.
"So the infinite charm, the heartbreaker reputation, the enviable wit… all lies, then?"
"Not those parts, obviously."
"Obviously," she says, smiling.
Over her head Wyatt shoots me a look I've known for years, and there is nothing in it but pure, helpless delight. Charmed. To the studs. One sentence is all it took, and I'd feel smug about it if Darcy hadn't taken me down even faster than it took for her to win over every man in this room.
We join them at the table, Darcy to my left. Somebody pours her a glass of the good stuff without being asked. And then the table remembers it has nearly two months of grievances with me on file.
"So," Brad says, ice-blue eyes narrowed over his scotch. "This is what happened to you. My money was on a new extreme sport you discovered in the wilds of North Fork. Thought maybe you were building a training compound out there at the family vineyard."
"That was your theory?" Alec says, chortling.
"It was a better theory than Wyatt's," Gabe says.
Wyatt smirks. "Zip-lines over the vines. It's not that out there. Agritourism is exploding. Bardot Vista Adventure Park had a nice ring to it. I had the pitch deck half-built in my head."
"You were all wrong," I say, and I can't keep the grin down. "Every one of you, trying to guess what I was up to for two straight months. I want you to know that your texts were the best part of my week."
"Which is more than we can say for your texts," Wyatt says. "Did anyone get more than three words out of this asshole during the past two months? Meanwhile, he's out there getting himself engaged. Bastard." Wyatt glances at Darcy, sheepish now. "Pardon my French."
"I teach high school," she says serenely. "I've heard worse before first bell."
Wyatt raises his glass in acknowledgment.
"What about you, Gabe?" I ask the most elusive member of our group. "I'm sure you had a theory on my extended absence too. Lay it on me."
"I had my suspicions," Gabe says, cagey as ever.
Alec shakes his head. "Very helpful. Very Gabe."
Gabe looks at me for a moment, economical as ever.
"I guessed you were a goner even before you left The Retreat that night.
There was a look in your eyes when you said you were going back to the hometown.
I knew you weren't coming back. Not in the same way that you left, that is. It makes sense now."
I look at him, then at Darcy. "Gabe's right. I'm not coming back to the city. Not permanently, anyway. Darcy and I are looking at houses in Mattichogue."
A collective quiet circles the table as the three remaining bachelors size up their competition and my two fellow fallen give me looks of total understanding.
They're not laughing at how fast or how hard I fell for Darcy, because they know.
They've each lived it in their own way and we all share the knowledge now of just how asinine our wager was in the first place.
"Well," Wyatt says. "Congratulations to the happy couple, and best of luck to the two of you, Brad and Gabe. It hardly seems fair to take your money when the time comes, but I will."
We stay for an hour before making our exit, and it takes twenty minutes, because everyone has to hug Darcy. Damien makes her promise to meet Willow, and Alec tells her the red rocks are waiting whenever we want the guest house.
Wyatt holds her hand in both of his and tells her that if she ever tires of me, he keeps a lawyer on retainer for exactly this situation, and when she tells him she'll keep his card, he looks at me over her head with that helpless delight all over again.
Then we head through the marble lobby, and into the city glittering outside the doors that Bernie holds open for us as he tells us goodnight. Darcy's hand finds mine, the ring I gave her a small new fact between our palms.
Two hours east there's a vineyard, a library, and a bed in a cozy apartment above a bookstore. All of it nestled in a town full of people who know our whole story and are waiting for us to come back home.
Two hours, with luck. Then Darcy is all mine once again.
I hold the car door for my fiancée as she climbs inside, and I don't look back.
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