Epilogue – Who Says You Can’t Have Everything
Epilogue
Cooper
WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING
Performed by Brothers Osborne
I searched the tables in the fancy marquee for Andie and came up empty. It didn’t cause quite the panic it would have even three weeks ago, but it still made me uneasy.
I glanced at the snow piled nearly halfway up the windows outside and swore to myself.
Knowing Andie, she’d have forgotten her damn coat somewhere, and all I could imagine was her picking her way over the icy path from the castle to the marquee in that slinky dress she’d left the house in and nothing else.
Snowstorms had pummeled the majority of the United States at unprecedented levels for days and buried Swift Rivers in near blizzard-like conditions.
The freezing temperatures outside were mitigated by the space heaters, heat lamps, and the sheer volume of people who had still shown up for the Golden Heroes fundraiser, regardless of the weather.
With Misty in jail, Andie and Fallon had to pick up her slack on top of their own, and they’d both been working long hours.
Between Andie’s schedule and the sheriff’s department being inundated with emergencies, utility outages, and accidents, we’d hardly seen each other in days.
Hell, Luca and I had hardly seen each other.
He’d been with my parents more than me for nearly two weeks now.
When Andie and I had seen each other, it had been for mere hours caught between meals or a few precious moments in bed together. So even if I hadn’t had to put on a damn monkey suit tonight, I would have been grumpy and irritable.
I put a finger under the collar of my tux, attempting to loosen it, and started for the front door of the marquee, determined to find Andie and ensure she, at a minimum, had a coat on and didn’t slip on the icy walkways.
I got stopped by Mayor Nattingly before I made it two feet.
She was talking budget numbers, something I’d left several messages with her about, hoping to increase my staff by at least two more deputies.
But I couldn’t concentrate tonight, not with Andie missing from the venue after the tireless hours she’d spent to make sure it went off without a hitch.
I was just about to brush the mayor off when she finally walked in.
As I suspected, she had no damn coat, and clear across the room, I could see her shiver.
Her dress was a deep forest green and clung to every delightful curve while, at the same time, hardly revealing any skin.
It still managed to be one of the sexiest gowns I’d ever seen on a woman.
The neck was straight, draping across her collarbones and over her shoulders to long sleeves that ended in sharp points over her wrists.
The slit up the side of the dress revealed the most skin, giving me glimpses of her thigh every time she moved.
I’d been longing to slide a hand inside the gap from the moment she’d walked out of our bedroom.
Our bedroom.
That notion still brought a pleased warmth to my chest. We hadn’t wasted a single moment since we’d claimed each other.
We’d moved her measly belongings into my house the weekend after Thanksgiving, never once even considering that it was too soon.
Nothing would have changed if we’d waited, except we would have wasted time together.
While the attack in her kitchen hadn’t quite ruined the place for her, the truth was, her house had never fully been a home. I was happy Luca and I could give her one. That we could build a family together.
We’d decided to renovate her house a room at a time over the next few months, and once it was finished, we’d rent it out—hopefully, to someone making Rivers their home rather than tourists just passing through.
The mayor’s laugh drew my eyes back to hers. She winked at me. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said with your eyes glued on Andie. Go get your fiancée. We’ll pick this up next week.”
I didn’t have it in me to even be embarrassed.
I simply strode through the tables toward the woman I loved, who’d stopped to straighten one of the centerpieces—a mini holiday tree that was part of the charity’s raffle.
When I reached her, I pulled her into my arms, her back to my front, and placed a kiss by her ear.
“I can’t wait to get you home, take every single pin from your hair, and find out exactly what you have on under that sinful dress.”
She shivered again, and it made me inordinately pleased to know it wasn’t from the cold this time.
She squeezed my biceps before turning in my arms.
Her gaze slid over my tux, and she brushed at an invisible speck along my chest.
“Speaking of sinful. You have to be breaking some kind of law in this tux, Sheriff.”
Her eyes twinkled, her lips quirked upward, and I was afraid I was going to embarrass myself again in front of even more of the town than had been at my parents’ birthday celebration.
“When can we leave?” I demanded.
She laughed, and the joy of it, the ease with which she did it, warmed my heart further.
The last three weeks, I’d watched as she’d gotten lighter and lighter.
The weight of the regrets and burdens and fear she’d been carrying for a decade were slipping further and further away.
Watching her emerge was breathtaking. She practically glowed with an inner brilliance now.
I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her, even knowing it would mess up her lipstick.
And it wasn’t with the restrained politeness it should have been, given we were in a marquee full of people.
Instead, the kiss held the heat, the longing, the promise of what we would be doing in our bed before the night was over.
A chuckle next to us should have ripped my lips from hers, but it didn’t.
It was Andie who dragged us apart. She smiled up at me, wiped her lipstick from my mouth with her thumb, brushed at a lock of hair that had fallen over my brow, and then finally turned toward her boss.
Fallon wore a deep-aqua dress that showed off toned arms and muscled legs. At her side, with his palm spread across her bare lower back, was her husband. Parker looked as ready to get out of his tux as I did.
“Everything okay?” Andie asked.
Fallon reached over and squeezed her arm, eyes a little misty.
“I don’t know how you always pull it off, Andie, but this…
” She waved a hand around the room. “It’s stunning.
Even in the midst of the storm of the century, you still managed to create a winter wonderland.
The foundation is lucky to have had you working on the event. ”
Andie flushed and picked up a clipboard from where she’d set it down while adjusting the table-top tree.
“It was definitely a team effort. Speaking of teams, I need to check in with Hannah. She’s been putting on a brave face, but after all the mishaps with the person leaving her those notes and the fact Brady and her mom couldn’t get here because of the storm, she’s got to be feeling rattled still. ”
Parker’s smile dimmed. “Cranky has it under control.”
I scoffed, thinking of the last time I’d seen the man with his arm wrapped protectively around the singer.
The look on his face had been more than just the look of a bodyguard.
It had been the look of someone all but screaming Don’t fuck with my woman.
That same look had been on my face every time Andie had been threatened over the last few months.
Parker’s eyes narrowed in on me. “You know something I don’t?”
I shook my head. If Parker didn’t see what I saw when he looked at his former SEAL teammate and Hannah together, it wasn’t my place to enlighten him.
Colt Arden, aka Cranky, had promised to keep me abreast of any developments in Hannah’s case, but so far, nothing had been actionable.
Some snarky notes from some pissed-off fan.
Nuisance stuff that picked at emotions but hadn’t escalated into anything physical.
I could only hope it would stay that way.
Andie’s phone alarm dinged. “Okay, time to get everyone in their seats. The first course is ready.”
She started away, but Fallon stopped her. “I got this. Mic by the stage?”
Andie nodded, and Fallon strode toward the elevated stage at the far side of the room.
Draped in white sheers and swags of pine and holly, it hid the piano I’d seen earlier—a digital baby grand painted with an abundance of wild flowers, as if it was a canvas rather than an instrument.
But the the piece seemed to fit the musician—a ’70s, flower child throwback.
Parker clapped me on the shoulder and then headed after his wife.
I pulled Andie into my side again, kissed her temple, and dropped my voice so only she could hear me.
“Baby, I know you need to be here tonight, and I respect that, but I need you to know it’s costing me several pieces of my soul not to drag you out of here, take you home, and devour you right now. ”
The smile she gave me set my chest ablaze. She raised up on her tiptoes, brushed those soft lips along my jaw, and whispered, “I took tomorrow off. I plan to spend the entire day in bed, letting you devour me as much as you wish.”
Heat went straight to my groin, and I let out a pained groan. She laughed.
I grabbed her chin and kissed her fiercely again. “Havoc. You’ve been pure chaos since the moment you strolled into my life.”
Her smile disappeared, and I was ready to kick myself in the ass, until she said, “Want to make some more chaos with me? Maybe a bunch of little hurricanes?”
My heart nearly stopped. Kids. She was talking about kids.
I was forty-two years old with a teenage son and hadn’t foreseen any more children in my future.
But her words put images in my head that were impossible not to love.
Andie with a baby swaddled in her arms. Luca helping a baby sister learn to skateboard.
A little girl with Andie’s red hair and my blue eyes wrapping her finger around mine.