Zoe stared, open-mouthed, while Ethan dropped to his knees and held out his hand. The gold coins sparkled at her.
"Can I buy your love?" Ethan asked her.
"I don't know what to say," Zoe said.
"Say yes!" Grandma yelled. "Go on, sweetie, take his hand!"
As if on cue, the music switched to "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
The audience sang about feeling happy inside while Zoe climbed onto the stage with a racing heart and a thousand burning questions.
"How? Where?" she asked.
Ethan laughed and took her in his arms. "I was thinking New Year’s Eve, because I don't want to spend another year without you."
"That's not what I meant," she said.
"I know," he said. "But it's what I want and what I hope you want, too."
He spun her around and kissed her long and deep.
She pulled away and looked him in the eye. “But where did you find the coins?”
“Hannah found them. She said that God had given them to her. At first, I didn’t believe her.”
“But now you do?”
“God has given me you.”
Grandma and Courtney climbed onto the stage and began to sing into the microphone about diamonds and feeling all right.
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EPILOGUE
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TWO YEARS LATER
On the night of the Lawrence Atelier grand opening, Ethan stood staring at the soaring ceilings and tall glass windows. Converting the cigar shop into a gallery had been relatively easy; getting rid of the tobacco smell, not so much. But Zoe had been right, his paintings—both the old and the new—looked incredible. And the fact that the atelier was right next door to the bakery so that he and Zoe could share office space and see each other as much as they wanted made the situation all the more ideal.
He'd had to cut back his hours at the school, of course, but he didn't mind. The gallery didn't open until eleven, so he taught at Canterbury in the morning. More adjustments would have to be made when baby Harold arrived, but Ethan was looking forward to that as well.
Rather than hanging Christmas lights, they had hung battery operated candles on varying lengths of wire in the front window. Now that the sun had gone down and the lights were dim, the flickering candles looked as if they were floating in the air.
A banging on the window distracted him, and he went to open the door to his first guests, Misty and the Gearheads.
"Nice digs, man," Leo said.
"Yeah. No hard feelings, right?" Lance asked.
Misty looked around the gallery and sniffed as if she didn't like what she saw. Ethan just smiled, because he recognized the smell of envy. The gallery Misty and the Gearheads was doing fine financially—especially since Misty was selling what she calledboudoir portraitsin a private studio in a back room—but it marketed to different clientele.
When a very pregnant Zoe lumbered out of the back, Ethan held out his arm to pull her close to his side. "Nah," he said. "I have everything I could ever want and more."
“Aw, gross,” Hannah said. “Get a room.” But she smiled as she said it. She joined Laurel and Jon on the makeshift stage the band had set up beside the twenty-foot Christmas tree and picked up her electric guitar. Laurel fiddled with the keyboard while Jon adjusted his drums.
Ethan didn’t like Hannah playing in a band—he had visions of his daughter prancing on the stage in tight red leather pants and lace bustier—but Zoe had convinced him the Gingerbread Band would be good for all of them.
