“And we’re already in a boss-employee relationship. We’ve covered a lot in a weekend, babe.”
“You can say that again, Fifi.” I glare and he laughs. “It’s a fact. Get used to it. I want to be saying that when we’re old.” I grin at him, and his gaze turns thoughtful. “Maybe one day we won’t be boss and employer.”
“What? You want me to leave?”
He shakes his head. “Of course not, but I do want you to have everything you want, Clem. You can discount our age gap, but I will always endeavour to make sure you’re not holding back from going after what you want.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I shake my head. “Do you think I don’t know my own mind?”
“It’s good you do because no one else wants to venture in there with you. It would scare Stephen King.” I shove him and he laughs before becoming serious. “Maybe one day you’ll own the bookshop with me.”
We meet each other’s eyes, and I can feel all the possibilities rising up between us.
I smile slowly. “Then I’m afraid there’s only one requirement left.” I hold my finger up. “It’s very serious. Ill-informed people insist it isn’t necessary, butalltrue romance readers know it’s essential.”
“And what is that?”
I wink. “It’s the happy every after, Harry. Can you commit to that?”
“I can,” he says immediately, and I draw him to me, kissing him like we’re on the cover of our very own book.
Move over, Fiona and Jared. There’s a new romantic couple in town.
EPILOGUE
TWO YEARS LATER
Harry
“It’s her,” Clem hisses.
“Her, who?” I ask.
“No, don’t turn around.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know who you’re talking about, then?” I say very reasonably, in my opinion.
He rolls his eyes. “It’s Frida McBain.”
“Who’s she when she’s at home?”
He arches one blond eyebrow, his face creased in that smile of his that manages to be both wicked and incredibly sweet. It made me fall in love with him years ago and keeps me in the state, because it’s the perfect expression of his sassy nature.
“She had rather a profound effect on our lives,” he says.
“Is she the one who put the council tax up?”
He snorts. “No, she wroteTorridly Yours.”
That title rings a bell, and I rack my brains to remember. It comes back to me in a flash. “Jared and Fiona’s treatise on how to win friends and influence people?”
He points a finger at me. “Ding ding. Their book was my manual on how to grab you.”
“Makes me sound like something you’d find in a fairground machine. And you had me anyway. I was yours from the moment you crashed into the shop—the source of all sass and snark.”
He shoots me a private and very loving smile. “Yes, but you neglected to tell me of the fact.”
I sit back in my chair, tossing my napkin on the table and lifting my wineglass to my lips. “I was playing the long game,” I say after a sip of wine.
