I frowned, pulling him away from me and turning him this way and that to make sure he was okay.
“Why are you lumpy?” I asked him, because if I couldn’t have my Daddy, talking to Teddy like I’d used to back when he was all I had at least helped a little. And then, “Oh.”
He had a key dangling around his neck like a necklace. Not one of the hotel’s plastic keycards, but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned metal key with a swirly end on it. I was pretty sure I recognized it, since Mom had oohed and ahhed over it—and honestly, about every single other thing here at the Plum, too—when Daddy had first hired her.
It looked like the key to the breakfast room.
“Teddy…” I started, slipping it off him. But then I shook my head. I was being dumb. Teddy wasn’treallygoing to answer, and obviously… obviously someone had left it there formeto find, right? Although I couldn’t think why.
And yet, my stomach started getting squirrelly.
Goodnerves, though.
I still didn’t know what was happening right now, but if Teddy was here and not at home, then I thought it might turn out to be something… good.
I bit my lips, trying to hold in a smile even though I had no actual for-sure reason to be grinning. But I’d taken Teddy with me to my job interview, and I’d brought him when we’d bought the house we lived in now, too. Both times, hidden inside my backpack, but stillthere.
It was because Teddy had always been there for me, and I never wanted him to miss out on anything truly important in my life.
And I’d told Daddy that, and he hadn’t laughed.
And now… now Teddy was here.
My stomach got even more fluttery as I approached the breakfast room door. It was closed, and it was never closed. It sounded totally silent, like the room was empty, but I… I wondered if it wasn’t.
I rubbed a hand over my stomach, but the flutters only got worse. The wholehotelsounded silent, actually, which I hadn’t really picked up on before but which I now realized wasreallyweird, especially in the middle of the day with the parking lot so full.
I put the key in the lock, and there was a quick rustling sound, then more silence.
“Teddy,” I whispered, looking down at him before I turned it with my whole heart suddenly up in my throat. “What’s… what’s happening?”
I didn’t want to guess.
But I wondered… I wondered if I knew.
And then I gave the key a turn and pushed open the door, and every single person I knew and loved was there.Allof them. Filling the whole room to almost overflowing and throwing sparkly stuff in the air and shouting a whole host of things that all jumbled together but sounded exciting. And in the middle, right in front of the door, facing me in a suit that looked amazing on him but that I’d just about fainted over when he’d told me how much it had cost, was my Daddy.
“Teddy,” I whispered, frozen in place because… because I did know what this was after all. I knew, and it was the whole fairy tale. The full happily-ever-after ending that I’d never, not once, noteverexpected to have for myself.
It was my Daddy, coming toward me with eyes only for me, as if none of the excitement around us was even happening. It was the whole last year, right down to… right down to the very day we’d met, of being loved and cherished and taken care of by him. It was Daddy remembering I’d want Teddy here, and my mom, too, who was already crying over there next to Sam even though Daddy… Daddy hadn’t asked me yet.
And I hadn’t said yes yet.
But she knew. They all knew. There was never any other answer I’d want to give him, not now, and not until death did us part. So when he finally reached me and went down on one knee, when he took my hand in his—his, where I could still see, just barely, the ring of smoother skin around his ring finger from the one he’d worn all those years for Blair, but which pretty soon would have one forme, because he’d loved us both and was right here telling me so in front of Teddy and all his best friends and allmybest friends and the whole, big, loving kinky family we’d made and brought here to Asheville…
Well, I suppose no one held it against me when I forgot to let him actually ask me the question before I blurted out my part.
“Yes,” I said, flinging myself right at him and almost knocking him to the ground. “I do. I will. Daddy, I… Iloveyou.”
Daddy laughed and caught me, though. Hewouldalways catch me, and I knew it.
“You’ll marry me, beautiful?” he asked, his eyes shining so brightly that the gold flecks actuallyglowed.
Or maybe that was just the reflection from my heart, which felt like it could outshine the sun.
“Yes, Daddy,” I said, melting right into his arms and not caring one single bit that we had an audience. Maybe… maybe even liking that part, just like Daddy had known I would. “I’ll marry you,” I said. “I’ll marry you forever.”
His eyes teared up, which I’d seen happen approximately never, and he pulled me close, pushing the hair back from my forehead and pressing a long kiss there. “Dollbaby,” he murmured, sounding choked up. Then he kissed me properly, too, smiling against my lips when our friends and family finally started whooping and cheering loud enough that we noticed. “Thank you,” he said softly, still for my ears only, before he let me go. “I love you with all my heart, Rene, and you’ve made me the happiest man on the planet.”
