He waves me off, “Coppers can be paid off.”
“Once again, you! Are! Insane!”
“Yes, but you love that about me.”
“I never said love,yousaid love.”
He pulls my hand up and kisses it, “And I’ll say it again and again, as long as you’ll let me.”
I don’t respond, I can’t. Because I’ll probably start sobbing tears of joy right here on the boardwalk not far from my new job.Love.
Aiden Vanderwell loves me.
And, annoying as it is, as usual, he’s right.
I love him too.
EPILOGUE
Harper
“Higher! Higher!” Steven calls out.
“You gotta really reach, man!” Maxine adds.
Aiden turns on the ladder and gives my friends a look that could kill. Except we’re all immune to that look and everyone knows the crowd just wants to check out my boyfriend’s butt.
Aiden shifts his gaze to me, pleading for help. I just shrug.
“Why didn’t we hire this out?” He grumbles as he adjusts the head of a skeleton taller than a two-story building.
“Someone taught us to cut costs so as to increase our profit margins!” Shelly says before she, hilariously, plops on the curb with a pretzel in one hand and a caramel apple latte in the other. She takes a sip and sits back like she’s enjoying dinner and a show.
“Harper, Sweetheart, why are we here, again? Don’t you want to be home, walking the beach at sunset?”
“You losers do that every night now, thanks to us,” Max says.
One of the Aunts harrumphs in disapproval. That I left town, that Aiden followed, that we have adult sleepovers out ofwedlock. Though, they’ll never know it, but that was a whole ordeal, waiting until my divorce was finalized before taking our relationship to the next level.
And wow.Was it worth the wait. Aiden is bossy and demanding, but it’s kind of lovely if his demands are that I let go and experience mind-bending sex. Plus, I have a new appreciation for his whole says-exactly-what-he-means habit after hearing him say reverent compliments into my skin over and over.
I blush.
Maybe we should be at home right now…
Steven interrupts my thoughts, “Yeah, you owe us, really.”
“You know dats right!” Tyrone says as he comes out of his shop.
His shop that’s still open. Because Aiden is a softy. Construction on the new extension of Main Street should be done before the new year, then all the stores will move over, right after the Christmas rush. He’s paying penalties for delaying the parking lot. For us.
He snorts above us, “Owe you? I oweyou?”
“Hey, not while he’s up twenty feet, guys,” I say. The teasing is all well and good until he turns to fire off some grumpy comeback and falls and breaks a bone.
“Do you people realize it’s barely September?” Aiden grumbles as he turns back to his job of securing the skeleton to the Welcome to Juniper Falls sign that lives above the start of Main Street.
Braxton and his friends pass and he calls up the ladder, “I know Lady B, I told Dad we should’ve started last week.”
