Page 79 of Bad Blood Bear

Epilogue

Lissa sat with her eyes tightly closed as Tank pulled his truck to a stop.

“Can I look yet?” she asked.

“No.”

He turned off the engine and walked around the truck. “No peeking!”

“I’m not peeking.” She shut the eye she’d just tried to crack open.

“You’re totally peeking,” he said, opening her door. “Am I going to have to get strict with you?”

“You start talking dirty like that to me, Big Bear, and there’s no telling what might happen. I could drop my panties right here, and what if the cops should drive by?”

Tank dropped a kiss on her lips, finishing with a tiny bite to her lower lip. Lissa moaned.

He took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

“Okay, now you can open.”

She opened her eyes to see the boarded-up service station. “My old squat!” she said. “How romantic.”

Tank leaned down and kissed the top of her head, grinning.

“Incorrect,” he said. “You’re looking at the new premises of Bearcat Construction, specializing in renovations and tiny house construction.”

Lissa turned and stared at him, eyes wide. “You bought it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Flynn and I signed the papers a couple of days ago. I wanted it to be a surprise. Flynn is going to renovate and flip regular houses, and I’m going to build tiny ones.”

Lissa turned in a big circle, looking at the yard with new eyes. “This will be perfect,” she said. “Look how huge the parking lot is! You can build the tiny houses right here, and keep model homes here too.”

“That’s what we thought,” Tank said. “The old car repair bays we can turn into a workshop, out of the weather. And let me show you what we’re going to do to the rest of it.”

He led her inside. The front door had been un-boarded, and had a new lock on it. Tank unlocked it and ushered her inside.

Most of the shelves had been cleared from the convenience store area, and some of the drink cases had already been removed. It looked much bigger than it had before.

“Over here we’re going to have a mini-showroom, with samples of finishes and hardware.” He pointed. “Staff desks in the back, and over here, where the kitchen area is, we’re going to have a break room for coffee and stuff.”

Lissa couldn’t suppress a thrill as she looked around the room, envisioning it all. She’d been encouraging Tank to set up his business, but he and Flynn had kept this close to the vest, the sneaky bastards.

He led her down the hallway to the offices. “We’re going to enclose part of the storage room as an office for Flynn. He’ll be out on site most of the time, but he needs someplace to hang his hard hat. And this is my office.”

He pushed open the door of Lissa’s old squat, and she gasped. The old desk and couch were still in there, but the junk had been cleaned up, and the room was full of flickering LED candles. There was an ice bucket with champagne in it next to the couch.

“Not as romantic as real candles,” Tank said, “but I wanted them to be lit when we got here.”

Lissa threw her arms around him. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Who would have thought, the day I knifed you in the hallway, that someday we’d be mated and you’d be building your dream in this very place.”

“Not me,” Tank said, kissing her slowly and thoroughly. “Come on. Let’s make a toast.”

Tank popped the cork on the champagne bottle and poured two glasses. “What?” he said, noticing Lissa’s expression.

“I saw the label,” she admitted. “I’m trying not to think about how much it cost.” Tank was trying to break her of the habit, but it wasn’t easy.

Tank laughed. “I swiped it from the wine cellar at the cabin,” he said. “Courtesy of Alexander Fucking Grant.”