Chapter Fourteen

 

*** Epilogue –Six Months Later ***

 

* JULIA *

 

“I’m closed,” I said without looking up from the pile of one dollar bills I was counting at the cash register. I really needed to start locking the door when it was closing time. It hadn’t been such a big deal to leave the door unlocked after closing time when my only customers were local. They had all pretty much known what time I closed, and had left me alone for the day after that. But now that I was getting a flood of new customers from the resort every day, my bad habit of not locking the door kept coming back to bite me.

“Should I lock the door behind me?”

I looked up at the sound of Megan’s voice. “Oh. It’s just you. I didn’t expect you to be back so soon.”

She shrugged. “Traffic was surprisingly light. I guess not a lot of people are actually coming in or leaving the resort today. I have something for you, though.”

She held up a gold foil box and I squealed.

“Oh my god! Are those the chocolates from the gift shop that I love?”

Megan grinned. “Yup. Not from me, though. They’re from Logan. He asked me to deliver them and I said I would for a small fee.”

“Seriously? You charged him for the delivery?”

Megan laughed and fished out a five dollar bill from her pocket, holding it up for me to see. “First rule of business, Jules. You can get a man to pay for anything when he’s trying to make his pregnant wife happy. I probably could have charged him a hundred bucks to deliver and he would have paid it.”

I rolled my eyes, and lunged for the box of chocolates. “Give me that. First rule of being a pregnant girl’s best friend: don’t keep the chocolates she’s craving away from her one second more than necessary.”

Megan laughed and let me have the box. The resort carried these fancy chocolates with weird flavors that I normally would have thought were gross, but somehow couldn’t get enough of while pregnant. I looked down at my belly, which was just starting to noticeably swell, and I sighed happily. I still had four months to go before my due date, but I was already impossibly impatient to meet my little girl. I hoped she had Logan’s blue eyes, but he was rooting for green eyes like mine. In the end, it didn’t matter all that much. The important thing was that she was healthy, and that she was ours.

A loud bark came from behind me. Decaf came running out of the back office and leapt straight up onto the front counter, then right over it, tackling Megan. She managed not to fall completely on her back, and laughed as the giant lab started licking her face like crazy.

“Decaf!” I yelled. “You know you’re not allowed on the counter. And you just messed up all the bills I was counting.”

Decaf ignored me and kept bouncing around the front of the café, trying to land more sloppy, wet kisses on Megan. He had made an astounding recovery after his surgery. One would never know that a few months ago he had barely been able to walk: his three-shots-of-espresso personality was back. The name Decaf was once again quite ironic on him.

I sighed dramatically as I began to gather up the mess of bills that would all need to be counted again. I didn’t have the heart to be angry. Not when it made me so happy to see him so full of life once again. Besides, Decaf never really listened to me anymore. He pretty much only listened to Logan these days. The two of them were always causing mischief together.

Megan finally calmed Decaf down enough that she wasn’t in danger of being knocked over by his exuberance, and she came around behind the counter. “Can I have a cupcake?” she asked, already reaching for one before I even answered. I always let her have whatever she wanted after closing time, especially when she took deliveries for me over to the resort. Sure, I was paying her for taking on the odd job here and there for me, but I had a feeling I was going to need her help more and more as my belly got bigger and bigger. It didn’t hurt to keep her buttered up with constant free cupcakes.

Megan glanced over at the jukebox as she started to remove the wrapper from her cupcake. “I’m surprised you aren’t playing Christmas music in here right now. Since it’s actually the Christmas season for once.”

I glanced at the jukebox, which was playing a mix of pop music, and rolled my eyes. “You know I get enough Christmas music the rest of the year. Logan is such a weirdo for being so obsessed with it.”

Megan just laughed, and took a big bite of her cupcake. She loved to give me a hard time about Logan’s strange taste in music. Truth be told, I thought his obsession with Christmas music was kind of adorable. But that didn’t mean I didn’t switch the Christmas music off when he wasn’t around. Enough was enough.

“You coming out to Joe’s Sandbar tonight?” Megan asked hopefully around mouthfuls of cupcake. “Joe said he’ll make you as many Shirley Temples as you want, on the house.”

I groaned. “I dunno, Meg. I’m tired. And a bar isn’t as much fun when you can’t drink actual alcohol.”

“Please? I know Logan is working late tonight. He already told me. Come out and be my wing woman for once. I won’t make you stay too late, I promise. And there are quite a few cute tourist boys who said they’re gonna come down and check out the local music scene.”

I sighed. “Fine. For a little bit.” Megan whooped and gave me a big hug. I patted her on the back, already seeing my plans to eat ice-cream in front of the TV all night going up in smoke. I couldn’t complain too much, though. Megan had always had my back when I’d been chasing some hot piece of tourist ass. Now that I had landed my gorgeous billionaire, it was only fair that I had her back, too. She would have done the same for me. Besides, Joe’s Sandbar did have the best fish and chips in town. I didn’t have any plans for dinner, since Logan had already told me he had a late meeting tonight. It was rare that he had to work late, but it did happen now and then. I was just glad that he was living on the same island as me now. He had moved into my little beach cottage with me, but we had plans to renovate with a bigger house once the busy Christmas season was over. Hopefully everything would be finished up before the baby arrived, but it was going to be tight.

Megan was still talking, detailing her plans to catch the eye of one of the tourist boys. I smiled and held up my hand, telling her to quiet down.

“Hey, stop trying so hard. Things will happen when it’s the right guy. Besides, you know that any man whom you give a second glance is damn lucky. Stop trying to impress them, and let them impress you.”

Megan groaned. “Easy for you to say. You’re engaged to the hottest billionaire around and carrying his baby.”

I shrugged. “True. But it happened in the time and way I least expected it.”

“You’re so corny.”

I smiled and punched her in the arm. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m onto something.”

She rolled her eyes at me and went back for another cupcake, but I just smiled as I reached down to scratch Decaf behind the ears. Things had happened in the time and way I least expected it, but now that everything was said and done, I wouldn’t change a thing.

My sexy billionaire had completed the piece of my heart that had always been missing, and I hadn’t even realized it. I’d been looking for a summer fling, and I’d found a forever romance.

And forever was just getting started.

 

* * *

 

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