Two years later . . .
“Mom, I’m hanging up the phone now.”
“Wait!” she yelled. “Can we talk about the flowers?”
“It will have to wait. I’ll see you in less than an hour. That is, if you’d let me off the phone so I can finish getting ready and load up Draven.”
“Fine,” she huffed and hung up.
I looked at my baby boy playing on the floor and smiled. Draven Nicholas III was almost a year and a half old, not really a baby anymore. He was an exact replica of Nick, minus the beard.
“Grammy is driving me crazy with this wedding business,” I told him.
He gave me a smile that melted my heart and went back to stacking a tower of cups.
My mother and Alesso had gotten married the fall after my ordeal with Steffie. They had come to Prescott and had a no-fuss wedding at town hall. At the time, I had been so impressed by Mom’s decision to skip the theatrics. Then that night at dinner, the real Collette had appeared and announced that they were having an enormous wedding reception. She had only wanted to get married quickly so she and Alesso could move into their Montana chalet.
The reception had taken her nearly two years to plan but finally it was all coming together. In a month, we would have the party, and I had vowed never again to get involved in coordinating a wedding.
“Ready to go, buddy?” I asked Draven, picking him up off the floor and kissing his chubby cheek.
It was Independence Day and we were hosting a party at the garage. This was our first Fourth of July gathering at Slater’s Station but I hoped it would become an annual tradition for our families and friends.
Tonight, we were filling the parking lot with camp chairs while the men barbequed, the women chatted and the kids played. Then we were all staying for Prescott’s fireworks show.
“We’re here!” I called into Nick’s shop.
Three heads popped up from underneath the hood of a green sports car.
As Nick, Uncle Dash and Grandpa Draven crossed the room, I gave my boy one last hug and kiss. It would likely be the last time I’d get to hold him until well after dark and he fussed for his mama.
“Hey,” Nick said, kissing my cheek as Grandpa Draven lifted Baby Draven from my arms.
“Hi.” I smiled. “Can you help me unload?”
“Dash and I can take care of it,” Nick said.
“Okay. Bring the beer in first, please, and I’ll start loading it into the fridge.”
“How’s my little man today?” Nick asked our son before ruffling his brown hair and walking outside to my Jeep.
Sliding into Draven Sr.’s side, I gave him a sideways hug. “How are you?”
“Good. Glad to be here.” He smiled and kissed my forehead.
When Nick had learned that Draven had saved my life, the broken bond between them had healed. They’d built a strong working relationship, and both Nick’s garage and Draven’s in Clifton Forge were now extremely profitable.
Nick had gotten so busy that I hadn’t been able to keep up with the bookkeeping and office work, so the year after they had moved to Montana, Alesso had started managing the office.
“How many cars did you bring with you this time?” I asked Draven.
“Three.” He grinned.
I rolled my eyes and gave him an exaggerated glare. “I’m never going to see Nick at this rate. He gets so caught up with one of them that he forgets what time it is. He missed dinner twice this week.”
Draven chuckled. “Like father, like son. I remember once, Chrissy got so mad at me for doing the same that she brought ten alarm clocks to the garage and set them to go off one minute apart. By the time the last one beeped, it was so loud that I couldn’t ignore them anymore.”
“She was a smart woman,” I said. Nick’s mom’s tactic was brilliant and tomorrow I was going alarm clock shopping.
“Yes, she was,” Draven agreed with a sad smile.
“Can you keep him while I get the food ready?” I asked.
He nodded before tickling his grandson and heading outside. Draven might not have been the best father but he was a wonderful grandfather. So was Alesso.
They were the only grandfathers Draven would ever have. My father had nothing to do with my life and I wouldn’t allow him in my son’s.
Trent Austin had refused to believe that his adoring fiancée would attack me. It wasn’t until after her trial and she had been sent away to prison that he’d realized just how much she had manipulated him. She hadn’t even been pregnant. It had all been a lie to ensure that he married her. I still wondered if she had planned on killing him too.
“Emmeline!” Mom was storming into the garage, pulling my brother, Ethan, behind her.
“Can you please tell your brother that bringing his ex-wife to the wedding reception is completely inappropriate?” she said.
“Hi,” Ethan said, giving me a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.
“Hello. Which ex-wife?” I asked.
“I’ve invited Rachel.”
“I like Rachel,” I told my mother.
“What?” she yelled. “How could you say that? She started having an affair with your father while she was married to your brother.”
“That wasn’t Rachel,” Ethan said.
“Isn’t she the blond one?” Mom asked.
“No.”
“Which one was the blond one?” she asked.
“Number Four,” Ethan and I answered in unison.
“Then which one is Rachel?” my mother asked.
“The second one. Brunette. Tall. Kind of willowy. I was in their wedding,” I said.
“Okay.” She nodded. “I like her too. She’s invited.”
Ethan muttered a curse and then declared he was going to help Nick at the grill. He had been on an extended Montana vacation following his divorce from Number Four.
I wasn’t the only member of my family no longer speaking to Trent Austin. My father had started sleeping with Ethan’s wife not long after Steffie had been out of the picture. Number Four had taken a chunk from my brother’s trust fund and was currently shacked up at the Austin estate.
On the bright side, it was the wake-up call that Ethan had needed to turn his life around. He had realized that his greedy lifestyle was never going to get him the happiness he desired, and I was proud to say that he was becoming a better man.
“What’s next?” Mom asked, surveying my food table setup.
The meat was ready and the garage was overflowing with drinks. Gigi and Maisy were bringing salads. Samuel, Mom’s chef, had made desserts. It was the perfect summer barbeque.
“Now you can tell me about these flowers and then we’ll enjoy the evening,” I said, looping my arm through hers and leading her outside.
“Do you miss it, helping with the fireworks?” I asked Nick. “I know how you men feel about blowing stuff up.”
When he’d worked at the fire station, Nick had always helped with the fireworks show. But now that he was just on the volunteer team, Michael Holt was supervising.
Nick bent down to kiss our son’s hair and then took my hand in his. “Not one bit.”
We were side by side in a couple of camp chairs watching the show. Draven was passed out on his daddy’s chest and I was wrapped up in a blanket to keep warm.
After things had settled down the day Steffie had shot at me, I’d learned about the fire that had kept Nick away. He had managed to save the elderly woman trapped in the burning chateau but the building itself had been too far gone to save. Though it frightened me to think of what could have happened to him, I was so proud of Nick.
He was a hero.
“Ryan told me tonight that they’re ready to knock out the walls. Did you decide if you want to stay at your mom’s or at the motel?” Nick asked.
This summer we were putting an addition on the house. Addition wasn’t quite the right term. It was more like building a second house and connecting it to the existing one. When it was finished, we’d have an entertainment room and playroom downstairs with two new bedrooms and another bathroom upstairs. And I would finally get a bigger closet.
“I hate to intrude on Mom for a whole week,” I said. “So, the motel I guess.”
Nick chuckled and brought my hand to his lips for a soft kiss. “I’ve got another idea,” he said. “We could fly to Vegas for the week.”
“Right. Sin City with a toddler would be a blast.”
“He could stay with your mom and Alesso.”
“I doubt they’d want him with all the activity they have going on.”
He grinned. “That’s not what Collette said when I asked her.”
“You already told her we were going, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
I rolled my eyes. “What about the garage? You’ve been so busy. Can you afford to be away for an entire week? What if you get behind?”
“Alesso can manage the office. The cars Dad and Dash brought up aren’t rush jobs. I’m good,” he said.
“It’s going to be miserably hot down there.”
“Think of it like a honeymoon. We’ll just stay inside our room with the air conditioning.”
“Honeymoon? More like returning to the scene of the crime.”
Leaning over, he brushed his lips across the base of my jaw. I loved it when he did that. “We could see if Clover is still around and renew our vows at the chapel? Maybe get to work on baby number two?” he whispered.
I absolutely wanted to see our chapel again but another baby? “No. No way. It’s too soon.”
He leaned back and smiled. His vibrant eyes sparkled as the fireworks exploded in the sky above us and in my heart. “I dare you.”
I shook my head and gave him a smirk. “That doesn’t work on me anymore. You’ve used up all your dares.”
“Fine,” he said. “I double dare you.”