The stone was warm under Olivia’s fingertips, radiating the late day sun as she traced the etched letters with care. Running her index finger forward then back, she paused on the last word. Loved.
Love. There was no room for hate in this little garden of Eden. No space for negative energy amongst colorful velvet blooms and paper-thin greenery. No dividing line between what the heart wanted and the pride protected.
Sliding her hand across the smooth granite surface, she brushed away dried pink petals and curled leaves, careful not to swipe the crawling red lady bug with them, staring at the words. She knew deep in her weathered heart that she’d made the right choice. She’d opened the door to the future, releasing the only remaining item standing between her and happiness. Between her and Ash.
Coleson Creek Winery.
Her laugh was ironic, but joyous. Considering she had no job, no place to live, and a costly divorce on the horizon, you might think she’d have nothing to smile about.
You’d be wrong.
The chimes were quiet as Olivia sat on the bench surrounded by rose bushes, taking a deep, cleansing breath. The last two weeks had been a flurry of activity. She’d locked up a five-year extension on the distribution deal, laid out a game plan for the upcoming harvest and initiated the lucrative sale of a cash crop, and prepared a budget to meet their operational expenses for the next two quarters. All of it paving the way for a banner year of sales and potential record profits.
Of course, this was pending the vineyard remain open. There’d been no news on that front, not so much as a peep from the new owner, so until then, it was business as usual.
Either way, her work here was done.
“You’re trespassing on private property, ma’am.” Her heart dropped at the rumble of his voice, then sprang to her throat. He glanced at his watch as he approached. “As of twelve minutes ago, anyway.”
Her resignation was effective at five o’clock tonight. Exactly twelve minutes ago.
“I need to see some identification. Pat you down and make sure you’re not hiding any contraband. I’ll need access to every nook and cranny, too,” he added, repeating the first words he’d ever said to her.
Blowing her mind in the process.
She ate up his imposing presence. The unapproachable man from the funeral was gone, in his place the Ash she knew. Worn jeans, work boots, and sex appeal oozing from his pores. A layer of stubble shadowed his face, the shaggy ends of his hair curling against his neck, overdue for a cut.
It only made her knees weak, her pulse pound, and her hand itch to dive inside those jeans. She could live to be a hundred and never lose her lust for him. Or her love.
“Wait, you look familiar to me.” Rubbing his bristled cheek, he assessed her. “Weren’t you and I joined together for eternity a few years back? If I recall, there were two geese going at it on the cake table.”
“It was two swans kissing, and they were sculpted from ice.”
He shrugged, hiding a smile. “Romanticize it all you want. Looked like bird porn to me.”
“Why are you here, Ash?” She kept her guard up. It was highly likely he’d come to escort her off the premises.
“Well, Liv,” he paused to glance at the headstone before crooking a brow at her. “If that bullshit e-mail you sent is to be believed, then I’m here to do your exit interview.”
“No bullshit. Believe it.”
“So, you’re quitting?”
“Quitting my job, yes. To prioritize my life.”
He grunted. “And your job isn’t a priority?”
“No. It’s definitely not.” She smiled at his confusion. “Surprised me, too. Took me four years and a good therapist to figure that out, but here I am,” she quipped, spreading her arms wide, “unemployed and loving it.”
“Why the sad face and teary eyes then? Because you’re so happy?”
“Oh, these.” She dabbed at her wet eyes. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Or this, right?” He indicated the marker a few feet away, his lack of reaction giving him away.
“You’ve been here before.” Posing it as a question wasn’t necessary.
“Many times.”
“Color me the surprised one now.”
A glint of sun reflected off the gray granite, and Ash leaned down, running his large hand over the stone much the way she had. His fingers didn’t linger on the last word, though. They lingered on her name.
The small headstone was traditional, profiled with delicately carved angel’s wings, but the writing was purposely informal.
It was a simple, but poignant statement for a little girl whose heart beat for only nine months, all while in her mommy’s tummy.
The dormant chimes began to twinkle, a single ringing note then two, a soft melody though little breeze blew. Ash heard them, too, his mouth quirking in a fast smile. A devout believer might see the significance. A parent definitely did.
Daddy was here.
“Many times? But I’ve never seen you here.” And she spent a tremendous amount of time in this garden.
“I didn’t want you to see me,” he said simply, standing. “I’ve been here during the day, but mostly I come at night.” He gestured toward the cropping of oak trees near the back of the property. “Park a few miles down and jog through the woods. Easy in and out.”
It was a stunning development. His apparent disregard for their daughter’s remains after her birth had boosted the hate meter to epic levels.
“How—”
“How did I know? I’ve always known.” His eyes never left the stone. “I told Rosa this is where I thought she should be.”
When she’d chosen burial over cremation, her mind still reeling, body still recovering, Rosa offered a gentle suggestion. “The rose garden, mija. It is a beautiful, peaceful place. It is her father’s heritage. It is where my mijo would want her.”
Olivia never put two and two together until now.
But paternal heritage or not, this property would soon belong to someone else. Someone who wasn’t a Coleson.
Ash sat next to her, their shoulders brushing as he reached for her hand.
“I needed to know her name. In case I never met her.” He threaded their fingers, as if the last two weeks hadn’t happened. Or the last four years. “Wasn’t sure I was gonna make it home alive.”
What a lucky little girl Gracie Coleson would’ve been.
Named by her daddy, in case he died before witnessing her birth. Her first tooth. First skinned knee. First everything. Instead, she’d died. And if you wanted to get real about it, Olivia died right along with her.
“Sometimes I think it helped, that you’d named her,” Liv whispered. “It made her so much more real. Alive before she really was. Made her unforgettable.” Leaning her shoulder against his, she felt him absorb her lonely burden. “Sometimes I think it made it harder. Because it made her alive before she was. Made her unforgettable. Does that make any sense?”
“It does,” he murmured, lost in thought, rubbing his thumb over her hand. “I’m not sure I’m handling this love thing between us all that well.”
She choked out a laugh. “Me, either.”
“I keep screwing it up on the regular. Soon my second chances will be gone. Hell,” he muttered, stretching out his long legs and sighing, “I’m a little concerned I’m already out.”
“Me, too.” She stared at the same thing he was. The red lady bug ambling across their daughter’s gravestone. “But when it comes to us, I don’t think we’ll ever be out of chances.”
“You think one day we might manage to get this right? You and me?”
“I’m hoping so.”
“Christ, Livvy, me too.” Letting go of her hand, he leaned forward, fingers raking through his hair. “I killed Beck. It was an accident.”
Her head snapped back. “What? You—”
“Shot him twice, right through the heart. Well, not really, but I might as well have.” He angled his head toward her. “Blanks.”
“Son of a mother duck, Ash!” Clutching her chest, she fought the urge to club him as her pulse leveled off. “You scared the sugar out of me.”
“Scared the shit out of me, too.” He eyed her. “Tell anybody I said that and I’ll deny it. Trust me, they’ll believe me.”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe,” she drawled, marking an X over her heart. “I’ll tell no one that you’re human.”
“It made me realize something about myself. About you and me,” he continued, oblivious to her subsiding panic. “I’ve been so focused on winning the battle, I didn’t realize I was losing the war.”
“Did you just compare our marriage to a war?”
That question earned her a devastating smile. “It’s what I know best, darlin’. We don’t live in a peaches and cream world.”
She tilted her head toward the stone. “Don’t I know it.”
“You’ve been through so much shit, and I just keep shoveling more onto you. I should be strung up for that.” He brushed loose strands of hair away from her face. “Too late I realized winning the battle against Marshall meant losing you in the process. Twice.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m waving the white flag. I am definitely not bulletproof.”
“The white flag is your resignation, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Where are you gonna go from here?”
“Remember that, prioritizing my life thing I mentioned? This is where that comes in.” She nudged his shoulder. “Only, there’s a potential flaw in my mission.”
“Well, I’m your man, then. Lay it on me, and I’ll tell you where you need work. Missions are my thing.”
He was her man, there was no doubt about that.
“I’m gonna go home tonight, and I’m gonna wait for you to come home, too. If you do, then I’m gonna make you a dinner with meat, have a conversation about our affinity for dramatic exits and how that needs to stop immediately or else, and then I’m gonna take you to bed where we won’t be doing much sleeping.”
When he didn’t respond, she laid out the alternative.
“The flaw is if you don’t come home. Plan B is to cry myself to sleep tonight, spray paint the walls with insulting but creative names for you and your anatomy tomorrow, then pack my bags and leave. Where I’ll go, I have no idea, but it won’t be in this time zone. Maybe back to Savannah.”
He nodded slowly, not looking at her as he contemplated her plan. “Thought you had hope for us? That we’d always have more chances?”
“I need you to be present, Ash. For all that hope and second chance stuff to work, you can’t hole up at Scorpio any longer, and I can’t hide at Coleson Creek. I did that for four years, and all it got me was miserable.” She smiled, but it didn’t feel happy. “Hence my resignation.”
“So, you’re quitting to prove a point?”
“No,” she said automatically, but stopped short. “Okay, maybe I am.”
“You know that’s just gonna build resentment, right?” He stood, running a hand over his head, and she followed suit.
“I do know that, which is why I never asked you to leave The Unit. I’m showing you how much I love you by doing this. How much I want to stay married to you, for real. I’m not mad you’re selling the vineyard. I don’t care. I’m choosing you.”
Their love had flourished this summer without the noose of The Unit. It could soar for a lifetime without the weight of Coleson Creek.
“I don’t want you to leave your job,” he replied, missing the point. “And you do care.”
“You can sell the vineyard. You can burn it to the ground, if you want. It doesn’t hold my heart like you do. It doesn’t fill me up like you do. I spent years thinking it did, but I was wrong. I only stayed here, barely making it through those terrible days after she died, then the lonely years that followed, because of you. I was afraid to go anywhere else. If you decided you wanted me and I wasn’t here, you might not keep looking.” She searched his eyes, but they gave no hint to his thoughts. “I was waiting, too. I just didn’t know it.”
“I never stopped wanting you, and I’m not selling. Or burning it to the ground, though at one time, I did map out an arson strategy. I was ten.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, not really hearing him. “This isn’t gonna be between us any longer.” She motioned around the garden, her eyes skipping over their daughter’s headstone. “I’m giving it all up. I’ll have her moved to another resting place. I’ll plant new rose bushes, and it’ll be somewhere closer to us. I love you that much. More than anything. More than her.”
The reality of a backhoe breaking the earth, digging into pristine, sacred ground, was almost too much to bear. But the reality of losing Ash forever was far worse.
“More than myself and, apparently, food and shelter, too, because I’m hitting the unemployment line in the morning,” she added, wiping her eyes with a smile. “These are happy tears, in case you’re wondering.”
“So, the only flaw is whether I get my head out of my ass or not?”
She laughed, then sniffled. “Considering it’s shoved up there pretty far, it could prove to be the fatal flaw, mission man.”
“You won’t leave again? You’ll really walk away from this”—he circled the air—“for us? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Feeling lighter than she had in days, if not four years, she reached for his hand as powerful three-word sentences flew from her mouth. “I won’t leave. I love you. All the way.”
“I’m not selling.”
“I don’t care.” When grief lessened, and hate faded, clarity came. “You’re the only thing I want with a Coleson label on it.”
He tugged her close, only a thin space separating their bodies. “Two questions.”
“Shoot.” Her smile turned quirky and she held up her free hand. “Don’t take that literally. Don’t do me like you did Beck.”
He jostled her against him, swatting her ass playfully. “You’ll pay for that comment later, darlin’.”
“Can’t wait.” So far, this was going her way. “What are your questions?”
When he dropped to a knee, her stomach dropped along with him. Touching her wedding ring, he stared at her with eyes more brilliant than the sky above.
“I love you, Olivia. Always have, always will.” Then he said three wonderful words. “Wanna stay married?”
“Head in your ass or out?”
“Out. Most of the time,” he admitted. “I can’t guarantee all of the time.”
“Then yes. I’ll absolutely stay married to y—” Rising up, Ash’s impatient mouth covered hers, sealing the deal.
Deeper than physical connection, stronger than sexual attraction, his kiss was a promise. Rooted in history and forged from destiny, it was a vow to get it right this time.
Whimpering when he released her, she licked her lips, tasting her future.
“If your other question is if I’ll have sex with you, the answer is the same. Absolutely yes.”
His cocky grin said he knew that already. Then that grin turned sheepish. “I was gonna ask if you’d teach me how to make wine.”
She barked out a laugh, appreciating his sense of humor, but he wasn’t laughing with her.
“Oh. Oh, you’re serious.”
“Or we could compromise. You keep making the wine you love so much, and I keep acting like I hate this place, and we live happily ever after as long as my head stays out of my ass.”
“Mmm, I don’t know. It all depends.”
“On what?” he growled, not used to groveling.
“Are we gonna live in that messy house in the suburbs someday?”
He motioned over his shoulder. “As long as it’s not this house.”
“You gonna complain if I put a dozen pillows on the bed?”
“Hell, why stop at a dozen?” He tugged on her hand. “Let’s go for fifteen. As many pillows as the woman I love wants.”
“What about pink and blue toys?” she asked, as they left the rose garden, making their way down the cobblestone path. “Can we have some of those underfoot?”
“So far I’m not hearing a downside. It’s all good from my end, darlin’.”
Smiling, they walked arm in arm toward his Jeep parked in the driveway, the sweet melody of chimes ringing out across the bountiful vineyard.