Epilogue
Two weeks later
~Kat~
Malisa hefts her four-year old daughter, Salon, up on her hip and thumbs my engagement ring that she’s examining. “Cubic zirconium my petunia, Uncle Tommy. That’s at least eight carats of grade A, illegal blood diamonds straight out of an African mine. You’re going to jail because I’m telling Astrid.”
“I just wanted everyone to see the ring coming before she got there, traitor,” Tommy snipes, then plucks my hand out of Malisa’s, as if he’d really risk his business, freedom, and life for breaking international law.
I’m not ashamed to say I’ve fallen in love with the ring and am so proud of the huge, square diamond in a solid gold band with mini-diamond accents lining it. Tommy and I have gone through so much to get it where it belonged, and we made it, finally. While I admire it in the confines of Tommy’s arms, Luke, a much huskier but younger version of Tommy, walks up and pulls me into a bear hug.
“Welcome to the family finally, Kat. Tommy was a sorry excuse of a man without you. Come to think of it, he’s still that, just has you now to make him a better man.”
I pat him on the shoulder. “I’m definitely not going anywhere. Someone has to unpack his boxes for him.” And I did empty them packed with the things from his condo in town that he’d upgraded to a year after I left—my house on Belmont Avenue became our home a few days after we reunited.
Tommy sniffs, mockingly offended. “Luke, if you don’t get your pecker-stroking hands off my girl, we’ll fight, and I’ll win.”
Salon repeats ‘pecker-stroking’ in the cutest little voice, then giggles.
Malisa rolls her eyes. “I swear kids can sense which words are off limits.”
Luke steps back with a deep grin on his face, shoveling his hands in his brown slacks above a stark-white opened-collared dress shirt that his wife, Natalia, admits to having to bribe him to wear for the surprise engagement party thrown at their Botanic Gardens on one end of their property. I can’t imagine what all she’ll have to do just for getting him out of his coveralls for the day when he’d rather be breaking big horses that he breeds for little children’s horseback-training classes held on the other end of the forty acres, well away from the gardens.
“Tommy, you couldn’t whoop my ass with help,” Luke says with a smug grin.
Tommy points at him. “That may be true but you weren’t saying that when you were three, and watch your mouth around my niece. Now, go hug your own wife. Natalia!” He spins around, walking away, leaving me with Luke in one of the event areas blocked off by hedge bushes barely taller than Malisa’s husband, Apollo.
Tommy’s voice transcends the noise from the family and friends gathered to watch me cry my eyes out when he dropped to one knee. “Natalia, come get your man before he goes missing only to reappear in chunks on dinner plates! And I’m going to spread his ass around like mayonnaise! Everybody in Arrow will have sampled him before I’m through serving him up!”
Tommy will be hollering for her for a while.
Natalia is in the house a quarter of a mile away, changing Luke Jr’s clothes after the third-grader got into the cake after dinner, then got it all over his shirt.
I smile stupidly, recalling the lie Tommy gave me over the phone to get me over here: he’d planned a romantic dinner for us under the stars in the last days of summer. Outside, where he knows I love to be, isn’t something I could pass up. He knows me too well already, or rather I haven’t changed that much. Whatever may be the case, I missed the cars that carried everyone here because he told me to park at Luke’s and Natalia’s house instead of the parking lot for the gardens a few acres over.
Luke and Natalia escorted me to where Tommy was waiting. I should’ve known something was up when I saw them both dressed up. Since I didn’t suspect, imagine the shock I got when I found so many people from both of our lives, past and present, waiting quietly in one place with Tommy, who was standing at the front of the tract of land with a microphone in hand, the guests seated at several dinner tables.
The second I stepped onto the red carpet running down the center aisle, leading straight to Tommy’s first words were, “Finally, my plus one arrives and late at that. Thinks she’s Jesus, doesn’t always come when you call her but whenever you need her… and that’s for life, baby. Don’t expect a whole speech on what you mean to me because you mean everything and no speech is long enough to express that. Even if it was, we’d be here the rest of the year, so let’s cut to the chase.”
In the middle of my walk to him, he dropped to his knee. “Will you marry, Katara Johnson? Continue being my love, my reason for being, my everything?”
I could only nod yes, sobbing like a baby, my father blurry as he stood up near Tommy to approach us, guiding me the rest of the way while Luke and Natalia took their seats. How many girls can say their father led them down the aisle to the man meant for them, before the wedding ceremony?
Tommy’s hands shook as they placed the ring on my finger connected to the heart he owns. He had to clean up my tears before I could kiss him for being not perfect but the perfect man for me.
After his proposal, the first person I recognized was Mahogany seated at the rear without Majestic, who’s in the hospital after taking a turn for the worse and being monitored by her doctor. Like Tommy, I can’t express how much I appreciate Mahogany leaving her baby girl’s bedside long enough to support Tommy on his day, her closest ally in the war that life is determined to wage on her and her daughter.
As if she knows I’m thinking about her, Mahogany moves toward me at a fast clip through the throng, placing her phone back in her purse with a troubled look on her face. I meet her halfway, completely afraid that Majestic’s health has taken another turn. I love the little girl like she’s my own already, and it would hurt me and Tommy tremendously if something happened to her before her doctor found a donor match for her, the only thing that’s going to save Majestic’s life.
“What’s happened, Mahogany?” I ask as I take her into my arms.
In a simple black cocktail dress, the poor woman falls apart, her tears drenching my bare shoulder in a red, halter neck dress with full skirt that I assumed I’d be persuading Tommy to peel off me when it’s acceptable to leave my own party. Well, I now have the sinking feeling that we’ll be headed to another destination that would kill any festive mood dead in its tracks: the hospital.
“Kat, will you tell Tommy that I’m so happy for you two, but I had to go? Majestic’s immune system is getting weaker and they told me to come back to the hospital… to say goodbye. They’re not sure if she’ll last… through… the night.” The second she gets the last of her sentence out, she starts bawling, loudly.
I’ve been staying out of her business concerning Majestic, but it’s time someone told Mahogany the cold hard facts, and she so is not going to want to hear them. I forge ahead anyway.
“I think it’s time to call Chance, Mahogany. He’s almost certain to be a perfect match for Majestic since she has his rare blood type, and she wouldn’t have to wait for her name to rise to the top of the donor’s list to get treatment for her cancer. How bad do you want to save your daughter’s life?”
I expect her to get spitting mad with me for being all up in her business. She isn’t the one who told me about Chance’s blissful ignorance of his daughter and her illness.
Mahogany raises her head, looking me square in the eyes, then nods. “I’ll do anything for my baby, Kat, that’s why I just left him a message after the hospital called. I just hope he comes through for his daughter.”
“Me too, Mahogany. Me too.”
The End
Tommy’s Story is a novella written to bring his tumultuous, secret heartbreak closure and open Mahogany’s Story.
Mahogany’s love for her daughter will force her to face her past in the spinoff series Undone by Deceit.
Read more of the Owens’ clan in the , currently available on Amazon.
The Tycoon's Heart