When I opened the door, my heart fell. It was a delivery man. I did think it was weird for him to be delivering so late.
“Hi, are you Imogen Grant?” he asked in a kind voice.
“Yes,” I said, skeptical and trying hard not to get my hopes up. I was already so close to an emotional breakdown, it was hard holding my head together.
“I have these for you,” he said, ducking away from the door to bring an enormous bouquet of flowers up off the ground. The flowers were as tall as he was.
He handed them to me and I put them on the table next to the door. “Can I have you sign this please?” he asked as he produced a well-worn clipboard with a pen hanging on a string made of knotted rubber bands.
I signed it, numb and dazed, he thanked me and left. I closed the door and just stared at the bouquet before I had the courage to open the attached note. When I finally did open the note, it said:
“Come back, Imogen. The castle is too big to live in without you and our child. Don’t run away from this, we already know how badly that turns out. I need a zombie slaying princess who is a great psychologist and will be a great mother. Get your ass over here!
- All my love Dashell”
Epilogue
Dash
Imogen did eventually come back to the estate. I gave her a few months to get to know me and the family better, and she finally agreed to live with us here. It was a risk jumping into a new relationship so quickly, but in my heart, I knew she was the one from the moment I rescued her from the ditch.
We decided to start again, this time properly, which meant I had to call her Jeni around her work friends, but I was given permission to call her Imogen at home. It was all about compromises. We decided she would continue her work as would I, even after our baby was born and I appreciated her being a child psychologist because she was amazing with DJ and Ally and helped them embrace all the changes in their lives with beauty and grace.
We discovered that we were having a son, which I was thrilled about and couldn’t wait to meet. At our intimate gender reveal party, which was just with Gloria and her boyfriend, Lydia and Imogen’s feisty Gramps, the kids and ourselves, Imogen opened a box full of blue balloons that filled the air around us.
We were very busy planning a baby shower, but I did go to the authorities and while it took time to catch him, Mark was eventually charged with fraud, and manufacturing and trading of illegal street drugs, and was sentenced to prison with the heads of the Minneapolis drug cartel. The minute I saw Mark in an orange suit being carted off to his jail cell, a thousand-pound weight was lifted from my shoulders. Finally, I could live again. Apart from spending time with my growing family, living to me also meant diving into my work. I had a lot of success with the trials for my cancer drug. We were on the road to a medical solution that would, at the very least, prolong the life of some cancer patients. We hadn’t cured cancer, but we were getting closer and I vowed to make it my life’s work to find a cure.
Imogen convinced me to open up my mountain house for all of us to use on weekends and we built a road to her grandpa’s place so that we could visit him often. His health had taken a positive turn with all the kids and bustle about him every weekend, and despite his continuously cantankerous disposition, I could tell he secretly loved having family about.
What wasn’t a secret was how much Lydia loved it. She was always cooking something amazing for us. The person though, who was most happy next to Imogen and me, was Gloria. She had a wonderful boyfriend who had just proposed marriage and she accepted, but more than anything she was free to start her own life and family.
There would never be enough words to express my gratitude for all she’d done for me, so, while it was only a small token of my appreciation, I built them a house, made to their specifications on the same block as ours and we were in the process of building another cabin between Gramps’ place and mine.
Life truly couldn’t have been better. I was with the woman of my dreams, I was doing work that would help humanity and Imogen promised we’d continue to grow our family for years to come. I thanked God every day for sending an angel to rescue me.
Jeni
At the end of September, we gave birth to a little boy who we named Liam Michael for Gramps, whose name was Liam, and Michael for Dash’s late wife Michelle. The kids loved their baby brother and I adored being a mother.
I knew I’d like it, but I didn’t know how much I’d love it. I found my true calling. I continued to work as a psychologist after Liam was born because I still loved my job, but I felt like I was missing so much of his life at the office, so Dash built a home office for me and I started my own practice. It was perfect; I could have lunch with the kids and see DJ and Ally after school, breastfed Liam when he needed it and plan for baby number two or actually four if we were really counting.
After Liam came, the house was louder and crazier, but also more perfect. When Liam was a bit older, and the houses in the mountains were finished we spent our first Christmas together as a big family. Gramps and Lydia were there as well as Gloria, her new husband, Dash Jr., Aleksandra, and Little Liam. In order to celebrate all of their accomplishments over the last two years, Dash and I went on a mountain climbing expedition to the hill where we first met and “fell” in love.
At the top of the mountain in the freezing cold, overlooking the world, Dash dipped down on one knee and asked me to marry him and I gleefully accepted his offer.
“I hope we fill the halls of our home with laughter, love, and lots of little feet so that we’ll never be lonely again. Just us and all of our little zombie killers,” he said with a smile.
Life, while it may always have its ups and downs, was pretty perfect. Every time I get stressed or worried about anything, I look at what we’ve built and I realized we can move mountains together.
THE END
The Billionaire’s Fake Marriage
Chapter 1
Lilli
“There’s a guy looking at your ass from that window.” Anna laughed as she pulled me back into the Uber. “You should give him a little show.”
Anna was the kind of friend that could convince anyone to do something crazy. She was fun, carefree, and wild beyond her years. I had only recently connected with her, but she had really spiced up my partying life.
“He’s probably already getting a pretty damn good show. I don’t have on any panties,” I said with a giggle.
For fun, I wiggled my ass back and forth while I continued to lean into the car window and talk to my girlfriends. My legs were wobbly from our evening of drinking and dancing, and I used the time to gather my focus before I had to walk into my house.
“Oh, you’re naughty. Let’s give him a real show,” Anna said as she jumped out of the vehicle and wrapped her arms around me to give me a giant hug.
I had lost my balance as she swung the door open and was barely standing when she wrapped her arms around me. Anna was shorter than me, but she still managed to lift me off the ground. Her arms stayed locked around my waist, and my skirt pressed up toward the crest of my ass. I glanced up at the window as she spun me around and saw my handsome neighbor standing shirtless in his bedroom, watching us. I could only imagine what he was thinking as he looked down at our silly group of girls making so much noise after our night of partying on a weeknight.
He wasn’t even hiding the fact that he was watching us. The light in his bedroom was on, and the curtains were wide open as he stood there with a mischievous smirk on his face. I’d only been back home for a couple of weeks, but a handsome neighbor was certainly one of the perks of being back under my parents’ roof. He was mysterious and much better looking than any of the men I normally hung out with. I estimated he was a few years older than me; okay, actually he was probably ten years older than me, but that didn’t matter for the flirting we were doing.
“He’s still there,” I said to Anna as she sat me down. “But I’m too drunk to stay out here any longer. I’ll see you girls
later. I need to get to my bed.”
“Bye Lilli,” Amy yelled from the other side of the vehicle. “Be good, or don’t be good and just go over to that hot guy’s house.”
“See you when I see you,” Rebecca added.
“Are you sure you don’t want to make out and really drive that guy crazy?” Anna asked. “I bet he’s already ragging hard just looking at your ass.”
“No Anna.” I laughed. “I think I’ll pass. I’m not into torturing the poor guy. Plus, I don’t really want to kiss you. No offense.” I giggled as I tried to steady myself against the car.
“Okay, but don’t say I never offered.”
“I promise I won’t say that.”
“Goodnight super-hot neighbor dude,” Anna yelled out as she blew him a kiss.
I reluctantly turned toward the window and waved apologetically as I shook my head at how loud Anna had been. It was three o’clock in the morning. She wasn’t just going to get the hot neighbors attention; she was going to get the attention of the whole damn neighborhood. My upper-class Chicago neighborhood wasn’t exactly a hot spot for late night party girls. Most of my neighbors worked and had families, and one had even mentioned that I seemed to be ‘having a lot of fun’ when they ran into my mother at the grocery store.
My neighbor’s slight grin turned into a full blown smile as he closed his curtains and turned the light off in his room after I waved at him. He didn’t seem like the type of guy who got upset about the noise my friends and I made when coming home from our nights in the town. Over the last few weeks he hadn’t come to the window very often, but occasionally I’d seen him glancing out the window to see what the commotion was. He almost never had a shirt on, which was really how he got his nickname “Hot Neighbor”. I appreciated the ripples of his abs every time I saw him.
He had a scruffy shadow of a beard and a deep olive skin tone. His short brown hair was always messed up like he didn’t have a care at all. I had no idea what he did for work, but from what I heard from my parents, he traveled a lot and had some unusual hours. My hot neighbor was definitely older than I was, but I couldn’t really tell by how many years, and I liked that mystery. I had never actually met the man, only flirted from a distance with quick glances through our windows. He was the perfect fantasy guy.
From what I could figure, my neighbor was gone for long periods of time, and I assumed he was doing top-secret work, or at least that’s what I thought about when I fantasized about him. I’d asked my mother about him, and she said he never had people over, and she’d seen him loading up a single suitcase on several occasions. I’d seen him go out jogging before but never at the same time of the day, so his schedule wasn’t something I could figure out in the short time I had been home. He did tend to stay up late, though, and I’d seen his lights on at all hours of the night, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to him yet.
“Okay get going,” I said to the girls as I tapped on the roof of the car.
The car slowly took off, and I turned to walk inside. I could barely keep myself upright as my heels wobbled in the cobblestone of my parents’ driveway. My mother had insisted on putting the rocky stone into our driveway instead of a regular cement slab. She obviously hadn’t been thinking about how hard it would be for me to walk in at three o’clock in the morning with my 4-inch heels and a plethora of alcohol in my system.
The five martinis I’d been sipping on all night long were rushing through my blood stream as I tried to unlock my front door. The key flopped around in my hand, slipped through my fingers, and was decidedly uncooperative as I spent at least five minutes trying to get into my house. It was a good thing my parents were heavy sleepers, or I’d surely have heard an earful from them with all the noise I was making.
As the key finally slipped into the lock, I looked up at the neighbor’s window just to make sure he hadn’t seen that debacle. There were no lights on so I couldn’t tell if he had seen me or not, but I hoped he had not. The last thing I wanted him to see was me fumbling and nearly falling as I’d tried to make it into my house; that wasn’t a very ladylike picture at all.
I slipped my heels off as I ascended the wooden stairs of our grand foyer and then walked down the hallway toward my room. Our house was much larger than it needed to be. My parents had their master bedroom on the main floor and never even came upstairs now that all of us kids were older. The upstairs consisted of four very large bedrooms, all with their own bathrooms and walk-in closets. Mine was on the east side of the home and faced the hot neighbor’s house.
I flipped the light on as I walked into my room and then quickly turned it back off so my neighbor couldn’t see into my room as easily. I wasn’t sure if he was still up or if he even cared to look in my room that night, but to give myself the upper hand, I left the light off. My fingers slipped around the smooth blue curtain that covered my window as I pushed it open. In the dark of my bedroom, I had a clear view into the master suite of the hot guy’s house. It was dark also, so I assumed he had gone off to bed.
I didn’t bother to slide my dress off and instead fell right onto my bed as I closed my eyes and gave in to the exhaustion that I felt in every muscle of my body. The morning would be there sooner than I wanted it to be. With my curtains left open, I’d be able to wake up as the sun rose and hopefully get a nice breakfast and run before it warmed up too much.
***
“We are leaving Lillian, grunt if you are still alive up there,” my father yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
I heard his words and rolled over in bed as I tried to gather my voice to respond. I had clearly slept past the sunrise and well into the early morning hours if my parents were already on their way out for the day.
“I’m alive,” I said without opening my eyes.
I didn’t feel all that lively, though, and every inch of my body ached with a hangover. Since moving home, my parents gave me the freedom to come and go as I pleased, although they still worried about me, and they certainly didn’t like it if I came home late and woke them up. My father probably worried just as much now as he had when I was in high school, but at least he wasn’t sitting in the old recliner waiting up for me every night.
“Dinner at Romeo’s tonight if you’re home at six. Otherwise, we will bring you some leftovers. Love you, sweetheart,” my mother said, and then I heard the front door close behind them as they didn’t wait for me to respond.
My eyes were practically glued shut, and my lips were so dry that I felt them crack as I opened my mouth. A late night of partying always had a morning of suffering attached to it for me. I couldn’t understand how Anna never seemed to have a hangover. She wasn’t even legally old enough to drink, yet she was much better at it than I was. Drinking and partying weren’t always my thing, but since breaking up with my boyfriend and moving back in with my parents, drinking felt like the right thing to do at this particular moment in my life. I was trying to find myself. Trying to find the next big thing in my life, and there was no hurry as I navigated the fun of the moment.
My phone alarm went off, and I listened to Aerosmith for a whole minute before I reached for my phone and turned it off. It was 10 o’clock, and I had set my alarm to ensure I wouldn’t sleep in too much because I wanted to work out. As I rolled out of the bed, the dehydration from my alcohol was evident by the tightness in my legs and my lips as they stuck together. My muscles cramped up in pain at the slightest of movement, and I winced at the idea of exercising. It was going to be a tough run with this level of alcohol aftermath, but all I had to look forward to right now was partying and building up my running so I could do a marathon.
I glanced out my window to see what the day looked like and was met with the warmth of the morning sun. It was June in Chicago, and I couldn’t have asked for a better day. The sky was clear of all clouds with brilliant blue ricocheting from one side of the horizon to the other. I slipped into my favorite red sports bra and black running tights and made my way downstairs.
After drinking more water, I headed out the door at a slow enough pace to warm up and let my muscles adjust to their current condition. It was my opinion that even a slow short run was better than not going for a run at all. But only two blocks from my house my phone started ringing, so I slowed to a walk and answered it. I’d already conquered a big hurdle in actually getting out the door to go for a run; a short walk wouldn’t hinder my workout all that much.
“Hey Monica, what’s up?” I said to my friend from work.
“I really need you to take my shift today. Please, please, please,” she said as I heard one of her kids in the background vomiting.
Monica was one of the most responsible girls I’d ever met. If she was calling me to work for her, there was going to be a good reason. We worked with a lot of flakes and people who hardly ever showed up on time for work. Unfortunately, our facility just didn’t pay enough to keep the high-end nurses and assistants working there. But Monica was responsible, and I was a close second behind her. I worked second shift purely so I could go out partying and not have to worry about being late for work. It was my way of being responsible while also getting to be a little wild for a change.
“Oh, man, who’s that?”
“It’s Chance, but Elizabeth has a fever too. I think it’s just a matter of time before she gets to the puking. I hope I don’t end up sick as well. I can’t afford to take more than one day off from work.”
“Aww, I’m sorry Monica. Sure, I can work instead of you. Can I go in at noon?”
“You can go in anytime you’d like. They will just be so happy to have someone there. I know they were already short staffed, so when I called in sick, they weren’t very happy. I’ll call them back right away and tell Jackson you’ll be in at noon.”
The Baby Package Page 40
