"I hear," I said quickly, shocked at the grave promise of her words.
Ellen quickly looped an arm around her mother's wide shoulders. "We'll be back to see Tori as soon as she's awake," she promised me, giving me a smile. "And I'm glad to hear that the plan worked out!"
"Mostly," I admitted. "I lost the ring somewhere."
Ellen just smiled – and her hand ducked into her pocket, pulling out a slim box. "Yeah, it fell out in the car. I grabbed it."
I snatched it out of her hands. "And you didn't say anything?"
She smiled. "Trust me, you didn't need it. She still said yes, didn't she?"
"She said that she needed to think about it for six months."
"That's just Tori-speak for yes. She'll say yes in less than a month, I guarantee it." Ellen sighed, looking wistful for a moment, but then her smile returned in full force as she looked back at me. "You didn't need the ring. You just needed to be honest with her, tell her how much you truly love her. That's all it took."
"Thank you," I said, again feeling the tears touching my cheeks. "Thank you, Ellen. You've been a great friend."
She shrugged, reaching up to wipe her own eyes. "I did it all for her. Tori deserves happiness, and I know that you're going to give it to her."
"But if you don't..." interjected Mrs. Beckers again, giving me another angry finger waggle.
Ellen sighed, led her mother away. I watched them go for a minute, but then remembered something.
"Ellen, wait!"
She glanced back at me. "What?"
"There's a briefcase sitting in your restaurant that you probably want to move."
"Why? What's in it?"
I coughed. "A hundred grand in cash."
Her eyes went wide. "Yeah. Let me go get that right away."
I watched her dash off, now dragging her mother along with her, and then turned to head back to Tori's room.
I found her still sleeping, looking tired, worn-out – and beautiful. I tugged the armchair over to the side of her bed, wincing at each squeaking noise it made. I reached out, patted her hand.
"I'll be here," I promised her. "Always."
And then, closing my eyes, I dozed off beside her, beside the woman I loved, the new mother of my child.
And it was perfect.
Epilogue
TORI
*
Five months later...
"Okay, how about this one?" I asked Seb, twisting around on the couch and holding up the iPad so that he could see the screen.
He leaned forward over the back of the couch, never losing his rhythm as he bounced a happily gurgling Lily in his arms. "That's a nice looking one," he allowed. "I like the old lines, but it doesn't have much of a front yard, does it?"
I sighed, lowering the tablet back into my arms. "We're not going to find much of a yard at all, if we insist on getting a place closer to the center of town," I lamented, even though there wasn't much real heat behind the words; I'd heard it all before, been nearly as picky as Seb.
After all, picking a new house – one that would be a bit more permanent than before, hopefully – wasn't an undertaking to do lightly.
I tried looking through a few more house listings, but the sound of Lily's gurgling finally got the better of me, and I put the iPad aside so that I could turn and see my daughter. "And how are you doing, hmm?" I asked her, rising up on my knees on the sofa so that I could lean forward into her face, pinching her cheeks lightly as I beamed at her.
Lily beamed back at me, spreading her gums wide to show off the very first teeth starting to appear. Seb said that the baby books warned of her growing irritable and cranky from the pain of the teeth coming in, but she seemed to be handling it quite well. She'd developed an insatiable urge to fit just about anything she could grab into her mouth, however, and her eyes shot straight to my tempting fingers.
"Wait – wash them first!!" Seb complained, as I let my daughter pull one of my fingers towards her open lips. "You've been touching all kind of dirty things!"
I rolled my eyes at the man as I stood up from the couch. "Aren't I supposed to be the worried mother, and you're the disaffected dad?" I asked as I headed into the kitchen to rinse my hands. "How did you become the panicking parent?"
Seb followed me, bouncing Lily in his arms. "Well, I'm the one who read all of the books, so I'm the one fretting the most."
"I told you, I tried getting through them!" And I had tried, several times, to pick up the baby books and make my way through them. Unfortunately, my eyes always grew heavy after a couple pages, and I still hadn't finished a single one. I don't know how Seb managed to get through them all without slipping into a coma.
Thankfully, he took pity on me as I turned around, shaking the last drops of water off my fingertips. "I suppose you've been busy with business books instead," he allowed.
I leaned up on my tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "That's exactly right, honey. And while I don't think I'm ever going to hit billionaire status, things are going pretty well for us right now!"
Pretty well was actually a bit of an understatement, even. I had to take a few weeks off from helping out Ellen and Vicky with River's Edge Café – but when I finally managed to get Ellen to do anything besides coo over the adorable baby, she reassured me that everything was still going well.
"It's great, even," she beamed at me, although her voice still sounded high-pitched, as if I was another baby for her to sweet-talk. "We're putting out more ads, we've started a loyalty program like you suggested with punch cards, and we've never had so many people lining up to hand over money and buy from us!"
"Really?" I asked, scarcely able to believe it – but thrilled for her.
"Yes! And Tanner's helping out a ton, too." Ellen bit her lip for a moment, looking as if she wanted to say something else, but decided against it. She continued before I could ask her what else was on her mind. "Mom's got so little to do now, after all this time of running around with her hair on fire, that she's even thinking about opening up a second location further downtown."
"That could be a great project for her – but she'll need to look into hiring more employees, and probably put a formal rules manual in place," I mused, my mind already rushing ahead to take on this new challenge. "And if the business keeps on growing, she'll need to start offering a retirement plan and health insurance, which is its own minefield from what I've been reading..."
Ellen reached out and gently laid her hand on my arm, interrupting my thoughts. "Tori, we've got it under control," she said softly, still smiling. "You just focus on taking care of your new daughter."
I tried to take my best friend's advice. Really, for a couple of weeks, I attempted to keep business thoughts banished from my brain. But finally, sitting next to me, Seb sighed and turned to face me.
"Just tell me," he said with a groan.
"Tell you what?"
His gaze didn't waver. "You're sitting there thinking about all sorts of ways to fix a business and make it better. I can tell – you always get this far-off look in your eyes. Now, why don't you let me know what's on your mind?"
I considered holding out, but I was too eager to share this new inspiration. "What about a combination mobile and stationary restaurant setup?" I enthused, sitting a bit forward as my eyes gleamed. "Most of the prep and difficult cooking could be handled in the full kitchen, but the mobile vehicle could park outside of popular businesses or downtown where all the business workers come out for lunch? Or it could offer extended late-night hours so that the restaurant could use up any leftover supply, park outside of the clubs! I know I was always hungry by the time we got outside."
"And you're going to propose this to Ellen and her mom?" Seb asked. "I'm not sure they have room to handle it right now."
I frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you remember how I lured you downstairs by pretending to offer to invest in their business?" He chuckled. "Turns out, Vicky actually wants to take me up on that offer! I
guess she's going ahead with that second location, after all. I was happy to help her out by covering the loan amount."
"Oh. Ellen didn't mention it to me."
"She probably wanted you to keep focusing on your new daughter," Seb remarked mildly. "Speaking of which, can I hold her?"
"Of course." I passed Lily over to Seb's arms. He cradled her expertly, smiling down at the infant's little, wrinkled, pink face.
I looked at the pair of them, sitting next to me. I'd always thought that Seb looked sexy because he was lean, dangerous, never the kind of guy who would be caught dead in any kind of domestic setting. He always seemed to have that aura of flirting, reckless danger about him. If I'd tried previously to imagine him holding a baby, I would have burst out laughing at the mental image.
But now, seeing it in front of me... it looked right, in some way that I couldn't quite describe. I saw love radiating out from Seb's face as he smiled down at his new daughter, love that trickled over to infect me contagiously as well. He hunched his big shoulders around Lily, as if protecting and shielding her from the stresses of the world, and his strong cheekbones stood out as he tightened his jaw in a smile down at her.
"I love you." I'd said it many times before, but now, looking at him, it came bubbling up out of me once again, spontaneous but no less true.
He looked up at me, his smile growing to encompass me as well as Lily. "I love you too, Tori. Always." And he leaned forward to kiss me, Lily snorting as she was momentarily trapped between the two of us.
We'd moved back into the Stone mansion, joining Richard and Linda, as we began our search for a new place. Linda and Richard kept assuring us that there was no rush, and they loved spending time doting on Lily. Even Teddy came to visit the newborn, dragged along by Callie. He stood back for most of the time as Callie cooed over the baby's tiny little fingers and toes, but finally held her in his own arms. He looked frozen, as if the baby was made of glass and might shatter at any moment, but a slow smile finally appeared on his face as he looked down at the sleeping Lily.
"She is pretty cute," he reluctantly admitted.
"Yeah, no shit. Play your cards right, and you might get a half dozen of your own." Callie just grinned as Teddy nearly choked at that remark. She turned to Seb and I, as if this was all part of normal conversation. "So, what's next for you two?"
"House," Seb said. "A place of our own, even though it's great of Richard and Linda to put us up here for this long."
"We really don't mind – it's such a big house, there's more than enough room for everyone," Linda piped in, also smiling down at Lily.
"And we're grateful, but we do need our own place," Seb insisted. He glanced over at me, unsure how much of our new plans he should share, and I nodded at him. "Once we get a new place, I'll probably be staying home with Lily."
"Really?" Teddy exclaimed in surprise, trying to cover up a smirk. "Sebastian Stone, party boy, lady-killer – and now, stay-at-home dad?"
I glanced sideways at Seb. That remark would have bothered him in the past, I knew. But he just smiled tolerantly, not annoyed in the slightest.
"That's right," he confirmed. "I can take care of Lily, and Tori can keep working on helping more local businesses grow their income and become more successful. She did so well with Ellen's café that she's looking at branching out, offering her services to other shops in the city as a freelance consultant."
"Hey, that's great!" Callie cheered, Linda adding her own words of warm praise. They both hugged me, and I beamed back at them. I'd grown closer to them both, now that Seb and I were permanently together, and their kindness warmed my heart.
"Of course, I probably will need to go back and finish up my business degree at some point," I admitted. "But I can take classes on the side as I work, especially with Seb helping out with our daughter."
The man smiled at me, his eyes full of deep love. "I'm so proud of her," he commented to the rest of his family. "And you all thought that I'd end up with some bimbo – my future wife is super smart, as well as super sexy!"
"Future wife?" I repeated, raising an eyebrow. "I still haven't said yes, you know."
He rolled his eyes widely at the others. "Yes, I'm well aware. Despite me asking you over and over, just about every day."
"Maybe, one of these days, I'll slip up and say yes by mistake," I shot back at him. Try as I might, I couldn't fully keep my grin off my face. He pretended to growl at me, but then leaned in to kiss me.
And so, the first few months after the birth of my daughter passed. Each day brought new adventures – discovering how Lily's sleep schedule seemed to change day to day, learning about the devastation she created inside her diapers, watching her eyes light up as she started to finally crawl and explore the world around her. I threw myself into recovery after I got home, ordering some light weights, a yoga mat, and other exercise equipment into the Stone mansion and setting up my own workout area. I still wasn't quite back in the same shape as I'd been before my pregnancy, but I was determined to try and fit back into some of my old clothes so that they wouldn't all go to waste.
And just as he'd promised, Sebastian asked me to marry him, every day. Sometimes, he'd be grand and romantic, sweeping me off my feet, kissing me breathless, and then dropping down dramatically onto one knee. Other times, he'd ask in cute little ways – he left a message on the bathroom mirror that only became visible in the steam after I came out of my shower, or he tucked little notes into my cell phone's case.
Each time, I told him no – and then dragged him off to bed. I forced myself to wait the six weeks recommended by Dr. Rick after pregnancy before finally having sex again – but it felt like agony. I knew that Seb was counting down the days as well, until the day finally came when we made love together until neither of us could speak. We finally finished and flopped down beside each other, our naked bodies still together in the tangle of bedsheets, both of us breathing heavily.
"You know, if you keep on doing this every time I ask you, it really make the 'no' sting a little less," Seb murmured to me after one bout, his lips only an inch from my ear.
I wriggled at the warmth of his breath against my sensitive skin. "That's kind of the idea. I'm just not quite ready to say yes – but I don't want you to be hurt by me saying no."
"Some of the books said that, after the baby comes, you might need a break from sex for several months," he said next, as his fingers slid down my body, probing ever so gently at all sorts of different sensitive spots.
I twisted and giggled at his touch, turning so that I could torture him back with my own fingers. "I guess they aren't always right," I retorted. "Do you want to take it easy on me?"
He added his mouth to the exploring body parts. "Not even a little," he murmured up to me as he kissed one of my nipples, making it stiffen and grow more sensitive as it pricked up.
Just as he started to rise up to nudge my legs apart, however, the baby monitor sitting next to our bed squealed as Lily let out a cry. Seb sighed, dropping back down onto the bed beside me.
"You want to get it?" he asked hopefully.
I shook my head. "You know, if a man wanted to prove that he was real husband material, he'd volunteer to take care of our child..."
Seb wagged a finger at me, even as he stood up, tugging his boxers up over that gorgeously muscled ass that I never tired of admiring. "You can't use that cheap method of manipulation forever," he warned me.
I just smiled back. "Can't I?"
He pouted. "Maybe. But one of these days, you're going to slip up and accidentally say yes when I ask you to marry me, and then I'll finally have the upper hand."
It was cute that he believed this. But as I watched him head out of our bedroom, over to the next room to take care of our crying daughter, I felt love surge up inside me, so full and overwhelming that I could barely breathe.
I'd been on the brink of leaving Seb behind, moving on and convincing myself that he didn't deserve to be a part of my life. I'd nearly cast him o
ut completely.
But he'd fought his way back from the brink, showed up for me at the time when I needed him most of all. He'd proven himself, over and over, and I truly believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that he loved me more than anything – except possibly our daughter, and I couldn't fault him for that one.
And just as he seemed to know, one of these days, love would overcome my desire to keep teasing and taunting him, and I'd finally say yes to his marriage proposal.
The bed was warm and so comfortable, and I felt my eyelids growing heavy. On the intercom, I heard Seb's voice as Lily's crying cut off.
"There we go, that's not so bad," he murmured to her, along with a scratching sound – probably him lifting her out of the crib. "You're not really that upset, are you? Just lonely. You know that your mother and I are having fun in the next room, and you're sad that you're being left out of it."
I laughed a little, closing my eyes as I listened to him.
"But it's okay – I'm here now," Seb went on, still talking to Lily. "I'll always be here. I'm your daddy, and I'm never going to leave you. I love your mother and you, and I'll always be here. I've realized that you're the most important things in my life, and I'm not going to screw that up again and risk losing either of you."
In bed, my eyes filled with tears. I loved him so much, so much that it sometimes hurt a little bit with the sheer strength of emotion.
"Yes," I whispered to his pillow, knowing that I'd say it to him very soon, any day now. I couldn't keep it back, not when I truly loved him so much. "Yes, Seb. I'm going to marry you, I will. I swear."
Gently, I drifted off to sleep. A few minutes later, I felt the weight and warmth of Seb settling in beside me, draping his arm around me, and I smiled. He'd always be there, and even though our family was anything but conventional, I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.
That's all - for now...
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 21
