Ever After (The Christmas Cottage - Book 2)

by Samantha Chase

  “You’re wrong because clearly you have some major hang-ups about my relationship with Mason and it’s becoming an issue with us!”

  “An issue? You asked me one time to go to one place and I mentioned that I wasn’t crazy about the idea and now all of a sudden we have issues because of it? It seems to me that you are the one with the issue, Ava. For whatever reason, you seem to be a little preoccupied on going to this cottage.”

  “I’m not preoccupied, Brian,” she countered as a small amount of panic began to set in. “I merely enjoy going there and it’s been a while since I’d been there. I thought it would be romantic but if it’s that big of an issue for you then just forget about it. I’ll go to the damn interview by myself. I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable or anything.” She was steaming mad and started clearing the dinner table even though they’d barely touched their food. Brian stopped her before she dumped their dinner.

  “Okay, okay,” he said calmly. “Let’s take a step back here.” He took a deep breath and looked Ava in the eye. “I’ll admit that your announcement about meeting Mason took me by surprise. I just wish you would’ve talked to me about it first, that’s all.”

  Placing the dishes back on the table, she then turned to face him. “I thought I was being helpful. I thought that if I could show you that it doesn’t bother me to speak to Mason and that I’m okay with hanging out with him that you’d see that there is nothing for you to worry about.”

  Brian placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her a little bit closer. “I was never worried about you and Mason, Ava. I just don’t want to live in the shadow of that relationship. I want us to have a fresh start; go to places that are purely ours and nobody else’s. Does that make sense?”

  Unfortunately, it did. Trying to mask her disappointment, she nodded in agreement. “I can’t help that I love that place, Brian. It’s a part of my life, my family, my heritage. I’m never going to not want to go there. Can’t we just go this one time and start fresh on the next getaway?”

  Again, Brian had a hard time denying her anything. “I guess I never felt that kind of connection to a place so it’s hard for me to understand your feeling so strongly about a house.”

  “I’m probably one of the few that feel this way but I want you to know that I feel the way I do because of good family memories; it has nothing to do with Mason.” She snuggled in close to him and hugged him. “So are we okay now?”

  Kissing the top of her head he smiled. “Yeah, we’re good.” Then he pulled back and looked at her and his smile grew. “Does this mean we can skip going for drinks tomorrow?”

  Giggling, Ava playfully punched him in the arm as she pulled free of his embrace. “Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  ****

  That next night, Ava was mentally kicking herself for not canceling when she had the chance. They were seated in a too small booth in a local hotel bar. It was the four of them – Ava, Brian, Mason and his new fiancé Melissa. It took all of five minutes for everyone to catch up on their lives before silence fell among them. Ava seriously considered ordering shots for them all just so they’d have something to do but then, luckily, Mason broke the silence.

  “So, Ava tells me that the two of you have been dating for about two months now,” he said to Brian who simply nodded.

  And they were back to silence again.

  “Oh for crying out loud,” Ava mumbled under her breath. “So, Melissa, tell me about the big wedding plans!” Her voice was overly enthusiastic but she was hoping that no one else noticed it. Soon she and the young paralegal were engrossed in their own conversation about dresses and caterers and the men were all but forgotten.

  Brian finally looked at Mason. “So, seriously,” he began, clearing his throat, “are you okay with this? With me and Ava?”

  Mason smiled. “I knew probably before you did that you had feelings for her; it just pissed me off that what you were telling me back then was going to mess up my plans. As it turns out, you did me a huge favor.” He paused and smiled across the table at Melissa who beamed a sappy smile right back at him. “I can see now all that was missing from my relationship with Ava. Melissa makes me happy; we both want the same things. I’m sorry that it took me so long to realize that what you were saying to me was the truth. Chalk it up to ego, pride and whatnot.”

  “I’m glad for you, I really am,” Brian admitted, feeling relaxed for the first time that evening. “And I have to admit, I’m happy for me, too. She’s everything I ever wanted.”

  “I know,” Mason said sincerely. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us. You’re one of my best friends and I don’t want to lose you, man. Believe me, I thought that this would be weird; when Ava called me I was a little shocked, but I think that really, everything worked out for the best.”

  “I have to agree,” Brian said and reached under the table for Ava’s hand and squeezed. When she turned her head and smiled at him Brian felt as if someone had a fist around his heart. She was so beautiful, so amazing and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to knowing that she was his.

  That night he took her home with him to his place. There was a sense of urgency, a need to show her exactly how much she meant to him. From the moment he turned the lock on the front door, his seduction began. Without words, he leaned in and kissed her. Wrapped in his arms, Ava let out a sweet sigh that always managed to bring him to his knees. They kissed until they were breathless and when Brian finally lifted his head, Ava’s passion glazed eyes told him all that he needed to know.

  He swept Ava up in to his arms, wanting nothing more than to love her all night long. When her arms went around him Brian knew that he would never grow tired of this, of her. If anything, his need for her grew stronger every day. Luckily, Ava’s need matched his. They moved together as if they were doing a choreographed dance and yet every touch, every sigh, was new. There was a new heightened level to their intimacy that wasn’t there before and though not a word had been spoken since they arrived home, he knew they had said more to each other than ever before.

  As the sun rose all too soon the next morning, he finally allowed himself to say what he’d been holding back since she’d come back into his life.

  “I love you.”

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning Ava knew that she’d heard him; she’d heard his whispered “I love you” and fought the urge to say it back. She knew that she felt the exact same way and that she wanted to scream it from the roof top but quickly caught herself and inwardly reminded herself of the fact that she was waiting for the perfect moment. If she was going to be guaranteed that they would have a love everlasting, she just had to wait one more week to say it!

  As much as she loved the Callahan legend of the cottage and all that went with it, it was a heck of an inconvenience right now when all she wanted to do was greet Brian when he came out of the shower with an “I love you, too”.

  Darn legend! And darn her for being such a slave to it! Why couldn’t she move beyond it? Why did it seem to consume her more than any other member of her family? Ean didn’t believe in it and yet he got to experience it for himself with Lacey! Of course, Ean was a guy so maybe that had something to do with it, but all of her aunts and cousins…well, they had thought it all enchanting, but none of them really seemed as consumed with it as Ava was.

  Why was that?

  She had no time to analyze that before Brian was standing before her wearing nothing but a towel and a grin. “Good morning, beautiful,” he murmured as he leaned in and kissed her. “Did you sleep okay?” Her blush said it all. “I’ve got a ton of appointments today and I’m meeting Ean later on to discuss the plans for the house again. Now that they’re settled in with the baby, he said that they’re ready to get serious with the extension.”

  “That’s great! Are you meeting him at the house or his office?”

  “He’s actually coming to my office; he’s my final appointment for the day and
we’re going to go over some plans and discuss what exactly they want to do and how we can accomplish that without disrupting Lacey and the baby too much.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said lightly, rising from the bed to stretch and then wrap her arms around him. “I haven’t had any opportunity to observe the new family at home; Ean’s always at work when I stop by, but they seem to be the stereotypical paranoid new parents. If I know my brother, he’ll end up renting someplace for them to live while the construction is going on.”

  Brian’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  Ava nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Ean is a computer geek who likes to work with little to no noise around him and Lacey is constantly shushing me if I talk to loud while Olivia is sleeping. Trust me; it would be to your benefit if they moved out for a while.”

  “It seems a little extreme don’t you think?”

  “For normal people, yes; for the two of them? No.”

  “Wow…thanks for the head’s up. Now I won’t look like a deer in the headlights should he bring that up later on.”

  “My pleasure. Too bad Lacey sold her condo when they got married; it would have been nice if they had a back up for a situation like this.”

  “Well, be realistic Ava; who really thinks that they’ll need a backup place to live? I mean, maybe they can stay with you or with your parents during the construction? It wouldn’t be for long.”

  “Believe me, I would love to have them stay with me but I think it would put a damper on us having any alone time,” she said with a sexy grin as she reached up and kissed him again, deeply.

  “I certainly don’t want a damper put on us,” he whispered as he returned the kiss and slowly eased her back down onto the bed. “That would not be a good thing.” He gently kissed her lips, her jaw, her throat and was rewarded with a purr of delight.

  “No, that would be terrible,” she sighed and reached for his towel. “Let them find their own place to live.”

  And that was the last of that conversation for a while.

  ****

  “So you still haven’t told him.”

  Ava gave an exasperated sigh as she cradled the phone to her ear. “No, Lace, I still haven’t told him. Why do you ask?”

  “Well I just figured that you would have called me if you did finally say the words and being that I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days I thought I should ask. Inquiring minds and all that…”

  “I’m trying to find the perfect time to tell him. I want the first time that I say I love you to Brian to be someplace special, someplace perfect.”

  “Oh, sweetie, enough with the perfect!”

  “Not you, too,” Ava grumbled.

  “What? What about me, too?”

  “Brian is tired of me talking about things being perfect and so we’ve had to agree to disagree on that topic and now it seems as if the word has been deleted from his vocabulary. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “Oy…I’m telling you, Ava, sometimes you amaze me. And not in a good way.” The only response Lacey got was a dramatic sigh from the other end of the phone. “Look, everyone has their idea of how they want their life to go and what they want to accomplish, blah, blah, blah, but you are missing out on so much because you are always trying to stage things so that they are ‘perfect’! And while you may have convinced yourself of how perfect they are, the truth is, it’s not real.”

  “How can you say that? When have I ever staged anything?” Ava cried in despair.

  “When have you ever…? C’mon, Ava, do you honestly hear yourself? Your whole wedding to Mason was staged. You became obsessed with how everything had to be down to the tiniest detail!”

  “That’s not staging, Lacey, that was me being detail oriented.”

  “That’s a load of hooey and you know it. You wanted everything to look like a darn page out of a bridal magazine.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “No, normally there’s not, but for you it wasn’t because you liked how those things looked you liked it for what you thought it would represent. That is where the problem lies.”

  “There is no problem,” Ava sighed.

  “Okay, let’s just say, for the moment, that there is no problem. When do you plan on telling Brian that you love him?”

  “Well, we’re going up to Asheville on Friday because I have an interview with a university up there and we’re going to spend the weekend at the cottage and I was thinking…”

  “Stop it! Stop it right now!” Lacey demanded.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “I see exactly where this is going. You’re going to take Brian up to the cottage – which you will somehow manage to have set up or decorated or whatever to your specifications – so that you can tell him you love him and have your night there because you think that’s what you need to be happy! Why can’t you just let nature take its course and tell Brian that you love him now? Do you really need to wait to be up in the mountains to be sure that that’s how you feel about him? What’s different about being up there from being here other than geography?”

  “Well, it’s just that…um…I just wanted…”

  “Yes?” Lacey inquired.

  “I wanted it to be romantic.” There, that sounded completely reasonable, didn’t it? Ava thought for sure that her statement would bring an end to their argument.

  “So you’re saying that the two of you have done nothing romantic at all since you’ve been dating?”

  “No, that’s not it at all; we do plenty of romantic stuff.”

  “So why wait?”

  “Why are you obsessing about this? Did I harass you about telling Ean that you loved him?”

  “As a matter of fact you did! And my reasons for waiting to say it had to do with my fear of commitment and you making me doubt my feelings for him!”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You had me believing all of that nonsense about the dang cottage! You honestly had me second guessing my feelings for Ean and wondering if they were true or if I was under some ridiculous spell!”

  “It’s not ridiculous. Family history has proven…”

  “Oh, shut up with that! This is so not the time for the reciting of the tale!” Lacey was beyond frustrated and if Ava were in front of her right now, she’d slap her in the back of the head. “There was nothing staged about my time with Ean; nature took its course and it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d never gone to the cottage.”

  “I’m not saying that I need the cottage…”

  “Then don’t go,” Lacey said flatly. “Tell Brian you love him and don’t go to the cottage.”

  “But I want to,” Ava said sadly. “I can’t explain it; it’s like a sickness. I want to experience it for myself and then I’ll know, finally, what all the fuss was about.”

  Lacey considered banging her own head against the nearest wall. “You know what, Ava? I’m done. You’re going to do what you want to do and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. It’s just like it was with your wedding. All of the signs were right there in front of you but you refused to see them.”

  “I’m not making a mistake with Brian; I love him.”

  “That’s the thing, Ava; I know that you do. You know that you do. You don’t need geography to confirm that.”

  “Says the woman who was blessed with it,” she mumbled.

  “Okay, let’s just agree to disagree and move on, okay? What are you doing on Thursday?”

  “Um, nothing. Why?”

  “Well, I have a meeting with a potential client all the way in Charlotte. Ean’s going to go with me but we need someone to stay with Olivia for the day. I thought that maybe…”

  “Done! Look no further, I am totally here for you.”

  Lacey smiled at the enthusiasm in Ava’s voice. “You’ll need to be here early because we want to be on the road by eight and we probably won’t get home until dinner so it will be a long day.”

  “Not a problem.
We’re leaving for Asheville on Friday morning so I had nothing planned except to pack.”

  And plan, Lacey thought to herself but decided to keep her mouth shut on the subject. “I’ll have everything that you’ll need to know written down for you and you have both of our cell numbers and if you really needed anything, your mom could always swing by.”

  “Please, I am so not going to need my mom to stop by. Olivia and I are going to be fine. This will be some quality bonding time for us and we’ll have a blast.”

  “You realize that she’s not even three months old, right? She doesn’t know how to have a blast yet.”

  “She will by the time you get back,” Ava said confidently.

  “Maybe I should call your mom…”

  “Don’t you dare! Relax; it’s not like I’m going to take her out and get her pierced and tattooed, you know.”

  “I know, I know; this will be the first time that we’re leaving her and so I’m just a little twitchy, okay? Someday you’ll understand how it feels.”

  “Any idea on when that will be?” Ava said, only partially joking.

  “When the time is right, Ava,” Lacey replied simply. “When the time is right everything will fall into place for you.”

  “I hope you’re right, Lace. But I’ve got to be honest, the waiting is killing me.”

  Lacey laughed. “Me too!”

  ****

  Thursday morning dawned early and bright and Ava was practically bouncing on her toes when she rang Lacey and Ean’s doorbell at seven a.m. Ean opened the door, looking less than excited to see her. “You’re early,” he said as he stepped aside to let her in.

  “Still not a morning person,” she said as she twirled beyond him and went in search of her niece. “I thought it might be easier for the two of you to get ready if I got here early.”

  It was hard to argue with that. “Thank you,” he said grumpily. “We didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night; I think Olivia’s cutting a tooth. We took turns getting up with her but it’s hard to sleep when she’s crying.”