by Stacy Gail
Everything inside her melted with painful sweetness as she drank him in—her rough, pierced man with the kindest heart the world had ever seen. More than anyone she’d ever known, Coe understood the intangible riches of life—loyalty, respect, devotion. Was it any wonder she adored him? “You big softie, you.”
He grimaced. “Whatever.”
“You do realize that if you want to get your hands on tens of millions of dollars and the patent that goes along with it, you need to turn it over to a probate judge?”
“It’s now hanging in my office, and that’s where it’s staying. End of discussion.”
“What about the will’s requirements?”
He looked down his nose at her. “What about them?”
“I came back to Bitterthorn to make sure that everything you lost seven years ago was returned to you. You know me well enough by now, right? You know I won’t rest until I reach my goal.”
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to marry me.” He kissed her again, and as he did he kept his eyes open, as if he couldn’t bear losing sight of her, even for a moment. “I lost you seven years ago. I’m the one who isn’t going to rest until I make sure I get you back...forever. I can’t live without my happiness.” He kissed her again, his lips soft, worshipping. “I can’t live without my...without my love.”
Brilliant joy exploded inside her chest, as if she’d swallowed sunshine as he said the word she believed she’d never hear from him. Not because he didn’t love her, but because he didn’t have a background that allowed him to understand it.
But he understood. For her, and because of her, he understood love.
“Coe,” she whispered while her throat threatened to clench up again, this time with happiness. “I love you.”
Epilogue
“Hey, babe! Come take a look at this.”
Miranda raised her head from making silly faces at five-month-old Sydney Sharpe kicking excitedly in her stroller, and glanced at Payton leaning on the stroller’s handle. “Oh, crap. Here we go again.”
“Doesn’t Coe realize he gives himself away every time he tries to sound innocent?” Snorting with suppressed laughter, Payton joined Miranda in looking back at the garage, which was slowly being transformed into a Halloween house of horrors. Animated spiders the size of compact cars scuttled up and down tracks Coe had installed along the front and side of the old building. A sensor hose had been laid out across the driveway leading up to the garage bay doors, which kicked off an attack of squealing bats every time a car rolled over it. Realistic-looking bloody limbs hung out of car trunks and under doorways. If anyone checking in for a lube and oil made the mistake of touching the check-in podium out front, a screaming skull popped out the top of it, tongue lolling obscenely.
It had to be said—Coe’s mechanical genius was a true gift. But around Halloween, it ran a little wild.
Miranda gave Payton a look of doom. “What do you think he’s cooked up this time?”
“I say rats. Rats the size of draft horses, and they’ll look like the only thing they want to do is eat your soul.”
“Lord give me strength.” Bending to give Sydney one last kiss, she then hugged Payton and reluctantly stepped back toward the garage. “You’d better get your kiddo out of here while you can. I don’t want her traumatized by my bloodcurdling screams.”
“It’s almost over, sweetie. Tomorrow’s Halloween, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Sure there is. If Coe doesn’t scare me to death first.”
“No worries, I’d just administer CPR to keep you going.” Laughing at Miranda’s groan, Payton started to turn away. “Remember, if you need me to bring anything, text me, okay?”
“Just bring yourself and Wiley. Did you get a babysitter for Sydney?” No way was she going to have that sweet baby around Coe’s haunted house. It was brilliant, on the scale of a Hollywood set, but he kept moving things around so that every time she went through it, his props popped out from new places to scare the daylights out of her.
Coe, of course, was in heaven.
Payton nodded, looking both up and down Main Street before heading for the crosswalk. “My mom’s going to watch her for us. Tell Coe everyone in town’s looking forward to seeing what he’s got cooked up, so he’d better be prepared to wow tomorrow night.”
“Not a problem.” Miranda waved her off before heading with no small amount of trepidation up to the one bay door Coe had left open for business. It had been nearly a year since she and Coe had been together and six months since they’d been married, yet every day it seemed she learned something new about him.
Like his love of Halloween, for instance.
Or, more accurately, his love of creating haunted houses that scared the crap out of her.
With the caution of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, Miranda tiptoed into the eerily silent garage. She was a sitting duck, she just knew it. She couldn’t see where he was, but no doubt he saw her. Off to the right was the tree that animated whenever someone got too close to it. Hell, everything became animated if you got too close to it. It was getting to the point where she didn’t trust Coe to not animate the damn toilet back at their—
A sudden blue-white thing rushed for her head even as a puff of icy air blasted in her face from the side. She squealed and crunched down, not sure what the hell was happening, but absolutely positive it was time to wring Coe’s neck.
Halloween couldn’t come to an end soon enough.
“Awesome response. Just what I was looking for.” The sound of footsteps made her uncurl from her duck-and-cover position, and she watched him approach with murder in her eyes. “Okay, before you kill me, I need to know something. In your opinion, which had more impact—the ghost flying at you from straight on, or the burst of air from another direction, or both?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to have an impact,” she growled, hands balled into fists. “My foot in your ass.”
“Miranda.” He spread his arms wide, and his work shirt pulled across his chest to show just a hint of the tattoo of her name that had been designed in the shape of a heart. “Babe.”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me.”
Soon after they’d moved in together, Coe had discovered the devastating power of the puppy-eyed look. She was still trying to figure out how to combat it, but so far she had zero immunity.
“Come on now. Don’t be mad at me.” Sad and soulful and totally knowing she was a complete sucker, Coe held her gaze as he pulled her close. “I’m doing all this haunted house stuff for the kids. You know that.”
This was true, and it made her melt. The majority of the money Coe had inherited from the valve had been put into a trust for any future children they hoped to have. But they’d set aside a small part of the money to start up a non-profit charity by the name of Growing Garden, whose sole purpose was to revitalize Garden Court. The haunted house was their first serious charity event, as all the proceeds were already earmarked for building the area’s first-ever play park.
Considering both Coe and Lucy had regaled Miranda with frightening stories about nearly getting hit by cars while playing in the street when they were kids, she figured this would be a good first step in gentrifying that community.
But if Coe thought he was pulling the wool over her eyes, he seriously underestimated her.
“Try again, pal,” she muttered, lifting a brow. “You’re doing this because you love it.”
“That too.” With a sudden grin, he dropped his mouth onto hers and didn’t let her come up for air until she’d forgotten she was mad at him. “I also love you. Thanks for putting up with me.”
“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.” She smiled into his dark eyes, wrapped her arms around his waist and savored the words that came so freely from him now. It hadn’
t always been that way, and because of that, she would never take his love—or those words—for granted. “And I guess that scare could have been worse. Payton thought that maybe you had massive rats prepared to pounce on me.”
“Rats! Damn it, how could I have forgotten about rats?” With a look of genuine dismay, Coe looked around as though already calculating where he could put a small army of rats just as a luxury car pulled up. They both glanced at it as it pulled over the sensor hose, before it jerked to a stop when mechanized bats the size of condors squealed toward the windshield.
“I don’t recognize that car.” Coe frowned as the driver crept gingerly out, looking skyward for another attack. “Who is that?”
“One of the biggest rats of them all.” Her arms dropped and she turned to face the Italian suit wrapped around a pretty but empty shell of a man. She’d honestly thought she’d never see him again. “Anthony. This is a surprise.”
“Miranda. I went to your house first, but since you weren’t there I took a chance I’d find you, uh...here.” Anthony Carstairs, her sister’s newish husband and the son of her father’s attorney, threw a gesture out to encompass the garage. The motion came too close to a mechanic’s tool cabinet she’d learned early on to avoid. An insane-looking clown with a cleaver in its rainbow-colored hair popped out.
Anthony screamed. Genuinely, straight-up screamed.
Hmm. Maybe Coe’s props weren’t that bad after all.
“We’re gearing up for a haunted house fundraiser tomorrow evening,” she announced, hoping it was loud enough to cover up Coe badly stifled chuckle. “I guess you caught us at a bad time. Are you all right?”
“Uh, I...” He couldn’t seem to get his eyes off the clown. “Yeah, it’s...I’m fine, thank you.”
“What about Katherine? She’s all right, isn’t she?”
At last Anthony turned his sharp eyes back to her. “She’s doing as well as can be expected, considering the turmoil her life has endured this past year or so. You know how delicate she is.”
“Oh, I know all about her, I assure you. She’s quite the trooper.” Employing all the grace her Brookhaven roots could muster, she turned to Coe. “Sweetheart, this is Anthony Carstairs, of the Dallas Carstairs, and my sister’s husband. Anthony, allow me to introduce my wonderful husband, Coe.”
“Yo, brother.” Pulling out all the stops, Coe wiped his clean hand casually on a rag, managed to smear some grease on it, then offered it to him with a challenging grin. “Or I guess I should say brother-in-law. Ain’t family a bitch?”
Miranda beamed. He was so irresistible when he was naughty.
Anthony lost huge man-points when he refused to take Coe’s hand, instead choosing to fish something out of his inside jacket pocket. “I’m actually here on a business matter, not a family one.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Miranda offered. “Considering Katherine hasn’t spoken to me in almost a year.”
“She’s still deeply wounded over how the whole valve affair unfolded,” came the grave reply. “My wife only had your best interests at heart when she came here to try and talk some sense into you, Miranda. It took her weeks to get out of bed after she failed to reach you. You clearly never understood that her only motivation was to shield you from any—” his eyes flicked to Coe and back again, “—predatory intentions from interested parties.”
“Geez, dude, have the fucking balls to say what you mean,” Coe drawled, his hands coming to rest on her hips. “Katherine lost her shit because I wanted to marry Miranda, then ran back to Dallas to pout about it when she realized she couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it. She wasn’t worried about her kid sister. All she cared about was getting her greedy mitts on the valve.”
“A valve which is about to become obsolete, by the way.” Smiling, Miranda leaned back against her husband and sighed in contentment. “Coe improved upon the original design beyond recognition over the years, and now has several new patents pending. Come to think of it, as we’re already getting offers from manufacturers wishing to distribute the new valve, the old one really won’t be worth all that much.”
“Hey, I just had a thought,” Coe murmured, glancing down at her. “Since Katherine was so hot to keep it, I don’t see why I can’t just chuck it over to her. I mean, in a couple months it’ll be as useless as tits on a boar, but she’s more than welcome to have it.”
Miranda laughed, as much at the blank look of shock on Anthony’s face as from Coe’s drawling comment. “Anthony, it was never about the valve, or the money it made. Not to me, and not to Coe. With my husband’s genius, he’s always going to come out on top. For me, it was always about doing what was right.”
“And for me,” Coe added honestly, “it was always about getting in Miranda’s pants.”
She tilted her head back so that she could see him. “Because you love me.”
“Oh yeah, babe.” Coe’s face softened, and he pressed his mouth to her forehead. “Do I ever. Just as much as I know you love me.”
Her hands landed over his. “You’d better believe it.”
“Well, then. It looks like this matter truly is settled.” Clearly not sure what he should do now that he didn’t have a disapproving leg to stand on, her brother-in-law handed over the envelope he’d pulled from his pocket. “My father instructed me to hand deliver this to you. As I do this, the final request of B.B. Brookhaven has now been officially fulfilled.”
That jerked her spine straight, her fingers tensing on the envelope. “What?”
Anthony turned and headed toward his car, taking care to give the insane cleaver clown a wide berth. “This letter was to be hand-delivered to you on the one-year anniversary of your father’s death.”
The paper felt cold against her fingers. “So he arranged to have the last word, did he? I’m assuming Katherine also received one of these?”
“No she didn’t, and I’m not telling her about this. Despite the fact that she was the perfect daughter to the very end, she’s always insisted that you were your father’s favorite. This letter would no doubt send her into a tailspin from which she might never recover.”
Coe’s face was a perfect deadpan. “That’d be a tragedy.”
“Indeed it would be...at least for me, since I have to live with her. Have a nice day.” With that, he disappeared into his car and backed out, setting off another volley of screeching bats to announce his departure.
Miranda barely noticed as she stared down the blank envelope in her hand.
“Hey.” Coe turned her to face him, his hold protective, as if he wanted to shield her from the chaos of emotions that the mere mention of her father’s name sparked. “I’m so sorry, babe. I completely forgot about the date today.”
She hadn’t. It had hit her the moment she’d opened her eyes this morning, almost like her subconscious had been waiting to spring it on her. “I shouldn’t read this. I swore I’d never have anything to do with him after what he did. I should just throw this away and be done with it forever.”
“If you throw away the last statement that this man made—throwing away the very last words he knew he would ever say in his entire life—then you’re not the woman I thought you were.”
She made a furious sound and tried to blister him with the heat of her glare. “After what he did to you, I’m always amazed when you take his side.”
“I’m on your side, Miranda. Always have been, always will be. I would do anything for you to be happy, and that includes busting my hump trying to get you to let go of all the shit that fucker did. But do you let go? Hell, no. You just keep holding on to your grudges, refusing to forgive a dead man, and freaking the fuck out every time someone mentions his name. Then I have to watch you rip yourself apart all over again, and it kills me that I can’t stop you from doing it. I don’t give a shit about B.B. Brookhaven,” he finished, gi
ving her a little shake. “But when it comes to his youngest daughter, I would move heaven, earth and every last godforsaken acre of hell to make you happy. Don’t you know that by now?”
“I do. Seriously, I do.” She bit her lip, ashamed. And he was right; her life was just about as perfect now as it had been screwed up a year ago. But there was still one terrible cloud in her sky, and she’d never been able to make it go away. She ignored it, pretended it wasn’t there, and sometimes she even managed to forget about it.
Then someone would mention her father, and the cloud that he represented popped back, bigger than life.
Maybe it was time to do something about it.
“I know what it’s like not to want to let that anger go.” His hands slid up and down her back, as if he wanted to erase the tension there. “But it doesn’t punish him, Miranda. All it does is hurt you. Please, baby. Forgive him for your own peace of mind. Don’t you think you deserve it?”
“Yes.” It was barely audible, but she managed to get it out of her clenched throat. The moment she did, it suddenly loosened, and a weight that she didn’t even know was there lifted off her chest. Not sure if this was a sign of things to come, she nevertheless rolled with it by pulling the single sheet of paper out, then turned so that Coe could read over her shoulder.
My princess, my baby, my Miranda,
As I write this final note to you, I have little hope your eyes will ever see it. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are made of the strongest stuff God’s green earth has ever known. Nothing will make you bend. No adversity will make you break. I wonder if you’ll find it strange that even as this unbreakable will of yours keeps me locked out of your heart, I am utterly in awe of it.
And, as always, I am in awe of you.
