“That’s fine,” the employee said. “But I’m getting paid to—”
Grammy whirled on the woman with a wild, waving index finger. “Don’t even start winding up that sass train with me, little missy. Do you know how old I am? Do you have any idea? I could die at any minute.” I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but Grammy’s normally straight posture seemed to crumple in on itself a little as she spoke. “Too much stress and I could just keel right on over. Is that what you want? Did you wake up this morning and say, ‘today would be a good day to murder a sweet, innocent old lady?’”
The woman looked stunned by the barrage, and Grammy took the opportunity to keep marching toward us with her bag of books and little dog on a leash.
“Since when do you dog sit?” I asked her.
“I needed some beer money,” Grammy said. “And hey, condoms aren’t cheap, either.”
I thought I saw Peter gag a little from the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t help smirking. “You said you wanted one signed book. Why does it look like you brought twenty?” I asked.
“Wait,” Peter said. “You knew she was coming?”
I winced. “Sort of?”
“Tough shit, Barnidge,” Grammy said. She plopped the bag down at his feet and pulled out a book. “You take this red sharpie, cross out the she-bitch’s name, and write in your own. Then you do it nineteen more times. Pardon my Cantonese, little tike,” she said when she noticed Zoey.
Peter didn’t move to take the pen from her. “No.”
Grammy leaned forward, and because Peter refused to bend down to her level, she whispered something to his chest. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but I could’ve sworn I heard, “gum you silly, you little fucker.” Whatever she said, it made Peter go a little paler. When she was done, he took the pen from her and started signing the books.
A few minutes later, Grammy took her loot, her dog, and left without so much as a “thank you”.
“We’re not going to talk about that. Ever,” Peter said.
Peter and I walked with Zoey back toward his place, which I’d only been to a few times now. To my surprise, he seemed to prefer my cramped little apartment over his sprawling penthouse with incredible views. Even though he claimed to have little to no experience with kids, I thought Peter was an absolute natural with Zoey, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if his real motivation for always choosing my place was to keep Zoey somewhere she was comfortable.
Zoey demanded that we stop at a playground we passed on the way back. We both stood with her while Peter pushed her on the swing.
“Mommy,” Zoey said while she swung back and forth. “Can Peter be my daddy?”
I smirked as I looked to Peter. “I swear to God. I didn’t put her up to that.”
Peter laughed, but from the way he was looking at me, I thought he might be giving serious consideration to that idea. Obviously, I had thought about it a thousand times already. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, he and I hadn’t known each for much more than two months. I knew how it would look to someone else if we did something crazy like getting engaged. It was supposed to take years to know if someone was right. At least that was the common mantra.
But somehow, I thought Peter and I might be on the same page when it came to that notion. I’d spent years getting to know Dawson and I’d still been completely wrong. Peter had let himself believe he knew Kristen—that he loved her, even. The truth was you didn’t ever completely know someone.
Maybe love meant something different to everyone, but to me, I realized it meant being willing to give my trust to that person completely. Because giving my trust to a man meant I was also giving them a door into my daughter’s life, and she was the most precious thing in the world to me. If I was willing to do that for someone, how could I call it anything but love?
When I looked at Peter pushing Zoey on the swing, I knew I wanted him to be part of my life. I wanted him to be part of our family, and I trusted him with every inch of my heart to be worthy of that trust.
If Zoey hadn’t been there, I thought I might have even been crazy enough to tell him as much, too. Instead, I just watched and smiled.
“Well,” Peter said. “We would have to run it by your mom, but I’d like to be a dad to you very much. I was waiting for a special time to do it, but this actually feels just about right.”
I frowned as I followed Peter’s hands. They went to his back pocket and he started getting down on one knee. Before he could show me what he was getting out of his pocket, though, Zoey turned in the swing to look, which made her legs sway to the side. She came full speed toward Peter and accidentally kicked him in the head with both of her feet, knocking him to the ground.
I knelt down beside him, trying not to laugh.
“This isn’t exactly how I envisioned the big moment,” he said with a groan as he got back to one knee.
“Sorry,” Zoey said. “I was just joking on you.”
Peter rubbed the side of his head. “And it was a powerful joke.” He cleared his throat and looked back to me. I was still kneeling just inches from him, and I could see the excitement in his eyes. “I felt like I’d lost my mind when I bought this. I felt even crazier when I realized I actually wanted to ask you. So I told myself I was just going to hold on to it for a while so I wouldn’t scare you off. But…”
“How long have you had it?”
“About half a day,” he said. Peter opened the box and took the ring out, holding it up for me to see. “I told myself I’d never trust anyone again. And said I’d never fool myself into thinking love was real again. But I love you, Violet.”
“Aww,” Zoey said. She was still rocking back and forth on the swing as she watched us kneeling in the mulch in front of her.
“I love you too,” I said. Just saying the words made my skin erupt in goosebumps.
“Marry me,” he said.
I bit my lip and searched his face. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll be forced to seduce you.”
“Hmm, maybe your threat shouldn’t sound so enticing.”
“Mommy, you’re supposed to say yes,” Zoey said.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Of course, yes.”
Epilogue
* * *
Seven Months Later
Zoey sat between Violet and me near the front row at Wimbledon. Violet and I had wondered if even a toddler as tennis crazy as Zoey could be expected to pay attention for a live tennis match, but we were on day three of watching matches and her little eyes were glued to the court.
I was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, but that didn’t stop a woman in front of us from stopping when she saw me on the way back to her seat.
“Peter Barnidge?” she asked.
I smiled and gave a quick wave, wondering if that would be enough.
She reached up to shake my hand. “It’s such an honor to meet you. I’ve read all of your books. Well, not the non-fiction ones, no offense. But when I heard about everything that happened with Kristen Woods, I just had to read What’s Buried There again once I knew who the real author was. And I immediately read the next two. I just think you’re amazing. And listen to me rambling on while you’re trying to enjoy the match with your family. I’m sorry, it was an honor to meet you.”
I smiled again and nodded as she left. Violet was beaming when I looked over at her. It didn't seem to matter how many times someone stopped me to tell me they were a fan of my thriller series to her. She celebrated each one like it was a personal blow to Kristen, which, in a lot of ways, I guessed it was.
To say her career had been ruined would've been an understatement. Kristen's entire identity had become my book. When we took it away, we took away everything she had. As it turned out, she was spending the money she'd made just about as fast as it was coming in. I hadn't even sought financial damages or tried to recoup the lost royalties when we took her to court. We just wanted the contract nullified and for ownership of the book to be given back to me. Stil
l, the last I heard, Kristen had moved out of New York altogether and was trying to get a fresh start somewhere cheaper to live where people might not recognize her name.
Zoey did a fist pump when the player she was rooting for won the point. She didn’t even seem to think anything of it when she slid her little hand into mine and squeezed. I put my arm past her to pull both her and Violet in toward me, soaking in the moment.
When I told Violet that I loved her seven months ago, part of me wondered if I’d look back and realize I’d been an even bigger fool than I’d been when I thought I loved Kristen. I thought I’d begun to realize something about love. The difference in how I’d felt about Kristen and how I felt about Violet wasn’t a difference in quantity. It wasn’t that I felt twice as happy or even three times as happy when I was around her. The difference was fundamental. It was at the foundational, most basic level. It was in the way I couldn’t so much as look at her without wanting to touch her, and not just in a sexual way—though she admittedly brought that side out of me more than I would’ve thought possible, too. It was in the way I found so much enjoyment from learning her little quirks and habits, from how I could get caught daydreaming about the way she looked at me when we’d been apart or even how she’d say my name when we slept together.
I hadn’t been an idiot to say I loved her. It hadn’t mattered that the proposal happened fast or even that our first time together had been so sudden. Whether we realized it at the time or not, there was an instinctual understanding. Something was different about the way we made each other feel. It was special, and even when we thought we hated each other, it kept dragging us back together.
“You know,” Violet said. “You never did tell me if I proved myself worthy as your marketer or not.”
“And you’re just asking me this now, what, nine months later?”
She shrugged. “I was kind of hoping if I didn’t bring it up, you’d forget I was supposed to be on a kind of trial run. But now that I have an in with the boss, I figure I’m probably safe to ask.”
I chuckled. “You mean the fact that I made you my head of advertising and put you in charge of all things thriller didn’t clue you in?”
“How do I know you didn’t just do that so you had an excuse to fire Derrick?”
I smirked. Apparently, she'd seen right through that one. I'd fired him about a week after I proposed. I'd never admit it to anyone so long as I lived, but his final offense had been letting his eyes wander when she leaned under her desk to check a computer cable. Still, I was sure that bastard had done something worth getting fired over before, so I didn't feel bad.
“What it if it was both?” I asked.
“Hm. I could live with that.”
“Good. Because you’ll have to. And yes, you passed the trial run, with flying colors. Even my brother likes you, which is saying something.”
“I’m still working on getting Lilith to stop threatening to be nicer to you. I don’t think she’s going to stop planning on murdering you in your sleep until after the wedding. Maybe the honeymoon.”
“Speaking of the honeymoon, have you decided where you want to go?” I asked.
“Africa,” Zoey said with a huge smile.
I winced. “Usually honeymoons are just for mommies and daddies, Zoey.”
Zoey hung her head. “Then I’m going to look for the rest of my heart. Because you took some of it.”
Violet and I shared an amused eye roll over the top of Zoey's head. Zoey had developed an impressive ability to manipulate us with adorably deep sayings like that, and the little brat knew it, too. I could see her trying to hide her grin even as she hung her head.
"I'll tell you what," I said. "If you really want to go to Africa someday, we can work on a way to convince your mom to get you a few weeks off from preschool. If she agrees, we'll go. But you're not coming on the honeymoon. Sorry to break it to you."
“Why?”
“Because we have to do mommy and daddy things on the honeymoon,” Violet said.
“Like what?”
Violet bulged her eyes at me a little and held up her palms.
“Taxes,” I said.
Zoey groaned. “Taxes?”
“That’s right,” I said, locking eyes with Violet. “We’ll be up late every night doing taxes. Your mom actually loves it when we do taxes, believe it or not. She gets so excited that we’ll probably have to tell our neighbors to keep it down.”
Zoey laughed. “I never heard mommy get excited to do taxes before.”
“Because she wasn’t doing them the right way. Not before she met me.”
“Then it’s a good thing I met you,” Violet said.
“Yeah,” I said. “My thoughts exactly.”
THE END
* * *
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Thank you so much for reading! Whether you loved the book or not, it would mean the world to me if you left an honest review on Amazon. I read every single review and take them all to heart, even on older books, so it’s not just a great way to give me your feedback and help me improve, it’s also one of the best ways to support me and help me find new readers.
If this book or this series are the first books you’ve read by me, most of my other work generally has less humor. Writing in this more care-free and light style was kind of a reaction to some frustrating things that happened in my personal life. It started out as a kind of therapy for me, but now I think it has turned into a style I hope to keep developing and learning to use for as long as I can.
Last little note is just that this particular book was probably the most serious one in the Objects of Attraction series so far. If that was a disappointment to you, I’m sorry! I decided to do an enemies to lovers style book and didn’t realize how much that would tend to naturally limit the opportunities for humor until I was deep into the book. With that being said, I’m still really happy with how this one turned out, but I’ll make sure future installments in the series get back to some more of the heavier humor like in the earlier books.
Hope you still loved it!
xx
Penelope
Also By Penelope Bloom
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