by Lucy Score
And their guests were behaving as if they were facing life in prison.
It was going better than Eden had expected.
She plucked the open bottle of wine out of Davis’s grip and drank.
“We can get through this. The first time is the worst, right? They have to get used to not hating each other,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Agreed. We can’t let this fester until we have kids and they get arrested at a tee ball game for fighting.”
Eden handed the bottle back to him and Davis drank deeply. She ran a soothing hand down his back, the charcoal gray cashmere soft to the touch. “We’ve got this,” she promised.
“Listen, gorgeous. I know we talked about telling them. But I think we’re pressing our luck. It might push us over the edge into actual bloodshed.”
Eden handed the bottle back and nodded. “Agreed. I think telling our parents that we’re building a house together on the property line and turning your house into an annex for the inn would be asking for trouble.”
“It would be asking for nuclear war.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t gone for each other’s throats yet.”
“Whatever retraining the Beautification Committee put them through seems to be working,” Davis observed. “Did you see my mom when she started to call yours a buttface?”
“Yeah, what was that rigid muscle spasm thing?”
“You don’t think the B.C. used electroshock, do you?” Davis mused.
“Whatever they used, it’s a Christmas miracle,” she said dryly.
“Do you still love me even though our parents are assholes?” Davis asked, putting the wine down on the counter and pulling her into his arms.
She dropped her head to his chest. “Davis, I’d love you even if our parents were serial killers. Are you sure it’s not too much?”
“You’re everything that I want in this life. And nothing, not even a group of middle-aged adults acting like cranky-ass toddlers, is going to change that.”
She sighed. “Okay. Just checking in.”
He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “What you and I have is bigger than anything they can dish out,” Davis promised. “Besides, if I could convince my father to retire into consultancy, I think we can keep them from murdering each other during the holidays.”
“I love the hell out of you, Davis Gates.”
He hadn’t let her down. Not when she’d been too scared and blind to admit that she loved him. Not when his father had held his position at the winery hostage for a week. Not when his mother threatened to have an aneurysm when he’d invited them to Christmas at the inn.
Davis was sticking.
Meanwhile, Eden’s parents had vacillated between a grumpy acceptance and overdramatic despair. Both were manageable.
“I love the hell out of you, Eden Moody,” Davis said, fondly brushing a curl off her forehead.
Eden brightened. “You know, the worse time they have here, the earlier they’ll leave.”
He caught her drift immediately. “And the sooner we can commence Naked Christmas Sex.” His hands slid down to cup her butt, pulling her flush against him.
“How are you already hard with World War III brewing in there?” she teased.
“We have a lot of time to make up for,” Davis insisted. “Fifteen long years. Wasted.”
There was a high-pitched shriek from the dining room.
Davis tensed. “Shit. Did someone just get stabbed?”
Eden snuggled closer, cuddling his erection with her hips. “Nope. That’s Atlantis’s kids starting their screaming contest.”
“You know, I sure could use a preview of coming attractions before we go back in there,” Davis suggested, backing her up against the kitchen island.
She met his mouth hungrily, feasting on what he offered her. The newness was still there, but so was the abiding belief that this was what she’d been waiting for. This man, who saw her and loved her just the way she was. This commitment. This beautiful relationship.
She didn’t know if it was the Beautification Committee’s manipulations or just some kind of timely magic. But she’d unlocked herself from the shackles of her past, from a half-century of bad blood. And the next fifty years were looking pretty damn great. Even if both their families were certifiably insane.
Eden slid her hands under Davis’s sweater, letting her fingers play across his abs.
“You are worth every second of every inconvenience, every fight, every fire—”
She pinched him, and they both laughed.
“God, I want you naked,” she murmured against his mouth, desire flaming into a four-alarm fire.
The door swung open, and Bryson hurried into the kitchen. “You two might want to get out here with the dessert… and more booze,” he suggested.
“On our way,” Eden promised.
“You’re doing well. In another decade or two, they might start using each other’s first names,” Bryson said cheerily.
Davis waited until Bryson disappeared through the door. “How hard do you think it would be to convince them all to move out of town?”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Eden said with a grin.
She plated up the last slice of cheesecake. “Ready?”
He squared his shoulders. “Ready. The sooner we get them out of here, the sooner we can have Naked Christmas Sex.”
“I like those priorities.”
Extra Epilogue
Blue Moon 1966
The fine spring day brought Blue Moon residents out of their stuffy homes and into the sunshine. Winter bones creaked, and vitamin D deficient bodies slowly awakened with the season. Storefronts threw open their doors to welcome foot traffic. Husbands brought their sedans to gleaming shines in driveways with the aid of garden hoses. Wives mixed up the year’s first batches of lemonade and iced tea.
Neighbors gossiped over backyard fences while they hung out the laundry to dry.
“Isn’t it a fine day, Cordelia?” Laura Beth asked.
Cordelia brushed her bouffant back from her face and dropped the folded table cloth on the picnic table. “Never a finer day,” she agreed. “How’s little Tilly feeling today?” Laura Beth’s baby had been to the doctor twice that week.
Laura Beth waved a hand dismissively. “It was just what we thought. We’ve got ourselves an ornery baby girl. Nothing wrong with her but her attitude, the doctor says.”
Cordelia giggled. “Just remember, if you can’t take another minute of her crying, rubbing just a dab of paregoric or brandy on her gums will get you a few hours of peace.”
“And what do I give myself?” Laura Beth laughed. She slipped a pack of cigarettes out of her apron pocket and handed one over the fence.
They blew twin streams of smoke up toward the beautiful, blue sky.
“How’s your little Ned doing? He was just the cutest little thing in his Easter outfit,” Laura Beth crooned.
“He’s just the sweetest little blessing.” On cue, Cordelia’s backdoor banged open and a little boy in matching baby blue shorts and shirt with a crisp white peter pan collar emerged.
“Mama! The lady with the makeup is here!” Little Ned piped up.
“I forgot all about the Avon lady,” Cordelia said, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray on the picnic table.
“Send her next door when you’re done,” Laura Beth insisted. “I’m almost out of my persimmon lipstick.”
“I’ll do that. And you and Bert are still coming over for cocktails Saturday night, aren’t you?” Cordelia said, starting for her backdoor.
“Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll bring my fondue pot!”
“Perfect!”
The women waved and returned to their respective springtime afternoons.
One house down, a pick-up baseball game was brewing behind the white picket fence of Jenny Zhao’s big backyard. It was a rag tag group of children who had been cooped up for
too long. The bases were Jenny’s mother’s underwear, yanked from the clothes line. The bat was a stick plundered from the unruly garden of Bruce Oakleigh’s mother. The ball, a monogrammed golf ball discovered in the alley behind the Nuswing home.
Johnny Pierce, who was already quite tall for his age, took a practice swing with the stick while Jenny warmed up her throwing arm.
“Bend your knees more,” Bruce called helpfully to Johnny.
Johnny pulled his ballcap lower on his brow. Jenny took the mound—two pairs of her father’s coveralls folded neatly on top of a patio cushion.
“Now, I’ll go second. You go third. And Jillian, you’re up after that,” Bruce announced to the rest of his team. Organizing was his specialty as his mother had repeatedly told him. He kept his room spotless, always took out the garbage, and had spent a week making nametags for his classmates before the first day of school.
There was a satisfying crack as the golf ball and stick connected, and the kids watched as the ball sailed up, up, up.
“Home run!”
“Foul ball!”
A good-natured argument broke out as the ball continued its flight over the Nuswings’ manicured backyard before finally dropping behind the Moodys’ fence.
“Awh, man!”
“Game over!”
Bruce waved his hands. “Wait! I’ll get it,” he insisted. This was the first game he’d been invited to, and he wasn’t letting it end on the first pitch.
He jogged out the back gate of Jenny’s yard down the alley past the Nuswings’ garage to the Moodys’ fence. He tried the gate and found it locked. With a running leap—he had an audience after all—Bruce scaled the fence, his shoes slipping on the wood, his fingers gripping the pickets like he was one-hundred feet off the ground, not two. With a graceless heave, he rolled over the top of the fence and landed face down on Mrs. Moody’s garden.
Hauling himself up, Bruce scoured the backyard for the missing golf ball.
“Hurry up, Bruce!” Jenny called from two yards away.
“Didja find it yet?” Jillian yelled.
“Be a hero, Bruce,” he murmured to himself. “You can do it.”
He tiptoed closer to the house, not keen on Mr. Moody bursting forth and starting an awkward conversation about “when I was a boy…”
Finally, he spotted it under the picnic table. The white ball with red initials. BN. Burt Nuswing. He crawled under the bench and grabbed it triumphantly.
“I got it!” he announced, holding it aloft so his friends could see.
“Throw it back,” Johnny called, waving the stick in the air.
Bruce wasn’t exactly the best thrower, and Jenny Zhao’s backyard looked like it was a million miles away.
“C’mon, Bruce!” someone else yelled.
Bruce glanced around the yard. Maybe if he got up on the picnic table, he could throw the ball farther? With a shrug of his seven-year-old shoulders, he climbed up on top of the Moodys’ spotless white picnic table and took a deep breath.
“Hurry up! We wanna play!”
He took a deep breath and got a running start. Things didn’t go quite according to plan.
His wind-up was great. But he released the ball just a smidge too early. Early enough that the golf ball hit the brick of the Nuswings’ house and ricocheted right through the Moodys’ window.
And Bruce didn’t exactly come to a stop at the end of the picnic table. He had too much momentum. And that momentum carried him right off the end of the table and into the low fence that divided Nuswing yard from Moody. The fence crumpled against his flying body like that folding chair under his Great-Uncle Artie last Thanksgiving.
“Uh-oh!” the resounding cry rose up from Jenny’s backyard. Bruce was tangled in some kind of flowery vine, but other than having the wind knocked out of him, all his pieces and parts seemed to be working.
“Run, Bruce!” Jillian howled.
Bruce brushed himself off, ripping the vines off his legs as he ran after his friends down the alley.
“Well, that was quite the hub-bub over on Martha Washington Avenue today,” Bruce’s father announced when he unfurled the newspaper at the dinner table.
“Mabel told me she heard Elton Moody accuse Bert Nuswing of breaking his kitchen window with a golf ball,” Bruce’s mother said. Gossip was Gladys Oakleigh’s drug of choice.
“And what was it someone was saying about a clitoris?” Bruce’s father asked reaching for the peas.
“Clematis, dear,” Gladys corrected, shooting a pointed look in Bruce’s direction.
Bruce was too busy trying to look innocent of window breaking.
“Bert Nuswing jumped right in and accused the Moodys of being jealous of his Laura Beth’s prize clematis. I heard it was ripped out of the ground and shredded into a hundred pieces.”
“What about the damage to the fence? That’s not going to be cheap to repair,” Bruce’s dad huffed.
“Well, Laura Beth claims she’s never speaking to them again, and Cordelia is horrified that anyone would accuse her of property damage. And the husbands are practically coming to blows on the front porch,” Bruce’s mom said, breathless with excitement.
“It’s the most excitement we’ve had around here in… well, ever,” Bruce’s father commented.
“Maybe the window and the fence and the clitoris thing were just an accident,” Bruce volunteered. His dinner wasn’t sitting well in his stomach. Never having disappointed his parents before, he wasn’t familiar with guilt.
“Clamato,” his father corrected him.
“Brucifer Oakleigh, I certainly hope you didn’t have anything to do with all this,” his mother said sternly. She was a shrewd woman who sussed out the truth and then spread it around like raspberry jam.
“No, ma’am,” Bruce insisted, a bead of sweat running down his back.
“I’m sure this will all blow over,” his father said, turning his attention to the roast on his plate. “This is Blue Moon. No one can stay mad forever.”
Author’s Note to the Reader
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Blue Moon! I hope you enjoyed your visit. I wasn’t sure how everyone would feel about the story expanding beyond the Pierces and Merrills, but I loved writing Eden and Davis. And you’ll notice we still got to spend quite a bit of time with our old favorites.
It’s funny, after seven books in this series (counting the prequel, Where It All Began. Were you brave enough to read it?) writing in Blue Moon still makes me feel like I’m coming home. I wasn’t sure how I was going to top the insanity of the astrological apocalypse in Holding on to Chaos, but I think a stink bombing arson really moved this story along. How many authors can write THAT sentence?
Anyway, if you loved The Fine Art of Faking It, please feel free to leave a review or email me and tell me how super awesome you think I am. Or terrible and weird. Totally up to you! I’ve also got a hella awesome newsletter that’s not at all annoying. You can sign up for it here. If we’re meant to be BFFs, don’t forget to come hang out in my reader group, Lucy Score’s Binge Readers Anonymous. I can honestly say I’ve cornered the internet on awesome people in the BRAs.
Thank you so much for joining me on this Blue Moon journey! You’re awesome and gorgeous!
Xoxo,
Lucy
About the Author
Lucy Score is a Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon bestselling author. She grew up in a literary family who insisted that the dinner table was for reading and earned a degree in journalism. She writes full-time from the Pennsylvania home she and Mr. Lucy share with their obnoxious cat, Cleo. When not spending hours crafting heartbreaker heroes and kick-ass heroines, Lucy can be found on the couch, in the kitchen, or at the gym. She hopes to someday write from a sailboat, or oceanfront condo, or tropical island with reliable Wi-Fi.
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Acknowledgments
Oh, where to begin?
To Kathryn Nolan, fellow romance novelist, who helped me figure out what was missing in Eden and Davis’s story. You saved my sanity when Blue Moon tried to drive me cray-cray(er).
To Joyce and Tammy for reading this book 1,000 times before its release just to make sure it was Blue Moon perfection.
To Jaycee at Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs for our very Davis-y cover.
To Dawn and Amanda for your ever-ready eyeballs.
To Mr. Lucy for being a sexy publisher AND mowing the lawn.
To the makers of half-caff coffee, savers of my hummingbird heart.
To Jenny Smith, Andrea Qualls, Annie Dyer, Julie Laszczak, Julie Sadowski, Lee Ann Giangrasso Schwartz, Stacy Dillard Kinman, Kerry Bowman, Bobbi Switlik, Barbara McHenry-Peale, Amy Jackson, Natasha Marie, Meggie Cole, Stephanie Michelle Emma Gow, Katie Mae Dickey, Kandee Snider Engle, Nicolle Walker, Alessandra Williamson, Brianna Evans, Tera Shideler-Baldridge, and Alyssa Hyde for being incredibly kind and available and willing to help me create characters on the autism spectrum. Thank you for so generously sharing your experiences with me.
To my BRAs for being the best people on the internet. I promise someday we’ll meet in person. Maybe I’ll show up on your doorstep and demand that you make me tacos.
Lucy’s Titles
The Blue Moon Small Town Romance Series
Where It All Began
Find out where Blue Moon got its start in this prequel. John Pierce is a farmer enjoying his solitude until the grad student he reluctantly agreed to take on turns out to be a woman.
No More Secrets
Carter Pierce is a gorgeous veteran who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty tending the family farm, but he’s not in the mood to be shadowed by a big city journalist.
Fall into Temptation
Beckett Pierce is the charming mayor of Blue Moon with a soft spot for women who are trouble, especially when they live in his guesthouse.
The Last Second Chance
Jackson Pierce is the returning prodigal son. With a successful career as a Hollywood screenwriter, he has everything. Everything but the girl he left behind.
