you can’t trust me.”
“Josie …”
She leaned back and pressed her fingers over his lips. “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand now that sometimes it’s better to leave secrets secret. There will be no stories about you or your mother in any Jessup publications or broadcasts. And there will never be another story by me.”
“Never?”
Tears glistened in her smoky-green eyes, and she shook her head. “I should have never …”
“Revealed the truth?” he asked.
“Look what the consequences were,” she reminded him with a shudder.
“Yes,” he agreed, and finally he looked at the full picture, at what she’d really done. “You got justice for your friend—the girl that kid assaulted. If you hadn’t written that article, it never would have happened. And I know from experience that it’s damn hard to move on if you never get justice.”
“That’s why you went after all those crime organizations,” she said, “to get justice for what your dad did to your mom.”
“She gave up her justice for me,” he said.
“So you got it for her and for so many others.”
He shook his head. “No, Margaret got it for her. Go figure. But you helped your friend when no one else would. You can’t blame yourself for what the boy did. And neither should his father.”
“He needs someone to blame,” she said.
Just as the people in her new town had blamed her for her student’s death. Someone always needed someone else to blame.
“And so did I,” she added. “I shouldn’t have blamed you.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he agreed. “Because I would have never hurt you, then or now.” He dragged in a deep breath to say what he’d waited around to tell her, what he’d waited four years to tell her. “Because I love you, Josie.”
“You love me?” She asked the question as if it had never occurred to her, as if she had never dared to hope. Until now. Her eyes widened with hope and revealed her own feelings.
“Yes,” he said, “I love your passion and your intelligence and—”
She stretched up his body and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I didn’t think you’d ever be able to trust me, much less love me.”
“I don’t just love you,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you and CJ. No more undercover. I’ll find a safer way to get justice for others, like maybe helping you with stories.”
She smiled. “That might be more dangerous than your old job.”
“We’ll keep each other safe,” he promised. “Will you become my wife?”
“It will thrill CJ if his parents are together, if every day is like that day at my house,” she said.
That had been such a good day—a day Brendan had never wanted to end. His heart beat fast with hope. She was going to say yes….
“But as much as I love our son, I won’t marry you for his sake,” she said. “And you wouldn’t want me to.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. But before he could argue with her, she was speaking again.
“I will marry you,” she assured him, “because I love you with all my heart. Because even when I was stupid enough to think you were a bad man, I couldn’t stop loving you. And I never will.”
“Never,” he agreed. And he covered her mouth with his, sealing their engagement with a kiss since he had yet to buy a ring. But it was no simple kiss. With them, it never was. Passion ignited and the kiss deepened.
If not for the dinging of the elevator, they might have forgotten where they were. His mother stepped through the open doors, her eyes glinting with amusement as if she’d caught him making out on the porch swing.
“We’re getting married, Mom,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, as if there had never been any question in her mind. “Now, open the door for me.” She juggled a tray of plates and coffee cups and a sippy cup.
He opened the door to his son, who threw his arms around Brendan’s legs. “Daddy! Daddy, you’re still here.”
“I’m never leaving,” he promised his son.
“Gramma!” the little boy exclaimed, and he pulled away from Brendan to follow her to his grandfather’s bedside.
With a happy sigh, Josie warned him, “We’re never going to have a moment alone.”
“Our honeymoon,” he said. “We’ll spend our honeymoon alone.”
“We’re alone,” Brendan said as he carried Josie over the threshold of their private suite.
Since his arms were full with her and her overflowing gown, she swung the door closed behind them. It shut with a click, locking them in together. “Yes, we’re finally alone….”
And she didn’t want to waste a minute of their wedding night, so she wriggled in his arms, the way their independent son did because he thought himself too big to be carried. As she slid down Brendan’s body, he groaned as if in pain.
“Was I too heavy?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, you’re perfect—absolutely perfect.” He lifted his fingers to her hair, which was piled in red ringlets atop her head. “You looked like a princess coming down the aisle of the ballroom.”
“Well, technically.” She was. It had made her an anomaly growing up, so she’d often downplayed her mother’s royal heritage. When she’d married Stanley Jessup, her mother had given up her title anyway. But here it was no big deal. Josie was only one of three princesses in the palace on St. Pierre Island. Four, actually, counting Charlotte Green-Timmer’s new daughter. Charlotte and Aaron had married shortly before their daughter’s premature birth.
There was a prince, too—Gabriella and Whit Howell’s baby boy. The princess had fallen in love with and married her father’s other royal bodyguard. There were so many babies.
So much love. But she’d felt the most coming from her husband as he’d waited for her father to lead her down the aisle to him. In his tuxedo, the same midnight-black as his hair, he looked every bit the prince. Or a king.
And standing at his side, in a miniature replica of his father’s tuxedo, had stood their son—both ring bearer, with the satin pillow in his hand, and best little man.
“It was the most perfect day,” she said. A day she had thought would never come—not four years
