Page 17 of Grumpy Biker's Bride
Taryn cooks breakfast for everybody. Eggs and hash, all of us crowded around the counter, Savage on his third helping, Viv teaching Lila's daughter the French word for cherry.
She looks up from the stove, finding my eyes, and smiles, and I know it plain as day for the first time.
I'm going to marry this woman.
EPILOGUE - TARYN
A month later
Grandma June has been in High Vale for a grand total of four days, and she's already running the place.
She rode the whole way from Bishopsdale in the front of Hawk's truck, complaining about his driving as predicted, and arrived in High Vale to be greeted by a chic Frenchwoman holding a gin and tonic. The two of them took one look at each other and the rest of us lost any say in anything ever again. By Sunday they had a standing card game. By Monday they had opinions about the mayor.
The first time she met Hawk, back at the care home, she made him sit in the visitors' lounge for thirty minutes answering questions while I signed paperwork. He told me afterward it was a fairer interrogation than some he'd had in the army. He also wouldn't tell me a single thing they talked about, and neither would she. They've been thick as thieves since, which frightens me more than Rotmere does.
“Heard the news?” Marvin slides into the kitchen at the tail of the lunch rush, beaming. “Letter came. That Rotmere offer expired all quiet-like. Bethany says the company they sent it through never had the authority to buy so much as a doormat. And that slimy fella from the Lodge got transferred to someother place.” He knocks the counter twice. “We’re good. For now, anyhow.”
For now. That's how this town deals with everything while Rotmere’s here, I've learned. Careful words, stubborn people. I'm starting to hold things that way myself.
There’s a car with out-of-county plates, parked across from the diner through the whole lunch rush. Nobody gets out. I wouldn't have noticed it at all, except that Lila does. She comes back from the window with the coffee pot and her face has gone pale under her red lipstick. Her quick steady hands that have never spilled a drop, are shaking.
“Lila? You okay?”
“It's nothing.” She says it too fast. “Sun in my eyes.”
At the end of the counter, Wrench puts down his fork. He looks at the car for a long, quiet moment. Then he stands, and there's something in his expression I've never seen before, calm and cold at the same time.
“Stay inside,” he says to Lila, gently.
And then he walks out the door.
Sunday evening, Hawk comes to Viv’s for dinner with her and grandma and me. It's when I'm carrying plates that Hawk appears at my elbow and takes them out of my hands.
“Got something for you. In the truck.”
“If it's another deer, Caleb, I love you, but the walk-in is full.”
“It's not a deer.”
The evening is golden and long-shadowed, crickets starting up in Viv's roses. He reaches over the tailgate, lifts out something flat wrapped in one of his soft old flannel shirts, and sets it in my arms gently.
I fold the flannel back. It's the board. Finished. The wood sanded to silk and oiled, and down the middle of it, the river of cherry red, glass-smooth, catching the last of the sun.
“Hawk.” My eyes are already teary. “It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”
“Turn it over.”
I turn it over. Burned into the underside, in his blunt block letters:
MARRY ME, SUNSHINE.
When I look up he's down on one knee in Viv's driveway, holding a ring in his big hands.
“I had a speech.” He swallows. “It's gone. All of it. So here's what's left. I love you. Marry me, Taryn.”
“Yes. I knew as soon as I saw you. Or maybe when I tasted that cherry pie.”
He stands and lifts me clean off my feet. Somewhere behind us I can hear Grandma June telling Viv, “Told you so.”
