Page 106 of Plot Twist

‘I will have you, Riley O’Connell,’ I replied, with a nod. ‘How could I not?’

He leaned down and pulled me into a long, lingering kiss. I held onto him tightly, losing myself in the moment.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a loud wolf whistle.

‘Oi, put her down!’ Adam’s voice called from across the grass down towards the beach. I grinned and clutched onto Riley’s hand.

‘Almost forgot where we were for a second,’ I called to Adam.

‘Hurry up, Becca, we’re about to get started.’

I sighed. My stomach had gone from backflips of happiness to dread, twisting at the thought of saying goodbye to Rae all over again as reality came back to bite.

Breathe, Becca.

‘I’m here, Becca. We’ll do it together. All of it. I’ll be here for everything, if you’ll let me.’

‘Only if you’ll let me, too.’ I smiled up at him.

‘You’d better believe it.’ He grinned.

I nodded and squeezed his hand. I could do this.

We could do this.

Epilogue

TWO YEARS LATER

The jewellery store was about to close when I arrived. Despite carrying an umbrella, my hair was soaked from the torrential downpour. The wind had blown me halfway across Dublin as I attempted to make it on time.

Sorry,’ I apologised, shaking the stray drops from my coat. ‘It’s me, the one that asked for the man-gagement ring.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The assistant offered me a wide smile. ‘Thanks for coming in. I’ll just nip through the back and get it.’

I didn’t even really need it today. The traffic was backed up because of the storm, everyone was beeping their horns and swearing at one another, trains were cancelled and delayed. The streets were full of grumpy people trying to navigate their way home.

It was hardly a ‘proposal’ sort of day.

But I just had to make the journey through, so I could see it.

When I’d shared my secret plans with Bridget, she insisted that I couldn’t possibly propose to Riley.

She balked at the very idea of it, insisting it was Riley’s place, as the romance-writing man who would want to plan the most over the top proposal the world had ever seen.

Therein lay the problem.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was what I wanted to do. Riley had never experienced the grand gesture that he always talked about. He had dished them out, talked about them, penned a good few, but never been on the receiving end of one. Coming to Rae’s memorial to insist he would continue turning up time and time again for the rest of the big and small events in my life had been a firm favourite of mine. Somehow, along the two years we’d been officially dating, I’d never returned the favour.

And now he was feeling the pressure to propose. I could practically feel the tension, on par with the time he’d been working on his second novel when I’d first arrived at Bellinder Cottage. As it turned out,Too Far Gonefinally hit the shelves last year and topped the charts as another bestseller. Not that I’d had any doubts. But the pressure to propose was becoming a whole new weight on his shoulders.

Last week, during an interview with an Irish newspaper, he’d been asked when he planned to propose to his ‘children’s author and teacher girlfriend’. It still made me want to do a little dance when I saw that in print. I was a real-life children’s author.Queen Beehad even been nominated for an actual children’s book award, thank you very much. It didn’t win, but I was still riding high on the very idea of it all. Being an award-nominated author also helped when it came to my creative writing school for children, which had become very popular over the last year, with kids from far and wide attending my after-school classes and summer workshops, based at Ellie and Bridget’s cottages.

Their business had been slow, at first. We’d all mused over various ideas to help with promotion, before coming up with a concept that might just hit the mark to set it apart from all the other holiday lets on the market.

And so, The Writers’ Retreat was born. We’d created a space for my children’s classes and group discussions, and it had quickly become a hub of creative activity. Riley launched his second book there, which attracted several authors to do the same. He’d even started his own creative writing classes for aspiring romance writers, which were always fully booked, with waiting lists. Somehow, what seemed like overnight, writers from all over the world were booking up to follow in our footsteps to come along and soak up the inspirational setting of Rathcliffe for their very own writers’ retreats.

We managed to keep Bellinder Cottage, thanks to the various new ventures, and our happy bubbles just seemed to keep expanding.