Page 21

One year later

Stepping carefully through her bedroom door, Jess plucked at the scarf tied tightly around her face. “You know, I don’t know if it’s necessary to cut off the circulation to my eyes.”

“How else are we supposed to know you’re not peeking?” Jonquil asked from behind her, hands gentle at Jess’s elbows.

“That’s hurtful,” Jess replied. “I like to think I’ve built some level of trust, considering the amount of time I’ve spent with you. The long hours working. The holidays—also, there was no reason to put duct tape across my door.”

“Honey, we saw what you did during the Easter egg hunt.” Sis’s voice was to her left.

“You shouldn’t have put tiny booze bottles in the comically oversized eggs. It added incentive!” Jess exclaimed. Sis was there, just beside her, to keep her from tripping. She hadn’t quite memorized the layout of her newly renovated office-slash-living-space for Bricker Consultants. The second floor had been completely reconfigured so that the storage room that used to be her shared office was now a bedroom. It was nice having more than one room to her apartment.

“Well, we didn’t know you would take the tradition quite so seriously,” Poppy said, her voice dry and amused in the distance.

“Can I take this off now?” Jess asked a few steps later.

“I suppose,” Sis replied, though her voice was much farther away.

Jess pulled the scarf away from her face and blinked rapidly, squinting against what seemed like a thousand blinding stars in her apartment. Someone had covered the newly painted walls of her living room with strands of fairy lights. She hoped they’d used the no-harm picture hooks, but she wasn’t about to bring that up.

There was a distinct lack of Osbournes in the apartment. Even Jonquil and Sis had disappeared. Instead, Jess found a chalkboard on her coffee table that read Start Here . Another chalkboard just a few steps beyond it read The Many Reasons I Love You .

Hanging over the sign was a little note card that read The way your first instinct is to help people. Or if you can’t help, to be kind. She picked up the card and found it was threaded through with a little turquoise ribbon. The ribbon stretched out her open door. She followed it down her stairs, wrapping it around her hand as she walked, and saw that it led to a web of ribbons, in a rainbow of shades, strung across her office space.

The construction crews had done a great job stripping most of the evidence that the building had once housed a bakery. The consulting area looked like a cozy living room done in creams and yellows. They’d repurposed the kitchen so caterers could provide sample meals for potential proposal plans. Mavis spent her workdays in one of two fancy private offices she got to design herself. Her favorite part was the fact that she got to close the door to separate herself from other people.

It still smelled like cake. Mavis suspected that over time, the vanilla smell had soaked into the walls. Jess didn’t have the heart to tell her about the scented candle she’d been burning. It would be like telling her assistant there was no Santa Claus.

All these changes were courtesy of Tillard Pecan money, which had been paid with an enthusiasm and swiftness Jess had not expected.

“What is this?” Jess asked, laughing as she turned around, searching for the others. Even a few months ago, this probably would have triggered a wee bit of PTSD, but over the last year, time spent at the spa had helped Jess move past Sev’s and Kiki’s attempts on her life. “I’m not going to be responsible for cleaning up all the ribbons.”

“Don’t worry about ribbon cleanup!” Dean called from Mavis’s office. “I’m trying to be romantic here, woman!”

Dean had been spending more time in the city. Nashville’s fine-dining restaurants had fallen all over themselves to get the reclusive chef into their kitchens, even on a part-time basis. Jamie had taken on more duties at the Golden Ash, and Dean was learning what it was like not to be in complete control all the time. They spent their free nights ensconced in her cozy apartment.

People still wandered in, trying to buy cannoli, but that was something Jess was willing to live with. It was a good life, one that Jess had carefully constructed for herself, and she was taking the time to revel in it.

The turquoise ribbon was tied to a lilac-colored ribbon, which led to a display of potential floralscapes. There she found a note card that read The way you never teased me about being named Hemlock.

Holding the card in her hand, she glanced around the room. There had to be twenty or thirty cards hanging at random on the ribbon web.

“Am I supposed to collect all the cards for the end?” she wondered aloud.

“No! Just drop them as you find them!” she heard Poppy yell, probably from the kitchen.

“Am I being watched?” she called.

Jonquil answered…from the bathrooms? “A little bit.”

“After the murder of it all?” she asked.

“That’s a good point,” Jamie conceded from the supply room. “Didn’t think that through!”

Jess swore she could hear Beth whisper, “I told you!”

“Just follow the damn ribbons, Jess!” Sis yelled. “You are the official proposal planner for the Golden Ash! Take a hint!”

Jess snorted. Yes, there was a small petty part of her that enjoyed organizing the spa’s new Proposal Package offerings for no other reason than knowing that while Jess was planning dozens of adorable, personalized, highly photogenic proposals for Golden Ash guests, somewhere out there Diana had accepted a quiet private proposal that had looked very boring in the photos posted on Helston LuxeGram. Diana had managed to lose followers, despite multiple posts devoted to her four-carat sparkler. Months had gone by without a peep about the Tillard-Helston wedding plans, so…Jess wasn’t sure how to interpret that, and she wasn’t going to spend too much energy thinking about it.

Aubrey still texted occasionally, trying to plan a lunch together. Jess never replied.

Jess dropped the card and followed a peach ribbon to a card that read The way you vehemently defend your right to eat pancakes for dinner. She giggled and followed different-colored ribbons to a series of cards that read The way you managed to talk Sis into offering goat yoga. And then The way you helped us keep the spa on track after a super-weird year while acting like it wasn’t a big deal. It was a huge deal.

Yeah, he really emphasized that one.

The way you’ve learned to put your own needs first and stop apologizing for it.

The way you managed to talk Jamie out of the Jumbotron.

The way you’re infuriatingly competent at ninety-nine percent of everything. The remaining one percent probably doesn’t matter.

And on and on. She crisscrossed the office over and over to find the cards Dean had left behind for her. Some of the cards made her laugh. Some of them made her tear up. Some of them— The way you wear socks to sleep, even when you’re not wearing anything else. — made her grateful that the Osbournes had such an open sense of humor.

When she reached the end of the last ribbon—cerulean and The way you’ve accepted my weird-ass family for who they are. — she found Dean on one knee with his bottomless heart in his eyes. And he was holding a cheeseburger. The cousins, Jamie, Lenore, Beth, Nana Blanche, and Mavis—all the people she’d come to love so much—had gathered around him, holding little white electric candles. Her photographer friend, Andrew, was documenting everything with his camera, no one had their phones out, and that was just how she wanted it.

“Jess, nothing about our relationship has been normal or expected or boring. I admire you so much for everything you are, and I just don’t think I can go another day without knowing that you’ll marry me. I really, really want to spend the rest of my life just watching what you become and what you do. I can’t guarantee you perfect happiness. But I can guarantee that I will get somewhere near there or sprain something trying. I love you with everything in me. Will you please agree to long-term sandwich-based commitments and marry me?”

It wasn’t social-media perfect, but it was heartfelt. And she saw that he meant every word. She nodded.

“Yes, Dean, I would very much like to marry you.”

The family hooted as Dean slipped the ring onto her finger. She realized she hadn’t even looked at it. It was a cushion-cut emerald flanked by rectangular diamonds. She grinned at this man who knew her so well. She didn’t love diamonds, but she loved the color of other stones. And suddenly, it made sense that she’d woken up a few months before to a twist tie around her finger and a startled expression on Dean’s face. He’d been sizing her.

“Get up,” she told him just before he wrapped her in his arms. She loved this man. And life with him wouldn’t be easy, but it would be interesting as all hell.

“Did I live up to the Jess Bricker standard?”

“Far, far exceeded it,” she told him. “This was perfect.”

“So, what about marrying me sometime next summer?”

Jess kissed him and gave him a grin. “I don’t have any plans.”