Page 48 of A Taste For Trouble
“I love you too, Dom,” she breathed softly. “And I’ll do so with the last breath in my body, and even after that.”
“I love you,” I repeated. “Demon cat and all.”
“Okay, maybe I don’t love you after all,” she replied with a mock glare.
“Nice try,” came a voice from outside her back door, and Trevor showed his irreverent face at the window. “We heard you say it, and you can’t un-say it now.”
“Can too,” argued Rose.
“Nuh-uh,” said Mara, appearing next to him with a bottle in her hands. “We’ve brought champagne to celebrate the grand event, and it’s the expensive kind, not the pig slop you like to drink. So no taking it back until we’ve popped this baby.”
“Do you think we should let them in?” asked Rose, and I shrugged.
“Can’t let the champagne go to waste. Or my lasagna,” I replied, and she laughed as she unlocked the back door and her friends trooped in.
“Where’s Beelzy?” asked Trevor. “I haven’t heard his angry yowls all day, and I think I missed it.”
“He’s probably showing Scary Mary around the house,” I replied. “Sweetpea, want some lasagna?”
As soon as I said the magic word, he raced into the room, with Scary Mary on his heels. They were both holding onto something and refusing to let go. On closer inspection, it turned out to be the purple dragon. Scary Mary tried to take it from him, and Sweetpea resolutely refused to share. Before I could break up the fight, they both tried running to opposite ends of the room, and the poor dragon came apart in the middle. But instead of stuffing, packets of white powder spilled from its middle.
Mara and Trevor scooped up the cats and locked them out of the kitchen while Dom and I stared at what was clearly the stash of cocaine that Joe had hidden in my house.
“Sonofabitch,” growled Dominic. “He didn’t even think about how he was putting our Beelzy at risk. What if he’d ripped the toy apart and broken open the packets? He’d be dead by now.”
“I hope the cops find Joe’s prints all over the toy. I can testify that he had no reason to ever touch it until he stuffed the drugs inside it. There’s enough cocaine in here to send him to jail for a long time,” I said viciously.
But as it turned out, I didn’t have to testify after all. When Joe realised he was going to prison, he sang like a canary and ratted on all his associates to get a good plea deal.
Meanwhile, Dom bought two identical dragons for both the cats and didn’t even react when I decorated them with a bit of glitter. Sweetpea and I moved into his apartment while he had my mother’s cottage restored to its original glory for us to use as a weekend home.
Grammy Cora was very pleased to get her heart’s desire, although we refused to set a date so soon.
“We’ve only just got together, Gran,” argued Dominic. “And the next person to pester us about setting a date is not invited to the wedding.”
EPILOGUE
There wasn’t a dry eye in the old nineteenth-century church on Maple Street when the bride walked down the aisle that morning.
The elderly lady who was giving her away wept openly as she gave her hand in marriage to the man who had waited years to see this day.
“She is the best thing that happened to our family, even though my son didn’t have the sense to see it. I’m so glad she found you again, Robbie,” said Cora Carlisle, as she put Anthea’s hand in Rob Nelson’s.
Dominic and his grandmother had walked Anthea down the aisle together, while Robbie’s daughter, Lana Frost, had been his best woman.
She kissed her soon-to-be stepmother on the cheek and hugged her father before she took a few steps back and left the two of them at the altar.
“Dearly beloved,” began the priest, and Rose hugged Dominic’s arm tightly as tears streamed down her face.
There was a small reception at The Orangery after the wedding, and Rose smiled at Dom and his mother during the Mother-Son dance.
“It’s so romantic,” breathed Trevor. “I love that Anthea got a second chance with her one true love at last. And it’s amazing that he came back to Maplewood after all these years to win her back.”
“Lana forced him to come back for Anthea when she learned about their history after her mother died,” replied Rose.
“Don’t make me cry,” snapped Trevor, trying not to ruin his mascara. “And start thinking of setting a date for your own wedding.”
“That’s it! You’re not invited,” Rose snapped back.
“Nice try, moron. You can’t uninvite the wedding planner,” he retorted, and Mara wound an arm through both of theirs and squeezed hard.
“Honestly, I can’t take the two of you anywhere these days. Stop squabbling like children and go find me a piece of pie.”
Trevor and Rose cast a surprised glance at her, and Rose’s eyes narrowed at the tell-tale glow on her best friend’s face.
“You’re pregnant,” she gasped, and the three of them let out a soft collective squeal.
Grammy Cora noticed it and smiled. That was two out of those three sorted. She also had someone special in mind for Trevor. Now, what about Robbie’s daughter? She was single,andshe was a wonderful girl.
That’s it! She knew what topic to raise during the town council’s next meeting. It looked like The Maplewood Matchmakers were back in business.