Page 55 of Hensley Manor

I’m happy you found your happiness. Hold onto it and never let go. Merry Christmas.

No signature. Grabbing the box, I stood back up and closed the door.

“Who was it?” Ian asked, peering over my shoulder.

“I didn’t see. But they left this.”

Ian read the note and looked just as confused as me. “I guess you should open it.”

Inside the box, tucked inside red and green paper, was a snow globe. And in the snow globe was our manor.

***

“What are you thinking about?” Ian asked later that night.

We were in our bedroom in front of the fireplace, cuddled together amidst a pallet of soft pillows. The snow continued to fall outside, weighing down the branches of the tree outside the window.

“You,” I answered, smiling at him before looking at the dancing flames. “Us. Everything.”

Ian pressed his lips to the scar above my brow and wrapped his arms around me. “Are you happy?”

“Do you really have to ask that question?”

He chuckled, and even after four years, the sound still made my heart soar. “I suppose not. It would be like asking if you wanted sugar.”

“Which the answer isalwaysyes,” I pointed out, resting my head against his.

“Do you have any idea who sent the gift?” he asked, playing with my hair. “It’s lovely. I’d like to be able to thank them.”

“I have an idea.” I looked at the snow globe on the bedside table. “I don’t know her name, but she helped me once. It was right before I met you. I owe her a lot.”

If it hadn’t been for that older woman in the antique store, I wouldn’t have spent over a week in a fantasy town, in a beautiful home that hadn’t even existed at the time. The day I met Ian outside the shop, after he bumped into me, I only stopped in my tracks because I recognized him.

If I hadn’t known Ian before then, if I hadn’t fallen in love with him in Evergreen Valley, I would have kept walking that day and not turned back. We would’ve never had coffee. Would’ve never fallen in love.

We wouldn’t be here right now.

My life had started again the morning I’d woken up in a strange room, wearing some other man’s clothes. Every little thing that happened after that moment had led me to this one; cuddling with a husband I loved more than life itself.

“I love you, Ian Hensley.”

He smiled and kissed the top of my shoulder. “I love you most, Cole Hensley.”

“Impossible,” I huffed.

“Nothing is impossible at Hensley Manor,” he whispered, gliding his lips up my neck. “It led me to you, after all.”

And as the fire crackled in front of us and a winter storm raged outside, I kissed him, knowing he was the best gift I could’ve ever asked for.

THE END