I made love to her there and then, on the blanket on our ground where we would build our dream. I kissed her passionately, my hands twined in her red curls that spilled across the blue blanket beneath her, used every stroke to bring her spiraling closer to ecstasy until I made her come right there on the spot where we’d build our home.
“Welcome home, my love,” I said to her as I held her afterward.
Epilogue
Maggie – Two Years Later
“Danny, come back here!” I called, racing across the gardens to catch our little boy.
Whoever said one-year-olds barely toddle around never met our son. He was as fierce and determined as his daddy, and he ran everywhere. I caught up to him before he could rip up any of the vegetables in the kitchen garden outside the restaurant. The restaurant that was closed for a private party that night. His birthday.
Purple balloons decorated the dining room as I carried him inside, windblown, red-cheeked and happy.
“Come sit down, wild man,” I teased him, and settled him in the highchair decorated with crepe paper in front of the sign that read “Happy Birthday Danny!” that the employees had made for him. He was a huge favorite at the restaurant with his sunny smiles and silly giggled.
Jeremiah was at my side with a glass of wine, a light, sweet white from our first harvest last year. I sipped it gratefully as he brought out the smash cake for Danny. My mom took pictures while my dad videoed the whole messy proceedings.
“Can you believe it’s only been two years?” he asked. “Since the night you said you’d marry me?”
“It seems like it was just last week,” I said, leaning into his shoulder as his arm looped around me. “It’s been a whirlwind. And we’re booked solid for the next seven months!”
“Yeah, there’s no slowing down. Tyler says the barn will be done any day and we’ve already got weddings booked for the fall there.”
“Sarah Jo has outdone herself landscaping for that. It’s like a fairyland,” I said.
“It’s perfect, but the most perfect thing here is this,” Jeremiah said, kissing my lips. “Us, and that little boy. I never dreamed I could have anything like this.”
“Your mom seems to like the wine,” I said. His mom was taking pictures with her phone while Danny smeared cake on his head, but she wasn’t putting down her glass of pinot grigio to do it.
“She’s a fan. Mainly of you, and the spa. She told me yesterday she wants massages from Jorge to be her Christmas present. Just a week of twice a day massages,” he laughed.
“I think we did well, Company Man,” I said with a smile.
“I think this is the best, my wife,” he said and kissed me full on the mouth no matter who was looking.
“It’s almost the best,” I said. “The best will be when we have a christening in that beautiful, rustic event barn eight months from now.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant. It was bound to happen, the way we can’t keep our hands off each other,” I giggled with joy.
But his face turned serious, handsome and grave. “I love you so much, Maggie. How do you always surprise me, always make me love you even more? Just when I’m thinking I’m the luckiest bastard on earth and there’s not another thing I could wish for, you give me this. Thank you.”
“I remember you had a role in this, too,” I said archly. “It had to be when my mom kept Danny and we had that candlelit dinner out overlooking the creek…”
“What can I say, I love making love to you under the sky?” he said.
“You can say you’ll never stop,” I said.
“I’ll never stop, my love.”
THE END