She stepped off the porch and shivered into her griffin form, stretching out her wings and flexing her paws in the snow.
Cooper was almost home now.
Gretchen leapt up into the sky to meet him.
Epilogue
Most people wouldn’t spend their honeymoon in a broken-down motel in the middle of nowhere, but then, Cooper Dawes and Gretchen Miller weren’t most people.
Ford welcomed them back with open arms.
“Sheltering a federal fugitive will always be one of my proudest accomplishments,” he said, giving Cooper a gentle punch on the arm. “It’s good to have you both back. You really stuck it to those corrupt monkey’s uncles. Did the legal beagles get everything all tied up for you?”
“More or less,” Cooper said. He smiled so much more easily and so much more often now, and Gretchen never got tired of seeing it. “I’m a free man with a spotless record. I can’t go around knocking on doors and convincing everybody in the world that I’m innocent—but everybody I care about knows the truth, and that’s what’s important.”
“He’s even going to become a Marshal again,” Gretchen said. She took Cooper’s arm in hers and beamed up at him. She liked bragging on him, especially since he’d never mention this kind of thing if he didn’t. “Since his whole old team is kaput... well, the Marshals Service needs another one to fill the void. And they need someone with Cooper’s, um, special qualifications to run it. He’ll take some time off to get his feet under him again, and then he’ll set up shop.”
She didn’t even want to know how many favors Martin had called in to make that happen, but she was infinitely glad it had. It would give Cooper a fresh start, and there was no stronger vote of confidence the Marshals Service could cast in his favor.
And this time, he’d get to pick his team. (She knew he already had some candidates in mind.) This time, he’d be surrounded by the kind of friends he deserved.
He had her friends, too, and all of her family. They had closed ranks around Cooper and fought tooth-and-nail to defend him against any dirty looks. Tricia had already conscripted him into babysitting duties, the ultimate show of trust.
Finally, they would both have what they’d spent their whole lives longing for.
The only downside was the commute—and, as Gretchen had delighted in pointing out to anyone who would listen, what was the big deal about a commute when you both had wings and couldn’t wait to use them?
Ford sighed. “You’ll be just another government stooge.”
Gretchen gasped in mock-offense. “Hey! You’re already looking at a proud government stooge!”
“That’s different,” Ford said graciously. “I always had a soft spot for a pretty lady with a gun.”
“Me too,” Cooper confided.
“Well, this pretty lady with a gun is happy to take you back to her room if we could get the keys—”
She batted her eyelashes hopefully at Ford, who turned the room key over to her with a resigned sigh that didn’t do anything to hide the affectionate wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“I can tell I won’t be seeing the two of you for a week,” said Ford, a hangdog expression on his face. “I’ll be down to just leaving bananas and some of that Gatorade outside your door so you keep your strength up.”
Gretchen patted him on the cheek. Even with her enormous family, she’d never really had a grandfather before, and she liked the way Ford’s stubbly cheek felt beneath her hand.
Of course, if he were really her grandfather, they probably wouldn’t be joking this much about sex—that was one of the bizarre advantages of the kind of family you found for yourself.
“We’ll summon up the necessary strength to put on clothes every now and then have dinner with you,” she said firmly.
Maybe he could even teach them to cook while they were there. The last year had been a whirlwind of court hearings, media requests, and meeting after endless meeting, and while it had all wrapped up into a happy ending that, to her, was so perfect it might as well have come with a shiny bow on it, it had been long. She thought she could count the number of real homecooked meals they’d made for each other in all that time on one hand. Neither one of them was that great in the kitchen, but they weren’t going to improve if all they ever got to do was steal a quick bowl of cereal or PB&J in between conference calls with lawyers. Tiffani’s rock-hard cookies, once a punchline, had become a lifesaver—since no one could ever tell if they’d gone stale or not, they kept forever. Gretchen had a Ziploc bag of them in her car to munch whenever she was short on options.
Yep, a hell of a year.
With a heaven of an ending, she thought as the motel door finally closed behind them.
It had been a small but beautiful wedding, with just her family and closest friends. Everything had been casual and intimate—except for the skywriting Tricia had paid for, which had spelled out COOPER AND GRETCHEN, JUST MARRIED! BEST IN THE SKY AND BEST ON THE GROUND.
Perfect—and they were following it with the perfect honeymoon.
They had their whole lives to learn how to make spaghetti. For right now, they were away from the world that had crowded in on them for the last year. They weren’t prime-time news subjects anymore. They were just Cooper and Gretchen: newlyweds. Mates. Best in the sky and best on the ground.