He nodded. “It wouldn’t really do for me to love you without you lovin’ me back, and anyway, my bed’s just not the same without you stealing all the covers.”
She laughed, and at the same time, tears filled her eyes. “You forgive me?”
“I can’t say I wasn’t mad—you stung my pride pretty good. But I know you were scared, Marley, just like I know you’re here to stay now. Yes, I forgive you.”
“I love you, Greyson,” she whispered. “I don’t ever want you at arm’s length again.”
He closed the space between them, pulling her into his arms and knowing she’d always belong there, just as he’d belong right back. “I’m glad for that, darlin’. Because I love you, too, and I don’t plan to ever let you go.”
Epilogue
Marley ran her hand over her dress for the four hundredth time and looked out the window at the lightly falling snow. Fitting for January, she knew, but also fitting for the fact that it was her wedding day.
After all, she was marrying a man who was mostly beautiful and just a little stormy.
“Oh, my God, look at you!” Cate—whose own wedding ring was still sparkly and bright from when she and Owen had tied the knot three months ago—poked her head past the door to the tiny room Marley had been instructed not to leave upon penalty of death. Emerson’s mother might look polite enough, but Lord above, the woman was a drill sergeant when it came to planning a wedding. Even a small one, like this.
“Are you sure it’s not too much?” Marley asked, gesturing to the delicately flowing gown. It wasn’t over the top or frilly—God, Marley never would’ve been able to pull that off with a straight face. But the simple, off-the-shoulder A-line dress had felt just right for her, and the flowers that Amber Cassidy had volunteered to pin to Marley’s hair were a shockingly perfect touch.
“Are you kidding?” came Scarlett’s voice from over Cate’s shoulder, and both women crowded into the room-slash-closet. “It’s perfect. Isn’t Aunt Marley gorgeous, J?”
She cooed to the baby on her hip, who gave up a toothless grin that made Marley’s heart melt. She’d had no experience whatsoever with babies before Jordan had entered the world only a few weeks after Marley had returned to Millhaven for good, but man. This one had stolen her heart, along with everyone else’s, right from go.
“Well, if sweet Jordan says so, then I believe it,” Marley laughed, making a silly face at her nephew, who was the spitting image of Eli if ever there was one.
Marley scanned the room, which wasn’t tough to do, since it was about the size of a Post-It note. “Where’s Emerson?”
“I’m here,” the redhead said, slipping in behind Scarlett and looking a little peaked. “Sorry, I was busy trying not to throw up.”
“Being knocked up will do that to you,” Scarlett said with a knowing laugh, and Cate nodded.
“Let’s see if we can find you some ginger ale. We’ve got to take care of my niece in there so I can spoil her rotten in seven months.”
“Or nephew,” Emerson said, pausing to kiss Marley on the cheek. “I’m so happy for you, sweetheart. Truly.”
All three women echoed the sentiment, hugging her like the sisters they were before slipping out of the room to leave Marley with her thoughts. She’d come a long way since that day in August when she’d returned to Millhaven for good. They all had, really. Although she’d felt a little bittersweet about it, she’d moved out of the main house at Cross Creek and in with Greyson right at the beginning of September, and Louis hadn’t grumbled once when they’d gone to adopt Shadow together. Marley had resumed her duties as the manager of the storefront as soon as she’d returned home, and Jade Beckett had proven to be a quick study as her assistant manager and right-hand woman.
Greyson and his father—who had taken some time to come around to the fact that his son was in love with a Cross and that Marley was in love with him right back—had done their best to figure out a way to allow Jeremiah to retire. In the end, it had surprisingly been Cate who had come up with the solution for the Crosses and Whittakers to combine forces in a merger that had provided retirement for both Tobias and Jeremiah, and allowed Greyson, Owen, and Hunter to run equal shares of the land. Both locations were booming better than ever, and this spring was promising to be the best one either farm had ever seen.
For so many reasons.
“Hey, kid.” Owen opened the door, flanked on either side by Hunter and Eli, all three of them looking sharp in dark gray suits and huge smiles. “It’s time. You ready?”
“Yeah.” Marley stood, hugging each of them in turn and letting them lead her into the hallway. “I’m ready.”
“Last chance. Are you sure you don’t want to run?” Eli asked with a gleam in his eye. “I mean, this is Greyson Whittaker we’re talking about here.”
Marley laughed. “It is Greyson. And that’s why I’m one hundred percent sure I don’t want to run.”
“Well, then. I guess we’d best get you inside,” Hunter said.
“Sorry, boys, but I believe that job belongs to me,” came a voice from behind them, and Marley’s heart swelled at the sight of Tobias, standing at the ready. Doc Sanders—Marley had the hardest time calling the woman Ellen—stood right beside him. She squeezed Tobias’s arm, just once, then slipped past the double doors down the hall with Owen, Hunter, and Eli in tow.
“You look beautiful,” Tobias said, his smile nostalgic and his blue-gray eyes crinkling with happiness. “I’ve never been more proud.”
“It’s me who’s proud,” Marley told him. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t get choked up, but apparently she’d been a big, fat liar, because her voice caught as she said, “I’m proud to be a Cross, and I’m so grateful to be your daughter.”
Tobias’s eyes misted, and he cleared his throat, taking a handkerchief from the pocket of his suit jacket and handing it to her so she could keep her tears in check. “Now, now. No sadness today. I believe you’ve got a gentleman waitin’ for you. If you’ll allow me to walk you down the aisle.”
He offered his arm, which Marley took with pride. Emerson’s mother stood outside the double doors, smiling at the two of them as she opened them to usher Marley and her father inside. Marley was vaguely aware of a few familiar faces—Clementine and her husband, Logan, Amber Cassidy and Billy Masterson, who had finally bitten the bullet and started to date, and Jade and Sierra, who waved like mad as Marley passed by. Lane and Daisy were there, her engagement ring glittering in the soft light, and of course, her brothers, their wives, and Greyson’s sisters and parents, too.
But the only person who mattered, the only person in her world, stood right at the front of the room.
“Hey,” Marley whispered as they finally finished their walk down the aisle, and Greyson blinked, his long dark lashes framing a wide stare.
“You are perfect,” he said, taking her shaking hand in his own.
“I think you’re pretty perfect, too.”
“Ahem.” A sing-song voice Marley knew all too well cut through the room, and Judge Abernathy peered down at them from her perch behind her bench. “If I may interrupt.”
“Sorry, Judge,” Marley said, grinning as she faced the woman.
“I distinctly remember telling the two of you I didn’t ever want to see you in my courtroom again,” she said, capping the words with a wry smile. “However, I believe that in this case, I can make an exception. Now let’s have a wedding and put this family rivalry to bed once and for all, shall we?”
Greyson laughed, squeezing Marley’s hand tight, and she knew he’d never let her go.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Sneak peek at Crossing Hearts
Read on for a look at the book that started the series, CROSSING HEARTS, as well as the links to all of Kimberly’s books!
Emerson Montgomery straightened the boxes of elastic bandages on the shelf in front of her for the thousandth time that hour. Turning to survey the one-room physical therapy office tucked in
the back of Millhaven’s medical center—aka Doc Sanders’s family practice—she surveyed her new digs in search of something to keep her occupied. She’d already rearranged the rolls of athletic tape, wiped down the questionably sturdy portable massage table—along with the geriatric treadmill and recumbent bike over by the far wall—and organized the mismatched hand weights and resistance tubing she’d dug out of the storage closet.
She was still an hour shy of lunch on her first day at work, and she’d officially run out of things to do. Beautiful. Now she had nothing but time to dwell on the fact that in the last two weeks, she’d lost a job she’d loved, a boyfriend she hadn’t, and the ability to keep the one vow that had saved her life twelve years ago.
She was back in Millhaven.
Emerson blew out an exhale, trying to ignore the stiffness in her knees that made her wonder if her synovial fluid had been replaced with expired Elmer’s glue. She knew she should be happy Doc Sanders had been willing to hire her to do supplemental physical therapy, especially when the fifteen job inquiries Emerson had made before her last-ditch call to the doctor had yielded fifteen positions requiring sixty hours a week, with fifty-nine of them on her feet. Under normal circumstances, Emerson would’ve pounced on any of those employment opportunities before returning to Millhaven. Hell, under normal circumstances, she’d have never left her high-powered, higher-energy job as one of the top physical therapists for the Super Bowl Champion Las Vegas Lightning in the first place. Of course, everything she’d known about normal had been blasted into bits five weeks ago.
And if there was one thing Emerson knew by heart, it was that once you broke something into enough pieces, your chances of putting it back together amounted to jack with a side of shit.
The door connecting the physical therapy room and the hallway leading to Doc Sanders’s office space swung open with a squeak, and the woman in question poked her head past the threshold.
“Hi, Emerson.” She swept a hand toward the PT room in an unspoken request for entry. Emerson nodded, sending a handful of bright-red hair tumbling out of the loose, low ponytail at her nape.
“Hey, yes, sure. Come on in Doc . . . tor Sanders,” she said, awkwardly tacking on the more formal address. But the woman was her boss, an MD who she respected greatly, and at any rate, more than a decade had passed since Emerson had left Millhaven. She was an adult now, a professional. Accomplished. Capable.
Even if her pretense for coming back home was a complete and utter lie.
“Emerson, please,” Doc Sanders said, her smile conveying amusement over admonition. “I know with all your experience, you’re probably used to different protocol with physicians, but call me Doc. No one in Millhaven has called me Doctor in . . . well, ever. And quite frankly, it makes me feel kind of stodgy.”
Emerson dipped her chin, half out of deference and half to hide her smile. While all of the doctors on the Lightning’s payroll had been top-of-their-field talented, they’d also sported enough arrogance to sink a submarine, making sure everyone down to the ball boys knew their status as MDs. Even though she’d technically earned the title of “Doctor” along with her PhD five years ago, she never used it, preferring to go by her first name like all the other physical therapists at the Lightning. True, she’d been the only one of the bunch with the varsity letters after her name, but the title meant nothing if she wasn’t good enough to back it up hands-on. Plus, she’d always felt something heavy and uncomfortable in her chest on the rare occasion anyone called her Dr. Montgomery. She turned around every time, looking for her father.
Don’t go there, girl. Head up. Eyes forward.
Emerson cleared her throat, stamping out the thoughts of both her father and her lost job as she kept the smile tacked to her face. “You got it, Doc. How are things in the office?”
“Not so bad for a Monday, although I could’ve done without Timmy Abernathy throwing up on my shoes.”
“Gah.” Emerson grimaced. Broken bones and ruptured tendons she could handle, no sweat. But stomach woes. No, thank you. “Sorry you’ve had a rough morning.”
“Eh.” Doc Sanders lifted one white-coated shoulder. “Timmy feels worse than I do, and I had an extra pair of cross-trainers in my gym bag. At any rate, I’ve got a patient for you, so I thought I’d pop over to see if you have an opening today.”
Emerson thought of her schedule, complete with the tumbleweeds blowing through its wide-open spaces, and bit back the urge to laugh with both excitement and irony. “I’m sure I can fit someone in. What’s the injury?”
“Rotator cuff. X-rays and MRI are complete, and Dr. Norris, the orthopedist in Camden Valley, ordered PT. But the patient is local, so I figured if you could take him, it’d be a win-win.”
“Of course.” An odd sensation plucked up Emerson’s spine at the long-buried memory of a blue-eyed high school boy with his arm in a sling and a smile that could melt her like butter in a cast-iron skillet. “Um, my schedule is pretty flexible. What time did he want to come in?”
“Actually, he’s a little anxious to get started, so he came directly here from the ortho’s office . . .”
Doc Sanders turned toward the hallway leading to her waiting room, where a figure had appeared in the doorframe. Emerson blinked, trying to get her brain to reconcile the free-flowing confusion between the boy in her memory and the man standing in front of her. The gray-blue eyes were the same, although a tiny bit more weathered around the edges, and weirdly, the sling was also a match. But the person staring back at her was a man, with rough edges and sex appeal for days, full of hard angles and harder muscles under his jeans and T-shirt . . .
Hunter Cross.
Emerson stood with her feet anchored to the linoleum, unable to move or speak or even breathe. For the smallest scrap of a second, she tumbled back in time, her heart pounding so hard beneath her crisp white button-down that surely the traitorous thing would jump right out of her chest.
A blanket of stars littering the August sky . . . the warm weight of Hunter’s varsity jacket wrapped around her shoulders . . . the warmer fit of his mouth on hers as the breeze carried his whispers, full of hope . . . “Don’t go to New York. Stay with me, Em. Marry me and stay here in Millhaven where we’ll always have this, just you and me . . .”
“Emerson? What . . . what the hell are you doing here?”
The deeper, definitely more rugged-around-the-edges version of his voice tipped the scales of her realization all the way into the present. She needed to say something, she knew, but her mouth had gone so dry that she’d have better luck rocketing to the moon in a paper airplane right now.
“I work here,” Emerson finally managed, the truth of the words—of what they meant—delivering her back to reality with a hard snap. She hadn’t returned to Millhaven for a jaunt down memory lane. Hell, she’d only come back when her process of elimination had dead-ended in total despair. She was here for one thing, and one thing only. To bury herself in as much work as her body would allow. Even if her first client probably hated her guts.
Check that. Hunter had probably moved on ages ago and didn’t care one whit about her.
Other books by Kimberly Kincaid
Want hot heroes, exclusive freebies, and all the latest updates on new releases? Sign up for Kimberly Kincaid’s newsletter, and check out these other sexy titles, available at your favorite retailers!
The Cross Creek series:
Crossing Hearts
Crossing the Line
Crossing Promises
The Station Seventeen series:
Deep Trouble (prequel)
Skin Deep
Deep Check
Deep Burn
In Too Deep
Forever Deep
Down Deep
The Line series:
Love On the Line
Drawing the Line
Outside the Lines
Pushing the Line
The Pine Mountain Series:
The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap,
with Donna Kauffman and Kate Angell
Turn Up the Heat
Gimme Some Sugar
Stirring Up Trouble
Fire Me Up
Just One Taste
All Wrapped Up
The Rescue Squad series:
Reckless
Fearless
Stand-alones:
Something Borrowed
Play Me
And don’t forget to come find Kimberly on Facebook, join her street team The Taste Testers, and follow her on Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!
Kimberly Kincaid writes contemporary romance that splits the difference between sexy and sweet and hot and edgy romantic suspense. When she's not sitting cross-legged in an ancient desk chair known as "The Pleather Bomber", she can be found practicing obscene amounts of yoga, whipping up anything from enchiladas to éclairs in her kitchen, or curled up with her nose in a book. Kimberly is a USA Today best-selling author and a 2016 and 2015 RWA RITA® finalist and 2014 Bookseller’s Best nominee who lives (and writes!) by the mantra that food is love. Kimberly resides in Virginia with her wildly patient husband and their three daughters. Visit her any time at www.kimberlykincaid.com
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