Finding Fate

by Ariel Ellens

  Colt puts his hands to my face, holding me. It feels so good to be held. “Bella, I’ve never wanted anything more than this. You are my everything. My life, Bella, is wrapped around yours.”

  “Then take me,” I say. “Take me away.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want a chance at this. At life. At us. At truth.”

  “That’s what I’ll give you,” Colt says.

  We kiss and we leave.

  Just like that.

  It’s funny how moments happen. How one can come and go. How one can come and change everything. And how one can come and mean everything.

  That’s what Colt is.

  Everything.

  -Epilogue-

  Colt drops the cardboard box on the counter and I jump.

  I hate it when he scares me like this. Not to mention now all the customers in the café are staring at us.

  He’s wearing a suit and tie, something different to see. Something sexy. Something really sexy. My mind begins to rage with thoughts, but I stop them and point to the box.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it,” he says.

  I reach for it. He hand comes to mine. “Not right now though.”

  “What the hell? You give me something and I can’t open it?”

  “Not right now. Wait until we close.”

  I look out at the full tables of people. “Don’t think that’s for a little while.”

  “That’s why we hired help. Where’s Anna?”

  “She comes in at three.”

  “Good.” Colt turns around and scans the café. He nods. He inhales. He turns back around. “Yeah, this is perfect.”

  I smile at him and our eyes lock. “What’s with the tie?”

  “Business meeting. Looking at the small place near the interstate.”

  “Keep the tie for when I get home.”

  “Why? Am I in trouble?” Colt asks.

  I grab the tie and pull. He comes close to me. “Big trouble, mister. Big trouble.”

  “Good. You better get it all out now because we’re going to get extra busy. Little Ms. Bake Bread is the hottest thing in town.”

  I back up and watch as Colt leaves.

  It’s amazing what time can do for two people.

  I got the call an hour after leaving the hospital that my mother passed away. An hour after that my Aunt Nancy called me in a fake teary fit that her sister was dead. I went along with it because there was nothing I could do. Aunt Nancy thinks she’s inheriting a goldmine. A free house. A free business. Everything. What she’s getting is a house that needs work and a bakery that needs people to run it. She’s offered me a job many times but I’m too busy... running the new café with Colt.

  Turns out his mother left everything to him, enough to open a new place. A friend of his at the bank gave him the loan to open the place, a side project he had been slowly working on for a year or so. I was told by Colt that if I wouldn’t bake, he wouldn’t open the place. No arguing there. It’s a different world when you have help with the business and when you actually enjoy it.

  I went to my mother’s funeral and paid my respects.

  Everyone is happier now, dare I say it.

  Becca-Ann offered to fly in and be there for me but after a video call with Colt, she understood that I was in good hands. She told me Colt was one of the hottest guys she ever saw, even on a computer screen. When she asked about my plane ticket to Paris, I already had a better idea in mind. I wouldn’t tell her my wicked intentions, but I do wish I was there when she showed up at the airport and saw Stevey walking towards her.

  I don’t miss much at the old bakery, but when I do get those feelings, Colt takes me for a ride on his motorcycle to see it. There’s nothing there now but a closed business. Same for the old house. Everything is closed. I figure sooner than later my aunt will realize the mess she’s been given. And all I can do is laugh at it.

  At exactly three, Anna comes walking in. She’s always on time. She’s just out of high school and something about her reminds her of me. She’s a writer though and while she has the knack for baking, she prefers writing. I asked to read some stuff and she won’t let me.

  I take the package Colt gave me and carry it to my car. When I get in the car I sit there for a few seconds, letting the day run off my shoulders. There’s something amazing about leaving when the place is still open. I’m able to go in, bake what needs to get done, and still have a life. Colt and I talk business, plans, expansion, everything. It’s really something special. I almost feel like I don’t deserve it. But I can’t say that around Colt, he’ll get pissed. And his version of pissed is grabbing me and kissing me. So I guess you can say I like getting him pissed.

  Home is Colt’s apartment which he lovingly allowed me to turn into our place. Not that I’m a picky girl, but I make sure there’s a female presence in the place. As I sit in the parking lot I look to my left at the box. I know Colt. I know how he does these flirty, romance things.

  He wants me to open the box in the car. I sense it.

  I slide my finger under the tape and pull. Cardboard tears with tape but I don’t care. I open the flaps and find bubble wrap waiting for me. I pinch a few because you have to. It’s a law written somewhere.

  When I move the bubble wrap I’m staring at the back of a frame.

  A frame?

  I pick it up and turn it around.

  My breath is stolen.

  I want to say something, even though I’m alone, and it comes out as a whimper. A hopeless whimper.

  It’s a photograph of my grandparents.

  Actually, it’s the photograph. The one from the bakery.

  I tear into the box and all the pictures are there. The ones I wanted. The ones Colt told me to leave.

  He got them.

  Somehow.

  I put the pictures back into the box and rush from my car, carrying the box. I’m crying, something I find easy to do around Colt because he’s found a way to open my heart that nobody has ever tried nor succeeded.

  I open the door to the apartment and Colt is standing there with his hands in his pockets.

  “You like?” he asks, knowing I opened the box in the car.

  I put the box down and dive at him. He catches me and spins, quickly carrying me towards the bedroom. I guess the box isn’t the only present I’m getting today.

  “I love it,” I say and kiss him.

  We kiss deep for a few seconds but I have to know.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I bought them from your aunt,” he says.

  “You bought them?”

  “Yeah. She had no idea what they were. Told her I was an old customer and needed them.”

  “She sold pictures of her parents...”

  “Oh well. Her lose, your gain.”

  I kiss him again and then say, “Our gain.”

  “I like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Our. The way it sounds.”

  Colt smiles and gently places me on the bed.

  I’m sitting and he’s kneeling. Our eyes are battling each other. We battle for love, time, and memory. Every second with Colt is a new memory.

  “Colt, you have no idea...”

  “Oh, I have an idea or two.”

  He reaches for the nightstand and opens the top drawer. That’s when I realize Colt isn’t on his knees anymore. He’s just on one knee.

  One knee.

  My eyes see a small black box as he takes it from the drawer.

  I gasp for air again, my heart racing.

  I know the answer to anything Colt would ever ask me... tonight and forever.

  If it’s a chance with Colt, it’s a chance I’ll take. Again and again.

  Acknowledgements

  Here’s a little story. There once was a person, sitting alone, in their room, with a pen touching a piece of paper. Something was happening, something special. All the books that had been read were coming to life in that mind, read
y to create something.

  And so it began with…

  ‘Once upon a time…’

  Sure, I may have started my writing career born out of cliché, but I was nine years old. What was that story about? Trust me, you don’t want to know. Just know this, from that moment on, I read and I wrote. It was my life, then and now. I acknowledge this because reading and writing kept me going through good times and bad.

  I love Isabella and Colt. It pained me to finish their story and it pains me right now to write this. They were such an important part of my life… and I hope yours.

  Thank you to my close friends who read this book and loved it. Thank you to my beta readers who took the book and tore it to shreds. I’m thankful you were nice enough to wrap it lovingly when you returned it to me in pieces. It turned out much better this way.

  Thank you to family and friends. To bloggers and reviewers.

  Most of all though, thank you to the readers. Whether you read my books or not – and whether you like my books or not – you are the life of books. It’s not the authors, it’s the readers. Because of your appetite for our ideas, we can continue having them.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First electronic edition February 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Ariel Ellens

  Published by Hundred to Home Publishing

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part of any form.