Josh stared at him in surprise. “Did Melanie see the same clip I saw? I thought Ashley was amazing.”
Mike grinned. “You’d think she was amazing if she drew little stick figures and called it art.”
“Possibly,” he admitted.
“I assume, though, that seeing her on TV is what put you in this odd mood,” Mike said.
He nodded.
“Why?” Mike asked.
“What if she decides she has to stay up there and fight for her reputation?”
Mike gave him a bland look. “What if she does?”
“How the hell will we work things out then?”
“Creatively,” Mike said. “Planes fly. The phones around here work. You’ll manage, at least if you want to badly enough.” He gave him a sly look. “Or you could move to Boston.”
Josh shuddered. “Not likely.”
“You would if you loved her enough and it was where she had to be.”
Would he do that in the name of love? Josh tried to imagine it and couldn’t. Unfortunately, he couldn’t envision his life anywhere without Ashley in it. He supposed if that meant moving to Boston, he’d find a way to handle it. He’d played in a shark-infested pool before. He could do it again, especially with Ashley added to the stakes.
In the meantime, though, maybe he’d take a leap of faith and put a deposit down on office space right here in town. With luck, he’d find a place with room enough for two lawyers just in case she decided to come back and they worked things out.
He got to his feet, grabbed a jacket and headed for the door.
Mike stared after him without budging. “Where are you going?”
“To put a down payment on my future,” he said at once. “Want to come?”
Mike grinned. “Can I call Melanie first?”
“Absolutely not.”
Mike seemed to weigh that for a minute, then shrugged. “Oh, well. How much hell can she put me through? Count me in.”
Ashley had been back in town for twenty-four hours and she still hadn’t seen Josh. She’d debated simply calling him, but each time she’d reached for the phone, she’d stopped herself. She’d done a lot of thinking in Boston and she knew what she wanted. At least she thought she did.
She did know that they needed to have this conversation in person. She wanted to look into his eyes when she told him she was staying. She needed to see if that mattered to him at all.
Half a dozen times she was tempted to take her kayak out on the water and paddle along until she ran into him, hopefully not literally again. But she had too much pride to do it. Besides, it was cold as hell out and he was the one who owed her an apology, at least almost as much as she owed him one. She had to give him time to reach that conclusion on his own. If he didn’t, well, she could still take matters into her own hands. She wouldn’t let this absurd impasse go on forever.
Maybe the delay was a good thing. Maybe she could manage to think clearly about what she really wanted without getting her hormones all tangled up in the decision. In Boston, she’d all but made up her mind to open a practice right here, but was it what she really wanted? Or had it been a knee-jerk reaction after she’d accepted that there was nothing left for her back home?
And how much of her thinking had been based on having a future with Josh? Could she stay here in this quiet place, maybe go into private practice, if Josh were never to be a part of her life?
She sat beside her kitchen window looking out at the brilliant blue sky, the calm water reflecting the trees that had already turned, their leaves now bright splashes of autumn colors. She felt the once-familiar calm steal through her. How long had it been since she’d known such a blissful lack of stress? Years, if she were being totally honest about it. She’d thought she needed the stress to survive, but she didn’t. She’d discovered that other things made her feel alive.
Yes, she could stay. In fact, she was eager to stay. She’d tapped into a serenity here that she’d never expected to want or enjoy. Now she knew she needed it to be a whole woman and not just a workaholic lawyer.
And she had family here. Maggie and Melanie were building their lives here. Boston would always be home, but with her parents and Jo still there, she could visit as often as she wanted to. Maybe this place was even in her soul, just as it was in her mother’s. Maybe there was something to this whole roots business that made her feel as if she’d come home, rather than run away from it.
She glanced around Rose Cottage and considered the whimsical notion that it was magical. Maybe it was. Two of her sisters had fallen in love here. There was no denying that. Now she was on the same path.
“I want to stay,” she said aloud, testing the words, testing the sentiment. The instant she’d said it, the last of the second thoughts faded and she felt an even deeper kind of peace steal through her.
An hour later she was standing in front of a building with office space for rent in Irvington. Real estate wasn’t exactly easy to come by now that the area had been discovered by other professionals looking for a more lei surely way of life.
“Sorry I’m late, but my other appointment took longer than I expected. I have to tell you that someone else is interested in this space, too,” the real estate agent said when she finally arrived looking harried. “He looked at it an hour ago.”
Ashley seized on what the woman hadn’t said. “But he didn’t put down a deposit?”
“No. He had to go home for his checkbook. I probably shouldn’t even be showing it to you, since he said he’d be back any minute now, but I’ve had enough be-back customers in my day to know to hedge my bets. I want to be honest with you, though. If he does show up, he has first crack at it.”
Ashley slipped into full-lawyer mode. Even without going inside, she could tell this space would be perfect. It was on a main street in a Victorian house that had been converted to offices. The available space was on the first floor with windows facing the street and the giant oak tree that shaded the porch. The building had history, substance and charm. She was ready to fight for it. “Did he sign any papers? Did you make a verbal agreement to hold it?”
The woman looked at her curiously. “Let me guess. You’re a lawyer.”
Ashley gave her a rueful nod. “I guess it shows.”
“Funny. It showed on him, too.” Her eyes lit speculatively. “It’s a big space. If you hit if off, maybe you could hook up, go into practice together.”
“I don’t think so,” Ashley said, but the words trailed off when she spotted Josh pulling into a parking space right beside them.
“Is that the other prospective tenant?” she asked the woman.
“Oh, my,” she said worriedly. “It is. I hope he’s not furious about this.”
“Let me handle it,” Ashley said, then snatched a dollar out of her pocket. “There’s my deposit. You’ll get the rest in ten minutes.”
“But you haven’t even seen it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ashley said. “It will do. Now I have another negotiation to complete. Meet me inside in ten minutes.”
The agent glanced from Josh to her and back again. “If you say so.”
He looked so good. Better than he had a right to. He should have looked as miserable as she had felt every minute since they’d fought. He stood where he was, regarding her suspiciously.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Same thing you are, apparently. Trying to rent office space.”
An unmistakable spark of hope lit in his eyes. “Really?”
She nodded, her gaze locked on his face. “I’m staying, Josh. You’ll just have to get used to it.”
“So am I,” he said easily. “Think you can get used to that?” There was an undeniable challenge in his voice.
She nodded confidently. “I know I can. In fact, I was counting on it.”
Silence fell. It lasted for what seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke again.
“Think we can get past the mistakes we both made
?” he asked. “You were awfully furious with me.”
“Are you reminding me of how angry I was just so I’ll give up and let you have this office?”
“I’m reminding you because I need to know that’s in the past. I’m reminding you because I love you and I hate being separated from you. I want you to be sure, because it would kill me if you walked away again.”
She barely contained a sigh of relief. “I have an idea,” she said, kicking pride out of the window to reach for what she wanted, what she needed. “Want to rent part of that space from me? I’ll negotiate a fair deal.”
He grinned. “Nice try, but that space is mine. I might consider letting you share it.”
She gave him a wicked grin of her own. “I’m the one who put a deposit down, smart guy.”
“But I had a verbal agreement with the agent. I can sue to make sure she honors it.”
“You could,” Ashley admitted.
“Then, again, I think I might have a better idea.”
“Oh?”
“We could get married and share a life that just happens to include this office space.”
Why quibble over terms, when it was the deal she’d been praying for? She held out her hand. “Deal.”
“Just like that?” he asked, looking vaguely surprised.
“I’m going to trust my judgment on this one. I don’t think it’s letting me down, after all.”
“I won’t let you down, that’s for sure. Not if I can help it.”
Instead of taking her hand, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. “Now we have a deal,” he said firmly. “We’ll seal it in a church with all the appropriate bells and whistles, but it’s binding now.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer,” she said, oddly pleased. It was something she would have said herself, if he’d given her the chance.
“You’re not still furious that I don’t fish for a living?”
She shook her head. “Not as long as you take me with you from time to time when we play hooky from the office.”
“That’s a promise.”
“And you’ll bait my hook,” she said, going for broke as long as he was in such an amenable mood.
He laughed. “You can bait your own hook, sweetheart. In fact, I should probably have you bait mine. You’ve reeled in more fish lately than I have.”
She wound her arms around his neck. “Reeled myself in a big one just this afternoon, in fact.”
Ashley glanced up just then and saw the real estate agent staring down at them with a stunned expression.
“We’ll take it,” she called up.
A grin spread over the woman’s face.
“What made you say yes so quickly?” Ashley asked Josh. “I know I’d hurt you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I saw you slip her that dollar and this was the only way I could think of to make sure my law practice didn’t wind up homeless.”
“You’d marry me just to have a decent law office?” she inquired with a hint of indignation.
“No, I’d marry you under any condition. The office is just a nice bonus,” he assured her.
“How will I ever know that for sure?”
“To prove how much I love and respect you, I’ll let you put your name first on the door. How about that?”
“D’Angelo and Madison? Sounds good to me.”
He shook his head. “Madison and Madison sounds even better.”
Ashley laughed. “You really are a clever lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Takes one to know one, darlin’.”
Epilogue
“I am getting very tired of my daughters getting married in such a hurry that there’s no time to plan a proper wedding,” Colleen D’Angelo said wearily as the entire family relaxed in the parlor of the family home in Boston after Ashley and Josh’s wedding ceremony.
The guests had gone, but Ashley and Josh were still there. He’d insisted on going over the marriage license one last time to make sure every t had been crossed and every i had been dotted. Ashley could have told him they had been because she’d gone over it herself, several times, in fact.
She slipped her arms around his waist. “You know that piece of paper isn’t what really matters,” she told him.
“Then why’d we go through all this fuss that obviously wore your mother out just to get it?”
“Because living in sin wasn’t in the cards. In this family, we do things the old-fashioned way.”
He turned and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You don’t strike me as an old-fashioned woman, Mrs. Madison. Are you going to stay home with the kids and bake cookies?”
“Nope,” she said complacently. “I’m going to bring them with me to the office and pick up cookies from the bakery on the way. I think they’ll get over the trauma of it.”
He laughed. “I imagine they will.” He studied her intently. “We never talked about kids. Maybe we should have. How many do you want?”
“Two, three. How about you?”
“I’m rather partial to four. I like the way you and your sisters stick together. I want our kids to have that.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that there are four of us. It has to do with the way we were raised. Loyalty was ingrained in us.”
“I know.” He glanced over at Jo. “What will happen to Jo now that the rest of you are going to be in Virginia? Won’t she be a little lost?”
Ashley had worried about the very same thing. She’d even tried discussing it with Jo, but her baby sister had insisted she was going to be just fine in Boston. Unspoken was the fact that Jo had always kept herself a little apart from the rest of them.
“She says she’s content here,” Ashley said.
“I suppose she can always come and visit,” Josh suggested.
“I said the same thing, but she had the oddest reaction. She brushed me off. She said she wasn’t like the rest of us, that she had no intention of running away to Rose Cottage, not ever, no matter what happened in her life.”
Josh looked as perplexed by that as Ashley had been. “I suppose there’s no law that she has to like it down there, just because you, Melanie and Maggie do,” he said.
“But that’s just it,” Ashley protested. “She always loved it as much as we did when we were kids. In fact, she could hardly wait to get back there each summer.”
“Things change,” Josh said. “She’s an adult now.”
“I still think it’s weird. A couple of times when she drove down with us, she acted almost as if she didn’t want to go out in public, as if she was afraid of something.”
Josh’s gaze turned speculative. “Or someone.”
Ashley stared at him, her indignation immediately rising. “Do you think someone there hurt her?”
Josh grinned. “Slow down, tiger. I’m merely speculating. And to tell you the truth, I think there are a lot more interesting things we could be doing on our wedding night than worrying about your baby sister and manufacturing problems where there might not be any at all.”
Ashley immediately responded to the heat in his eyes. “Think so?”
“Know so,” he said. “I know this cozy little gathering is all for us, but I say it’s time to head for our hotel room. We can get a head start on our honeymoon.”
She laughed. “I think we’ve been getting a head start on that for weeks now. Where are we going, by the way? You still haven’t told me.”
“Because it’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
He grinned. “I know, my darling control freak, but you’ll love this one. Trust me.”
She sighed and pressed her forehead to his, surrendering. “I do,” she said softly. Despite everything that had happened to her, despite the betrayals she’d suffered, she did trust this man with her heart.
That didn’t mean she didn’t want to know where they were going first thing in the morning, though. “How am I supposed to pack?” she groused.
“Maggie packed for you,”
he assured her, his eyes glinting with amusement. “Besides, it’s a honeymoon. How much clothing could you possibly need?”
“A lot more than you’re obviously anticipating,” she said, “especially if you keep playing games with me.”
“I’ve got it covered,” he insisted. “I promise.”
“Is it warm? Cold?”
“There will be heat,” he said cheerfully.
“Indoors or out?”
“Wherever we are,” he assured her.
“You’re really not going to tell me, are you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a man’s job to plan the honeymoon.”
“Who says?”
“I read it somewhere.”
She laughed at that. “You have not been reading books on wedding etiquette.”
“I needed something to put me to sleep during all those lonely nights you were up here planning the wedding.”
“I was gone for a week.”
“Too long,” he insisted. “One night is too long.”
She smiled. “Then isn’t it lucky that we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives?”
“Damn straight,” he said, waving the marriage license under her nose. “I made sure of it.”
“No loopholes?” she teased.
“Not a one. This thing is airtight. Not even a lawyer as clever as you could find a loophole.”
“Good,” she said, pleased. “Because I intend to hold you to it.”
Josh laughed. “Never doubted it for a minute.”
For the Love of Pete
Prologue
“Pack your bags and come to Virginia,” Ashley commanded the morning after Jo’s life had been turned upside down by her lying, cheating ex-fiancé.
Jo sighed. She’d planned to spend the whole day in bed, licking her wounds in private, maybe eating the en tire pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream she had stashed in the freezer. Her funk had been interrupted before it could even get going by this call from all three of her sisters. She knew they were all on the line, even though Ashley was the only one who’d spoken so far. She could hear them breathing, while they left the coaxing to their big sister.
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