So cute.
He took the score from Rosie with the greatest of care, however, and looked down at it. As his eyes skimmed across the page, reading the notes, following the tempo, a faint frown tugged at his brows. He turned the page, his eyes lifting briefly back to the tense woman before him. “Yes. If you want me to, I’d be honored. But I’m not sure it’s what you’re expecting.”
He crossed to the piano and sat down, placing the papers on the music stand before he pushed up the sleeves of his jumper. Sylvie just had time for a spike of lust—honestly, all Dominic had to do in the future was bring out his forearms and plop down at his piano, and half the work was done for him where foreplay was concerned.
But as he set his long fingers to the keys and began to play, any light amusement faded. Patrick’s composition, the music that had poured from him in his dying days, the story of his life and his love, wasn’t the wrenching sadness Rosie had feared. It was deep and rich, first fast and lilting in tempo, then slow and passionate—a man falling in love, finding himself, seeing the world differently. Somehow, as Sylvie stood listening, the music twirling around her, she heard nothing but gratitude. The sheer thankfulness of having known her, of having been them. It didn’t matter for how long.
It was happiness.
It was joy.
By the time the last note drifted away, as if a final bittersweet ghost had slipped out through the window and into the stars beyond, Rosie was in Johnny’s arms, her arms wrapped around his neck, her head buried against his shoulder.
And her body free of every last scrap of tension.
Dominic rose from the piano, looking at Sylvie. Silently, they left the other couple in their own world, following a security guard back through the halls of the eerily quiet palace.
In the deserted courtyard outside, in the shadow of Abbey Hall, they stood on stone steps and looked at each other in the light of the streetlamps.
The rain had stopped today after what seemed like weeks, the ground hardening with a thin layer of ice, and a hint of the moon shone through the dark clouds above.
Dominic finally spoke. “Competitors at work. And outside of Magnolia Lane?”
His face was difficult to read in the weak light and shadows, but his hands took hers, his grip tightening immeasurably as she spoke.
Simple words for something so wondrously immense. “On and away from Magnolia Lane, you’re my business rival. My friend.” Their fingers linked. “The man I’ve fallen in love with so hard that sometimes I look at you and I can’t breathe.”
The look in his eyes was one she’d never forget. And there was a lump in her throat as he spoke.
“You walked into my life, tipped it upside down, and when it finally righted—you were right there in the center. In a very short space of time, you’ve changed everything.” He lowered his head. Against her mouth, he said, with a lightness he obviously didn’t feel, “Bane of my existence four years ago. The best part of it now.”
Her breath shuddered inward. “This really is . . . it. The real thing.”
His hands came up to cup her cheeks and he kissed her again.
She was kissing him back, but tears were a thick burn in her chest, and she had to break off to press her closed eyes against his neck. “Still a little scary.”
His arms locking at the base of her spine, he rested his cheek on her head. “Still fucking terrifying.”
“I’m so glad I saw your forbidding scowl on TV and decided to apply for Operation Cake anyway.”
“Clearly, so am I, but don’t expect a follow-up that I’m grateful your version of Cupid’s arrow was a unicorn catapult.”
Her laughter was echoed in his eyes as they stood entwined under the night sky, the ice glittering on the ground beneath their feet, the growing moonbeams slipping through the faint mist.
Despite everything, as the Sugar Fair motto said, Vita est plena magices.
Life is full of magic.
Epilogue
The cake stood towering and majestic on the gold state table. Six feet tall, it had come in at eight tiers, arranged to wind upward like the circular staircase that Rosie adored in St. Giles Palace. A photograph in the records at Abbey Hall had shown Rosie and Patrick sitting together on the landing, hand in hand, feet crossed. During her childhood, Patrick had apparently propped his great-niece on that banister and slid her down as they laughed and laughed, her mother and their advisors looking on in frozen disapproval. The cake stand had been designed to reflect the same Georgian carvings etched into that stairwell.
Both the top tier—Rosie and Johnny’s portion, to be preserved for their first wedding anniversary—and the largest bottom tier were flavored with Midnight Elixir; the remaining cakes alternated dark and white chocolate, with one obligatory fruitcake to appease the traditionalists.
The overhead lights hit the Serch Bythol sculpture on the utmost tier, the sugar crystals shimmering and dancing like a cascade of diamonds. The planes of the cake beneath were clean and crisp, and the sugar stained-glass panels caught every light on the ceiling, throwing back shimmering rainbow rays. Sylvie was most proud of the silhouette that circled the middle stained-glass tiers—the skylines of London and Johnny’s family estate in Lancashire. Only when viewed at close range did a second, hidden skyline emerge from within the reflective depths—the fantasy lands of I, Slayer, complete with a tiny flying dragon. It was a work of art—and even now, she was taken aback by the level of harmony they had achieved, twining together two very different styles.
In honor of the union of two very different people, whose lives would hopefully interlock just as successfully.
She stood at the edge of the crowd, watching Rosie and Johnny doing a very decent Charleston in the center of a ballroom that had probably seen far more scandal over the centuries than the starchy décor would suggest. Dominic’s warmth pressed behind her before his hands came to rest on her ribs.
His fingers moved as if he was enjoying the sensual glide of her silk dress—or just the feel of her body, which he traced with lips and hands almost every night and treated with more reverence than the most beautiful and valuable of masterpieces.
His mouth touched her neck, making her shiver as he said into her ear, “Quite a contrast to the public part of the proceedings.”
Eye-openingly so. She put her hands over his, unconsciously stroking his knuckles. On the dance floor, the band switched to classic rock and Johnny started undulating his hips. The intention was presumably Elvis; the execution was more like an emu that had just been stung by a bee. He was doing extraordinary things with his neck. As a mating dance in the wild, it would have netted him eternal bachelorhood, but his new wife seemed genuinely impressed. Definitely true love.
After the pomp and solemnity of the day, the ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral beamed out to millions across the globe and the carriage procession that had packed the streets of London, she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting for the private reception—high tea and a cotillion, probably. However, the moment the gates of St. Giles Palace had closed and Rosie and Johnny had completed the obligatory balcony snog for the screaming crowds—Rosie passing off the moment smoothly when Johnny came in too quickly in his nervous state and very obviously bit her lip—the vibe had jumped straight to the level of Ibiza nightclub.