We raised our glasses, and their eyes turned to me.
But mine were on Maisie, my heart too big for my chest, straining my ribs. “If love were a commodity, we would all be filthy rich. To family and future. To faith and forgiveness.” I pulled Maisie into my side, where she fit with perfect precision. “To the Bennets, every last one.”
Hear, hear! rang out, but she and I didn’t drink.
We occupied our lips otherwise instead.
32
Can Do
MAISIE
Absolute and utter joy.
It zinged around the room, riding every laugh, clinging to every hug. It sparkled in tears, lingered on fingertips, hung on every word.
After the tumult of the last few days, I rode that high like a bird on the breeze.
Marcus and I didn’t separate by more than a foot through it all, and the minute the champagne flutes were empty and the conversation slowed, he swept me away like I’d been dreaming of since the whole ordeal began.
I truly was swept—he towed me out the door, the two of us rushing toward his house without speaking even though there was so much to say. But I sensed there would be plenty of time for that. Forever in fact.
Now wasn’t the time for words.
And moments later, the world was locked away outside his door, and it was only us.
A breath, and I was in his arms, his lips against mine, my back against the wall, his hips pinning me, holding me still. As if there were anywhere else in the world I’d rather be. Hands roamed, tasting what we’d missed, cataloging what had been absent, promising never to leave again. Never to doubt.
Only to trust. Only to forgive.
Only to love.
Rough and possessive was the unending kiss, wild were his hands. With a shift and a purposeful press of his body, my thighs hooked around his waist, skirt hiked to my hips and a gasp on my lips. He was demand and request, assertion and submission. He was a living declaration of relief and adoration.
It was a claiming of my lips, of my body. Of my heart and of my soul.
Marcus broke the kiss to bury his face in my neck, his lips slowing as he tugged the reins of his composure. Breathless, I mewled.
He chuckled, pressing a final kiss to the bend of my neck before leaning back to look at me. To catalog my features, recording and registering them, smiling at them with the admiration of a collector.
“I missed you,” he said simply, tenderly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer you sooner.”
“I should have been more clear regarding my intentions, but I didn’t quite know how to ask you to marry me in a text.”
With the flip of my heart, I laughed. Until he chased that laughter away with a kiss, swallowing it until it was his.
It took little more than a hitch for him to lift all my weight, holding me in place with a hand on my ass, my legs still locked around his waist as he carried me up the stairs. I kicked off my shoes with twin thumps on the stairs behind us.
“You asked me to marry you,” I mused.
“And you said yes.”
“I told you I wanted to be a Bennet. Did you really think I’d say no?”
“Well, I hoped you wouldn’t, but there was always a chance.”
“No, there wasn’t.”
He stopped near the top of the stairs to kiss me again, breaking only to trot up the rest in a gallop that had me giggling and bouncing around his waist. And in a few breaths, I found myself in his bed, looking into the eyes I’d love my whole life.
For a moment, we just watched each other with quiet smiles.
“Your mother gave you the company,” he said in wonder. “I cannot believe she gave it up.”
“I can’t even imagine how deeply she’ll regret that when we rebrand as Longbourne.”
I laughed it off, but Marcus’s brows gathered.
“Are you sure that’s what you want? The business is Bower. It’s always been Bower. That is your legacy.”
“But that’s the thing. I don’t want Bower for what it is. I want it for what it could be. I don’t want her legacy. I want to make one of my own. For me. For us. For our children.” The word lingered between us, thick with hope and promise.
“Bower will not survive, not as it is. The board and I came up with a plan, a way not only to survive, but to rebuild. We’ll close the offices and the magazine. Trim down our staff and tighten the business. Our distribution is strong, but the flash my mother so loved has to go. We’ll focus on our storefronts. Take a boutique approach. Use what we already have in the way of marketing and management to shift us in a new direction. And what better direction than a rebrand? What better way to rebrand than to separate ourselves from what we were? I am the face of my company—a fresh, new face with new ideas. If there was any time to rebrand, it’s now. And if there’s one thing I want to invest in, it’s the Bennets.”
He opened his mouth to speak but kissed me instead, his hand holding my face and his lips slow. And after, he watched me again.
“Why Longbourne though? Why not rebrand both of us as something entirely new?”
“Why strip your legacy simply because I’ve forsaken mine? Longbourne is iconic in the boutique world. Think of it, Marcus—all my mother ran were impersonal, big-box flower shops. No one would trust a Bower boutique, especially not after what she’s done and the press that’s come along with it. And no one would know what to make of something entirely new. But if someone walked past a Longbourne shop with one of Tess’s displays in the window, they would be charmed and enchanted, just like everyone is. What you have, what your family has built, is spellbinding. Your story is alluring in its honesty, in its truth. Your family is inspiring, and I … I still can’t quite believe I’ll get to be a part of it.”
“Believe it.” He took my left hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
“And now you and I can save both of our legacies. We can save them together. I don’t think I’d be brave enough to do it without you.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. You can do anything, Maisie.”
“If you’re by my side, I know I can.”
“I’ll be by your side forever.” A pause. “I should have forgiven you.”
“And I never should have doubted you. I didn’t blame you for being hurt, not when I betrayed you like I did. I’m just so thankful you took me back. Even if you hadn’t, the only way I’d keep my Bower shares was if you were running it with me.”
“What would you have done?” he asked quietly.
“I’d have bought the charity from the board and sold the rest of my shares off. Thrown myself into that. Probably would have adopted a handful of cats while I was at it, really kick off my spinster life.”
Marcus chuckled. “No way you wouldn’t get snapped up.”
“It wouldn’t have been fair to them, seeing as how I’ll love you until I die.”
“From the first time I ever saw you until the last breath I take.”
“I knew it even then. Even when we were apart, I think I knew we would find a way back to each other.”
“I wouldn’t have given up,” he said.