The Renegade (The Moorehouse Legacy #3)(65)

Alex had shrugged off the words with all the arrogance and self-possession of youth.

It was the last time he’d seen his father alive. Four years later the man had been dead. Alex’s mother, too. Both at the hands of the water.

Alex thought of the horrible night on the sea with Reese.

Reese was gone, as well.

As he stroked Cassandra’s belly, he felt a titanic shift in himself.

His woman stirred and lifted her head. “Good morning—Alex, what’s the matter?”

“I’m not going out again,” he said. “I’m not going back out there. I’m staying with you and the baby.”

“What…the sailing? You’re giving up the sailing?”

“Yeah. I am.”

A pained relief hit her face, but then she shook her head. “No, Alex, you love the—”

“I love you,” he said, kissing her. “The winning is cold and irrelevant compared to that. And nothing is worth the time away from you. Nothing.”

There was no way his wife and his child were going to have to fend for themselves and worry about whether he was coming home. And he didn’t want his sisters doing that anymore, either.

He was owning his own life from now on, not letting the need to compete drive him toward an ever-unreachable sunset.

Alex shifted his body to get even closer to Cassandra, feeling her soft skin brush up against his hard places.

One hard place in particular.

As her lids dropped and she started to smile, he laughed deep in his throat. The very male core of him was hungry for her again, in spite of the many times they’d reached for each other in the night.

But before his lips took hers, he pulled back. “Oh, no…”

“What?”

“Oh…hell. I left Spike down on the street.”

Cassandra sat up. “We better—”

Alex’s cell phone rang. Because Cassandra was closer to where his pants had landed, she leaned over and answered it. When she hung up, she was laughing.

“Spike doesn’t want to talk to you, but not because he’s mad. He doesn’t want to disturb us. He’s over at Sean’s and perfectly well. The two of them had a grand time last night, and they want to meet us for lunch. And Sean is thrilled, as he put it, that we came to our senses. He wants to know when the wedding is and where.”

Alex grinned. “You know, I might just warm up to that guy. And lunch sounds good.”

Because he was going to need some help. He had an engagement ring to buy. Between Spike and Sean, he figured the three of them could take on the diamond district.

“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Cass said as Alex pulled her back against his body, spooning himself around her.

He reached for her breast and nibbled on her shoulder. As she shivered and warmed under his hand, he murmured, “One more thing?”

“Spike said that Sean’s more of a gentleman than you are.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Um, I guess Sean didn’t make fun of his Wookie?”

Alex laughed and swept his palm down her body. “I’ll explain later. Right now, Miracle, it’s all about you.”





Epilogue


The renovations on White Caps were done in the late spring, but the bed-and-breakfast didn’t open for the season until the Fourth of July. Which was a conscious choice. The Moorehouse family was expanding so fast, it was all anyone could do to keep up with the changes. There were just so many moving vans and people coming and going….

Frankie and Nate decided to turn the whole barn into their private home. With the baby on the way, and more being hoped for, they knew they were going to need the extra space. Cassandra did all the planning work and Jay Dobbs-Whyte oversaw the on-site efforts. Frankie and Nate spent the first night in their new house at the end of June, a week before the B&B reopened for business.

Meanwhile, Joy and Gray bought a lovely duplex in Manhattan’s famed Dakota Building. Joy’s ball gowns were so popular with the New York City fashion set that she was besieged with commissions. Unable to handle all the work herself, she opened a small atelier in the garment district and hired two assistants, one who was good with shears and the other who was good with the phone. Gray accepted a teaching position at Columbia in the university’s political science department and authored a book on electoral theory that was very well received. Every weekend, without fail, the two of them flew upstate in their jet and landed at the Glens Falls airport. The drive to Saranac Lake from there was just about two hours. If Gray was behind the wheel.

As for Alex and Cass, they bought a house on the lakeshore three mansions down from Gray’s and four over from White Caps. The place was in absolute disrepair, a relic of the roaring twenties that had bats in its bedrooms and sagging floors and bathrooms that didn’t work. It was, in Cass’s words, absolutely beautiful. They stayed at Gray’s during the renovations and planned to be there until their baby was born sometime at the end of September. By early winter they hoped their renovations would be finished, but again, Cass wasn’t doing any on-site work. She was on bed rest, but tolerating the immobility well. As for Alex, he and the Norwich brothers began making sailboats. Now that Alex’s cast was off, he was able to drive himself wherever he wanted to go. Which somehow was never far from Cassandra.