I started trembling.

Hawk, Gwen’s man, arms went tighter.

The dark-haired man muttered a harsh, “Do not f**kin’ move,” to the man on the floor.

Then he stood, pulled a phone out of his back pocket, hit buttons and put it to his ear. Then his warm but intense and alert dark brown eyes came to me, he did a top-to-toe, they shifted up to Hawk then back to me. Then he said into his phone. “Yeah, it’s Lawson. We got her.

She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.”

We got her. She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.

That’s when I started crying.

Epilogue

He Got His Wish

The alarm went off.

It was music, Tim McGraw, and Brock heard Tess murmur sleepily, “What on earth?”

He grinned before he even opened his eyes.

She shifted away from him but before she could touch the button to turn off the music, he opened his eyes, caught her about the waist and pulled her back into his body.

She rolled in his arm and tipped her green eyes up to him, her light brown hair with its blonde highlights tousled and partly in her face.

“Who’s that?” she asked, lifting a hand to shift the soft tendrils out of her eyes.

“Tim McGraw,” he answered, understanding her question and knowing she had no f**king clue who Tim McGraw was. He’d spent more than a year introducing her to his music and she spent more than a year mostly ignoring these efforts.

The music started to get louder.

He watched her eyes narrow and it wasn’t because she didn’t have her glasses.

“How’d that get on my player?”

“I put it there.”

“You –” she began but he rolled into her so his body was on her soft, sweet one and he dipped his face close to hers.

“Baby,” he whispered, “it’s my birthday. I’m not wakin’ up to Fiona Apple.”

“Fiona wasn’t in the scheduled mix,” she informed him.

“Or Tori Amos,” he added.

“She wasn’t either.”

“Or Sarah McLachlan.”

“Her either.”

“Or Paula Cole.”

She snapped her mouth shut.

Yeah, there it was and Paula f**king Cole was definitely not scheduled for his birthday.

He felt his body start shaking and he heard Tim McGraw start to get louder.

He controlled his humor, dipped his face closer and again reminded her, “It’s my birthday.”

“I need to turn off the music.”

“Yeah, you can do that after you start my birthday right.”

“It’s getting louder.”

She wasn’t wrong. It was getting louder.

“Tess,” he growled as he pressed his body into hers, she bit her lip then the door flew open.

His head jerked back and he watched Joel and Rex walk in just as they had last year, just as Tess organized for him, her and Joel to walk into Rex’s room two days later with his cake and for them with Rex to walk into Joel’s room four days after that with his.

Joel was carrying a beautifully decorated birthday cake, undoubtedly carrot, his favorite, that held an abundance of tall, thin, blue candles all of them lit.

They were sing-shouting “Happy Birthday to You” over Tim McGraw and smiling like idiots.

He looked down at Tess who was grinning up at him, not like an idiot. Her eyes were warm, her face was soft and her smile was sweet.

All Tess.

He grinned back, bent his neck and touched his mouth to hers then he rolled off his wife onto a forearm in the bed and she rolled to the alarm, turning off Tim McGraw at around the time Rex and Joey were standing by the bed and drawing out, “Happy Birthday dear Daaaaaaaad,” to which Tess sat up in the bed and joined them for the last four words.

Joel shoved the cake forward and demanded, “Blow out the candles and make a wish.”

Brock “Slim” Lucas looked at his oldest son, his eyes moved to his youngest son and then they slid to his wife.

And when his eyes hit her shining ones he realized he had not one thing to wish for. Not one. There was nothing he wanted.

He had it all right there.

Except one thing.

So he leaned over Tess, silently made his wish and blew out the candles.

She hooted and clapped.

Rex stated, “So freaking cool! Just like last year! Cake for breakfast three days this week!”

Joel, having shot up in the last year, now well taller than Tess and definitely a boy-man only a week away from his fourteenth birthday, turned on his bare foot and started marching to the door declaring, “I’ll get plates.”

Rex, also having grown though nowhere near as much as his brother, still he was taller than Tess and nearly twelve therefore maintaining boy status but only just, followed him announcing, “I’ll get the milk.”

Tess threw back the covers and decreed, “I’ll start the coffee.”

He let her feet hit the floor before his arm curled around her waist again; he pulled her back into the bed and rolled over her.

Before she could say a word, he took his birthday kiss, he made it long, he did it hard and it was wet.

When he lifted his head and saw her eyes slightly dazed but mostly happy and still shining, he got his wish.

* * * * *

Brock walked up to the door that was opening before he got there. When he arrived, he jerked up his chin to the older man, the man tipped his down and stepped aside.

Brock stepped in.

The man closed the door and turned to him.

“Would you like coffee?” he asked, like he always asked.

Brock shook his head like he always shook his head, shoved his hand in his overcoat, pulled the envelope out of the inside pocket and handed it to the man.

Donald Heller took it. He didn’t even try to hide his eagerness when he instantly opened the folded-in flap and pulled out the pictures.

He never tried to hide his eagerness.

Head bent, he studied the snapshots of Tess with Joey, Rex and his family at Christmas.

Tess decorating a cake in the back of her new bakery. Tess standing in their kitchen, phone to her ear, laughing at something Elvira was saying. Tess in an ass to heels, knees to chest squat, her arm around Ellie’s waist, her head bent to listen to what Ellie was whispering in her ear, her body hidden by Ellie’s exceptionally girlie, pink flower girl dress.

And he stopped at the last and studied it for a long time.

It was a picture of Tess standing next to him in a classy ivory dress that hugged her rounded figure and skimmed her knees, her hair twisted in a sophisticated knot at the back of her head, her feet encased in a pair of high-heeled, f**k-me shoes, one hand holding a bouquet which was a mixture of blood-red and bright pink roses, the other arm wrapped around his back. Rex was to her back left, Ellie standing to her front left. Joel was to Brock’s back right, Levi at Joey’s side with Dylan and Grady in front of them. Martha was standing at Rex and Tess’s sides. Family and friends were scrunched all around behind the front crew.