Page 117 of The Summer that Changed Everything
“She didn’t have any choice. I finally demanded we call her doctor together. When she wouldn’t agree to do even that, I realized she’d fabricated the whole thing. So I checked her computer and found where she’d downloaded the audio file of a fetus’s heartbeat from the internet.” He grimaced. “It’s sickening that anyone could go to such lengths...”
“You must be furious. And devastated.”
“I’m furious but not devastated. I’mrelieved,” he said with a carefree smile. “Our marriage probably wouldn’t have worked out, anyway. What she did just made it easy.”
“I can’t... I can’t believe this,” Lucy said. “What about your brother?”
“He’s probably going to serve some time—maybe three to five years—but not nearly as much as Kevin Claxton.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said, “and that just makes me love you all the more. I need you in my life, Lucy. Will you marry me?”
Speechless, Lucy stared up at him.
“This is where you answer,” he said with a laugh.
“You’re seriouslyproposingright now?”
“I know it’s crazy fast and might not be the most romantic approach. I’ll make it up to you. But I need to know I can count on it. I’m not going to risk anything coming between us ever again.”
She felt a smile spread across her face. She’d never experienced such a sense of pure joy. “Yes, of course,” she said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense since I’ve never loved anyone as much as I do you.”
Epilogue
One year later...
When Ford saw his mother standing on the deck, looking out at the sea, he left the other guests at the party and went to stand next to her. “That’s quite a view, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous,” she agreed.
“Are you starting to have second thoughts about selling your interest in this place to me?” he asked. According to the trust, she was supposed to get a portion of the sale proceeds, but she’d agreed to let him buy her out at market prices.
“No. Coastal Comfort is where you belong,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy. And Houston needed his interest in this place to pay his legal fees. At leastIstill get to come visit.” She lifted the champagne flute she held in one hand and clinked it against his. “I’m glad you’re keeping it. I’m also glad Paris didn’t get her filthy paws on it.”
His father’s widow had driven a hard bargain, but he’d managed to work out a settlement with her that they could all live with.
He jerked his head in the general direction of Lucy, who was in the living room holding her own champagne flute, talkingto her friend, Missy, who’d come out from Las Vegas, and her father, who’d extended the lease on the Smoot cottage because he, too, wanted to remain in North Hampton Beach—close to them. “Lucy and I both love it here,” Ford told his mother. “We’ll have to get a place in the city soon, of course, so I can be closer to the office. But we should be able to spend most of our summers here.”
“Has she sold her condo in Vegas yet?”
Christina had gotten the DC apartment in the divorce, so he hadn’t needed to sell that. He didn’t mind seeing the apartment go, but it had been hard to give up Mo. Fortunately, the dog seemed happier with her thanhe’dbeen. “Not yet. We just put it on the market last week.”
The wind stirred his mother’s hair; she lifted a hand to keep it out of her face. “Are you sure she won’t regret leaving her poker playing days behind?”
“She might play an online game now and then. But she’s ready for a change, something new. She wants to go to school and earn a degree in finance.”
“Finance?”Sara said. “I’d be terrible at that.”
“I know,” he said drily.
When she shot him a dirty look, they both laughed.
“Lucy’s also interested in art history,” he said. “Maybe she’ll go for that instead. I want her to have the chance to do all the things she never got to do when she was younger.”
“You spoil that woman,” she said, but the smile on her face indicated she knew it was because of how much he loved her, and she was happy for him.
“She spoils me, too,” he responded with a shrug.
