They stood together watching the town wake up properly, watching neighbors emerge to clear snow and exchange gossip about the helicopter rescue and what it might mean. By noon, everyone would know. By evening, it would be settled fact—Dylan Flanagan and Aidan O’Hara, engaged after a dramatic storm rescue, the ring found, the last bachelor claimed, another chapter in Laurel Valley’s love stories.
“I love you,” Aidan said against her ear. “I’ve loved you since you walked into my life and started fixing things I didn’t even know were broken.”
“I love you too,” she replied.
“Our business, our family, our future,” he said. “We make a heck of a team.”
Our. Such a small word to carry so much weight. But as Dylan stood there in his arms, wearing a ring that had crossed oceans and centuries to find its way to her finger, surrounded by family that had chosen her before she’d known she wanted to be chosen, she understood that some weights weren’t burdens.
Some weights were anchors, keeping you steady in storms, keeping you moored to what mattered. Dylan had spent thirteen years running from the possibility of loss.
Now, she was ready to stand still long enough to see what grew.
Epilogue
December snow fell on the O’Hara ranch with the steady devotion of a lover’s promise, transforming the Montana landscape into something softer, more forgiving than the harsh land that had greeted Thomas and Seamus when they’d first claimed this valley in 1847. Through the farmhouse kitchen window, Dylan O’Hara watched winter paint the world white while flour dusted her hands like a blessing.
Two years since she’d married Aidan in a whirlwind week that still had the town talking. Two years since Pinnacle Restoration had opened its doors, fulfilling dreams she’d carried like stones in her pockets for thirteen years of running. Now Maggie squirmed in her arms—fourteen months of green-eyed determination wrapped in her father’s charm and her mother’s iron will.
The claddagh ring caught the light as Dylan shifted the baby—an O’Hara family treasure, centuries old, blessed in Galway before the famine sent desperate souls across the Atlantic. It had witnessed every storm, every joy, every loss that had shaped this family from Irish rebels to Montana royalty.
“She’s going to rule the world, that one,” Anne said, appearing with the timing of a woman who’d orchestrated decades of family gatherings in this kitchen. Her red hair, silver threaded now but still glorious, caught the light as she moved through her domain. “Just like her father at that age. Always into everything.”
Through the window, the sycamore trees stood skeletal against the sky, their bony branches framing Twin Peaks in the distance—those mountains that had watched over every O’Hara triumph and heartbreak since the beginning.
The kitchen door—never locked because O’Haras believed in open doors and full hearts—burst open with winter wind and children’s laughter. Harrison tumbled through first, five years of barely contained energy, with older sister Mary Catherine behind him, rolling her eyes at his immaturity.
“The road’s getting interesting,” Duncan announced, following his children inside, snow melting in his black hair. Hattie moved through the doorway with late pregnancy’s awkward grace, one hand protective over the child who’d arrive within the next month.
“That’s everyone except Colt,” Anne said, checking her mental roster. “He’s always late these days.”
“Doctor’s hours,” Mick said from the doorway of his office, definitely not smelling of cigar smoke, definitely not having just used his portable fan. His blue eyes—that brilliant Irish blue—twinkled with the mischief of a man who’d been getting away with things for sixty years.
Within the hour, the farmhouse filled with O’Haras like water finding its level. Wyatt and Raven with their twins, Patrick and Seamus, chaos in motion. Sophie and Hank with three-year-old Liam and fifteen-month-old Grace, Sophie glowing with the beginnings of a new pregnancy. And finally Colt and Zoe, her writer’s schedule making them perpetually late, their three-year-old twins and baby Eleanor completing the set. Chewy padded in behind them, more dignified than he had been in his youth.
“Complete chaos out there,” Colt announced cheerfully. “Roads are getting bad.”
“Wouldn’t be Christmas without a storm,” Mick said with satisfaction.
When Anne rang Margaret O’Hara’s bell—silver worn smooth by decades—everyone moved toward the dining room with the ease of tradition. It took the usual negotiations to get everyone seated, high chairs multiplying like miracles, children vibrating with Christmas Eve energy.
Mick stood at the head of the table, and when he raised his weathered hands, even the babies stilled. The candlelight flickered across his face as he began the ritual that anchored them all.
“Before we feast,” he said, his voice carrying that Irish lilt that emerged for moments that mattered, “we remember.”
The room held its breath, even the children sensing the weight of history.
“We remember those brothers who fled Ireland with nothing but determination. Who found this valley and planted the stake here when they could have kept running. Who built with hands that bled and backs that broke but hearts that wouldn’t quit.”
His gaze traveled to each son’s wife, and Dylan felt herself seen, claimed, woven into a story that had started centuries before her birth.
“We remember that O’Haras have always been saved by the women brave enough to take them on. Raven, who kept faith through secrets and storm. Zoe, who literally got knocked into love and decided the concussion was worth keeping. Hattie, who chose to trust again when trust seemed impossible. Sophie, who built beauty from ashes. And Dylan…”
The pause stretched like honey, sweet and golden.
“Dylan, who stopped running long enough to restore not just cars but the heart of my son who’d forgotten what it meant to stand still.”
He raised his glass, wine catching light like liquid rubies.
