Chapter Seventeen
Prescott Chance was standing, looking down at her, in a pair of designer jeans and a white T-shirt that molded to his excellent physique. She was so stunned she simply sat and stared at him. No words came out of her mouth.
Since he was usually the quiet one and she was a natural born babbler, the silence stretched until she saw his lips quirk in amusement.
“Hello,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” was her somewhat stunned reply.
He walked over and sat beside her in the sand. “Looking for you.”
“How on earth did you find me? I didn’t even know I was coming here.”
“It was my mother.”
“Your mother?” She wondered if she’d been out in the sun too long and was having some kind of hallucination. Probably, Prescott wasn’t here at all and people all around her could see her having a conversation with thin air. Soon they’d gather up their children and move farther away from her. She’d end up in a tiny apartment with a lot of cats and spend her days talking back to the television.
“Yes,” the possible hallucination said to her. “My mother. I called her, you see. I thought you might have gone there.”
“Why would I go to your mother’s?”
“Why would you leave San Francisco without a word to me? Just up and leave. I went over Monday morning first thing and you were gone.”
Her head was feeling slightly fuzzy. “Prescott, you dumped me.”
“I have no idea why you would think such a thing.”
She stared at him. He was clearly not a hallucination because anything she made up in her head wouldn’t be so clueless. “Rupert fired me and then you said, ‘It’s probably for the best,’ and drove away in your limo. Any of this ringing a bell?”
“I said, ‘It’s for the best’ and you thought I was dumping you?” He seemed genuinely confused. “I said, I’d call you.”
“You drove away.”
“That’s what my mother said you probably thought.”
“And how did she know where I was?”
“She didn’t. She said I’d better find you and make things right or she’d come down to San Francisco and spank me.” He sounded so miffed that she suspected those were Daphne’s exact words.
“Did Daphne ever spank you before?” Somehow, it didn’t seem like her kind of child rearing.
He shook his head. “Jack and Daphne never laid a finger on any of us.”
“And now she wants to spank you.” She felt better by the second. “Daphne is a very intelligent woman.”
“Funny, she said the same thing about you. And then she told me I’d better find you. I tried to get James to put out a BOLO, but he said that if he found you he wasn’t giving you back to me.”
“A bolo?”
“Be on the lookout.”
“You tried to get the cops out looking for me?”
“Well, mostly just James. He says if things don’t work out with me, that he’d like to date you, by the way.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet of him.” She felt warm all over. “I love your family.”
“Seems they love you too. Anyway, I thought about it and then I remembered a conversation we had when you said that if you had extra time you’d take the slower coast road. I was desperate to find you and Luis had already told me you left all your electronics behind, so I’ve been stopping at every possible place along the way.”
“Luis talked to you?”
“I’d say yelled would be closer to the truth. But, when I explained the situation, he calmed down. Said to call him, by the way.”
All of this was nice but there was a big lumpy thing in the conversation that she needed to clarify. “Are you saying you didn’t dump me?”
“No. Why would I do that? You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I had a sudden vision for the house and I knew I’d lose it if I didn’t get it all down.”
“But why are you still working on that design? You saw what happened. Iona is never going to live in that house.”
He grinned and it occurred to her that he looked awfully pleased with himself. “I told you,” he said. “A place always has a spirit. That one chased Iona Rupert away. Of course it’s not her house. It was never her house.”
“I feel so bad for Luis’s grandparents. I can’t tell them the house hasn’t sold after all.”
“Of course it’s sold. I’m buying it.”
“You’re buying it?”
“Yes. I think it was always my house.”
“Your house?”
“Our house.”
“Our house?”
“Are you going to keep repeating everything I say?”
“I don’t know. Try it again.”
“I love you.”
“You do?”
He sighed. “Actually, that one, I wanted you to repeat.”
“Oh, Prescott,” she said. “Really?”
He pulled her to him then and kissed her so long and so hard that she could barely breathe. “I’ve redesigned the house for us. It came to me whole and perfect, a vision, right when the Ruperts drove away. I had to get it all down before I lost it, so I couldn’t stay and talk to you.” He let out a contented sigh. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever done. All green technology. There’s plenty of living space plus an office for me and a studio for you.”
“I get my own studio?”
“Sure. With soundproof walls. It’s a place to keep your mess and you can take Rupert’s calls. I can’t change you. Don’t even want to change you. So, we make it work.”
“But Rupert fired me.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, seems you got that one wrong too. Rupert called me looking for you and—”
“You heard him. He said, ‘Make yourself scarce.’”
“He claims all he meant was to keep a low profile until Iona got over herself.”
“Did it sound like that to you?”
“No. It sounded to me like he was firing you. But then I was having my vision so I wasn’t super focused.”
“So, I’m not fired?”
“No.” He dug her phone—the one that wasn’t at the bottom of a beer mug—out of his bag. “Here. He wants you to call him.”
Even as he handed the phone to her it started to ring.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Hello?”
“Holly. Alistair here. Listen, sorry about the little misunderstanding.”
He was using her name? Identifying himself? Using the word sorry? For Alistair Rupert this was a dozen roses delivered on his knees.
“I thought you fired me.”
“Course I didn’t fire you. I want you to stay out of the office for a couple a days, that’s all.”
“But—”
“Anyway, I’ve got good news. I’m putting you in charge of our real estate portfolio. You’ve got a knack. There’ll be a salary increase of course, a car. Things like that. Just stay out of the way for a couple of weeks, right? Things are a bit touchy on the home front at the moment.”
All her sweat and stress, the sleepless nights, the unreasonable demands, finally her eight months of slavery were paying off. She was getting what she’d wanted. A promotion into the Rupert empire. Looking after his real estate portfolio would be a huge job. Beyond what she could have dreamed of as her first promotion.
“Thank you for the offer, Alistair. I really appreciate it, but I’ve decided to start my own business.”
“What?” She heard him cough and imagined he’d dragged in more cigar smoke than he’d intended on her unheard of refusal of his offer.
Beside her, Prescott was silent but his surprise as evident.
“I’m going to be a wedding planner.”
“Are you now.” He puffed in and out a couple of times, getting the cigar going. “Well. Let’s keep in touch. I might be needing you. Cheerio.” And he was gone.
“He offered me a promotion.”
“He did.”
“And I quit my job.” She pulled him in for a kiss. “I am going to be a wedding planner.”
“You are going to be an amazing success.”
“Rupert said he might be needing me. I wonder who’s getting married?”
“He is, probably. I guess you haven’t seen the news. He got caught in Tokyo with another woman. The story hit the Internet yesterday. Iona Rupert’s already hired a celebrity divorce lawyer.”
She started to laugh. “If I plan Alistair Rupert’s wedding, that will definitely start my business with a bang.”
“And we’ll turn your home office into your wedding planning business.” He reached into his bag again. “Here. This is why I rushed over Monday morning. To show you the design.”
She was so surprised she choked a little. “Prescott, is that a tablet computer in your hands?”
“Of course it is. I do use technology, you know. But I’m not a slave to it. However,” he said, pulling up the design of their future home, “it has its uses.”
She fell in love with the design for the home he’d created for them. In love.
“Are you sure?” she asked as all her dreams seemed to be coming true while she sat on a beach towel by the ocean with the man she loved with all her heart.
When he took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes she saw the deep love in his and felt her own mist.
“When I met you,” he said, “I didn’t know I was broken. I had my life exactly the way I wanted it. Streamlined, efficient, I had complete privacy and controlled all my relationships. Then I met you and one by one you threw all my defenses out. It wasn’t until I faced up to why I’d become so distant that I realized you were the one who helped me connect again. I don’t know exactly when I fell in love with you, but I know that if I lost you now my life would always be poorer. Please marry me and help me create my greatest design. Our home.”
She kissed him. “Yes. Yes to all of it and I think you saved me as well. I was so stressed and overcommitted and on call 24/7. I didn’t even notice that my own life was slipping away from me. I was like another device in the Rupert empire. You made me see that and gave me the courage to take back my own life.”
“We’ll keep on saving each other.”
“That’s a deal. So, can I plan our wedding?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Our elopement, you mean. I don’t want a bunch of people at a wedding.”
“Prescott, I cannot be a wedding planner if I don’t even plan my own wedding.”
She caught him laughing at her and pushed him to the sand. They rolled until he was on top of her. He reached down and played with one of her curls. “I believe I told you once that I never change my mind.”
“I believe you did. In fact, I have it in writing.”
She grinned up at him and found him grinning back at her just as foolishly. They both knew she’d changed his mind and then his whole life.
Getting him to agree to a real wedding was going to be a snap.
“I tell you what,” she said, “I will show you—”
He stopped her by kissing her and when he did, she decided she could hold off arguing with him for a little while.
At least while she kissed him back.
THE END
For more on the Chance Family...
Take a Chance series:
Meet the Chance family, Jack and Daphne and their 11 grown kids, all finding their way through life and love with passion, humor and some help from the sibs.
Chance Encounter, Prequel
Kiss a Girl in the Rain, Take a Chance Book 1
Iris in Bloom, Take a Chance Book 2
Every Rose, Take a Chance Book 4
Love to Go, Book 5
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Frosted Shadow, Book 1
Ultimate Concealer, Book 2
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For all my other books, please check out my website or visit me on Facebook: