THE RETIREMENT VILLAGE where Evie’s granddad now lived was light, bright and inviting. No wind whistling through the old walls the way it had on the old farm. Central heating rather than a tetchy fireplace. And plenty of company of people his own age.
It must have been someone’s birthday, as helium balloons bobbed about on the ceiling.
She spotted her granddad through the crowd the moment he spotted her.
“Evie, love!” he cried. “Christmas Evie. Happily Evie After.” He came at her with a plate full of cake. And when she fell into her granddad’s wiry hug she felt as though she could cry for a year.
“Come,” he said. “Sit.”
Evie came. She sat. Perched on the edge of a cool plastic chair. A table covered in paper plates, with half-eaten cake, scones and smatterings of cut soft fruit.
“Evie!” a woman called, and the word went around, “It’s Evie.”
She knew what they were after. She handed over her bag of beanies, and the women snapped them up, oohing and ahhing over the pom-poms, the cats’ ears, the lurid colours.
Her granddad frowned at the stash. “Hope you haven’t been spending all your spare time knitting for this lot.”
“Hush,” said one, giving him a nudge. And a smiling side eye. Norma, Evie thought, giving herself a mental note to ask about that later.
“Not all,” Evie said. “I’ve been working a lot. Hanging out. Making new friends. Just like you wanted me to do.”
“And Zoe?”
“Lance is back. For good. He’s moved in with her, in fact. They are blissed out.”
“Good for them. And you, Evie, love,” said Granddad. “Have you found yourself a nice young man who...blisses you out?”
Evie smiled even while her heart throbbed painfully. “I didn’t come here to talk about me, I came here to talk about you. And the latest JD Robb. How good was it?”
She’d dropped the magic word and now her table mates were off and running.
Soothing her with their touches on the hand. Quieting her pain with their ribald jokes. Easing her mind that, while she’d left her granddad behind, he was doing just fine. Better, even, than she’d ever imagined.
It gave her the tiniest kernel of hope she could one day feel that way too.
Not today.
But one day.
Borrowing her granddad’s ancient truck, she swung by the farm.
She waved to Farmer Steve, son of their closest neighbour, who now rented the farm. He’d offered to buy her out, more than once. She told herself she’d kept it so her granddad could know that he’d left out of choice, not because she and his doctors had pushed.
But as she pulled up to the old farmhouse she knew. She’d kept it for herself. A back-up plan. A reason not to give herself completely to the Melbourne experiment in case it all went belly-up.
“Evie,” Steve called, heading over to the fence, cattle dog in tow.
She hopped out of the truck and gave the dog a quick pat. “How’s things?”
“You know.”
She did. The life of a farmer was a difficult one.
“You staying?” he said, nudging his chin towards the house. “Your old room is the guest room.”
She hadn’t actually planned anything beyond fleeing the city, but in the end she said, “Sure. That’d be great.”
Evie slept like the dead, waking hours after the dairy farm had been up and at ’em. More proof she was a city girl now—her body clock clearly no longer on farm time.
By the time she sauntered out to the kitchen the wildlings were at school, Steve was out fixing fences and his wife, Stacey, had headed into work at the local supermarket. The logs in the old fireplace had burned down to embers.
There was a note on the old kitchen table.
Eggs, bacon and fresh milk in the fridge. Warm your towel over the heating rod in the bathroom.
She put some bread in the ancient toaster and while she waited for it to pop she took a quiet tour about her childhood home—finding the burn mark from when she’d discovered chemistry, the notches of her growth chart behind the pantry door. She’d passed her mother’s height when she was thirteen.
As she slathered the hot toast in homemade butter and jam, she let herself wonder what it might be like if she decided to stay. She could teach senior citizens how to use the internet, fix computers, get contracts with the local schools to help out with their IT programs.
It was a beautiful town. Slow and quiet, lovely and dear. But it wasn’t her home. Not any more.
Armand might have let her down but he had changed her too. With his deeply held sense of duty and love. His spirit of adventure. His bravery, his determination to stand up for what he thought was right.
There was no going back after that. No more cautiously hacking her way through the levels of her life—she wanted to meet it head-on. There would be bumps and bruises, there would be mistakes made. But that was okay. More than okay. More challenging. More engaging. More wonderful. For that was life.
And she wasn’t going to go another day not living it.
Sticking the toast between her teeth, she grabbed the notepaper from the kitchen table and turned it over to scribble a note to Steve:
If you want the farm, it’s all yours.
As soon as she wrote the words down she felt a sense of relief. Of letting go of the final shackles holding her back.
Now to figure out what it was she truly wanted so she could go out and get it.
Top of that list: Hot Stuff in the Swanky Suit.
For Armand was her “it” and had been from the moment she’d set eyes on him. And she was his. He might have taken longer to realise it—because he was stubborn and brooding and a man—but she knew he felt it too.
He’d told her so. In his own way.
But, while he claimed he was no hero, he felt it was up to him to fix everything, save everyone, all on his own. When things went wrong he shouldered all the blame. That was why he’d let her go. Not because he didn’t care, but because he did.
All she had to do was make him see he wasn’t alone any more. She’d be there, backing him up, patching him up, holding his hand, listening, caring right on back.
She’d been too scared to look for her life’s passion, but she’d found it anyway.
She moved to the height chart and placed a kiss on her mother’s last notch, then took one last turn about the farm kitchen to say goodbye.
Now what? Evie turned right, then left, like a chicken with its head chopped off.
Stop. Think. Finish breakfast, put on clothes, get the car back to Granddad and head to the city.
Wrapping herself in a blanket off the back of a couch, she bit down on her toast and stepped out onto the porch to see if she could see Steve out in the field to let him know she was heading off, when...
She choked, spraying crumbs all over her clothes. “Armand?”
Armand looked up at the sound of his name, his shiny brogues stopping halfway up the farmhouse stairs, his gaze travelling over her as if making sure what he was seeing was true. Or maybe it was her wild bed-hair, old brown blanket and scuzzy old Ugg boots that had him transfixed.
“How did you find me?” she asked, mind scrambled, senses in a tizz.
While, in his elegant chinos, button-down shirt and cashmere sweater, he looked the picture of cool. Only his eyes gave him away, all tempestuous stormy blue and focussed on her like a laser beam. “I asked Zoe, but even after using extensive torture techniques she didn’t budge.”
“And you with all your training.”
At her sass a spark lit within the stormy depths of Armand’s eyes.
Her voice was husky as she said, “Jonathon.”
“He owed me. He went to HR. Your granddad is your next of kin. The farm is his address.”
“Your friend has no respect for propriety.”
“For which I am extremely grateful.”
Evie took another step forward. Then, caught in the man’s magnetic pull, she stepped forward again.
A muscle worked in Armand’s jaw as he took the final step up onto the porch so Evie had to tilt her chin. He looked...tired, fraught and beautiful.
Evie hitched the blanket up. Curled her toes into her socks. Asked, “Why are you here?”
“You know why,” he said, that accent sending delicious shivers down her spine.
And okay, maybe she did. Because she was smart and he wasn’t a man to make empty gestures. Yet her heart thumped hard enough against her ribs that it knocked her forwards a step.
Right as Armand reached out to wrap an arm about her waist, haul her to him and kiss her.
Evie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him right on back.
This, she thought. This is what life is all about.
Then she didn’t think much at all for quite some time.
When Evie pulled back she breathed deeply of the chill farm air, of Armand. The feel of him filling her with warmth, with hope, with bliss.
I’m blissed out, Granddad! she thought. Already looking forward to introducing her two favourite men in the world.
With a sigh she tipped up onto her toes, wrapped her arms around Armand and buried her face in his neck. Then tossed the toast still gripped in her cold fingers out onto the dry grass, the chickens and ducks squawking as they swarmed to tear it apart.
“Evie,” said Armand as she looked up into his eyes, “I should have told you the moment I realised what Jonathon had done.”
“You should. But you thought you were protecting me, which is a nice thing to think. Next time know that including me is nicer still.”
“Next time?”
“Yes, please.”
He kissed her again, on the tip of the nose. On the edge of her eye. On her mouth. Marking his place.
“I truly wanted to kill Jonathon for putting us through all that. Yet at the same time I feel like I should hug him for putting us through all that.”
Armand smiled against her mouth before sealing it with a long, knee-melting kiss. “An urge I have had to subdue more times than you can count. The killing part, not the hugging.”
“I can count pretty high.”
“And yet...”
Evie shivered at the rough note in Armand’s voice. To stave off more shivers, she found the edges of the blanket and wrapped them around him too.
“Now,” he said, “I have a question for you.”
“Bring it on.”
“Did you come here because you finally realised dairy farming was your life’s dream?”
Evie laughed. “I did not.”
“Excellent. And what about working for Jonathon? I know he is putting together an extremely generous proposal in the hopes of luring you back.”
“Been there,” she said. “Done that.”
“I’m glad, because the conversation we had about following curiosity stuck. And I have an idea that I hope piques yours.”
“I’m finally going to be a bus driver? No ballerina firefighter!”
“If that is your dream then I support it wholeheartedly. If you are teasing me, then I have a generous offer of my own.”
“I’m teasing you. Offer away.”
“How would you feel about working for me?”
“For you, or with you?”
Armand’s smile was quick and bright and glorious. And gave nothing away. “I’m setting up an Australian office.”
“Of your company? The Action Adventure All-Stars? You’re getting the band back together!”
“In a way. Only this time I would like to be proactive rather than reactive.”
“Okay.”
“Much of the planning happened on my trip up here on the train, so the details are sketchy at best. But how would you feel about helping me design safety apps for commuters travelling at night? For starters. Apps for travellers; how to be aware, safety conscious. Self-defence class apps. The sky is the limit. You could have your own team, hand-picked, with the side benefit of doing work that makes the world a better place. What do you think?”
Evie wondered if it was possible to smile from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head, because that was what it felt like. “I think you only kissed me to soften me up to get me to work for you.” She also thought he was wonderful. “If so you’re sneakier than Jonathon ever was.”
When Armand’s brows lowered and his smile took on a predatory gleam the feeling rushing about in her body was far more fun than a mere smile.
“I didn’t come all this way to offer you a job. I came all this way to offer you a life. My life. With all that that means. I know I am flawed, and stubborn, and struggle to ask for help.”
“You are also generous. Astute. Forgiving. Loyal. Steadfast. And devastatingly handsome.”
He pulled her closer and her entire body sighed. “Taking all that into account, I hope that you can take me as I am.”
“I’ll take you any way I can get you.” Evie lifted a hand to swipe the hair from Armand’s eyes.
“You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that.” He breathed in, his eyes travelling slowly over her face as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “That moment—when I thought you were about to leap onto the train tracks—my life literally flashed before my eyes. A life in which you were no more. Every horror I had witnessed in my life coalesced into a ball of lead inside me and I could not get the image out of my head.”
Oh, Armand.
He went on. “After you left—no, after I pushed you away—I had every intention of going back to Paris, deliberately choosing the fugue in which I had been existing, as it seemed a lesser evil than a life without you. Until I realised the thing I had feared most had—in its own way—happened anyway. You would be gone to me. I would never see you again. And it was my fault.”
Evie opened her mouth to contradict him, to admit to her own part in the whole mess, but he leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers and her words dried up in her mouth.
“I love you, Evie. And the thought of life without you is no life at all. I want you with all the risk and joy you bring. And I came here hoping to convince you to give me a second chance.”
Evie could barely breathe. Her heart was full, her mind reeling, her blood singing in her veins because of this big, strong man with his grand, poetic heart.
Evie smiled, then grinned, then laughed. Rubbing her forehead against his, she said, “Armand, I’ve been a little bit in love with you since you were no more to me than my train boyfriend, Hot Stuff in the Swanky Suit. Now that I know you, the real you, flesh and blood and heart and soul, I love you with everything I have.”
She felt Armand’s body shift as if with shock.
He lifted away, to look into her eyes, his own swirling with emotion. Before they narrowed. “I thought I was Reading Guy.”
“That’s right. You were Reading Guy. Why am I telling all this to you?”
She made to pull away before he wrapped her up tight.
His mouth kicked up at one side. He had a hell of a smile when he let it loose. “I can go one better, ma chérie. I have loved you longer still. Since before we even met.”
“Oh, really?”
“Picture the darkest, roughest, farthest reaches of the planet. My spent body protesting every movement, my exhausted mind struggling to form coherent thought, I looked up one night to find the sky awash with more stars than I had ever seen before. And in that darkness, not knowing if any of us would survive the night, I prayed that somewhere in the world a woman had looked to those same stars. A woman whose joy and determination, quirks and kindness and light could fill the very edges of the darkness.”
Evie didn’t even know she was crying until Armand brushed the pad of a thumb over her cheek.
This time she kissed him, sinking against the long, strong lines of his body as she loved him with all her heart.
“You are my girl in the stars, Evie. My counterpoint. My way out of the dark. The Girl with the Perfect Aim who got me right through the heart. This is the day my life truly begins. No games. No rules. And I want to spend every day of that life with you.”
Evie didn’t have to think, overthink, or think twice. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”
“That’s a yes?”
“Yes!”
Grinning, indulgently, Armand squeezed her tighter still, lifting her feet off the ground. Then he spun her about until she laughed so hard she could scarcely catch her breath, the sound carrying off into the sharp, wintry sky.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
Evie nodded. “Let’s go home.”