“Bishop, what are you doing?” I asked, my breath trapped in my chest.
“I’m holding up a ring to a girl the way I should have done the first time I asked her to marry me. I’m asking her if she will marry me again, but this time for real. For love. For life. For hope. For joy. With all of the flowers, cake, and friends that we can fit into the church to say the words we said before with a whole different view on what they mean. Amber, will you marry me again, for real and for good this time? Will you keep being my wife?”
I laughed then, the tears running down my face even as my lips wore a grin. “I will marry you again on one condition.”
“Name it, anything,” he said, nodding exaggeratedly.
“That we get married with all the flowers, cake, and those most important to us at The Fluffy Cupcake. We started our life together with cupcakes, and I think that’s a perfect place to reaffirm our love for each other, don’t you?”
He leaned down and kissed my lips, his trembling against mine. “I do.”
“I think you’re supposed to save that for our wedding day, Mr. Halla.”
“Maybe I’m just practicing until the current and future Mrs. Halla lets me put this ring on her finger.”
He held it up again and waited for me to lift my hand for him to put it on. When I did, he started to work the band off my finger until I grabbed his hand. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the band off. You have a real engagement ring now.”
I shook my head carefully and pushed the band back on my finger. “The band stays. Maybe when we said our vows around those rings, we thought they weren’t real, but the truth was, they were never more real. This band was blessed that night, and it will never leave my finger, no matter how many rings we add to the mix.”
He ran his thumb across my cheek to steal away the tear that had fallen there. “Those are terms I can most definitely accept, my little tart.” He slid the beautiful diamond solitaire over my finger to nestle against the band, and he sucked in a breath. “They look like they were made for each other,” he whispered, his eyes on my finger.
“Just like us,” I sighed when his lips found mine.
Epilogue
Bishop’s arms went around my waist, and he tucked his face into my neck, his lips kissing the tender skin there. “Happy ten years of business, my beautiful tart,” he whispered, his words almost stolen by the sounds of the partygoers around us.
“Thank you, my love,” I answered, caressing his beard with my free hand. “Thanks for being here.”
“Here is everything to you, and that makes it everything to me.”
I smiled as I gazed at the scene before me. Here was The Fluffy Cupcake, and everything was the people filling it. Taylor and Sara were serving specialty coffee drinks from the new coffee bar we’d added this fall. It was a dream I’d had since we first opened the bakery, and after I almost died doing something as simple as walking up a hill, I decided it was time to stop putting it off. For our tenth anniversary, we were opening A Tea and A Tart. We lost a lot of table space to make it happen, but no one seemed to mind standing once they got a taste of our selection of coffee and teas to complement the treats in the bakery case each day. It had been so much fun to plan, implement, and market that I hardly noticed the massive amount of pain I was in from falling down a hill and smashing my head into a dock before nearly drowning.
“You should sit down,” he said, leading me to a table, but I shook my head.
“I want to enjoy being able to stand up again,” I said, resting my hand on his chest. “It’s been so long since I’ve been without crutches.”
“Okay, but don’t overdo it. Remember, the doctor said you have to break the brace in slowly.”
“Maybe for some people, yes,” I agreed, a smile on my face as I gazed at the miracle of modern medicine that now allowed me to stand and walk with only a cane. “But some people haven’t spent seventeen years in a brace. I got this, Mr. Halla.”
He laughed that laugh I loved of his. The one that didn’t harbor pain, guilt, or unhappiness. “I’m going to go check on Athena.”
I pointed at the counter where she was chatting with Taylor and Sara. “Honestly, I think she found her tribe,” I said on a wink.
He kissed my cheek and whispered, I hope so, in my ear before he headed over to see her. Athena had found her tribe, both in Lake Pendle and The Fluffy Cupcake. She worked here baking part-time now while going to school in St. Paul. She’d graduate in the spring with her culinary degree and planned to apprentice here as the new master baker. Sam and Ken had arrived here within twelve hours of hearing about my accident. They hadn’t even met me, but Athena’s frantic voice on the phone was all they had to hear to know they were needed.
And they showed up. They were there for Athena, and they had given her their blessing to transfer to St. Paul and continue her education there. They weren’t sad she’d no longer be across the country. They often came up to visit Athena in her new apartment, which happened to be right next door to her Daddy’s house. When she decided to stay, she refused to live in the house with
