Page 60 of Stuck With the Billionaire Grump

Should that make me uncomfortable? If so, there must be some mechanism inside me that’s broken. Honestly, I find it unbearably, sickeningly romantic.

Which is not something Ieverthought would enter my mind. Especially not in regard to Theo Danvers.

“Not at all,” I tell him. “I just don’t want you to regret it. Or something like that.”

“I won’t regret it,” he murmurs into my ear. Goosebumps pebble my skin.

“How do you know?”

He presses a soft kiss to the underside of my jaw. “I just know, Lucy.”

“Right.”

My fingers trail up the front of his shirt, slipping underneath his jacket.

Another kiss along the side of my neck. My breath catches.

“I should have brought a bottle,” he whispers against my collarbone.

“What?”

“A bottle to spin.” A kiss on my bare shoulder. “Spin the bottle.” A kiss just underneath the pearls resting against my throat. “For old time’s sake.”

I almost laugh, but it comes out more like a shaky exhale. “I think we can skip that part this time.”

“Agreed.”

The first brush of Theo’s lips against mine feels electric. It feels like everything that Josie’s stupid romance novels describe. It feels like I never want to move on from this moment. I want to be suspended in time, right here, with him.

When the kiss deepens, I lose myself completely. This is right. This is what I didn’t even know I’d been waiting for all these years.

And maybe, if things were different, this is what would have happened that night twelve years ago. Or maybe not. Who knows?

All I know is that I’m happy we found our way back to each other. Here, in the shadows, no longer afraid.

Epilogue: Theo

[Three Months Later]

With a grunt, I lift a box full of books onto the desk so that I can start unpacking them onto the built-in shelves—one of the many charming features of my new apartment in Boston’s Back Bay.

It’s mid-September, and the city is a pleasant contradiction. The nights are already chilled enough for the leaves to have started turning, but the days remain stubbornly sunny and warm. I have all the windows open, coaxing in the balmy breeze as I start tackling the many boxes piled in towers all around me. The breeze brings in the aroma of fried food from the Irish pub down the road, the vaguely dusty scent of sunbaked asphalt, and the faint smell of the harbor at the edge of the city.

I only arrived about three hours ago. The movers have just left. Stacy isn’t expecting me to stop by the office for another week.

And yet, I’m no longer alone.

Because as soon as I crack open the box of books, a car horn honks loudly outside on the street. Somehow, I already know it’s her.

With a grin, I move toward the window and lean out to find a tall, dark-haired tornado of a woman leaning casually against the side of her crookedly parked car.

Lucy smiles up at me from two stories below. “Parallel parking isn’t my strong suit.”“Nobody’s perfect,” I respond.

She twirls her keys around her index finger. “Are you going to invite me inside or what?”

“What are you, a vampire? The door’s open!”

I hear the echoes of her laughter bouncing between the brick townhouses as I duck back inside.

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