Page 75 of Two Steps Ahead

Kayleigh ran over to Weston and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, stroking his head. “I thought Beau had shot you.”

Weston tried to smile at her but it came out as a grimace. “I couldn’t let him kill your father.”

Leo crouched next to them both as Beau moaned on the ground in pain. “And I couldn’t let him kill who I’m pretty sure is my future son-in-law.”

She could hear cars screeching up on the other side of the building and Weston’s brothers yelling for him. Kayleigh reached out and grasped her dad’s hand, squeezing it. She still had so many questions but right now it didn’t matter.

Right now, all that mattered was that the men she loved most in the world were alive and going to be all right.

Epilogue

Six months later

“I guess it’s safe to say you’re not marrying me for my money.”

Weston grinned as he carried another box of Kayleigh’s things from the moving truck into his house.

She’d been living here since the day after Beau had almost killed them. She hadn’t wanted to go back to her house since the people Beau and Gwendolyn had hired to look for her camera had destroyed so much of her living space.

That had suited Weston just fine. He wanted Kayleigh next to him every day for the rest of forever.

“I won’t be surprised when your dad makes another fortune. Maybe not as big as the one he had, but he’s too shrewd of a businessman to stay broke for long.”

Leo hadn’t been lying about the toll buying Brighton Pharmaceuticals had taken on his finances. He may have gotten proof that Beau Kesler was a killer, but it had come at a cost.

The Delacruz fortune was no more. At least, not to the extent it had been. Nearly all of Leo’s properties and assets had been sold to cover what he’d spent to take down Brighton Pharmaceuticals.

He still had a couple million dollars—which Weston could’ve lived on for the rest of his life—but for Leo it was quite the change.

But he seemed...happy. He and Kayleigh had lunch together three or four times a week. They talked all the time.

He’d even come over to Weston’s parents’ house to have dinner a few times.

Leo Delacruz may no longer be a financial giant, but he was going to be just fine.

Kayleigh, who’d never wanted much to do with her father’s money, didn’t care that it was mostly gone. She’d replaced her destroyed cameras with the insurance money and had spent the last few months working on her passion project.

Plants that survive in circumstances that they shouldn’t. She could also add a few people to that study if she wanted to. Him. Her.

Them together. And they weren’t just surviving, they werethriving.

Beau was in prison awaiting trial for attempted murder, assault and battery, arson, and kidnapping. And that didn’t even touch the charges that would be brought against him once the FDA finished sorting through his company.

He would never walk around a free man again.

The court had been a little more lenient with Gwendolyn. Leo, Kayleigh and Weston had all testified that they did not believe Gwendolyn intended or would’ve gone through with murder. She’d been caught up in the lies Beau had fed her.

She’d been charged with kidnapping and would spend time behind bars, but not the rest of her life.

Kayleigh was unpacking boxes as Weston brought them in. She smiled up at him and he couldn’t resist plucking her up off the ground and backing her against the wall.

“I’m glad you’re moving in here with me permanently,” he said against her lips.

“I love you, Patterson, and I can’t wait until I’m a Patterson too.”

“Just a few more months.” He worked his lips down the side of her neck. He would never get tired of the breathy little moans she made.

“We have to be over at your parents’ in an hour,” she said. But her hands clutched him closer, definitely didn’t push him away.

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