Page 69 of Mace

“Okay, then I need you to tell me what you want,” he growled.

I opened one eye and closed it again. “You’re cranky.”

“I’m trying to tell you I love you, and you’re cracking jokes.”

“You love me?” I whispered. I knew what he was trying to tell me, but it was scary. Scary knowing this man completely owned me mind, body, and soul, and if he ever changed his mind about being with me, I would never recover.

“More than my next breath, Imogen. Since the day I saw you on the playground over twenty years ago, I loved you.”

I opened my eyes and took in the man in front of me. “That’s a long time to love me.”

He pressed a kiss to my lips. “Not nearly long enough. I’m going to need at least another twenty years to make up for the fifteen we weren’t together.”

“I don’t think that will be long enough,” I sighed. “Better make it forty.”

“How about you agree to marry me, and we can work on making that baby?”

A soft smile crossed my lips. “Now that is a question I know the answer to.” I pressed a slow, soul-scorching kiss to his lips. “Yes.”

*

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mace

“I don’t know how you did it, man, but you fucking did.”

I sipped my beer and surveyed everyone milling around the side parking lot of the funeral home.

Another thing I would have never thought would happen. Who had a barbeque in the parking lot of a funeral home? Apparently, Imogen did, and now so did I.

This morning before we left San Diego, I had texted Barracuda to let him know we would be back this afternoon, and when we pulled up to the funeral home, the whole club was there.

“We’re not completely out of the woods yet, but the odds are in my favor now.” Imogen was going to have to tell her story of what happened all those years ago with Kent, but I knew she could do it.

It would help protect the future both of us were looking forward to.

“Tell me something,” Barracuda implored. “You nail her down yet?” He nodded toward Imogen, who was holding Willem and laughing at something Maggie had said.

“Took a little bit of convincing, but, yeah. You know, I’m not into playing games and all of that bullshit. You guys all drove me insane when you got with your ol’ ladies. Just shit or get off the pot.”

“Is that how you nailed her down?” Barracuda laughed. “Monk,” Barracuda called.

Monk meandered over. “Yeah?”

“How did you ask Mitzy to be with you?” Barracuda asked him.

“Took a fucking lot. I had to convince her to stop running away from me, to begin with.”

Barracuda hitched his thumb at me. “He told Imogen to shit or get off the pot.”

Monk roared with laughter.

“I fucking didn’t,” I called. “I was saying that I wasn’t going to play games, and we just decided to be with each other. Hell, we’ve known each other for over twenty years.”

“So after that many years, you can throw the romance out the window?” Monk asked. “I don’t know if that would ever fly with Mitzy.”

“What?” Mitzy called from across the parking lot by the grill Rebel was manning.

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