Page 124 of The Honest Affair

Epilogue

September 2018

Matthew

“Darling, I really don’t think it should go there. Wouldn’t you like that big, heavy bookshelf in your own private office?”

Brandon and I turned from where we had just set one of my bookshelves on the far side of the living room. Brandon straightened and wiped his brow, which shone with sweat, and I pulled at the collar of my grime-stained t-shirt. We both turned to find Nina leaning against the wall, dishtowel in hand, looking a dead ringer for Grace Kelly in a light blue skirt, a thin white tank top, and her hair tied back in a ponytail at the base of her neck.

“You know,” Brandon said, “there are these people. Called movers. And you can actually pay them to move things that might break your back. You know, like bookshelves?”

“Nina and I like to do things ourselves,” I said with a wink at my fiancée. “Ain’t that right, doll?”

Nina flashed a smile brighter than the rays of sunshine dappling the room through the windows. “Indeed, my love. But to come back to the question of your lovely shelf…”

After a summer of sitting on pins and needles in New York, it was officially move-in week for Nina and me—and one I never thought I’d make too. As of today, we were officially Massachusetts State residents, living in the little white craftsman Nina purchased at just twenty-one for a future she barely allowed herself to imagine. Today we were finally taking real, solid steps toward the happy ending we’d almost had to steal.

It hadn’t been an easy summer. Four solid months of keeping things quiet while the Manhattan DA built their case against Calvin. Then six weeks ago we caught a break when Caitlyn Calvert turned out to be a better friend than Nina thought. After she quietly pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, trafficking, and identity theft, Caitlyn also provided the Manhattan ADA overseeing Nina’s rape charge with a shocking amount of evidence that Calvin Gardner had been stalking Nina for years before they met and had essentially conned her into marrying him with the intent to embezzle as many assets as he could. Tapes, emails, text messages, letters. Caitlyn had been documenting Calvin’s every move for more than fifteen years.

As a result, the terms of Nina’s prenuptial agreement were still overturned, but in her favor, not in Calvin’s. Which meant that overnight, she became the sole owner of the Lexington Avenue penthouse, the house in Newton, what little was left in their savings account, and sole guardian of her daughter, Olivia, while the government seized the rest of the more illicit holdings of Pantheon and Calvin got a jail cell where he could rot.

Nina had decided to drop her own suit against her former friend. I thought she was being too nice, but she insisted retribution wasn’t her style.

“You know,” I had told her the day she made her decision. “Catholics don’t believe in karma.”

Nina had used part of the summer to convert to Catholicism in anticipation of our wedding the next year, and we spent a surprising amount of time debating what Nina found to be the more questionable parts of the faith.

“No, we don’t,” she replied thoughtfully. “But we do believe in grace.”

Well, she had me there.

At any rate, it was looking more and more like God has his own agenda when it came to vengeance against the sins of Calvin Gardner. Caitlyn’s revelations had turned into something of a domino effect. As she came forward, so did many of the women Calvin had trafficked and abused over the years. And they, in turn, pointed fingers at a number of prominent men whom Calvin had successfully blackmailed—including several U.S. attorneys and the judge originally presiding over his case. The trafficking ring case was reopened, this time as a federal investigation that could potentially land Nina’s ex transferred to federal prison for the rest of his life. Nina’s entrapment was also shedding a new light on things, and I’d already moved for a new trial of her case as well. We had high hopes for an acquittal—Cardozo had already told me he wouldn’t stand in the way.

But it wasn’t until Calvin was finally locked up for good that I saw my girl really relax for the first time since I’d known her. The Nina I knew had always been graceful and gorgeous, but she was buttoned up tighter than one of my vests at Thanksgiving. I had seen glimpses of someone else more carefree and chased that woman for more than a year trying to tease her out.

Now that chase was over. She ran straight into my arms on a daily basis.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said as I drummed my fingers on the side of the wood.

Nina blinked innocently, though her gray eyes sparkled with humor. “Oh?”

“Oh?” I mimicked. “Do you really think that batting those eyelashes at me is going to get me to shove all my furniture into the one room in this house you’ve designated as mine, duchess?”

Her sweet, soft mouth curved into a suggestive smile. “I don’t know. Is it working?”

I slipped a hand around her neck and brushed her jaw with my thumb. Her scent of roses washed over me, along with the sweet taste of her breakfast—espresso and chocolate—along with the promise of something even sweeter sometime later.

“How about now?” she murmured, her lips only a hair’s breadth from mine. Then she leaned in and whispered in my ear: “I promise I’ll thank you properly tonight. Or maybe this afternoon in the pantry.”

Immediately, I stood up with intention. “Brandon, this is going upstairs to my office.”

The big man just rolled his eyes. “God, you’re so whipped, it’s pathetic.”

“Takes one to know one, my friend,” I told him. “Now, up we go.”

* * *

Five hours later,Brandon, Nina, Skylar, and I relaxed on the back porch, enjoying a pitcher of ice-cold gin and tonics as a reward for moving in nearly everything in the small moving truck out front. In the yard, Olivia was happily playing with the other kids—Annabelle and Christoph, Skylar’s younger siblings, and Jenny and Luis, the Sterlings’ children. Every so often, a squeal would erupt from the raucous game of tag under the old willow tree.

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