Durham looked at Emma. “You’re staying here, aren’t you? You aren’t selling Medicine Creek Camps?”
Ben answered for her. “No, she’s not. I’m going to move my office to Medicine Gore.”
Both men widened their eyes and Durham choked on his punch. “But I thought you owned some huge shipping company. How you gonna run something like that from way out here?”
“With satellites, modems, faxes, and computers.” He gave Emma’s waist a gentle squeeze. “And if I can find myself a good pilot, I can commute to New York when I need to.”
Durham and John looked floored. “What about all the people who work for you?” John asked.
Emma looked at Ben. This was the first she’d heard of his plan.
“Nothing in New York will change. But there’s a fine workforce here, also.”
“We’re loggers,” Durham said. “We don’t know nothing about computers.”
“It will be steady, year-round work,” Ben said.
Durham and John both frowned, their bushy eyebrows drawing together. Emma laughed out loud. “Your wife might become a career woman, John. And during your off season, you’ll be doing the cooking.”
Both men turned and beat a hasty retreat, mumbling that they needed something stronger than punch.
“Do you have a place in your company for a spry old woman, Mr. Sinclair?” Greta asked as she took the men’s place.
“I’m sure I can find something.”
“Well, Emma Jean. I must say, when I sent Ben that letter, I certainly wasn’t expecting the results I got,” Greta said.
“ Yousent the letter!” Ben said.
Greta nodded, smiling like a well-fed cat. “Damn right I did. I figured it was time you came back and righted a few wrongs.” She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “I didn’t realize that the greatest wrong was living under my own roof. Thank you for fixing things, young man.”
Ben smiled, took the old woman’s hand, and kissed it. “I’m glad to have been of service. And thank youfor giving me my son and Emma.”
Greta blushed to the roots of her gray hair as she turned to Emma and winked. “Your mother’s wedding dress is in my attic. Charlie asked me to save it for you girls.”
All three of them turned when the kitchen door opened and Mikey finally walked in. Emma started toward him but stopped when he smiled at her.
He looked surprisingly … peaceful. His jacket was thrown over his shoulder, his tie was pulled free and hanging down his front, and there were streaks of dirt on his cheeks. But he looked serene.
“I’m starved, Aunt Greta,” he said as he walked over to the punch bowl and downed two cups without stopping. “What’s to eat?”
Greta hauled him over to the counter and began filling him a plateful that would choke a horse.
“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” Emma asked Ben.
“He’s okay right now, Em. He’s found himself.” He smiled at her. “And thanks to your meddling friend, we all found each other.”
“I’m so glad,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him and hugging the man of her dreams to her heart.
Epilogue
A s weddings went, this had to be the nicest one Emma would ever see.
It didn’t matter that she was limping as Mikey and Beaker walked her down the aisle, or that there was a stain on her mother’s dress that she had decided to leave in, or that it was pouring cats and dogs outside. It didn’t even matter that Pitiful had broken one of the windows of the tiny clapboard church, and knocked over a vase of flowers trying to see what the love of his life was up to.
She didn’t even bat an eyelash when the ground rumbled with gentle shivers.
All that mattered was that Ben was waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
But it wasn’t until the vows were said, the rings exchanged, and the kisses given, that Emma noticed the boutonnieres in Mikey’s and Ben’s jackets, and she burst into laughter.
Both men were wearing sprigs of moss.
Letter from LakeWatch
Dear Reader,
I didn’t start out writing my stories for you, but rather for me. A switch, quite literally, flipped on in my brain just shy of my fortieth birthday, and unseen forces sent me scrambling to a computer when the imaginary people plaguing my dreams started insisting—quite loudly—that I get their stories down on paper. I wrote my first books in blissful ignorance, unschooled in such things as style, grammar, pacing, story arc, or plot. My only concern was to shut those people up.
Ironically, considering I was a voracious reader, it never dawned on me that anyone else would be interested in reading mystories. I just wrote them just so that I could read them, and then I shoved them in the closet and started writing another one. But I eventually realized my characters didn’t really exist, because it takes someone elseto read them to bring them to life.
A thought is merely a thought until it is shared, and only then does it become a tangible thing. Until someone other than me reads one of my stories, it is only a massive collection of words. That’s what language is, after alclass="underline" a means for one person to convey their thoughts to another.
How cool is that? It doesn’t matter if you’re in Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, South or North America, or even on the moon when you read one of my books, as you read, you are giving my characters life. You are seeing them through your own unique perspective based on yourlife experiences; judging them by yourpersonal ethics, yourhopes and dreams and emotional needs.
So for taking these people out of my head and putting them into yours, I thank you.
And I’m quite sure my characters also thank you.
If you connect with them—if you love them or hate them—then I’ve done a good job. If you laugh out loud, get flustered, teary-eyed, disgusted, or downright angry, then I have managed to give you a very real experience.
Only if you are indifferent do I feel that I’ve failed.
I don’t like every person I meet. Do you? I don’t agree with everything everyone says, nor do I like some of the situations I find myself in, either. And I certainly don’t like how life turns out sometimes. So I don’t expect my readers to like everything in my books, and, quite honestly, I hope you don’t.
When I pick up a book to read—be it from a favorite author, or one I haven’t tried before—I am usually searching for an emotional fix, depending on my mood at the time. Personally, I have only one requirement: that I don’t walk away from a story feeling bummed out, desolate, or without hope. I read romance novels because I likehappy endings, and for that reason alone I write them.
And I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that youread romances because you also wish to walk away believing that no matter how dire things seem, there is always hope. This need for a happy ending is sort of a universal theme, isn’t it? Hope is the ultimate human emotion. It is powerful enough to get us out of bed every morning even when that happy ending seems impossible, and it is as vast and timeless as the ocean.
It wasn’t until my first book was published, Charming the Highlander,that I realized I no longer was writing just for myself, but for you, too. A good friend and very wise woman told me—when I first started dealing with editors, book reviewers, and bestseller lists—that no onecan be in my studio with me, telling me how to tell my stories. I couldn’t let anyone sit on my shoulder censoring me, directing my creativity or insisting I make a character or situation fit their personal sensibilities.