Nate set her down and looked at her, shaking his head and touching her cheek as he absorbed the pure, unadulterated delight emanating from her gaze.
Then his eyes moved to Fazire.
“Do you mind if we get married now?” he asked with sham courtesy but his lips were twitching.
Fazire’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t let me stand in your way. It was only me who brought you together in the first place,” Fazire grumbled. “We shouldn’t let my little wish have any time in your busy, human lives. Not that it’s unprecedented for a genie to get a wish. Not that we shouldn’t revel in the fact that this has never happened before all through eternity. Not that we should glory for a moment in my joy and everlasting gratitude to the Great Grand Genie Number –”
“Fazire,” Nate cut him off.
“What?” Fazire snapped curtly.
Nate put a hand on Fazire’s shoulder. Fazire looked at the hand then looked at Nate.
“Tash,” Nate said quietly and Lily’s heart melted.
She never expected she could love Nate more, not in a million years, but at that moment she did.
Fazire’s face softened. Then he hid it and rolled his eyes.
“Fine. I’ll sit down,” Fazire said with feigned harassment and his eyes cut to Lily. “Lily-child, get married for goodness sake, I’m hungry.”
Again Lily giggled but this time she could hear Nate join her with soft laughter.
Fazire took Tash’s hand and walked her back to the seats.
Everyone sat except some of the genies who floated.
Then Nate took Lily’s hand. When he did, Lily squeezed his.
Then Lily looked deeply into Nate’s beautiful, dark, beloved eyes.
Ten minutes later, they were married.
Epilogue
Nate
Eight years later, Nate is forty-four, Lily is thirty-eight, Tash is fifteen, Jon is seventeen, Fazire is too old to count, again, it is early in the month of May…
The Rolls Royce glided to a halt outside the massive bookstore on Oxford Street in London.
Nate noticed the line out the door and around the corner.
He turned to the young man at his side. “Looks like we’re going to be here awhile, Jon,” Nate told his son.
The young man shrugged his shoulders and looked at his father then he rolled his eyes.
Nate smiled.
They’d been in this situation before. Lily’s books were very popular and she gave a great deal of time to her readers.
Seven years earlier, Lily published a novel about a war widow, her fatherless daughter, the intense but loving man she married, the daughter that came from a genie’s wish and that daughter’s romance with an impossibly handsome but hard, cold, forbidding man whose heart she had to mend, a romance filled with trials and tribulations.
It became a bestseller and Lily, often with Nate, Tash and their newly-adopted, ten-year old son Jon in tow, travelled the world signing books and speaking to rooms filled with her fans.
The first bestseller was almost always the fan’s favourite however they usually had Lily’s series which consisted of book after book of romantic lovers and their perils, each filled with humour, touched with sadness and always, there was a genie.
Nate and Jon moved through the crowd to the table where Lily sat behind a stack of books and smiled her quirky, effective smile at the next person in line.
Even after eight years of seeing it every day, Nate’s body (and heart) still reacted to that smile.
“Dad!” Tash called and ran forward from her place beside Fazire who was standing behind and to the right of Lily, shadowed, hidden but always at his Lily’s side.
Tash threw herself at Nate, her tall, lean body rocking him back on his heels.
She’d never changed her habit of shouting his name and hurling herself in his arms every time she saw him.
Late at night, some years before, lying in his arms in the dark, Lily shared with some sadness that she thought Tash secretly feared every time Nate left her presence that he’d never come back.
Nate had long since worried the same thing.
He leaned back from his daughter, tucked a heavy curtain of her black hair behind her ear and smiled down into her eyes, his eyes, and she smiled back. He read the relief in them, as he often did since the very first days he came into her life before she quickly hid it.
“Jeez, Tash. Knock him off his feet, why don’t you,” Jon muttered from beside Nate.
Tash pulled out of Nate’s arms and shoved her brother’s shoulder. “Shut up, Jon.”
“Grow up, Tash,” Jon shot back.
“You grow up,” Tash returned.
Jon turned beleaguered brown eyes to his father.
“Stop,” Nate said quietly but firmly and both of his children, as they had for years when their father spoke in that tone, immediately obeyed. Though, it must be said, Tash did it with obvious reluctance and Jon did it with extreme arrogance, an arrogance Lily maintained he got from Nate, pontificating, sometimes at great length, of the prevalence of nurture over nature.
Nate had been wary of adopting a child older than Tash, a street-tough, a kid just like him.
Lily had insisted. So had Laura. Maxine had demanded (dramatically). Victor had, surprisingly, sided with Lily, Laura and Maxie. Fazire had, surprisingly, sided with Nate.
Not surprisingly, Lily had convinced Nate as well as Fazire.
It hadn’t been easy going.
Jon was a good-looking boy, tall, lean, strong, with dark-brown hair and eyes. He was smart, not as smart as Tash but he was street smart, sharp as a tack and a quick learner.
Jon was also rough, foul-mouthed, ill-mannered and had a deprived life that equalled and even surpassed Nate’s.
Tash, with her open heart, had taken to him immediately. She loved having a brother and it was Tash’s months of unrelenting exuberance that broke him down. That and, of course, Lily’s unwavering but not overbearing love, just like Laura had shown to Nate, and Nate’s firm guidance and innate understanding. Not to mention Fazire’s outlandish but caring regard, Maxine’s dramatics and definitely overbearing love, Laura’s gentle affection and Victor’s gruff kindness.
It took a year but Jon settled in then he accepted them then his status of “adopted” melted away and he allowed himself to become one of the family.
The only one who knew his full story was Tash. Or Jon thought Tash was the only one who knew. Fazire had overheard them and he’d called down Lily who’d waved at a passing Nate and they’d all listened in until Nate, realising what they were eavesdropping on, had forcefully pushed both his wife and her genie down the hall as they silently struggled then eventually relented. Jon had bared everything to his new sister. And Tash had kept his secrets and they were close, truly close, as siblings should be.
Even though, to Nate’s gentle annoyance, they fought constantly.
They stood, the three of them, and watched Lily sign her books.
“I wish these crowds would go away, I’m hungry,” Tash mumbled impatiently.
“Careful with your wishes, little sister.” Jon threw his arm casually around Tash’s shoulders and she leaned into her brother, “Fazire’s watching.”
Fazire, Nate noted, wasn’t watching, he was scowling. Then again, Fazire always scowled.
Jon knew about Fazire. Jon had even been granted his own wish though he, as with Tash, had yet to use it. This wish had been granted two years ago, after a visit from the Great Grand Genie Number One. For some reason, these visits came regularly, usually when Lily baked Nate a cake, something she did each week of their first months as husband and wife (as promised) then each month after his first-ever birthday then yearly, without fail, on his birthday – and other times besides.