Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,113

said happily, hand in my hair. “I think my baby needs a nap.”

“Don’t call me––”

“My boyfriend, how’s that?”

“Not any better.”

“Look at this ring on his finger, Gwen, doesn’t this look good?”

“It certainly does. It’s a glorious thing to find the person who belongs to you.”

“It is,” he murmured, moving my hair so he could kiss my cheek. “You have no idea how much I wanted him to be mine. I’m still amazed that all my dreams came true.”

“You should dream bigger,” I groused at him, secretly very pleased with him, smiling into the table.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” he whispered into my ear.

I yawned loudly.

“And he’s such a romantic.”

Gwen laughed so hard she started to wheeze.

Nick went back down to the makeshift stage area and sang his heart out, and I lay down under the stars on a blanket with Gwen and Efrem, who were thinking that maybe they would take their first-ever vacation. I was very happy for them.

After a while, I walked back up to the house to call Jared Colter and give him the news.

His sigh, when I explained, was a surprise. “You know, I think you’ll make an excellent social worker, Loc.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he assured me with his deep rumble of a voice. “You were always trying to give your clients life lessons and advice. Now the people you talk to will have to listen.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said, and then took a breath. “Really. For everything.”

“You’re an excellent fixer, Loc. I enjoyed having you work for me.”

I was a thorn in his side, but I appreciated his words.

“It goes without saying, but if you need anything, you let me know.”

“I will, sir,” I said, smiling into the phone.

“Visit when you come to move your things.”

“Absolutely.”

I called Ella next.

“Oh, thank God,” she said in a rush when I told her she could have my apartment.

“You could at least pretend you’re gonna miss me,” I groused at her.

“That’s not how I mean it,” she said, chuckling. “I mean that I love your place so much, and I’ve been dying—and I mean dying—to decorate, somehow feeling like I should, and now I know why.”

My mother would be having a field day with all the different doors opening, like the universe was blessing my decision. I would have to tell her.

“I named all the fish too.”

Of course she had.

“I’m visiting soon, so prepare yourself. I want to be wined and dined and taken to all the best places.”

“Do you?”

“I mean, Nick Madison. Maybe he’ll buy me a phone covered in diamonds,” she teased me. “And make sure to tell him I’m the karaoke queen.”

I groaned and told her I would call my landlord.

“Thanks, Loc, really. I’ll miss you, but I really have felt right at home here the whole time. Stars in alignment and all that.”

“One might even say syzygy,” I quipped.

“Oh God,” she muttered, and I knew, without being told, that Jared had given her the speech he gave all of us.

“You have to do good, and create balance, and leave every situation––”

“Better than you found it,” I finished.

We were both quiet for a moment.

“You know, the man might just be brilliant.”

It was entirely possible.

Walking back out onto the porch, I came down the stairs and turned to walk around the side of the house, to return to the stage area where Nick and the band were taking last requests. There was a guy there, and before I could pass him, he turned and stepped directly into my path.

“Oh, look out,” I said good-naturedly, about to move around him when he shoved the muzzle of a gun into my abdomen.

Lifting my head so I could see his face, I found flat, cold blue eyes. “Who’re you?” I asked him.

“Nick was asked nicely, but now, if he ever wants to see you again, he’ll pay what he should have offered to help his family in the first place.”

I had always wondered about people like this. Like, if Nick actually paid this guy a ransom for me, and the money then went to Sterling, as soon as I was returned, we would go to the police. It was just so illogical. Unless you were getting paid and then leaving the country, to me that was the only way this worked. Perhaps Sterling would be let out on bail, would take the money and run. That was possible. But that wasn’t how the money had originally been requested. Nick’s sisters had come to hit him up for cash, but perhaps finding out that