art, a true masterpiece walking in poetic motion right in front of us all. And she was smiling at me. I wanted her so badly. I almost forgot where I was or what I was doing as she walked down the steps towards me.
The ball room was filled with capacity. All of our closest friends, our families, and our coworkers were there. I’d flown them all out here to celebrate the company and the love that Julie and I shared. I was going to ask Julie a question this evening that I wanted every single person in that room to witness. I just hoped Julie said the right answer to me.
I had to admit to myself I was a bit nervous. I’d even rehearsed the move, working as hard as I could to get the words, the phrasing, and the sentiment of what I wanted to say just right. It was still going to be difficult.
“You look ravishing,” I said when she met me in the middle of the ball room.
She gave that beautiful smile to me that melted my heart and made me instantly hard as a rock and then she hugged me softly. “You look pretty damn amazing yourself.”
“Thank you. I was afraid you weren’t coming down.”
“Well, perfection takes time,” she teased.
“I see. Well, perfection accomplished.”
She laughed and I took her arm in mine as we walked along mingling with everyone around us. The party was our annual company Christmas party. The great day was only in two weeks and I certainly was more excited about this Christmas than I’d been about any other in my entire life. It was like I’d been reborn somehow and a new chance for real happiness had been given to me. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve it, but I was grateful for it. I was finally happy. I was with the woman that I loved and the woman I wanted to spend my life with.
“So, how is the happy couple tonight?” Quinton asked as we joined them at our table. The food would be out shortly and right now Quinton was piling through as much of the free liquor as he could. The guy was already three sheets to the wind and the party had just started about an hour before.
“We are fine,” I said.
“You look amazing,” Sophie said to Julie. They embraced and smiled at each other. The two had become fairly good friends the past month or so. That was great. Quinton and I had a wonderful time going out with our significant others as a foursome now. It was a lot of fun, almost as if we were college kids and goofing off together or something while we blew off the steam of mid-terms. And it turned out that Julie had become quite the extreme activities junkie. It was startling to see her transformation.
She was still the same her, but she had this other component to her. She was tougher, edgier, more confident in every single thing she did, and she was so much more enthusiastic about her life now. The thing with Saul, fighting him, confronting him, and getting the best of him had really reawakened the real her. She was no longer under that bastard’s thrall. She was not intimidated by him or anyone else for that matter.
She’d thrown herself into martial arts and was really good. She was fast and accurate. She could anticipate movements before they happened, and she had a real aggressive streak to her. On top of that she’d been shooting regularly at the range and was so accurate. She’d learned so much about firearms, and she’d even branched out into learning martial arts weapons. Her skills with the nunchakus were amazing.
At work she was full of new ideas and she worked tirelessly on projects until everything was perfect. Barb had become a bit pissed off at her because Julie did everything better than her and she might logically be running the team soon. It was not personal against Barb, and there was not a bit of nepotism involved, but Julie was fantastic at what she did. We had dramatically increased profits this current quarter and a big part of that was due to Julie’s input. I loved to watch her work.
“So, what are your plans for Christmas?” Sophie asked Julie.
She looked at me and reached over to hold my hand. “Well,” Julie said. “We’ve talked about taking a nice trip to Paris. We are inviting my family and his