what Jessica wants. It will be fun to work with someone new. Hopefully, she'll like my design drafts and will want to sign a contract."
"I'm sure she'll love you. How could she not?"
"You're prejudiced."
"I might be," he admitted. "But I know how talented you are. Jessica would be lucky to have someone as dedicated as you are to creating the perfect dress."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. By the way, my mom and Mark are saving you a seat. They're in a great mood, because Mark just officially bought the house around the corner."
"That's exciting." He'd heard there was an offer but not that it had been accepted.
"It is. They're both thrilled. My mom gets to stay in the neighborhood, and she'll be close enough to walk over and watch the rebuild. Until that house is out of escrow, they'll live in the cabin that my friend owns."
"Our cabin?"
"Well, not technically ours," she said with a laugh. "Although, we did make some memories there."
"Some smoking hot memories. When is the cabin going up for sale?"
"About a month. There are still a few things to be done, but my mom can oversee those as well. She's actually excited to have more work to do. I'm excited to have less."
"The perfect trade-off. Maybe I should buy the cabin."
Surprise filled her beautiful brown eyes. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Because I love it. Because it always felt like ours, and we'll need a place to stay when we come back to visit, which will be often."
"There's still my house. I'm not sure what we'll do with that once it's rebuilt."
"True. We can think about it."
"I like that you want to buy a place here, though."
He pulled her closer to him. "I want you to be happy, Keira. I know you're making sacrifices for me."
"I'm really not, Dante. We need to be together, and I'm more flexible than you."
"For now," he agreed. "But the future can be anything we make it."
"As long as the future is us together, I'm good."
At her words, he thought he might just be the luckiest guy in the world. "Me, too."
"It's funny that we met because Hannah insisted that I needed a plus one for the wedding. That's the only reason I went on that date. I sat down at the wrong table, but I met the right guy. And now you're here—my plus one. How different would our lives be if we never met?"
"I don't even want to think about it. I love you, Keira."
"I love you, too. Now, I better go get Hannah married."
"I'll be waiting for you when you're done. I'll always be waiting." She gazed into his eyes with so much love, his heart ached. The loneliness he'd grown up in and lived with for most of his life was gone now. Keira was filling all the empty spaces. "My mom would have loved you," he murmured. "I wish you could have met each other."
"Me, too. I want to keep hearing about her. I want to keep hearing about everything."
"That's good. Because when you're around, I can't seem to shut up."
She gave him a loving kiss filled with the promise of happily ever after. Then she took his hand, and they walked up the steps and into the church.
One day, there would be another wedding, and Keira would be in a white gown, and he'd be standing in the front waiting for her. He'd never thought he would make a good husband or a family man but meeting her had changed that. Now, it was all he really wanted. And he didn't intend to strike out.
# # #
What to read next…
I hope you enjoyed Keira and Dante’s story! Please click here if you’d like to leave a review for If We Never Met!
The next Whisper Lake novel, Tangled Up In You, will be released March 15, 2022.
Preorder: Tangled Up In You
Are you up to date on the Whisper Lake Novels?
Whisper Lake Series
Always With Me (#1)
My Wildest Dream (#2)
Can't Fight The Moonlight (#3)
Just One Kiss (#4)
If We Never Met (#5)
Tangled Up In You (#6)
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Want more contemporary romance? If you haven’t read the Callaways yet, check out the first book On A Night Like This
Excerpt - ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS
As a teenager, seeing her father’s car in the driveway when she came home from school had always made Sara Davidson uneasy. She would steel herself for the evening to come, never quite sure why she felt afraid. Stephen Davidson had never physically abused