To Sir, with Love - Lauren Layne Page 0,80

of you. And because of what I said before—you deserve the fairy-tale ending, and I can only hope you’ll give me a chance to be yours, Gracie.”

I wipe my eyes impatiently, since the tears are blurring my vision, and now that I’ve found him, I don’t want to miss a second of looking at his face. “I should hate you. Do you have any idea how it tore me up? I was so sure Sir was my soul mate, but then Sebastian showed up, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And then I was falling in love with both—”

His mouth closes over mine, our lips fitting together perfectly, and his hand slowly slides around my waist, his palm spreading wide on my back and pulling me closer.

It’s a fairy-tale kiss.

Okay, fine, it’s a PG-13 fairy-tale kiss, with tongues and hands, and a lot of cheering and whoops from the crowd.

Someone yells, “Get a room!” Caleb.

Someone blows their nose loudly. May.

Wolf whistle. Keva. Or maybe Rachel.

Cheering mixed with the occasional sob. Lily.

And then something warm and invisible seems to wrap around us. Squeezing. Loving.

Dad. Mine. His. My mom.

Sebastian pulls back slowly, his thumb reverently touching my bottom lip, and he smiles down at me, looking every bit as happy as I feel.

“You know,” I say teasingly, touching a finger to the pink rose. “If you want to snatch up all my paintings of us, you should have made it a trio. The one of the guy in the suit and the aqua eyes? That’s you.”

“I know,” he says with a mischievous grin. “I knew the second I saw it in your living room.”

“But you didn’t want it? You didn’t like it?”

“I like it. I like it a lot, and I really like knowing that you were thinking about me as often as I was thinking about you.”

“But…?”

He lowers his head to whisper playfully. “But I’ll be honest, I thought it would be a little vain to have a painting of myself hanging in our home.”

I let out a stunned laugh. “Our home? Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you there, Sir?”

“My dear Lady, you stole my heart twice. If you think I’m letting another second of my life pass without you in it, I’ll have to kiss you again to set you straight.”

And he does.

Cinderella’s glass slipper? It’s got nothing on Sebastian Andrews’s kiss.

Epilogue

One Year Later

To Sir, with suspicion,

As an anniversary gift, Keva sent me the spreadsheet with the wagers you all made that night of my show at the gallery.

You described yourself exactly. Seeing as you had an unfair advantage, you, sir, should forfeit your prize.

Lady

* * *

My dear Lady,

I’ll gladly return the hundred bucks, but I’m not giving back the prize: you.

Yours in victory,

Sir

* * *

To Sir, with begrudging respect,

Well played. Also, did you get the anniversary gift I sent to your office? I call it Man with the Aqua Eyes, the Sequel.

Lady

* * *

My dear Lady,

I did. You might have mentioned that it was a nude.

My mother saw it.

Yours in I will never recover,

Sir

* * *

To Sir, with glee,

Be grateful. Hugh and Myron insisted that if I agreed to display it in the gallery, it’d fetch my highest sale price yet.

Lady

* * *

My dear Lady,

I’m ignoring that. Did you get my anniversary gift?

Yours in wondering,

Sir

* * *

To Sir, with love,

A bassinet shaped like Cinderella’s slipper for Baby Girl Andrews? I’m still trying to find the words.

Lady

* * *

Gracie,

Find them later. Quit texting me from the living room and come to bed.

Your loving husband,

Sebastian

Author’s Note

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading To Sir, with Love. If you’ve made it this far, I hope that means you finished the book, and I hope even more that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Sebastian and Gracie’s story is one that’s been with me for years—long before I typed the words Chapter One. Nora Ephron is one of my heroes, and You’ve Got Mail has always been my favorite of her works. But as strongly as I felt called to tell my own version of a couple who fell in love twice—once in person and once over “letters”—it took me a good long while to figure out what my version of that love story looked like.

In the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László (the original!), it was letters. In 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, as well as in the musicals In the Good Old Summertime and She Loves Me, it was also letters.

In 1998,