Page 71 of Let Me Win You

Goeff retorted with a few witty comments, and Jess deftly diverted everyone’s attention away from us, allowing me to run a hand down my mussed hair and straighten my blouse, all the while smiling in the spotlight like a woman with no regrets.

“So,” Jess turned back to us after the cameras had moved on to Aiden to properly document every drop of his bitterness and disappointment. “This isn’t going to be a one-night thing between you two, is it?” she asked me, with a gesture at Invi.

“No,” I admitted. “It is much bigger than that.”

She looked at me closely.

“You really like him?” she asked with a voice softer than her gaze. “Is he here to stay?”

Ilovedhim.

But considering that as far as Jess knew, I’d only met Invi a few hours ago, I figured professing my love for him would probably raise concerns and even suspicions on her part.

So, I simply nodded. “I do. And yes, he’ll be around.”

We hadn’t figured out yet how exactly we could be together. But Invi had promised me back in the maze that he’d never leave me, and he’d proven already that he was the man of his word.

Jess drew in a long breath.

“Well then…” She smiled, slapping Invi on his upper arm. “Welcome to the family.”

Because good friends became a family. And now, Invi was one of us too.

Epilogue

Nic

A month later

Iturned the wheel, steering my white, windowless van down the dirt road to my house. I often joked that my van looked like a perfect vehicle for a serial killer to kidnap his victims. But it was also perfect for delivering custom cakes for weddings and other events.

Except that lately, our delivery area grew way beyond the limits that I could reach on my van.

I might still get severe heartburn at the mere mention of Shaun, but the asshole turned out to be absolutely right about one thing. Before the show had even ended, Jess started getting offers.

The camera loved her, and so did the audience. She ended up hiring a lawyer to help her go over the tall stack of contract offers from modeling, to hosting, to pastry chef positions in fancy restaurants, and to reality TV.

After a long and careful consideration that included detailed consultations with Geoff and me, she decided on a baking show that was going to be filmed in our bakery.

The first episode had been filmed last week. But even without this new show, our business blew up beyond our wildest imagination.

In addition to a personal assistant to help her handle all her TV appearances, Jess hired more people to help in the bakery, which made her one of the top three employers in our tiny town, prompting Geoff to quip during an interview that the town should at least name a park or a street after her.

Jess offered me to be in charge of opening the second location in the city that we had planned to open after winning the challenge. But I saw a better opportunity. Since our win on national TV, our online sales had grown tenfold and kept growing.

People from all over the country and even from around the world wanted a custom cake from our bakery. My dream of designing cakes for a living had finally come true. I’d just completed two super fancy custom cakes for a local delivery this week. Today, I dropped by the bakery to catch up with Geoff and Jess and picked up a few more orders to design within the next few days.

Shortly after winning the TV challenge, I finally got to meet Madison and her purple boyfriend Avar, the Sin of Greed. I made a deal with Avar. In exchange for the transcendence potion, whenever I visited Invi and baked stuffed croissants, I sent a duck with a bucket of them for Avar and Maddy to Avar’s mountain.

With the steady supply of the potion now, I often designed and created my cakes at Invi’s house in Purgatory.

As I pulled into my long driveway shaded by the century-old oak trees, I spotted a flash of green up ahead. My mortal sinrushed out of the front door to meet me. It’d been only a few hours since we parted, but I couldn’t wait to see him again.

The moment I stepped out of the van, he looped his tail around me and pulled me into his arms.

“What took you so long?” he murmured, nuzzling my hair.

It was a good thing I lived literally in the middle of nowhere, with no one but birds and squirrels to witness my boyfriend’s tail curl around me in the tightest of hugs.

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