Page 156 of The Oscar Escape
Aria smoothed the bills onto the table and added the sprinkling of quarters. “Eight dollars. Cash. Boom!”
“Signatures,” the judge grumped in his no-nonsense voice that the audience was absolutely eating up.
She signed on the line and looked on as Oscar did the same.
“Oscar Abrams Elliott and Aria Paige-Grant are officially married,” the judge declared. “Now you may sign the contract to purchase The Sweet Escape Inn.”
With a few strokes of the pen, the property was theirs.
Amidst the applause, she took in her friends and family, emotion welling in her chest. She glanced off stage and spied Madelyn—the woman who’d orchestrated the happily ever afters of the people she loved the most.
“Thank you,” she mouthed to the matchmaker.
Madelyn smoothed her scarlet scarf and nodded her acknowledgment.
“Aria,” Ivy exclaimed, “your manager gave me a piece of paper. It says you hit double platinum. Aria Paige-Grant has gone double platinum in less than a year.” The little girl held the slip of paper in the air.
Holy shit!She’d done it. But something felt off. That wasn’t how she wanted the achievement broadcast to the world.
“Hold on, Ivy. I need to make a small correction.”
“What’s that?” the child chirped.
Aria whispered into the little girl’s ear.
Ivy beamed, then turned to the audience. “Listen up, suckers! Mrs. Elliott has gone double platinum.”
The kid’s declaration garnered a deafening round of applause.
Aria eyed her husband. “Not too shabby, huh? I do make a fantastic Mrs. Elliott. It suits me.”
He gathered her into his arms. “There’s no escape now.”
“The only escape I want is an Oscar escape.”
With their family, friends, a little over nine thousand people watching in person, and millions more taking in the livestream, Oscar tilted up her chin. “Buckle up, buttercup,” he purred with a cheeky grin. He held her face in his hands, and his teasing expression dissolved. He gazed at her with love and devotion shining in his eyes like when he was a boy. He leaned in, and his lips hovered a breath away from hers. “Your lifetime Oscar escape starts now,Mrs. Elliott.” He stroked his thumb across her cheek, pressed his lips to hers, and sealed the Oscar escape promise with a kiss blessed by love-match magic.
Epilogue
OSCAR
“Say it,” Oscar demanded. “I know you want to say it, Aria. You wanted to say it all through dinner. I could feel you thinking it.”
“That’s not all I could feel.” Aria shut the door to Havenmatch Island’s lighthouse museum. His wife sauntered across the room in a denim dress that hit just above her knees and her lobster-red boots. Trailing her fingertips along the wooden table, she strutted her stuff like a fisherman pinup girl. She glanced over her shoulder and caught his eye. “Are you sure you’re ready for me to say it,Mr. Paige-Grant?”
Was that his legal name?
No.
Were they Mr. and Mrs. Elliott?
Yes.
Did he care what she called him?
Not really. As long as she limited her use ofMr. Switcherooandmandelierto once a day, he didn’t give a fig how she referred to him.
She was his. He was hers.
