Page 79 of Dirty Little Secret, Baby
We kiss again, and this time I’m certain nothing and no one will ever tear us apart. Not ever. This is forever, and I won’t let any secret—or anything else—come between us.
Epilogue
Beth
A few months later
"And you are?" asks the older gentleman in a tuxedo who had just shaken Alex's hand and is now offering his hand to me.
"This is Beth. She's my girlfriend and exactly the woman I want to spend my life with, sir," Alex answers for me, turns to me, and winks. A warm feeling of safety floods me, even though it's not the first time he's introduced me with those words tonight at the charity gala.
It's the first event of this kind since Ben and I moved into Alex's villa. The last few months since the incident with the ladder and his ex-assistant have been pure bliss. We've become a real little family. Ben loves his daddy more than anything,and I find myself wondering what he and Veronica are up to right now in his room upstairs. I'm sure they're fine. Veronica adores the lively little guy and is so much more to me than just his godmother. She's a true angel who stood by me through the hardest time of my life. I'm super glad she didn't move to Washington after all and instead got a job at a company in New York in the HR department, where her background as a labor lawyer fits perfectly.
She did mention, though, that her boss is quite an asshole, and earlier, right before the gala began, she said she absolutely had to tell me something. Something truly unbelievable. But Ben demanded his mommy's attention by clearing the dining table completely and leaving a sea of chaos on the kitchen floor—something I didn't want the housekeeper, Bertha, to clean up. It still feels strange having someone like her in the house who takes care of things like that. Ben cried, I comforted him, and I cleaned up the mess with Veronica and Bertha, who couldn't be entirely dissuaded and more than once said that I was the best thing that had ever happened to her boss, which makes me blush every single time. To top it all off, Cutie started walking through the puddles on the floor and licking some of it up. Bertha ran after her so that the ball of fluff, who seemed to like Ben and me from the very first moment, wouldn't cover the entire upstairs with little spots that look like paw prints. I was curious about the story Veronica wanted to tell me, but she said not to worry, to get changed, and put on a dress without stains or food on it. I thanked her, but I could feel it was weighing on her. I decided to ask her after I got changed, because she's always been a good friend to me, and I want to be the same for her.
But then Alex came and said we had to go because the first guests were already waiting. He kissed little Ben and stifled a grin at the chaos. "Daddy... broke," Ben said, a little sad that he'd broken something. He had started calling Alex Daddy, which made Alex light up every time. He just couldn't be mad at the little guy. And neither could I. Alex kissed him and said it wasn't a big deal.
"Well, well... young love. How nice. You've made a good catch there, Beth. I'm Arnold. But my friends call me Arni," the guest says, snapping me out of my thoughts, smiling as he shakes my hand enthusiastically.
"Nice to meet you, Arni," I say with a smile, returning his handshake just the way Alex told me to.
"Hey, wait," he says, then looks at Alex and points at me. "Is that HER?" he asks, aghast.
"If you mean the woman with the flower shop next to the shopping mall under construction, then the answer is: Yes. That's exactly her," Alex says, pleased.
"The papers were full of it. Is it true you bought the shop for twice the market value to impress her?"
"You can't buy love, Arni. Took me a while to learn that. But what you can do is make sure the best florist in the city doesn't get thrown out of her shop unfairly," Alex explains, which is pretty much exactly how it happened. It still feels like a fairy tale when he tells it, and I can feel how what we had was somethingspecial from the very first moment, even though we had to weather a tough test.
"And the mall really belongs to you now? You're building that thing across from your wife's—I mean, your girlfriend's—shop?" Arni asks, looking a bit stunned.
"Yes, my former assistant spilled everything; that way he avoided a long sentence and is now only serving a few months for aggravated assault." At these words, Alex pulls me closer. We've talked often about how lucky I was, and when I looked out his bedroom window, it hit me. Aside from that oversized shrub, there was nothing but bare ground there, which would never have broken my fall. But I've gotten over the shock, and more than once I've looked out that very window at the stars after we made love, lying in bed in each other's arms while Alex kissed my forehead.
They could never prove anything against Jake, though. His lawyers were just too good, and Eric took the blame. That infuriated Alex, because he wanted Jake held accountable. But I told Alex that time would tell what people thought of him. And as it turned out, he'd struggled with massive drops in sales over the past few months. Legally, he was innocent, but New Yorkers didn't buy it and very much remembered what a poor impression he made in court.
"So he really tried to blackmail you, and you signed the mall over to him? Man, and I thought that was just tabloid gossip. What did he use to blackmail you with, if I may ask?"
"With Beth. He wanted..." Alex pauses. "He threatened to hurt her."
"Bastard," Arni says, and for a moment we all fall silent, and I have to think about how Alex said that Eric was basically just a poor sap and had been blackmailed himself because he was head over heels for Dilara, who, at Jake's behest, only used him and then skipped town for Mexico in time. From the information Alex has, she's living in a small village under the harshest conditions because apparently Jake cut off her money, since he was only interested in her spreading her legs for him. What a crazy mess, and without Eric it probably never would have come to light. A feast for the tabloids.
"But the mall—won't it take customers away from your wife?" Arni asks.
"There will never be a flower shop in there, if you catch my drift," Alex explains.
"I get it," Arni nods.
"You've got a great woman there. Don't you dare let her go," Arni says.
"I don't intend to. Never," Alex replies, slips an arm around me, and pulls me closer. "Never again."
"Wonderful," Arni says, then jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "Let me know when the bells start ringing. I need to go say helloover there, too. See you later," he says, turns around, and he's gone.
"See? Told you. A bunch of handshakes, small talk, and everyone wants to know if the story in the paper is true," Alex says, turns to me, places both hands on my waist, and looks me straight in the eye. "Without you, it would be unbearable, Beth. Without you, everything is unbearable. I'm glad you're here," he whispers and kisses me.
"You old charmer," I say, a little sassy, as I open my eyes after the kiss and feel the butterflies flitting wild across my belly. "But I'm glad to be here too. With you."
We kiss again, and I feel the whole room fade into the background, leaving nothing but the two of us and this kiss that still sends tiny electric sparks through my whole body.
