He kissed the top of her head. “You know when I said I said I didn’t believe in happy-ever-after’s?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“I think I’ve changed my mind.”
She dug her face into his chest with a happy sigh.
“Take us home, Archie,” she demanded.
“Gladly.”
“And try not to crash this time, huh?” Issy said.
“You crash one vehicle and you never hear the end of it,” Archer grumbled as Caley giggled.
Doc just smiled. If Archer had never crashed then they likely wouldn’t have met Caley and if they hadn’t met Caley, well, he wouldn’t have everything he’d ever wanted and never thought he’d have.
His love. His Little. His brother.
Epilogue
“Do I gots to, Papa?” She gave Archer her best pout, using her biggest eyes as she pleaded with him.
She was dressed in a pair of leggings and a sweater dress with a picture of a dachshund on the front.
Archer had bought it for her during their shopping trip before leaving Dallas. Archer had braided her hair for her this morning and she was wearing a pair of bumblebee slippers that Issy had bought.
They’d been back at Sanctuary for a week now and things had never been better. She knew they’d have some ups and downs. But she also knew that this is where she was supposed to be.
Soon after they arrived, Caley had gotten a call from the fire marshal about her house. Apparently, it had been the heat pack she’d put in the microwave for her hands. She’d left it in there to go say goodbye to Dave and forgotten about it. She was still kicking herself for being so careless, even though Issy and Archer had reassured her often that it was an accident.
She couldn’t get back the things she lost, but she knew she wouldn’t ever forget Dave. And in the summer, they all planned to go back there, and maybe camp for a while.
She wasn’t sure how Archer was going to do with camping, but they’d see. They just needed to ensure he had his coffee. Especially in the mornings when he could almost be as cranky as Issy before his first caffeine hit.
He was constantly surprising her, though. He’d really taken to this Daddy Dom stuff. Maybe more than she’d expected he would. Which sometimes didn’t bode well for her ability to sit comfortably. Neither man let her get away with much.
They were getting into a rhythm. She was working less, but still getting plenty done and when she wasn’t working, at least one of them was always around. To play with her as Little Caley or as big Caley.
Things would be perfect. Or they would be, if she just had a way of getting rid of the damn punishment jar.
“Yes, Caley Jane, you do,” Archer said sternly. “And if you keep procrastinating, you’ll be choosing two punishments. You’re probably owed that many anyway.”
“Good idea, brother,” Issy said, moving up to stand beside him, with his arms crossed over his chest.
Uh-oh. Okay, so maybe she should just get this over with.
She shoved her hand in the big jar and pulled a piece of paper out, handing it over to Archer who held out his hand. He looked at it then passed it to Issy who grinned.
For a man who had barely smiled when she first met him, he sure did smile a lot now.
“My favorite. Someone’s getting ginger up her butt,” Issy said.
“What! No! Papa!” She turned to Archer as Issy strode off to the kitchen with a whistle. They’d decided to expand the cabin so that both she and Archer had office space and she could have the second bedroom as a playroom. When she’d offered to pay for it, though, both of them had acted like she had mortally insulted them. Then she’d had to have a talk with Issy about how, no, she wasn’t broke, she just wasn’t very good at the day-to-day details which is why her cabin had been falling down.
Issy had been shocked. And a bit upset she hadn’t told him. He was still asking to read her books. Even though he now knew her pen name, he hadn’t peeked because he said he wanted her to be okay with him reading them first.
Well, she had something planned for him there…