Epilogue
Two months later…
Just keep walking forward,” Evan instructed as he gripped Staci’s arm, holding her steady. “A few more steps.”
She felt ridiculous with a blindfold over her eyes, but Evan had insisted.
; “Where are we, and what are we doing here?” she asked.
“Just have a little faith, baby. There are a couple of steps. Let’s take them one at a time.” He helped her ascend the short set of stairs. Then he said, “All right. Cross over here with me and…voila.”
“Voila, what? I can’t see a damn thing.”
He whisked off the blindfold, and it took a few seconds for Staci’s eyes to adjust to the sight surrounding her: a warehouse.
“What the…?” She shook her head, perplexed.
A warehouse.
A heartbeat later, a large crowd yelled, “Surprise!” as they sprang from just about every nook and cranny of the first floor of the building.
Staci jumped, startled. Pressed her hand to her heart as it thundered.
“What is going on?” she asked Evan as Maxi, Ryan, Lola, and several others rolled out a long table with sheet cakes covering them.
“This is your early wedding gift,” Evan told her. “I found you a secondary building for your operations.”
“Evan! Oh, holy cow!” She scanned the area, taking it all in. The right size, the perfect layout…A thoroughly beautiful setup. “This is amazing. But how…?”
“You put the bug in my ear when you were at my apartment a while back, remember?” he asked. “So I put out feelers to my friends and associates. And eventually, I heard of someone who was planning to unload this building, but he was waiting on the market to improve. I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and, well…Here we are.”
“He ran all of the specs by me, Stace,” Maxi said as she and Ryan joined them. “This place fits the bill to a T. And my team has already laid all of the groundwork to get us moved in so that there will be absolutely no disruption of service in production or distribution as we transfer manufacturing to this facility. Our main building will be able to temporarily pick up the slack so that we keep our production levels stable.”
“I have graphs and project Gantt charts if you’d like to see them,” Ryan offered in his Australian accent.
“Yeah, sure,” Staci said, totally dazed. “When we get back to the office. At the moment, I just want to take it all in.”
“We have the blueprints, too,” Maxi said. “Everything you need to fully assess what we have planned. There’s even extra room for growth potential. If Lola keeps up her brilliant marketing ideas, we’re going to need it. Not to mention when we rollout the shoes you and Evan are designing. We’ll be seriously busy.”
Staci absorbed the feeling of the space, liking the openness, the ambience. She thought back to her teeny, tiny building in a crappy part of town where she’d first kicked off Staci Kay Shoes six years ago and couldn’t help but pat herself on the back. She’d come a long way. With the help of her friends. And her customers.
“What do you think?” Evan eventually prompted her.
Staci was completely blown away. “I think it’s absolutely perfect. I love it. It’s exactly what we need.”
“All right, then,” he beamed. “It looks like you’re going to remain fully operational for a long to come, Miss Kay.”
She turned to Evan. “You really are too much for words.”
“Just trying to help out.”
“No,” she said. “You give so much to me all the time. All the help with the new line of shoes, this building, your support. Evan…” Her heart swelled. “I can’t for the life of me figure out how I got so lucky. How I found you.”
“If I recall correctly, you got locked out of a hotel room.”
She laughed, though tears filled her eyes once again. “I really am so very, very fortunate.”