“You were pretty cold, but you’ve thawed out nicely,” Tamsyn said with a forgiving smile he really didn’t deserve.
“You thawed me out. You made me see the real you, the beautiful woman inside that perfect exterior. It’s why I want to hold on to naming rights for the center.”
“You really want to call it Tamsyn’s Place?”
“You know about that?”
“Alexis sent me a link to the clip on TV.”
He smiled. Of course she had. “Are you okay with that?”
“Well, I would have preferred to see it named after Ellen, but maybe we can do that with the next one.”
“I like the sound of that. Tamsyn, I want our future to be together, planning everything together, no secrets, no lies.”
“Me, too,” she answered softly.
“Then, will you marry me? Will you have a family and grow old with me?”
“Oh, Finn, yes! I will.”
* * *
Much later, after they’d sealed their reunion with a wealth of physical promises and lay, replete, in one another’s arms, Tamsyn reflected on how she finally felt as though she’d come home. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day and while she would miss her family she knew she was exactly where she was meant to be. With this man, for the rest of her life.
Thinking of Christmas reminded her of the gift Finn had thrust at her after the funeral when she’d left for Auckland. She hadn’t gotten around to unwrapping it, yet hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to discard it, either.
“Finn? What was the parcel you gave me the other day?”
“You didn’t open it?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why don’t you?” he suggested.
She slipped from the bed and pulled on his T-shirt and went outside to her latest rental and dragged her case from the trunk. Bringing it upstairs to the bedroom, she unzipped it and burrowed through her clothes to where she’d stashed the package, cushioned in the center.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, she ripped away the paper, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the image of her mother looking back at her.
“Oh, Finn. She was so beautiful.”
“Inside and out, just like you,” he replied, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.
“But this picture, it must have been special to you. Why did you give it to me?”
“Because you deserved to have something of her. Something you could keep forever to remember her by and something that I know she, too, was proud of.”
Tamsyn carefully placed the picture on the bedside cabinet and turned to the man beside her. If she’d had any doubts whatsoever they were all banished now. She’d made the right choice in coming back to Finn, in coming home. Finally she could be secure in the knowledge that, for the first time in her life, she was finally where she truly belonged.
In his arms, in his life, and ahead of all others in his heart. Always.