Page 142 of Hockey Wife
“I did.”
“That’s where it leaves us.” She held out her hand.
On a harsh pull of breath, he wasted no time extracting the ring and placed it at the fingertip of her wedding ring finger. That’s when she noticed he still wore his.
“You didn’t take yours off?”
“A part of me refused to believe it was over. Those instincts have always known the score.” He slipped the diamond ring on, down to the first knuckle. “With this ring, I thee wed. I promise to love, cherish, and do naughty things to you as often as possible. I promise to try everything you cook, walk with you on the beach, and take care of your cat. Most important, I promise to make sure you never for one second regret a single moment of that night in Vegas.”
He pushed the ring all the way onto her finger.
Her breath caught, and those tears finally made good on their threat.
“Peaches.” He wiped them away. “You okay?”
“Yes! Happy tears, I promise. And speaking of vows …” She held his face, the lovely, lived-in face of her husband, and leaned close. “With this kiss, I thee wed. I promise to cheer you when you’re down and support you in everything. I promise to listen to your advice when I might be about to do something impulsive, like put too much hot sauce on my tacos, or marry a stranger in Vegas. I promise to love you as much as I want to be loved, which is a lot because I’m very selfish when it comes to you, Dylan Bankowski.”
She kissed him to seal her promise. He took that kiss and triple-downed on it for intensity.
“You’ve made me a very happy man, wife.”
She smiled through joyful tears. “I’m officially a Bankowski Babe! I can’t wait to tell your family. And make jackets!”
He raised an eyebrow. “No jackets.”
“T-shirts?” She gave her sauciest grin, which stretched wider as her husband relented.
This man was a bit of a pushover where his wife was concerned.
“Maybe. As for telling my family, that can wait. Can you leave early?”
“I’m the boss, I can do anything.”
“Good. Because right now, I’d like to take Babe Prime to bed and start fulfilling all the vows I just made.”
Which he did.
Three wonderful times.
Epilogue
Seven months later
April
It’s more than a door.
Though Georgia had visited the Empty Net several times over the last seven months—she would never feel in the know enough to call it the Net—it still gave her a thrill to pull that big oak door open and walk on through.
Like stepping into her future.
Tonight was a good night to be a Rebels fan. The team had made the playoffs, the bar was heaving, and a still height-challenged Georgia could barely make out anyone she knew. That blond crown in the distance might have been Erik Jorgenson, the Rebels goalie, or maybe a different Viking lookalike hockey player altogether.
She should have met Banks in the dressing room right after the game, but she had been called away by a Georgia’s Godmothers emergency. One of their clients was on a date night with her husband when some miscommunication snafu had resulted in their reservation being canceled. No other restaurant would do because this was the one they’d gotten engaged in twenty three years ago—wow!—so Georgia made a personal call to the chef-owner, Tony DeLuca. When he didn’t answer because he was in the middle of service, she had paid a visit to DeLuca’s in Wicker Park herself. The couple were soon seated at a chef’s table in the kitchen, and all was well again. It might have seemed trivial—boo hoo, they couldn’t eat in a fancy restaurant—but not to Georgia. These were the moments that mattered.
So, she was late to the celebration. But she hoped she would add to it with news of her own.
She arced her gaze again over the crowd, and that’s when it happened, just like that first night. Parting the crowd like the Red Sea, her husband moved toward her like she was the mission. He scooped her up and kissed her deep and she thought, how lucky am I?