Chapter 10 - The Horizon
Six months later, the private estate on Bainbridge Island looked like something out of an architectural digest.
It was a sprawling, modern masterpiece of cedar, glass, and river stone, perched on a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound. There were no high-rise towers here. No corporate boardrooms breathing down our necks. Just the sound of the tide rolling against the gravel beach, the smell of salt and pine, and the sound of two eight-year-old girls laughing as they chased a golden retriever across the back lawn.
I stood on the wide cedar deck, holding a mug of black coffee in one hand while my other arm was wrapped around Sloan’s waist as she leaned against the railing, sketching a new bridge design on a heavy paper tablet.
"The board is calling about the merger," Sloan murmured without looking up from her drawing. "They say you need to be in New York by Monday."
"Tell them to wait," I said, pressing my face into her dark hair. "Drake Capital can run itself for a week."
"And the girls?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder with a playful spark in her eye. "Hazel wants to know if we can adopt a pony."
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"Tell her," I smiled, looking out toward the horizon where the sun was beginning to break through the gray Seattle clouds in long, golden shafts of pure, unadulterated light, "that her father can buy her a horse, a mountain, and anything else she wants—as long as we never, ever answer the phone at 2:47 in the morning again."
Sloan laughed—that bright, beautiful sound I had spent ten years starving for—and turned to kiss me, right there in the open air, where the whole world could see us, and nobody could ever take us apart again.
