Did she remember? Annie's smile trembled. "Yes."
"I love you as much now as I did then, babe." His voice turned husky. "If it's possible, I love you even more."
Annie took the rose from him.
"I'll never stop loving you, Chase," she whispered, and she went into her husband's arms.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS THE DAY AFTER Christmas, and the Cooper clan was gathered in Annie and Chase's living room.
"There's no way your father and I can eat all these leftovers by ourselves," Annie had said, when she'd phoned Dawn and asked if she and Nick would come by for dinner.
"You don't have to convince me, Mom." Dawn had replied, with a smile in her voice. "If there's one thing I still don't love about being a wife. it's cooking."
Now, as Annie sat on the sofa beside her husband, with his arm curled tightly around her shoulders, she looked around her at her family and knew that she had never been happier.
Dawn and Nick were sitting cross-legged beside the big spruce tree Chase had wrestled through the door last week.
"It'll never fit," he'd groaned, as he'd lugged the tree toward the living room.
"Of course it'll fit," Annie had insisted, and it had-after Chase had lopped off two feet with a saw.
Annie's sister, Laurel, was there, too, standing under the sprig of mistletoe Chase had hung in the living room entryway. Annie smiled. Laurel and her gorgeous husband, Damian, were kissing each other as if nobody else existed. As Annie watched, Damian drew back a little, smiled at Laurel and lay his hand gently on her huge belly. He said something that brought a rosy flush to Laurel's cheeks.
Annie smiled and looked away, toward her friend, Deb, who was sitting before the fireplace, deep in conversation with a man-a very nice man-whom she'd met a couple of months ago.
"In the supermarket?" Annie had asked teasingly.
Deb had blushed. "In the library, but if you tell that to anybody, I'll deny everything."
Annie sighed and put her head on Chase's shoulder. What a difference a few months could make. She'd been so unhappy this past summer, and now-and now, her heart was almost unbearably filled with joy.
"Babe?"
She looked up. Chase smiled at her.
"You think it's time to tell them our plans?"
Annie smiled back at her husband. They'd been married for months now, and every day still felt like part of their honeymoon.
"Yes," she said. "Let's."
Chase grinned and kissed her. Then, holding her hand and drawing her up with him, he rose to his feet.
"Okay, everybody," he said, "listen up."
Everyone turned and looked at Chase and Annie. Chase cleared his throat.
"Annie and I had a problem..."
Long, deep groans echoed around the room.
Chase laughed and drew Annie closer.
"The problem was, where were we going to live? Annie had this old house that she loved. And I had a condo that I was pretty happy with, in New York."
"Don't tell us," Deb said. "You guys have decided to pitch a tent on a beach, in Tahiti."
Chase and Annie laughed along with everybody else, and then Chase held up his hand.
"And then, there was Annie's flower business and my construction company. As I say, we had a problem." He looked down at his wife and smiled. "Tell 'em how we solved it, babe."
"Well," Annie said, "when we thought about it, it was really a cinch."
"I told you," Deb said. "The tent, on the beach in Tahiti."
"We bought an island," Annie said, "off the Washington coast."
Dawn scrambled to her feet. "An island, Mom? Or your island?"
Annie blushed. "Our island. Your father spoke to Mr. Tanaka and convinced him that there was another island for sale up the coast that would be much more to his liking."
"I'm going to build us a house," Chase said.
"Isn't there a house there already?"
Chase and Annie smiled at each other. "Yes," Annie said softly, "a very handsome one...but we've decided we want something of our own. Something-something cozier." She looked at the people gathered around them. "Chase will build our house, and I'm going to put in a garden, and after that, we're going to combine forces. Cooper and Cooper, Landscape and House Design." She grinned. "Please notice that I get top billing."
Everyone laughed, and then Dawn clapped her hands.
"Well," she said, "as long as it's announcement time, I have one of my own." She smiled happily. "I'm going back to school. I signed up for the spring semester."
Annie let out a shriek. "Oh, baby, that's wonderful news!"
Nick smiled proudly and put his arm around his wife's waist. "It is, isn't it? Dawn will have her degree four years from now, and then-" A blush stole over his handsome features. "And then," he said, ducking his head, "we're going to start a family."
"Way to go, Nick," Damian called out. He winked at his wife, who stood smiling in the circle of his arms. "Of course, by then Laurel and I will probably be working on baby number two, or maybe three."
Everyone whistled and cheered.
"All right," Deb said briskly, "that's enough of this nonsense. You guys don't have a monopoly on good news, you know." She took a deep breath, looked up at the smiling man at her side and looped her arm through his. "Arthur and I have decided to tie the knot. And before anybody says we're tying it around each other's throats, let me make it perfectly clear that what I mean is, he's asked me to marry him." Deb's voice softened. "And I said I would so-it's too late to back out, Arthur, because now I've got witnesses."
In the laughter and good-natured banter that followed, it was simple for Annie and Chase to drift off into the kitchen, alone.
Chase took Annie in his arms.
"You know," he said, "after all these happy announcements, I've been thinking..."
She smiled up at him. "Yes?"
"Well," he said, "well..."
"Well, what?"
Chase smiled back at her. "Maybe we ought to reconsider those plans for the new house. I mean, heck, right down the hall from where our bedroom's going to be-wouldn't that be a great place to put a nursery?"
Annie looked deep into the eyes of her husband. Then she smiled, looped her arms around his neck, brought his head down to hers and kissed him.