tricks of time ― grayson hawthorne [the inheritance games]

EPILOGUE

"I'm glad," Jameson told me, the words slow and deliberate, "that it was you. I don't think we would've wanted anyone else, Heiress." He took a step back, clearing the way for Grayson to slide in next to me.

"Have you decided yet," Grayson asked me, "what room you're going to add on to Hawthorne House this year?" I wondered if he could feel my anticipation, if he had any idea what wewere counting down to.

"I've made a lot of decisions," I said. Alisa hadn't arrived yet, but she would be here soon.

"If you're planning to build a death-defying obstacle course on the south side of the Black Wood," Xander said, bouncing up, high off a Skee-Ball victory, "count me in! I have a lead on where we can get a reasonably  priced two-story-tall teeter-totter."

I grinned. "What would you do," I asked Grayson, "if you were adding on a room?"

Grayson pulled my body back against his. "You know what I would do. You know what I did do."

"Please." Thea sauntered over holding a pool cue. She was wearing a long silver dress that left wide strips of bronze skin on display and was slit to the thigh. "The correct answer is obviously ballroom."

"The foyer is as big as a ballroom," I pointed out. "Pretty sure it's been used that way for decades."

"And yet," Thea countered, "it remains not a ballroom." She turned back toward the pool table, where she and Rebecca were facing off against Leslie and Nash. Bex— my half-sister, leaned over the table, lining up what looked to be an impossible shot, her green velvet tuxedo pulling against her chest, her dark red hair combed to one side and falling into her face.

She sank the shot, and Thea strolled back toward her, shooting Nash a gloating look. "Still feeling cocky, Cowboy?"

"Always," Nash drawled.

"That," Libby said, her eyes catching his, "is an understatement."

Nash smirked. "Thirsty?" he asked my sister.

Leslie poked him in the chest, but she was grinning widely.

Are you ready for this?" Alisa asked beside me as Grayson challenged his brothers to a round of hold-the-puppy pinball.

"As ready as I'm ever going to be."

Thirty minutes to go. Twenty. Ten.

No amount of winning or losing at pool, air hockey, or foosball, no amount of puppy pinball or trying to beat the high score on a dozen different arcade games could distract me from the way the clock was ticking down.

Three minutes.

"The trick to a good poker face," Grayson murmured, "isn't keeping your face blank. It's thinking something other than your cards—the same something the whole time."

Grayson Davenport Hawthorne had gotten rid of the puppy. He offered me a hand, and for the second time that night, I took it. He pulled me in for a slow dance, the kind that required no music.

"You've got your poker face on now, Leah."
Alisa appeared beside me, holding a tray of the champagne. I took a glass and met her eyes.It's almost time.

"That's my girl!" Xander bellowed.

"Woman," Leslie corrected.

"That's my woman! In a completely not possessive and absolutely unpatriarchal kind of way!"

"It's time." Grayson said. I leaned into him as the others crowded around.

"Ten... nine... eight..."