“You should do whatever you feel is right.”
“I want to call him. I feel hopeful about our relationship. Not because he’s paid off my loans—although it’s very generous of him—but more because of what that represents. It’s like he wants to make amends. And honestly, I like him and I’d like to know him more. I probably didn’t tell you but I had an opportunity to ask him for the money. Something stopped me. Maybe I wanted him to offer it to me willingly. And now he has.”
“So now you can get to know him because you want to. Not because you need to.”
“I’m exhausted,” she confessed. “It’s been a day.”
“We should get married in Italy,” I said, trying to work out what we had to do first to start our lives together. We needed a list. “We should contact a wedding planner. Someone good.”
“You haven’t asked me yet. And I haven’t asked you. No putting the cart before the horse.”
“You see?” I turned to her. “This is why I love you. You challenge me, make me see the world in a different way. Don’t ever stop.”
“You can count on it.”
Forty-Three
Sofia
A warm, comforting breeze blew as we looked across the New York City skyline at the Chrysler building, the Met Life building and the Empire State building.
“So this is why we’re at a different hotel and not your usual Mandarin Oriental,” I said. “The view. You can see the whole of Manhattan from up here.”
“This roof terrace is the perfect place . . .”
I turned to him when he didn’t finish his sentence. “The perfect place for what?”
He cupped my face and swept his thumb over my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I replied. Even though we said it to each other incessantly, like we had to make up for lost time, a thrill still chased up my spine whenever I heard it from him. I’d gone to London to find fifty thousand dollars and ended up with a different life and everything I could have ever wished for.
“A few months ago, you accosted me in the middle of the street and gave yourself a job as my assistant. Little did I know, I’d finally met my match in every sense of the word. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He dropped his hand from my face and took a step back. Then he bent on one knee and pulled out a ring box. “Will you marry me?”
His proposal was positively wordy for him. I couldn’t see anything but that look in his eye that told me I was his queen. I ignored the ring, stepped forward, and sat on his knee, wrapping my arms around him. “I knew the moment I followed you up those stairs on that first morning, your tight butt directly in front of me, that you’d rock my world one way or another. And you have. In the best way. Although it’s your heart that can take most of the credit. You’re a good, kind, sensitive man. I’m lucky to see that side of you. Your belief in me has given me everything I ever wanted and I want to spend the rest of my life trying to make you feel as special as you make me feel. Will you marry me?”
“Every day of the week for the rest of my life.” He stood, taking me with him, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as we kissed. He’d chosen the perfect background—it was the land of my roots and the place that had given our relationship wings.
As Andrew lowered me back to my feet, I spotted the hot tub. “I brought my bikini. Shall we celebrate?”
“You won’t be needing your bikini. Just this.”
He grabbed the ring box from where it had been discarded on the floor.
“Oh god, I didn’t even look at it.”
Andrew grinned like it hadn’t bothered him at all.
As he opened the box, I gasped. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. It was a huge rectangular diamond that kind of reminded me of New York itself—all angles, and not to be missed.
“Dexter gave me a few options. I picked this but we can change it.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s gorgeous.”
“Dexter has a talent for knowing what people will like.” He pulled it out of the box and slipped it on my finger. It fit like I’d been wearing it my entire life.
“Anyone who wouldn’t like this is an idiot.”
Andrew chuckled. “So, you’re ready to tell your mum you’re getting married?”
“I’m ready to tell everyone. Everyone’s going to hear how happy you make me and how happy I want to make you.”
“You already do,” he said.
“Hot tub?” I suggested.
“Naked?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
Forty-Four
Andrew
“That ring was pretty in the box, but on you, it’s something else,” I said as Sofia slipped out of her underwear. She was naked in the New York moonlight and I’d never seen anything so breathtakingly spectacular.
“I don’t think you’re looking at the ring.” She laughed as she climbed the first step into the hot tub.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her off the step toward me. “I’m never looking at anything but you if you’re in the room.”
“Same,” she replied. I skirted my fingers up and down her arms. I wanted to bend her over the hot tub and fuck her so loud the entire city could hear me, but I knew I’d regret it. I was going to take my time tonight. Not to torture her, but to remind her that we had our whole lives to be together. For as long as my heart beat in my body, I was going to worship her.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered. “My fiancée.”
She shivered. I bent and placed a kiss on her shoulder.
I cupped her face and pressed a kiss on her lips. Threading her fingers into my hair, she deepened our kiss, our tongues pressing together, urgent and purposeful. She was so soft and warm and perfect, and the occasional scrape of her ring against my scalp sent a bolt of desire right to my dick. She was going to be my wife. That was the best aphrodisiac I’d ever experienced.
She pulled away.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it to the hot tub,” she said, glancing down at my erection straining between us.
“You think I’m going to pass up an opportunity to get you even warmer and even wetter?”
I bent and scooped her up, then slipped her into the bubbling water before sliding in next to her. I positioned her so she was straddling me, face to face.
“You’re perfect.”
She shook her head. “I’m anything but.”
“You’re perfect for me. And I love you.”
I glanced around, looking for a condom.
“Let’s not,” she said, the look of contentment and trust in her eye better than every award and pat on the back I’d ever gotten.
“You want to get pregnant?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “We probably should have talked about this before getting engaged.”
“No need. I’m happy if you’re happy. I seem to remember you saying something about you wanting fifteen kids or something. If you decide you don’t want any, that’s fine too.” I never thought I’d hear myself saying I wanted children, but the idea of a family with Sofia felt right. It felt like destiny.