But if Tom knew the routine, then that meant…
No. Yes? No! Yes!
Tom had been slipping out one evening a week for the last month, telling me he was working late. Well, the work he’d been doing wasn’t on computer systems, I knew that much now. It was on proposing to me in the language I spoke better than any other.
I clapped my hands over my mouth as the others kept dancing and Tom stopped, moving toward me to offer his hands.
Blinking tears away, I took his hands, my body trembling as I thought about what this might be. I hardly dared to hope…
“Rusty Best,” Tom said, swaying this way and that with me as the song drew to a close. “You came into my life like a redheaded hurricane.”
A gentle laugh around us reminded me that we weren’t alone, but I only had eyes for him. I blinked the tears out of them and cleared my throat, my smile wobbling.
“You taught me that who I am underneath is what matters. That I deserve to step into the spotlight and be seen. You saw me, and you never let me be anyone else but myself. You’ve made me the happiest man imaginable for these last six months.”
My throat was so tight I could hardly breathe, and I whimpered and wiped my eyes. Oh, Tom, I wanted to say and fling my arms around him. But Tom wasn’t done yet.
“Would you make me even happier still?” Tom murmured as he sank to one knee, clumsily fidgeting with the little box in his hands to get the catch open and present it to me.
It was upside-down. I giggled and clapped a hand to my mouth, and Tom glanced at it and scowled like it had personally offended him.
Tom mumbled, “Golly. Hold on. I rehearsed that bit so often, too.” He flipped it the right way up so the shiny silver ring wasn’t in danger of slipping out of its snug nest. “There. So, Rusty… would you make me even happier still, and become my husband?”
Duh. I didn’t have to think twice—I just offered him my left hand and nodded, wiping away the tears that streamed down my face. “Yes, baby. Oh, God, yes.”
The whoops and hollers and applause around us startled me. I offered them all a sheepish grin, even if they were too blurry for me to focus on, and then looked back down at Tom as he slid the ring onto my finger.
Then he sprang to his feet and kissed me, bending me backward—and not dropping me this time. He hadn’t in a long time, in fact. He always had me, safe and sound. And now… he had me for life.
A life I couldn’t wait to share with him.