Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
She smoothed her palm across my jaw and lifted herself out of her shoes to place a kiss on my cheek. “I want to go to New York to see her and tell her in person about us, and about my father. And about her operation.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“You’ll come?”
“Absolutely. Let’s go this weekend. We’ll take Friday off and get the red eye back Sunday night.”
“Wow, it’s all so fast. I should call my father, shouldn’t I?”
“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.