A wedding at The Venetian was nothing like what Mac had imagined. There were no Elvis impersonators, cheesy organ music, or checkout lines of couples waiting to tie the knot outside the door. Instead, the wedding chapel was intimate and, yes, even elegant. On one side of the aisle sat Joe’s family, and on the other, Aaron’s parents and two of his brothers who had flown in yesterday for the ceremony.

Mac sat next to a twitchy Joe and laid a hand on his leg.

“She’s late,” he whispered.

“She’s meant to be late,” Mac whispered back then directed an everything’s going to plan smile at Aaron, who stood by himself at the front of the chapel.

He gave her a thumbs-up, but if the man looked any more relaxed, he’d be asleep on his feet. Unlike Aaron’s future brother-in-law.

“She and dad might’ve got lost walking through the casino,” he muttered. “It happens.”

“I know,” she said. “It took you almost an hour and a half to find your way back to our room earlier. You should come equipped with a GPS; I nearly sent out a search party.”

“Getting lost doesn’t make me any less manly.”

“Did you stop to ask for directions?”

Joe shot her a grin that made her knees wobble. Luckily she was sitting down.

“Don’t be daft, woman.”

He laced his fingers with hers and squeezed her hand as the first haunting notes of Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love” piped through the chapel’s sound system. Their little group stood, turning toward the double doors and the two assistants standing by. The doors opened, and Kerry walked through on her father’s arm. As she usually did, Mac allowed herself a count of two to admire the bride in all her finery then transferred her gaze to the groom’s face.

The groom—big, burly, tough-guy Aaron—had tears leaking from his eyes. So many big guys did when they caught the first glimpse of the woman they loved. It made all the hard work worthwhile.

Kerry glided down the aisle, her dress flowing around her legs in silken waves. The dress suited her perfectly, but it was Kerry’s smile that lit her up from the inside out. She hadn’t once taken her eyes off Aaron, and the two of them could’ve been the only ones in the room they were that enraptured with each other.

Mac glanced at Joe, about to nudge him with a combination look of “awww, so beautiful” and a “told you so” smirk, when the look on his face froze her elbow mid-nudge. Joe wasn’t looking at his sister, and he wasn’t looking at Aaron, he was looking at her. With a heat and intensity that caused her breath to hitch. He was looking at her the same way the groom was looking at his bride. Her heart fluttered on a thousand wings and beat with hopeful recognition.

The music faded away, and they sat, Joe’s arm draped around her shoulders. She was aware more of his warmth and the brush of his fingers on her bare arm than the ceremony taking place in front of her. It was lovely—sweet and emotional and lovely—but Mac’s heart continued to pound as if she were running a desert marathon the whole time.

The rest of the afternoon flew by with glasses of bubbles, a meal at an award-winning, Italian steakhouse, and to much teasing and laughter, Kerry and her new husband retired early to their suite as they and Joe’s parents were flying back to New Zealand the next morning. After hugging the newlyweds good night, Joe and Mac wandered out hand in hand onto the Strip.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

They strolled past summer crowds moving in and out of the casinos’ huge entrances, clogging up the sidewalks and generally partying on.

“You’ll see.”

Fifteen minutes later, and what felt like many, many miles trekked in high heels through a flashing-light maze of casino floors, Joe came to a halt in the middle of a bank of slot machines. His mouth twisted into a grimace as he stood gazing around, his brow set in stubborn lines.

“Admit it,” she said. “We’re lost.”

“We’re not lost; we’ve misplaced our destination.”

“Which is?” Hopefully not far since Mac was pretty sure she was developing a blister.

“A surprise,” he said mulishly. “And don’t roll your eyes; it shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

Mac pressed her mouth shut to smother a grin as lights flashed and machines tinkled and beeped around them.

“You think you can do better?” he grumbled. “Fine. I was planning a romantic ride on that feckin’ giant Ferris wheel that’s visible from almost every direction in Vegas, except when you try to take a shortcut through a bloody casino to get to it.”

“Wait here.” Mac patted his cheek and spun around, weaving back through the slot machines until she saw a staff member. Less than a minute later, she was on her way back to Joe with directions to the fecking giant Ferris wheel.

“You’re such a stereotype,” she said, leading him through the slot machines.

He allowed himself to be towed along in her wake. “I did try, you know, to get directions before we left dinner. There were communication issues. Evidently, I have quite an accent, and the server had no clue what a Ferris wheel was. So I thought, how hard can it be to find something so big?”

“A question many women have asked.”

Joe stopped dead and threw back his head, laughing from deep down in his gut. The sight, the sound, the fuzzy warmth that swept through her at seeing him so relaxed, so happy—even though things hadn’t gone to plan—filled her with pure joy and caused her to join him. So she stood there, in the middle of God-knew-where in God-knew-what casino and laughed until tears popped into her eyes and her stomach ached.

“C’mon, big boy,” she managed to gasp. “We’re almost there.”

They strolled through another set of sliding glass doors, and the cool air-conditioning gave way to warm night air once again. The huge, High Roller wheel in front of them stood with only a lane of shops and restaurants between them. Shortly after getting their tickets, they stepped into one of the large glass-sided booths with two other couples.

The booth rose smoothly, slowly upward. The two other couples found a spot away from them to admire the expanding view of Vegas’s lights. The higher they rose, the more dazzling the lights grew as the whole city spread beneath them. Foot by foot, the booth lifted them above the spectacular display of the Bellagio’s fountains, the golden lights of the fake Eiffel Tower, the huge buildings that formed the Strip’s many casinos. In the distance, the beam of light from the apex of the Luxor’s pyramid speared through the inky night sky.

They sat together on one of the bench seats built at either end of the oval-shaped booth and facing the curved glass windows. Joe’s arm slipped around her waist, keeping her close against him.

“If you’re scared of heights,” he said, “feel free to hang on to me for the rest of the ride.”

“I’ll pretend I’m scared, shall I?” Mac leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in his unique, new-leather-and-male smell and trying desperately to stamp every detail of this moment into her long-term memory.

“Grand idea.”

A bittersweet pull tugged her heart as they neared the wheel’s apex. They had three more nights together in the city, including this one, before they drove back to LA and their flight home. But without Joe at her side, she’d never again see the gaudy beauty of Vegas’s lights. She wouldn’t want to, couldn’t bear it. That was the bitter. The sweet? She lifted her gaze from the endless sea of neon and refocused on the strong line of Joe’s jaw. The sweet was that Vegas could be their city, the one they went back to in ten or fifteen years’ time, maybe with their eye-rolling teenagers who thought it hashtag cool-not-cool to see where their olds fell in love.

“Joe?”

He glanced across at her, and something in her face must’ve alerted him that she wanted—no, needed—him to kiss her. Right here, right now, until the sounds of the other couples’ conversations and the running commentary of facts and figures from the built-in sound system faded away, and it was just their space.

Joe lowered his head and took her mouth, took her very breath as his lips slanted warmly against hers. She melted into him, her eyes drifting shut as the invisible connection between them bound them together. His fingers caressed her cheek, traced the line of her jaw, then cupped the back of her neck. The spark grew to a flame as his tongue flicked into her mouth, stroking, stoking the fire hotter, promising wicked temptations to come.

He gave a soft tug on her lower lip as he pulled away, his hooded gaze on hers. “Still scared, Mac?” He squeezed her hip then spider-walked his fingers up to her waist, making her shiver.

“A little.” Her fingers remained dug into his biceps, and she had to make a concentrated effort to remove them, praying she wouldn’t dissolve into a sizzling puddle at Joe’s feet. “But since you paid a lot of money for us to enjoy the view, maybe we should look at it.”

Once the wheel had completed the circuit, they stepped off with the two other couples who moved ahead of them toward the stairs.

“Honeymooners,” Mac overheard the elderly woman who’d ridden with them say to her husband in a stage whisper. “Can’t keep their hands off each other. I remember being like that on our honeymoon.”

“Not me,” her husband replied deadpan. “I was drunk the whole time.”

“George! You were not!”

The woman giggled like a teenager and her husband’s face lit up.

He turned and winked at Mac and Joe. “Enjoy the rest of your night, folks.”

Then with great care he took his wife’s elbow and helped her down the stairs.

Would that be her and Joe in forty years’ time? The heart fluttering returned with a vengeance because part of her really, really hoped so.

They let the two other couples get a head start before they descended the stairs and made their way back along the open mall. Joe stopped to buy them an ice cream, and after demolishing his in record time, eyeballed hers. She made sure to torture him with long, slow swipes of her tongue over the creamy goodness before she caved and gave it to him while they continued to stroll back the way they’d come.

“You’re limping,” he said once they’d successfully navigated through the casino to reach the Strip again.

He crouched at her feet, the sidewalk crowd flowing around them as he examined her left heel.

“Diagnosis, Doctor?” she asked.

“The beginning of a blister,” he said and stood. “An unacceptable injury for tomorrow’s plans.”

A whole day out with him that didn’t involve casinos or credit cards was the only clue she’d wheedled out of Joe about their second-to-last full day in the US. To say she was curious as hell and excited was an understatement. But before she could open her mouth to bug him again about the next day’s itinerary, Joe scooped her up into his arms.

“Put me down!” she squeaked.

“Not a chance.”

Joe ignored the punch on his shoulder and continued walking toward The Venetian. Traffic rumbled and honked past, signs glowed, music blared, a hundred different smells filled the air. Mac relaxed against him, her fingers smoothing over the spot she’d just hit.

“What will people think?”

He grinned down at her. “That we’re honeymooners. And you’re drunk.”

She mock glared at him, and he laughed, dipping his head to kiss her forehead. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Isn’t that what they say?”

“I really, really don’t like you,” she said and punched his shoulder again. But lightly.

“I know,” he said, and continued to carry her through the desert night.

* * *

Early the next morning, after they’d said their goodbyes to the newlyweds and the rest of the Whelans and Paratas, Joe rifled through Mac’s suitcases. Yep, he had a death wish, but he didn’t want her dressing for the day in heels and a cocktail dress.

“These.” He pulled out a pair of red shorts and a blue-striped cotton shirt, which looked as if it’d provide some sun protection. “And these’ll have to do.” Her gym shoes—though, heh, Mac had only worked out twice since they’d arrived as they’d been breaking a sweat between the sheets at every opportunity.

Mac lifted an eyebrow. “You think I’m going anywhere with you in that shirt with those shorts?”

She dug through the mountain of clothes jumbled up inside the bag and came up with a short denim skirt, waving it under his nose. “This goes with the shirt. It’s cute.”

He shrugged. “Don’t blame me if a snake bites your cute arse.”

“There are arse-biting snakes where we’re going?”

She hugged the skirt to her breasts but didn’t let go of it. After a few seconds she rolled her eyes.

“Eh,” she said. “I’ll risk the pervy snakes.”

She stripped down to a dick-hardening pair of tiny black panties and a matching black bra. Pervy snakes were the least of his worries. He turned away before he caused their departure time to shift back an hour and dug out his own suitable clothes.

Thirty minutes later they were in the Lincoln with a greasy but amazing takeout breakfast and coffee, heading out of the city. The sun had risen an hour earlier, the sky a hazy blue arc above their heads with only a scattering of small, streaky clouds. He didn’t need to be a meteorologist to predict a scorcher of a day ahead. Mac stretched out in the passenger seat, licking butter from her bagel off her fingers while the warm slipstream flicked her ponytail around her face. She turned her head, meeting his gaze and making a provocative motion with her tongue over her fingertip.

“Later,’” he said. “When we make use of that big back seat.”

“To sleep in when you get us lost?”

He laughed. “Darlin,’ I know exactly where we’re going, and there’ll be no sleep involved.”

They cruised along the I-40, bantering, laughing, talking about everything under the sun, except perhaps the most important thing there was to talk about—them, and their future. But that topic of conversation wasn’t one you had with a gorgeous woman, driving through an eerily empty but beautiful desert landscape.

If Mac guessed where they were headed by the time the Lincoln crossed into Arizona, she kept it to herself. She whooped like a schoolgirl when he took a short detour off the interstate to cruise along part of the old Route 66 highway, insisting on a short souvenir excursion in the dusty but quaint town of Seligman. Two hours after they hit the road again, they reached their final destination: Grand Canyon National Park.

The expression on Mac’s face when they approached the first lookout point—squeezing in among the other tourists to get to the guardrail—was priceless. She stared out at the stunning vista, her gaze skipping over the rugged terrain, like him, he imagined, trying to comprehend the sheer vastness of the landscape. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She turned her head into his chest, slipping her arms around his waist, and holding on tight.

“Thank you, Joe,” she said simply.

Then she scrubbed the tears off her face and tilted her head. “If I’m not too gross and red-eyed, I’d like you to kiss me now. Just to make this amazing memory even better.”

He happily obliged, kissing her until the wolf whistles and applause from the other tourists had them laughing and pulling apart.

They spent the rest of the day wandering along the rim trails hand in hand. They took numerous photos, watched in delight at the antics of the cheeky crows that reminded Joe of the kakas back on Stewart Island, and hopped on and off the shuttle bus to catch the changing mood of the canyon from different vantage points.

“I thought we’d find a spot to sit and watch the sun set,” he said as the day wore on. “Grand Canyon sunsets are rumored to be stunning.”

And romantic—they had that going for them, too. Joe figured he needed all the help he could get. His heart thudded just that little bit faster as he led Mac onto an outcropping near the rim that was away from the other tourists but far enough from the sheer drop into the canyon not to be reckless.

His gaze swept across the rocky, pebble-strewn ground and latched onto a thin, brownish-gray length twisted around a medium-sized rock. “Watch out for the snake!” was out of his mouth before his brain had registered only a stick, gobshite.

Mac squeaked and launched herself at him. Her arms noosed around his neck, her legs banded around his hips, and his hands were forced to grab two handfuls of her sweet arse to keep them from both tumbling over.

“Where? Where?” she bellowed into his ear.

He shuffled in a turn to show her the spot where a dried-up old stick lay innocently on the ground. “My bad. It was a stick.”

“You can’t tell the difference between a snake and a stick?”

“Does it matter?” he countered with a grin. “Considering, if it were a snake, I’d be the one bitten since you’re safely off the ground.”

She released her grip on his neck long enough to smack him on the shoulder. “Maybe you were just looking for a convenient excuse to grab my ass.”

“I don’t need an excuse. Your arse is mine.”

“You think you own my ass or any other body part? Think again.”

She huffed and squirmed in his arms, but he merely adjusted his grip, positioning her right against the body part of his that emphatically disagreed.

Chest hitching, she dug her nails into his flesh.

“I don’t own any part of you, MacKenna, nor would I ever claim to,” he said. “But nevertheless, you’re mine.”

Her eyes narrowed into slits under her baseball cap, which was sitting cutely askew on her head. “I really, really don’t like you, Joe Whelan.”

He narrowed his eyes right back at her. “Bullshit. You’re as head over heels in love with me as I am with you. And tomorrow you’ll marry me at one of those wedding chapels you found so bleedin’ hilarious.”

For once in her life, it appeared Mac didn’t have a sassy comeback. She unhooked her legs from around him and wriggled until he let her go. They stood toe-to-toe, the only sounds the sough of the breeze picking up leaves and tossing them into the canyon’s depths.

He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. He’d silently rehearsed at least a dozen different heartfelt variances of, “I love you. Will you marry me?” on the drive up there. Somehow, the heartfelt had been swallowed up by the gut-deep, frustrated passion she always seemed to invoke. But he meant it. Every damn word, and every one of the other, more flowery variations of the same thing: He loved her, she loved him, and he wanted to make a commitment to her there and then. There was no other crazy-magnificent-beautiful-intelligent-infuriating-wonderful woman he would even consider spending the rest of his life with.

She was, without a doubt, the one.

“Are you”—Mac’s hands fisted at her sides, and the tip of her tongue swiped along her lower lip—“are you proposing or planning to abduct me?”

His sassy woman was back. But he knew her well enough to understand the humor was a deflection to buy time. He could almost see the wheels spinning inside her brain. But he got it, he did. The wheels in his brain had been spinning pretty constantly once he’d allowed himself to admit the truth.

“Proposing. Badly, as you can see.” He held up a finger in a silent order to wait then dug into his pocket, where he’d used the hotel’s complimentary sewing kit to attach the cord of a small velvet bag to his shorts, so he wouldn’t—heaven forbid—lose it on one of the canyon trails.

Her eyes flew open wide. “What are you doing?”

His sweat-slicked fingers fumbled with the gathered edge of the bag, and he couldn’t for the life of him pry it open to reach the ring inside. Smooth, Joe. Real smooth like. The knot finally gave, and he was in, fingertips closing on smooth gold with a plain but beautiful solitaire diamond. He drew it out of his pocket, the diamond winking once in the dying rays of rosy sunlight. The gold was slightly faded from the years, and he’d had no time to resize it after asking his mam to slip it off her finger before he’d left her and Kerry the day before, so it’d be too big. But it was right for his Mac—perfect.

“What I’m doing,” he said, getting down on one knee, and to hell with the snake threat, “is telling you I love you and asking if tomorrow you’ll be my wife.”

“It sounded more like a demand to me.”

“Yes. Yes, it did,” he said. “That’s because I’m bloody determined to win you over with my good looks and wit.”

“I’m not the first woman you’ve asked this question to.” She cast a glance down at the stick-snake, as if a real snake would be less of a threat than his marriage proposal.

Of which he was sucking at so, so badly. He could see doubt written in every tense line of her body. Doubt of his feelings for her, perhaps doubt of her feelings for him. He hesitated, the grit and tiny, rough rocks under his kneecap digging into his skin.

“No. But you’ll be the last because you’re the only woman I can picture at my side through better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.” He rolled a shoulder. “I’ve never had the clarity with anyone else—with Sofia,” he added. “The vision, or whatever you’d call it, I’d had in my head of our future together was always hazy and always of inconsequential good times—her throwing dinner parties for our friends, or her holding our perfect baby who never cried nor dared to puke on his mother’s shoulder.”

Joe stood then and laced their fingers. “But when I see our future, Mac, I see you with my nanny’s ring and your wedding band in a dish on a windowsill to keep safe while I make love to you in the middle of washing dishes. I see muddy walks on Rakiura, backyard barbecues with our friends, with our snot-faced kids playing with their snot-faced kids, fights where we have amazing makeup sex, and dancing to Springsteen and Madonna and Bananarama if that’s your choice. It’s crystal clear and so feckin’ real. Can you see it, too?”

Mac leaned into him, resting her forehead on his chest. “I can see it, and I want it.”

Her free hand landed on his hip, fingers hooking into the waistband of his shorts. She dragged him closer. “That’s your nanny’s engagement ring? The one your mother was wearing the other night?”

“Yeah. Mam’s folks were married fifty-one years.” He gently twisted Mac’s ponytail around his fist and tilted her head back. “I never considered asking her for the ring up until now, and she never offered it to me for any woman before you. But it’s right that you should have it—if you’ll have me.” His gut plummeted as Mac’s huge green eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

“I’ll have you,” she whispered, brushing a soft kiss on his mouth. “And you’re right, I am in love with you…”

“But you need to think,” he finished for her. “Because this is all happening so fast and you must think me completely insane, not to mention a bloody great hypocrite.”

“I’ll need a little time to think things through and question both our sanity.” A smile played over her lips. “But I really, really love you, Joe Whelan.”

His heart sung the “Hallelujah Chorus” and he turned them toward the setting sun and the shadows deepening in the vast canyon. “That’s a good enough start for me.”