“Of course she knew. Well, some of it.”
This explained everything. I can’t believe poor Tina kept herself from breathing a word of it to me.
“Do you like it?” Michael asked again. He actually looked a little anxious, but also excited, like a kid at Christmas. Or Hanukkah, to be exact.
“I love it.”
I lowered my head to kiss him, because obviously when a man has gotten down on one knee in the sand to propose to you with a lab-engineered diamond, the natural thing to do is wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him, quite deeply, and for a long time, as the ocean waves lap gently around you.
“But, Michael,” I said a little while later, after catching my breath, “I thought we were going to wait to get married until—”
He’d had his arms around my waist, and his head was resting quite comfortably against my chest, in a sort of dreamy way. But when I said the thing about how I thought we were going to wait, his head jerked up.
“I’m sorry, Mia, but I’m tired of waiting,” he said, in a decidedly unromantic manner. “We can’t even live together, thanks to those vultures in the press. Think about it, because I have, a lot. What if something were to happen to you? I wouldn’t be the first person they’d notify. I doubt anyone would remember to notify me at all. I wouldn’t even be allowed into your hospital room—”
“Oh, Michael, how can you say that? It isn’t true.” I ran my fingers through his thick dark hair, still slightly damp from his shower and giving off that irresistibly fresh, clean scent of his. “First of all, nothing’s going to happen to me—”
His gaze was filled once again with dark hurricane clouds, and I realized this was what had been troubling him all along. “How can you say that after what happened to your stepfather?”
“Michael, we all loved Frank, but you know he was terrible about following up on his medical care. Nothing like that could ever happen to me, because I’m very proactive about my health.”
“Fine, but what about those protesters? Or your stalker? Next time it might not be only an orange that gets thrown in your direction.”
“Yes,” I said patiently. “But that’s why I have the Royal Genovian Guard. There’s nothing Lars would love more than to take a bullet for me—”
“I want to take a bullet for you,” Michael said, his hands curling into fists in my lap.
“Michael, that’s the last thing I want.”
“I don’t understand why you’re arguing with me about this. Do you not want to marry me?”
“Of course not! I mean, yes. Yes, of course I do, but—”
“But what?”
“But I don’t want you to ask me because you feel like you have to, or because you want to take a bullet for me, or because you feel pressured to do it—”
“Mia, I’m a grown man. No one can pressure me into doing anything I don’t want to do.” He looked quite fierce as he said this, his dark eyes flashing. There wasn’t a hint of shadow in them anymore. They were very clear. “I want to marry you because I love you, and I want to spend as much time as I have left on this earth with you. And the most practical way for me to do that is by marrying you. Now, do you want to marry me, or not?”
I slipped both my hands into his. “Yes, Michael Moscovitz, of course I want to marry you, more than anything. But—”
“Good.” He lifted both my hands and kissed them, then laid them back down in my lap and rose from the sand. “Now eat your crab cakes before they get cold.”
Really, has there ever been a more sensible—yet loving and romantic—husband-to-be in the entire world? Probably, but you never see or hear about them because they aren’t the kind that get written about in books or shown on movies and TV. They just go about their business, getting things done. Like Albert, the prince consort of Queen Victoria. No one ever hears anything about him (except for prank calls about having “Albert in the can,” and of course references to a certain genital piercing, which in historical fact the real Prince Albert did not have, and of course, as we all know from having watched Sex Sent Me to the ER, can actually be quite medically dangerous to both the pierced and their sex partners).
But early into Queen Victoria’s marriage to Albert, while they were both riding in an open carriage, the prince consort saw a would-be assassin draw a gun. Instead of freaking out, Albert did the most practical thing on the planet: he pulled Queen Victoria down against the carriage seat (and himself) so the bullet brushed him and not her (at least according to what I remember of the biopic. Obviously I can’t fact-check it right now, as I have no Internet access, and also I’m in the bathroom).
How completely sensible—yet utterly romantic—is that?
And how like something Michael would do, if ever given the opportunity . . . which I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure he will never have to. Because protecting your subjects, which includes your loved ones, is what being a royal is all about.
Of course, if they make a third movie of my life, it would be lovely if they show Michael taking a bullet for me, just to liven things up a bit. But only a small one that does minor damage, and not to his face (or anything downstairs).
It wasn’t until I saw Michael eating his own crab cakes (with surprising savagery) that I realized that’s what’s been going on in his eyes lately: Mr. Gianini’s dying, a possible madman wanting to kill me, and protesters throwing genetically modified oranges at my bodyguard have brought home to him how fleeting life is, and how, when you really love someone, all you want to do is spend all the time you can with that person.