Ten months later
The end of March, and it was rainy in San Francisco. Paige should have been patrolling in the downpour. Instead, the temperature outside hovered right at eighty degrees, and she was getting dressed for the day in about the most beautiful house she’d ever seen. There were worse things in the world than a long, low house on a private white-sand beach in north Queensland, with a curved infinity pool flowing over the edge of nothing, lush strands of hot-pink bougainvillea climbing stone walls, green palms waving in the summer breeze, and an endless turquoise sea beyond dotted with white sails. Not to mention a motor launch moored at a private dock in case you managed to rouse yourself enough to do some snorkeling. Jace was normally a low-key guy, but this time, he’d pulled out all the stops.
She should still be nervous. She had been nervous when she and Lily had been flying all the way to Australia with Jace, and she’d known she was going to have to meet his whole family. He hadn’t taken her to meet his parents at Christmas, because they hadn’t had enough time. Instead, the two of them had spent the holiday at the Montana cabin. They’d cooked and eaten Christmas dinner with Lily, and Jace had seemed happy to share the day with her twin.
“I don’t know,” Paige had said lazily on Christmas night, stretching out after dinner on the new leather couch with her legs draped over Jace’s lap and Tobias curled on the rug beneath them. They should be playing a board game or something, but she seemed to want to go to sleep instead. “Maybe I’m feeling queasy because there are still scary people in Sinful, but I think it’s just that I ate too much ham. And whatever that white thing was.”
“Bite your tongue,” Jace said. “I told you, that’s not a ‘white thing’. That’s a pavlova. Of course, it’s meant to be eaten for summer Christmas, when the strawberries would be sweeter. But a pav’s a pav all the same.”
Lily said from her spot curled up in the easy chair, “Not that many scary people here, not anymore, now that Charlotte’s in that facility. You have to feel sorry for her today. What must her Christmas be looking like? It has to be a prison in itself, being locked into your mind when it works that way. The personality disorder sounds horrible enough, but I can’t imagine having hallucinations, something you absolutely can’t control telling you that you have to hurt people. Terrifying. When I think of her holed up with her sleeping bag in that freezing-cold ski cabin with no power and no water, looking down at Jace’s house with her binoculars and all that anger—” She shivered. “Awful.”
“Mm,” Paige said. “I find I can’t be quite so sympathetic. I’ll let you do it for me, how’s that? Since you’ve got the pink aura and all.”
“I think yours is getting pinker, though,” Lily answered. “And I know we still have some bee killers around, but I don’t have bees anymore, so I’m not worrying.”
“Chicken killers, too,” Paige said. Jennifer Turner and her husband hadn’t left town after the beehive escapade, choosing to keep their gym and ride out the wave of bad publicity after their nocturnal activities had become known.
Lily said, cynically for her, “Chicken releasers, that’s all. Nobody thinks what they did was all that awful, since Charlotte did all the violent parts. All they did was jump in there when they heard Jace had a stalker, and he started being seen with me. Nobody would even have known that Charlotte wasn’t responsible for the chickens and bees if you and Jace hadn’t caught Jennifer and Hal in the act. A lot of people probably thought I deserved it, and those that didn’t? Half of them have probably joined the gym just to check out all the excitement. Besides, when the new resort opens next winter, Jennifer and Hal will be in a great spot. They probably still think Brett is going to lease them the space for their spa, because they imagine he’s good-natured enough to overlook a tiny little lapse like a brick slipping out of somebody’s hand and going through a window. Like, ‘Whoops! How did that happen?’ They don’t see what’s underneath his smile. He didn’t get where he is by being stupid.”
“Interesting,” Jace said. “So are we getting the rice ready?”
Lily only smiled. “I can like him. That doesn’t mean I have to marry him. I don’t have to date him, either. I’ll just be Paige’s cheering section.”
Paige wanted to say something, but she didn’t. Lily had been exactly right all those months earlier. Being with the wrong person was worse than being alone. Being with the right person, though? That was something entirely different. Especially when he didn’t always want to talk, but he always wanted to cook. And go for a run in the redwoods on Mt. Tam with her on her days off, and teach her to sail. There was nothing so exhilarating, she’d discovered, as a fast, bumpy ride through the Golden Gate with the boat heeled all the way over to one side, feeling like you were about to capsize but knowing that it actually wasn’t going to happen, because Jace knew how to ride that edge all the way to the limit without the needle ever dipping into the red. Safe but thrilling. It was a fairly wonderful concept, and not just in the bedroom. It was pretty good in the bedroom, too, though. Every fantasy you’d ever wanted to explore, with none of the scary downside, like adventure camp for grown-ups. You didn’t get much better than that.
She hadn’t started out living with him, of course, when he’d closed on his houseboat in record time. She’d just come for visits. Visits that had turned into “maybe one more night,” then another one, then a row of new hangers suddenly appearing like magic in Jace’s closet, not to mention a bathroom drawer that “you might as well put your things into. Neater, hey.” He was a very sneaky man, and it hadn’t been nearly as hard a decision as it might have been to let her lease go.
He’d been right about something else, too. It was a lot nicer to buy things to put into a house you were sharing with somebody you loved. Or, rather, two houses, since he’d held onto the cabin. Jace turned out to be a good online shopper, or her version of it. Which meant choosing fast and pressing the button instead of asking her to decide. Or, worse, asking her to shop.
Now, on Christmas, he looked at her, rubbed his hand slowly over her leg, and said, “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” she answered. “Just that I love you. And that I’m glad Charlotte didn’t kill any of us, because I wouldn’t be nearly as happy right now.”
“Good to know,” he said, smiling into her eyes and making her heart do that funny little flip. “This would be a good time to ask Lily and you if you can get a week off in, oh, call it March? My parents were pretty disappointed to miss having us for Christmas. March could be a good time, though, I’m thinking. Good for you, baby, since most people won’t be taking a holiday then, I’d think. And off-season for Lily as well.”
“You can’t want to take me,” Lily said.
“But I do,” Jace said. “Meeting the family’s always a bit fraught. If it gets too much for Paige, she can switch with you and let you carry things for a while. I always have an ulterior motive.”
Jace had taken them first to his parents’ home in Brisbane, a compact little house on a hillside with frangipani and hibiscus blooming in the garden and a man who looked like an older, even more imposing version of Jace presiding over the dinner table. Sergeant Major Colin Blackstone, to be exact, a man who looked like he’d been forged from iron and hardened in the fire. Paige was used to tough men, but all the same, she’d been glad to have Lily with her until she’d gotten to know him a little better.
Jace hadn’t made her sit around and be uncomfortable, though. He’d taken her and Lily to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary on the first day, where he’d watched a sheepdog show with them, then queued patiently so they could snuggle a koala. The look on Lily’s face when she’d done it had been well worth the wait.
Jace had said quietly to Paige, “She looks like that’s her baby doll.”
“Yeah,” Paige had answered. “Lily’s always wanted to be a mom.”
“But not you?”
“You pick your moments for the good questions, don’t you?”
“Could be. Put it that I’m interested.”
Her heart had started to beat much too hard for a woman looking at sleepy marsupial cuteness. “I don’t know,” she’d answered honestly. “It always seemed like if I did it, I’d be doing it alone. I don’t want to do it alone.”
“Mm,” he’d said. But the attendant had been gently prising the snoozing koala off Lily’s shirt, and the moment had been over.
He kept doing things like that, too. Two days ago, he’d taken Paige on a long morning run along the winding horseshoe bends of the Brisbane River, under cliffs and through the bougainvillea walk of South Bank, then across the bridge into the Queen Street Mall and out for a coffee in the turn-of-the-century opulence of the Brisbane Arcade. Afterwards, they’d wandered the elegant stone corridors under the stained-glass panels and window-shopped. “The only kind of shopping,” Paige had tried to joke, “that I can actually stand. We’re not exactly dressed for it, though.”
“No worries,” Jace had said. “We won’t go in. We’ll just have a wander round. I need to get an idea somehow. Your birthday’s barely a month away, and I’d never get you someplace like this if we weren’t on holiday. I’m seizing my moment.”
She might have gotten a little breathless again, but he’d been nothing but casual, pointing out diamond earrings and opal pendants. Definitely not dragging her into stores to try on rings. She’d shoved down the stupid, sneaky edge of disappointment that had risen unbidden, as if she’d expected a romantic proposal in their running shorts from a man she’d known less than a year. Even if he was the most wonderful man in the world.
She’d relaxed, eventually, and enjoyed the moment. Holding Jace’s arm, because being up close to that muscle was one of her favorite places wherever they were, and saying, “The opals are really pretty.”
“But?” he’d prompted, moving her along to the next store. Half of this building seemed to be jewelers, each more exquisite than the last. It was a heady spot.
She’d stopped, and he’d said, “Yes?”
“I hate to admit it,” she’d said, “but I love those pink stones. I should like opals best. Opals are Australian, and they’re more my thing, right? All of them so different, and different shapes, too. But that is just so pretty. Way prettier than a diamond, don’t you think?”
“Pink sapphire,” Jace had said. “No worries. You have good taste, is all. Especially against the diamonds, wouldn’t you say? No reason you can’t like something just because it’s pretty and feminine. You get to have that if you want. We don’t need no stinkin’ rules.”
She’d laughed and said, “Nope. We sure don’t,” and had felt so light, she could float away. Exercise endorphins. Really good coffee. Beautiful jewelry. Vacation. And Jace. That was all.
Five minutes later, he’d asked, “Had enough?” And they’d left. No champagne. No earrings. Which she didn’t need. He was right. Looking was fun. And her birthday was only a little more than a month away. She might even get a pink sapphire pendant. Maybe that one with the carved rose-gold setting, even. Maybe so. She’d be willing to dress up for that.
Yesterday, they’d all flown up to the tiny Whitsunday Airport. The two of them, Lily, and Jace’s parents. A helicopter had met them there and flown them over sugar-cane fields and palms, the noise of the machine’s flight sending kangaroos and wallabies bounding away beneath them like some kind of ad for Australia, delighting Lily—and Paige, she had to admit—beyond measure. The pilot had taken them over a winding coastline, past endless white-sand beaches and over the paler spots in the turquoise water that were coral reefs, and when they’d reached the house called Heaven’s Gate? Jace’s brother Rafe and his cousin Willow had already arrived.
Paige had met Rafe before. Lily hadn’t. Maybe that was why Lily had been extra-quiet since. Which Paige had to admit she didn’t understand.
This morning, she’d gone into Lily’s bedroom, which featured the same ocean view as all the others. A half-dozen sulphur-crested cockatoos were raising a ruckus outside, perched in a tree, and as they watched, a brightly-colored parrot swooped down into a date palm, followed by another.
Lily said, “So what do you do if he fails the test?”
Paige smiled. “Tease him mercilessly, of course. He’s getting a little smug, especially since I’ve been being myself all this time. I want to see, that’s all. Come on. The boat’s going to be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe I’ll stay here and hang out by the pool,” Lily said.
Paige paused in the act of pulling her swimsuit up over her hips. “What? Why? It sounds like fun. Jace said the boat was fast. An adrenaline ride, he said. Don’t you like his parents? I know his dad can be a little gruff, but he’s not that way underneath. Just think how sweet Jace is. That didn’t come from nowhere. And his mom’s great.”
“No,” Lily hurried to say. “Of course they’re both wonderful, and I like Willow, too.”
“Ah,” Paige said, finally getting around to pulling up her swimsuit. “Rafe. So he’s a movie star. He’s not that bad. You have to admit he’s charming.”
“You’re right,” Lily said. “It was silly. Never mind.” She finished getting dressed, picked up her bag, handed the other one to Paige, and said, “Ready?”
“Thanks,” Paige said. “I didn’t want to do it without you. It feels like an awfully big family.”
“I know,” Lily said. “But I’m here. Let’s go do it.”
Jace was sitting out on the terrace by the pool with Rafe, his parents, and Willow, having another coffee before they set out, when the twins came walking out together.
“Bugger me,” Rafe muttered under his breath.
“Overwhelming,” Jace agreed, “isn’t it?” He sat back and took them in. Two blondes, their golden hair gleaming in the strong Australian sun. Paige had somehow never gotten around to dying her hair back to brown, to his secret relief. They were both wearing swim costumes, sandals, and filmy little skirts tied well below the navel, but there was quite a difference.
One brief pink bikini, check, showings acres of pretty stomach, hips defined in a way that would get any man’s imagination working overtime, and more than a bit of cleavage. And one black tank suit, its sides and back scooping low. He knew what the legs would look like, too, when she took off that little skirt. They’d be cut almost to her waist. It was one hell of a costume.
He looked at it, and then he looked at her, and at her twin. Yeah, they were a sight to behold.
After that, he sighed, set his cup down on the table, and said, “Unless that’s what you want to wear, you can go back in and change. We’ll tell the boat to wait.”
His mother gasped out loud, then said, “Jace!” as if he’d worn his hat to the dinner table or mocked his dad’s CO.
“They’ve switched round, Mum.” He addressed Paige. “If this is a test, I pass. I’m always going to pass, so if it’s entertaining you, go on and do it. But I suspect you’ll like wearing your own costume better, or you’d have bought the same as Lily in the first place.”
The woman in the pink bikini said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Lily.”
“Sure you are. Show us your thighs.”
His mum said, “Jace” again, in despair this time, and he ignored her.
A toss of a blonde head, a yank at a filmy pink sarong that didn’t cover much at all, and there it was. A puckered scar where a bullet had passed. A through-and-through. The mark of her courage. “Satisfied?” she asked him.
He sat back and took another sip of coffee. “Yeah, baby. I am. And you should be, too.”
Lily said, “I told you, Paige. It’s body language. He reads it like a dog.” Then she turned a faint pink that matched her own costume much better than the black one she was wearing and said, “Not literally a dog, Jace. Sorry. Just as well as a dog.”
Now, everybody was laughing but Rafe. “Never mind,” Jace said. “Decide if you’re changing, because this boat’s coming, and the crew has a timetable.”
When they waded out through crystal water and climbed aboard the bright-yellow vessel with the help of a deckhand, Jace was holding hands with a woman in a black swim costume, and he may have been feeling a little smug, too. She said, “This looks very cool.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hope so. Want to sit on the edge and go fast?”
“Can I?”
“Yeah. You can.” He perched on the inflated side of the boat with her, and she told Lily, “There are three spots this side. Climb on beside us.”
Lily hesitated, then Rafe took a spot on the opposite side, and she said, “Sure,” and perched herself on the other side of Jace.
Jace said, “Go on, Willow. Hop up beside Rafe.”
His cousin, a pretty, fragile redhead, made a face and said, “Bit scary for me. I’m sitting on the benches.”
Jace’s parents sat there, too. The skipper showed the others how to hold onto a strap between their legs and said over the noise of the purring engines as they motored out of their sheltered little cove, “We’ve got two 500-horsepower engines here, and we like to have a bit of fun once we’re out on the water on the way to our snorkeling spot, so hang tight. If I do this right, you’ll go home today with your ears blown back and a new hairstyle. Everybody ready to go fast?”
Jace hadn’t been wrong. He’d wanted to give Paige a special day, and for Paige, that didn’t mean a stroll on the beach. It meant surfing another powerboat’s wake, flying through the water at fifty kilometers an hour, zigging and zagging and doing it again until Paige was breathless, laughing, whooping. Until her fist was pumping the air with the joy of speed and the exhilaration of not knowing what would come next. Exactly where he wanted her.
The skipper steered the boat fast around an island, then slowed and nosed his way into a deserted bay where the turquoise of the water was interrupted by paler patches. “Got some of the prettiest fish you’ll ever see here,” he announced. “And snorkels and fins for you so you can go see them. Oh, and…” He pulled down an overhead compartment. “Self-service noodle bar, in case anybody needs extra help floating. Wouldn’t want to miss a chance at snorkeling with a sea turtle. We’ll be getting in the water as well, and we’ll see if we can round one up for you.”
Foam noodles, exactly as ordered. The deckhand was pulling open bins of snorkels and fins, and Paige was standing up. Whoops. Jace pulled her back down, grabbed the water bottle the skipper handed him, and said, “Better hydrate first.”
“What?” she said. “I don’t need water. I need to get in the water. Look how clear it is.”
“No,” he said, feeling a little desperate. He should’ve done this back at the house, but he’d wanted her to have the fun of the ride first without thinking of anything else. “This is, ah, especially good water. Right, Lily?”
Lily looked startled, as well she might. Across the boat, Rafe dropped his head into his hand and shook it, and Jace scowled at him. Yeah, Rafe could’ve done it more smoothly. But it wasn’t his girl, and it wasn’t his day. Paige was just going to have to make do with Jace.
Lily must have taken pity on Jace, though, because she said, “I’m sure Jace is right. It’s pretty warm, Paige.”
Paige finally took the bottle, drank down half of it, handed it back to Jace and said, “There. Satisfied?”
Rafe was laughing now. Jace gave up. “Oh, look,” he said. “What’s this?” He was just glad nobody was videotaping him.
Paige finally saw the rubber bands holding the piece of paper in place. “Oh,” she said. “Is it a note?”
“The paper’s pink,” Jace pointed out. “I thought that would be a giveaway.”
“I’m sorry.” She was already pulling at the rubber bands, going too fast in her haste, and Jace took the bottle from her, rolled the bands down, and handed her the paper. “This went much more smoothly,” he told her, “in my ops plan.”
She was smiling, and then she wasn’t. She read aloud:
I promise you it won’t be futile
If you search amongst the noodles.
“Amongst the… noodles?” Paige asked. “Is that some kind of fish?”
“Mate,” Rafe said, looking pained. “Never tell me that’s your best effort.”
“Oi,” Jace said. “You try to find a rhyme for ‘noodle.’ I couldn’t use ‘poodle.’ We’re on a boat.”
“Quiet, Rafe,” their mother said. “I think it’s very sweet.”
Lily was all but bouncing up and down. “Paige,” she said. “The noodles. The pool noodles! We have to search among the pool noodles!”
Paige jumped up so fast, she nearly hit her head. The two of them had a dozen of the huge foam rolls down onto the deck as fast as you could say it, with everybody else laughing and moving out of the way. Paige was sorting through them, but Lily said, “Oh! Oh, I found it! Here!”
The note was taped onto a pink one. Jace had tried to make it at least a bit trickier by camouflaging it. Lily handed the foam noodle to Paige and said, “I should let you do it.”
“Nah,” Rafe said. “You should both do it. Heaps more fun to watch.”
Lily glanced at him sharply, then snapped her mouth shut with a not-Lily expression on her face, and Jace looked across at his brother and sent the message. Seriously, mate? No. Rafe ducked his head, and Jace got it. Message received.
Good.
Once again, Paige was ripping at the note. When she finally got it loose, she read aloud again.
You make me feel like a king,
So what you seek is in the ring.
Pink’s the color of some coral
Not just for things that are floral.
Rafe looked like he was either going to be sick or laugh. He didn’t do either, fortunately.
Paige said, “What ring?” She didn’t look frustrated, though. She looked thrilled. Jace hoped.
Lily said, “It’s a treasure hunt. He’s made you a treasure hunt. Oh, it’s so sweet. We’re keeping these notes. I mean, you are.”
Jace looked at his mum and said, “Twins, hey.”
She said placidly, “Yes, darling. I got that,” then held a hand out to Lily. “I’ll put them in my bag. I have a plastic zip bag in there. That way they won’t get spoilt.”
“Time to get in the water, baby,” Jace said. This had all seemed too easy when he was making up the clues, but he suspected she was halfway to tearing the boat apart. He was going to have to nudge her along like a sheepdog.
Never mind. You did what it took.
“Oh,” she said. “OK. Oh, gosh.” She put her hands in front of her mouth. “I’m a little bit excited to be breathing through a snorkel.”
Jace laughed out loud. He still felt nervous. He still felt sick, truth be told. But sometimes, being nervous was the price you paid for the big steps, the important ones. “Lily will swim with you,” he said. “Keep you afloat.”
The two of them did exactly that, moving like they were one body. Jace waited until the deckhand, a blond fella named Chris, had somehow managed to locate a sea turtle, and then enlisted Rafe to help Chris round the little group up to take a look. After that, he swam fast to the boat and told the skipper, “Toss it to me.” When the bloke did, he swam a little ways away from the group around the turtle, launched his floating message-bearer, and hoped Paige would find it before it drifted to shore with the tide.
It took forever, of course. Everything did when you were waiting. But finally, when Jace had not-watched hundreds of colorful tropical fish swim through forests of coral and waving beds of anemones, he saw a blonde head surface, then propel herself farther out of the water for a better look before nudging the swimmer next to her and going for the ring.
The pink ring. The pink plastic ring floating on the water, with a pink note in a ziplock bag duct-taped to its side.
They had to go back to the boat to read it. Once they were aboard, though, and everyone had their towels, the skipper waited patiently until Paige had the note out of the bag and was reading.
When you are upon the land
The clue is hidden near the sand.
Over the rocks and down again,
A ring is waiting ’round the bend.
“Better,” Rafe said, “but Keats still isn’t quaking in his boots.”
“Yeah, mate,” Jace said. “You’re just jealous that you don’t have my literary talents.”
Paige said, “Jace. This is just too cool. I can’t believe you did this.” She was clutching the note like she didn’t want to let it go, but finally, she handed it to his mum, and the skipper took off again.
Fifteen minutes, and a straight shot almost all the way onto the nearly pure quartz sands of Australia’s most stunning white-sand beach, all seven pristine kilometers of it. A few yachts moored offshore and no other commercial vessels, because almost none were allowed here.
“Whitehaven,” the skipper announced. “Best beach in Australia. We’ll spend some time ashore. We have a lunch for you, and I think there may be drinks sorted as well. Need to check that out.” He winked at Jace, but Jace was having trouble winking back.
He’d parachuted into combat more times than he could count. He’d done mission after mission into hostile territory, cleared areas building by ambushed building. But he’d never done anything more frightening than this. He waded ashore behind the others, saw Paige take Lily’s hand and tug her toward the outcrop of rock to the right, where a secondary cove would hide them from view, then grabbed Rafe, said, “Give us a hand, mate,” and doubled back for Chris and Bobby, the skipper. And started to unload.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Hustle.”
Paige didn’t run, even though she wanted to. Jace was sending them around the island? There was a reason. She scrambled over the rocks with Lily, taking care with her bare feet, until her sister turned to her and asked, “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I think I must be. Jace took me for a look at jewelry the other day,” she finally admitted to Lily, “and I thought, maybe… And then, no, and anyway, I thought, ‘You’re crazy. You’ve both been divorced. Why would either of you want to do this again? But it doesn’t feel the same. The first time I did it, it was almost like a joke. Like fun. This doesn’t feel like a joke. This feels…”
“Real,” Lily said. “It feels real, because nobody could be more real than Jace. He’s a wonderful man, Paige. He is. You did good.”
Paige smiled at last, then didn’t, because her smile was too wobbly. “I don’t think I did much.”
“Yes, you did,” Lily said. “You took your chance. It wasn’t easy to believe. It never is, not by now. But you did. You said yes.”
Paige didn’t answer, because they’d rounded the little point, and she saw something up at the edge of the rocks, where the beach ended and the bush began. Something pink. She said, “Up there,” and they scrambled in their swimsuits over hard rock and pockets of firm white sand, cool under their feet even on this hot day, all the way up to where she could grab the pink plastic ring. Which had, of course, a note taped to it.
The beginning comes after the end
As love can grow between good friends.
I pray your heart is truly mine—
My own is yours for all of time.
“I think,” Paige said, keeping her voice steady with a major effort, “that this means we go back.”
There was something on the beach now that hadn’t been there before. A white shade canopy set on poles, with a white-skirted table beneath it.
Paige barely noticed the others arranged behind the structure. She saw Jace standing under that canopy on the blinding white sand, dressed in his swim trunks, a navy-blue T-shirt, and nothing else. There was a bottle of champagne on the table. A vase of pink roses, too. And she wasn’t doing a good job of coordinating her feet with her breath. Good thing Lily had her hand.
When they got close, though, Lily dropped it. “You’ve got this, sweetie,” she told her sister. “You have beautiful wings. Go on and let yourself fly.”
Paige wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Lily was holding her note and her pink plastic ring. All she had was herself. And Jace.
She walked up to him, put her hands on his forearms, looked up into his beloved, hard face, and said, “Thank you. You’ve given me a beautiful day. And I love you.”
“Baby,” he said with just the ghost of a laugh, because she could tell he was nervous, too, “I haven’t even done it yet.”
“Yes,” she said. “You have. You took a woman who was scared of so many things, and made her feel like she could have them. That she deserved them. I was scared to trust. Scared to feel. And so very scared to love. You made me feel safe. You made me feel beautiful.”
“Then,” he said, “I’d better do this. Because I want you to know that you are safe, and you are beautiful. I want you to have a way to remind yourself, when you forget, that somebody loves you more than life.”
He was doing it. She’d never had this. She’d never had anything close. And she was going to cry.
Jace, on a knee. Jace, pulling a box from a pocket and opening it.
It was the ring from the jeweler’s shop. The one beside the pendant, the one she hadn’t dared to look at. Pink gold, the band carved by a patient, expert hand and studded with tiny diamonds. And a pink sapphire, rare and beautiful, sitting like a rose in the midst of tiny diamonds that sparkled like dew on petals. Like grace and strength. Like everything a woman could wish for.
“I love you,” Jace said. “And I promise that I always will. I can’t give you the moon and the stars, but I can promise you this. As long as I have breath, you’ll be what I breathe for. As long as I have strength, you’ll be what I hold strong. And as long as I have life, you’ll be why I’m living it.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t help it. She was going to cry. “I can’t… say anything that good. I can’t… think.”
“Well, to be fair,” he said, those lines crinkling around his blue eyes in the way she loved, “I practiced.”
She laughed, a choked sound. He was still holding the ring, though, and she needed to wear it. She needed to hold him, and to kiss him. So she said, “Could you just… pretend I said something that perfect? And ask me the question, so I can say yes?”
This time, he laughed. “Then here we go. Hold on for it. I love you, baby. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I only have one word, but I hope it’s the right one. Yes.”
He slid the ring onto her finger, and it went there like it was the place it was meant to be. She put her hand over her heart, laughed again, and said, “It’s here now. Those words… they’re going to be in my heart forever. And I’ll love you just that long. Just that hard. I promise.”
“I’ll take that promise,” he said, standing up at last, taking her in his arms, and twining his fingers through hers, so the ring winked between them like the pledge it was. “And I’ll take you.”