New York City weather sucks.

Plain and simple.

The rain falls cold and relentless in sideways sheets. The wind whips it in every direction and makes my raincoat nearly useless. Trying to force my umbrella open, it refuses and then snaps backwards, rendering it as useless as my raincoat.

I lived in New York City for years, so you’d think I’d remember how to dress in the spring.

Wrong.

My cute little jacket advertised as water resistant cinches around my waist and does nothing to protect me from the bone-chilling cold. The new suede platform shoes I bought because they were blue and reminded me of Elvis are completely ruined, and the swishing of them makes me wish I were barefoot. Even my skinny leggings leave me feeling naked and cursing myself for not adding the tights I’d considered and then rejected for fear I would be too hot.

I heard pregnancy does that to a woman.

As if to punctuate the thought that I can’t get back to California soon enough, a cab barrels through a yellow light and blares its horn at me just as I’m about to cross the street to hit up the donut vendor outside the park.

Pregnancy has obviously removed all of my filters, and I don’t hold back when I give the taxi driver my middle finger right in the heart of Manhattan.

Forget the donuts.

I’ll grab something later.

Considering the height of my platform heels, I make decent progress for the next two blocks. Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue…it isn’t that much farther now to my meeting; then, once it is over, I can call Keen and we can talk about all of this.

My thoughts are interrupted by the distinctive tone of my iPhone.

Walking fast, I stop to huddle under the protective confines of a building’s entryway and pull my phone from my bag. My screen flashes Makayla’s name and for a moment I consider hitting Ignore. Not that I don’t want to talk to her, but I can’t be late, and I shouldn’t tell her about the baby until Keen and I have talked about it.

“Hey, I’ll be back tonight—can we talk then?” I answer over the rain and wind.

“No, wait, Maggie, don’t hang up.”

“What is it?” I ask as a nasty gust of wind propels me forward, causing me to lose my balance and step right into a black, slushy puddle of mud on Fifty-ninth Street that I really, truly hope is mud.

No.

No.

No!

“I have been trying to reach you for over twelve hours. Is everything okay?” Makayla asks.

Standing like a flamingo perched not so gracefully on one submerged foot, I consider my options as I answer her. “I was really tired last night and went to bed early, and now I’m late. Can we please talk tonight?”

“Yes, sure. I was just worried about you. It’s not like you to not answer your phone.”

Dropping my foot in the pool of hell, I stand utterly still and stare at the Time Warner Center. My destination is so close. “Don’t be. I’m fine. I love you.”

She’s still talking but I can’t hear her over the rain and the traffic, and my toes are screaming from my shoes to get the hell out of the foulness I’m standing in.

“Maggie!”

I know that voice.

I push the phone even closer to my ear. “Is someone with you, Makayla?”

“No, why?” she asks.

“Maggie!”

Okay, the voice is not coming from the phone. I turn, and search for the voice I’d know anywhere.

And then I spot him. Keen, with his thick dark hair and sparkling blue eyes and drop-dead-gorgeous looks, sitting in the front of a carriage on the perimeter of Central Park.

With a white horse.

A white horse.

“I have to call you back, Makayla.”

Staring at Keen in shock, I drop my phone in my purse, and I’m not even sure it makes it in there.

I don’t care.

All I care about is this man—brilliant and wild and crazy, and coming for me like some Prince Charming out of a fairy tale.

In five long strides Keen is standing in front of me. “Maggie.”

My whole body is shaking. “Keen. What are you doing here?”

Acting more like a knight than the naughty boyfriend I know him to be, he bends and kisses my hand tenderly. “I need to talk to you and it couldn’t wait.”

All I can do is stand in shock.

Him.

Here.

And the white horse.

The.

White.

Horse.

Straightening to his full height, he places his hands on my face and pulls me to him for one earth-shattering kiss.

“Keen,” I say around his lips.

As he stares at me with those bright blue eyes that make me feel like today is the warmest day of the year, he puts a finger over my lips and continues staring at me for a long, long time.

I swear he is covered in sunshine on this dreary day, and all I can do is stare back as I try to comprehend exactly what this is. I told him about the baby. Told him I couldn’t talk—that we’d talk today. Rather than wait, he flew out from California last night. He came to see me. He’s here in New York. And this is not a dream. I don’t dream that way, or didn’t…until him.

His grin grows wide and then, like a prince out of some fairy tale, he lifts me out of the Manhattan cesspool that we are both now standing in. And with all his brute strength, he carries me in his arms across the street to the waiting carriage.

Once he sets me down right beside the white horse, he drops down on one knee and pulls a shiny box from his coat pocket.

I watch as his fingers open the box and I forget how to breathe. I wait, each moment longer than the last, my entire body trembling from my head to my toes. And then the box is open, and even in the dreariness of the rain and the gray clouds, the ring inside it sparkles so bright it’s nearly blinding.

“Maggie,” he says. His voice is a little shaky, but it still manages to ooze sexiness. “I might not have known it, but I do now. I loved you from the moment I saw you under the haze of the purple lights. With your smile so much like summer and your eyes so full of curiosity and wonder, you hit me at first sight like no one ever has.”

My hands fly to my mouth and I fight back tears.

This is so romantic.

“Every day I find myself wanting to tell you things I’ve never told anyone. Every day I know will be better because you are sharing it with me. I might not have known what love is, but I know now it’s you. You are everything I could ever want or need in my life, and I can’t live without you.”

With my pulse pounding in my ears, I look down, trembling, shaking, and happier than I ever knew anyone could be. This is so not me, or the old me. But I’ve changed with him, and I love who I am now maybe even better than who I was before.

“Maggie May,” he says, in a voice that sounds like dripping honey, “will you marry me and be my wife?”

As I look down at him, I’m still not able to breathe. “I don’t want to get married just because of circumstances.”

Confusion furrows his brow. “Circumstances might have sped this up, but you were always the one for me. From the moment I saw you downing that whiskey, it was you. And I think you know that.”

Laughing a little, I finally remember to breathe. “Are you sure?”

“Never more sure about anything in my whole fucking entire life.”

“Say it again, Keen Masters.”

That grin is sly, and yet humble—so freaking adorable. “Maggie May, will you marry me?”

So, without another second of hesitation, I yank him to his feet and throw myself at him. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Don’t fucking hang up on me again,” he breathes harshly in my ear.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to do.”

His head is shaking back and forth. “You’re enough to make a grown man cry,” he says quietly. This time his voice is hoarse, and yet still so incredibly deep.

And that right there. That. It’s enough to bring me to my knees.

Both lost to emotion, neither of us are able to speak, so instead we cling to each other right in front of Central Park, and with a white horse beside us.

With my face pressed into his shoulder, I breathe in the scent of him—Cartier and that distinctive scent that is all him. The scent that yesterday I was uncertain I would ever breathe again. I shake a little at the thought, and his hands smooth down my back to comfort me.

And then he pulls back and looks at me. Still shaking, I watch as he removes the glittering diamond from its cushy nest.

Never, ever did I think this would be something I would be doing. And that is the God’s honest truth.

I suck in a breath and blink away the new tears welling in my eyes.

One of his big, callused hands with those magic fingers slides the ring on me. Dazed, I look down at the large diamond and the band that holds it covered in small brilliant diamonds, and then suddenly everything feels so right. Perfect even. Still full of disbelief, I throw my arms around his neck again. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you,” he whispers in my ear.

As raindrops fall down on both of us, I squeeze him even tighter. He twirls me and twirls me until I can’t see straight, and then he sets me down and asks, “Are you really having my baby?”

As if it might be a possibility he misunderstood me, I find myself smiling in the way that only he makes me smile. “Yes, I am.”

The thrill in his eyes isn’t anything that can be denied and I throw myself in his arms again. Right now it’s the only place I want to be.

And this time when he twirls me, and twirls me, and twirls me, I think, yes, I do believe in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters…because this man is without a doubt my very wicked Prince Charming.