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.
Keen
I was expecting a flying Elvis or two.
I was expecting guitars, white jumpsuits, big glasses, and a pink Cadillac, but that wasn’t what I got.