"Valkyrie."
A hint of a smile relaxed her features as she sucked in a large breath. "So, we've been dating for a while."
"Not long enough."
"And I-I-what?" Her face fell. "What do you mean not long enough?"
"Just that we should have started dating sooner."
"Oh." She nodded, the movements of her eyebrows telling me that my words had disconcerted her.
I crossed my ankles. "Why aren't you naked?"
She shook herself. "Oh. No reason."
"Then why am I naked?"
"Because I didn't want you to be suspicious."
That made my eyes widen and made me suspicious. "Suspicious? About what?"
"Stop rushing me. Let me say my thing." Marie stood straighter and lifted her chin, her eyes darting over my body. "And stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Flexing your . . . muscles."
"I can't help that muscle. It sees you and flexes all on its own."
She slid her teeth to the side and cleared her throat, her eyes now studiously focused on mine. "So, as I was saying, we've been dating for a while now and I think things between us are going very well."
That made me frown. "That's a severe understatement of fact and is therefore an imprecise ascribing of value."
She must've liked my argument because she grinned. "I'm glad you feel that way."
"It's not a feeling, it's a fact."
Marie laughed. The sight and sound had me relaxing further on the bed.
"Okay, so it's a fact. And given the facts, I think it's time we moved-or at least we considered moving-on to the next step . . ." her smile dwindled until it left her eyes absent of humor and full of hopeful anxiety, ". . . in our relationship."
Before I could question her meaning, she placed one knee, then the other on the bed and knelt next to me, withdrawing a blue velvet box from behind her back. I stared at her, not masking my confusion, as she opened the box and revealed a set of gold square cufflinks with engraved wavy lines.
"One is sine, the other is cosine. One is you, and one is me." Her typically melodic cadence was now tight with nerves. "Marry me?"
I stared at her-at her spectacular eyes, presently both gray and green-my mouth embarrassingly agape, finally managing to say, "You . . . ?"
"Want to marry you." Her voice broke, wavered, but she nodded with certainty. "I love you, Matt. I love you completely. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I hope that you-"
"Stop." I shook my head, closing my eyes, squeezing them shut. "Damn."
This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.
Seven months.
I'd been carrying that ring around for seven fucking months.
And she distracts me with coconut, gets me naked, ties me to a bed, and proposes.
"Damn."
I felt her shift on the bed, heard her breathing change, and my eyes flew open. To my everlasting regret, the hopeful anxiety in her expression had been replaced with confused hurt. Thus, my growl of frustration couldn't be helped.
"No, Marie. No. Don't make that face. Don't have those thoughts. You don't know-listen, stop. Grah!" I pulled against the bindings, wanting, needing to reach for her.
But I couldn't.
Because she'd tied me up with soft, fancy rope.
Taking a deep breath and releasing it carefully, I lifted my chin towards my pants where they lay discarded on the floor. "Can you bring me my pants?"
"Of course." She nodded jerkily, closing the box on the cufflinks and shoving them back in her drawer, then darted to my jeans.
I watched her rushed movements, having to grit my teeth to keep from spewing profanities. She placed the jeans over my middle, as though to hide my nakedness, and the action drove a frustrated laugh from my lungs.
Great.
Just . . . great.
With still shaking fingers, she untied my right wrist. "I'm sorry. I should have gone with my original plan."
"Original plan?"
"I was going to bake the cufflinks in the cake." She sighed, shaking her head. "But, see, well, Janie and Quinn got engaged after he tied her up, and you said that thing about tying me up until I agreed to marry you and I just thought-I thought-I guess I don't know what I thought."
With my right hand free, I shoved it into the left pocket of my pants while she worked on the other wrist.
"And if you need time to think about it, I completely understand. I know it was sudden. But I saw the cufflinks and it felt like-I don't know-a sign? So I got them and-"