Need You for Mine(97)

When he was close enough to touch her, he put his hands on her hips. “But I need you.”

A collective sigh filled Main Street, but she ignored it. “Do you need me or my friendship?”

“Both,” he said. “I want both.”

Her chest ached at his statement. “I want everything. Not just fun and fancy-free.” She poked him in the chest and her finger bounced back. “I want passion and adventure and love. I want extraordinary.”

“I want to give you extraordinary and passion. I want to give you everything. Hell, sunshine, I want you,” he said. “Every single part of you. The yellow parts and the orange parts, even the pink parts.”

“Real men wear pink,” someone hollered from the back, but Adam kept his eyes on Harper.

“What about the red parts?” Harper asked, her stomach a jumble of knots, because everyone liked those parts of her. It was the rest that always went unnoticed.

“God, baby, the red ones are my favorite.” To prove it, he ran his hands up her sides and back down, her body tingling at his touch. “They’re all my favorite. Do you know I remember every kiss we’ve ever had, every word we ever shared, every outfit you’ve ever worn, including the bright yellow dress you wore that first night, right here.”

Harper thought back to that night, the way they’d run into each other, the way he’d made her feel so special and seen, and she shook her head. “That wasn’t real.”

“That’s what I thought too, but I was wrong. God, I have been so wrong about everything,” he said. “It’s all real. Every look, every kiss, every lame line. The way I feel about you, the man I am because of you—it just took me losing you to realize it.”

“And what did you realize?” she asked quietly.

“That you are the most real person I know. There is no way I couldn’t fall in love with you. I think I loved you when you threw your dress at me.”

“She Hadam at hello,” Clovis said in a dreamy voice.

“You did.” Adam cupped Harper’s face. “You’ve charmed me, Harper Owens. Heart and soul.”

He dropped to his knee and the crowd gasped. So did Harper.

“Oh my God.” She looked around at the swelling crowd, who had formed a circle around them, then back to the man she loved who was down on one knee, baring it all to win her back. “What are you doing?”

“Asking you to be mine. Completely and forever mine,” he said, and she felt all that hope start to blossom, so full her chest expanded. “And I hope you’re still willing to let me be yours. To let me be your friend, your lover, your everything. I need you, sunshine, and if you choose me, give me a second chance, I promise to spend the rest of my life making your world as extraordinary as you are.”

He took her hand and placed a kiss right in the center of her palm. “I love you, Harper.”

She wasn’t sure if the sidewalk was tilting or if she was shaking—either way her world was spinning at his words. His sweet words that made her breath catch and her heart sing.

“I chose you weeks ago, remember?” she said and saw the moment it registered. “And I would choose you again and again, because I love you too.”

A small hint of a smile started in his eyes, then spread. By the time it hit his mouth she was in his arms and he was kissing her. Kissing her as if he were saying, Mine.

“Do you think this was for show or did they really just get engaged?” a pocket-sized woman in bifocals and a sheath dress said from the sidelines. “I didn’t see a ring.”

Harper looked over and found Lulu Rous with her entire team. They’d watched the whole moment and looked as swept up as Harper.

“Oh, it’s real all right,” Adam said. “As for the ring, you might want to add a little pocket inside the boxers for occasions like this. Because if your customer is a real man, then love happens.”

“Are you taking notes?” Lulu asked Chantel, who was scribbling frantically, and Harper knew by the excitement in the woman’s eyes that she liked what she saw. “Real men love. Brilliant.”

“When you meet a woman like Harper, it becomes the truth.” Adam wiggled his pinky finger, and that was when Harper saw her grandmother’s ring. It had seen her grandparents through a lifetime of love and belonging and family. That Adam knew she’d want to wear Clovis’s ring proved how clearly he saw her.

“Marry me, Harper,” he said. “Marry me and be mine. Because I want to wake up to catch a glimpse of you every morning for the rest of my life.”

“Only if you promise to be mine.”