Once Upon a Rose(103)

While the crowd cheered, he bent to her ear. “And don’t you ever do this to me again,” he growled.

She turned her head and kissed him.

Something hit him on the shoulder softly, then several somethings. People were pelting them with…no, not rotten tomatoes. Roses. People were throwing the roses that had been handed out during the festival.

He took a step back and then another, eyeing his escape route. Petals fluttered around his face. He could leap over the edge there, shove through his cousins like their old rugby games, duck behind that post—“Hey.” He turned suddenly as he thought of something and glowered at Layla. “You’d damn well better marry me after all this.”

She grinned. “That is so sweet of you to ask.”

Shit, had he just said that for the whole world to hear? He didn’t fold his arms across his chest, though. He put his hands on his hips and gave her his bossiest glare. You’d better do what I said.

“Okay,” she said and picked up one of the thrown roses to kiss it. “I will.”

Oh, thank God.

He leapt off the stage, going for the rugby shove-dive through his cousins, and—they’d caught him, damn it. And they were…

…hugging him.

Pounding him on the back. Hugging him again in congratulations. More distant relatives and friends were pressing in beyond them, trying to join in the celebration.

“I’ve got it all on video!” Allegra was exclaiming cheerfully as she tried to force her way in to hug him, too. “This one’s going to go down in family history! It might even beat the alien photo!”

“Well,” Layla said with a deep breath through her mic. Over his cousins’ shoulders, he saw her standing there with her cheeks all flushed, too, and her eyes starry, and her hand pressed to her chest, over her heart. “Isn’t he a prince? What do you want me to play after that?”

And he finally relaxed into his cousins’ embrace, grinning and flushing at the congratulations and teasing that poured in and watching his happiness up on stage as she played.

She’d come back to him in a little while, and they would be able to take this somewhere quiet and private, the quiet and private she needed, too. It fit together, those two needs.

He was her roots. And she was his wings.



FIN