She looked at Jean-Pierre, the man who'd come back into her life to help her discover the truth about her lying client. She hadn't listened to him then, and their argument had turned into something beautiful and complicated. A night she would never regret.
But these last days, she'd hoped they were moving toward that common ground they'd shared long ago when they were teenagers. He'd taken her to his bed with all the passion she'd once dreamed of and more. But he still hadn't claimed to love her. And she knew him well enough to know he'd never speak those words if he didn't mean them. She could hardly believe he'd simply overlooked them...
"Tatiana." He hooked his arm around her now, guiding her from the pavilion and out into the clear, warm night. He purposely walked her past Kimberly and stopped, interrupting the woman's phone call. "Kimberly, I'd owe you a favor forever if you would cut the power to that cell tower as fast as possible."
"Seriously?" She frowned.
"We've got leaks all over the place and I want to sit on a story to let the bride and groom have their day." His hand gripped Tatiana's waist gently, his fingers grazing her hip.
"I do love being off the grid." Kimberly grinned, stabbing a few buttons on her phone. "And I don't mind going incognito for however long you like. Although, I've got to warn you, if my father finds out we're disconnected, he'll be on the first boat out here."
"I just need to buy some time," Jean-Pierre assured her while the country band turned up their amps and the fiddle player kicked into high gear.
"Done." She flipped her phone toward him so he could see. "Look close because I'll lose the image as soon as I shut down that tower." She showed him a picture of a cell tower disguised as a pine tree on the screen, then hit a button.
The image vanished. Thanking her, he continued toward a section of the island Tatiana hadn't seen before. It wasn't the dock where their ferry had parked, but it was a pier of some sort. And, she could see by the moonlight, a boathouse.
"Where are we going?" She had worn low heels for the wedding, but there'd been carpet on the beach. Now, she tugged the shoes off and left them on a planter incorporated into the landscaping.
"I thought about taking you to the boathouse on Lake Pontchartrain. But there wasn't enough time, so this is going to have to do." He slid off his shoes, too, and left them by hers.
"We used to fool around in the boathouse." She'd fallen in love with him there.
Of course, that was a long time ago and she'd buried all those feelings. Did he know they were breaking through all the barriers she'd put around them? That the past and present had mingled in her mind and heart, helping her to see the old hints of the boy she'd loved along with the more reserved man she'd carefully avoided ever since he'd come to New York two years ago to play for the Gladiators?
"It remains my fondest teenage memory." He held her hand as they walked out onto the pier and then up the steps of a simple boathouse with a deck on the flat roof.
Jean-Pierre led her past a small shed containing extra lifesaving gear and utilitarian jackets to the front railing that looked out over the gulf.
She wanted to ask him more about that. To hear why he remembered those days fondly, too. She'd always suspected his heart hardened toward her when she'd told him to leave and not come back-a directive given by her father, but one that she meant since his family had hurt hers irreparably.
Only by being the best in her class had they afforded Columbia. Only by being the best in her job had she afforded her apartment, and even then, she'd been fortunate to have a connection in the law firm who knew the building owner. But she didn't want to win cases at the expense of the truth. She never would have taken that case if she'd known that Blair Jones lied through her teeth.
"Who do you think that woman was who posed as Leon's nurse?" She felt as if she had too many puzzle pieces that she couldn't fit together. And maybe she was avoiding thinking about what mattered most. One benefit of having the truth come out about César would be she didn't have to hide him any longer. She wasn't going to live for the sake of keeping up appearances anymore.
"Someone looking for a payout by obtaining unauthorized pictures of the event." Jean-Pierre shrugged. "You said she was taking photographs, so I assume she planned to sell out the family and offer wedding photos to the highest tabloid bidder."
"But doesn't Leon have a real caregiver? Do you think the nurse made the trip?" She felt worried about him after seeing the way he'd veered from clarity to confusion and back again. It must be frightening to lose your grip on your memories.
"We'll find out," Jean-Pierre promised her, taking her hands in both of his. "She might have made a deal to split the payday with the nurse, or just paid the woman outright. It's very difficult to find loyal employees, especially when scandal draws us into the headlines and the price for a story goes sky-high. Once interest in us dies down, the staff will go back to honoring those confidentiality agreements they all signed."
"It's my fault that interest really ramped up right before the wedding. I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to spill over into Gervais and Erika's special day."
"Erika is tough. She would probably be the first to say it's not a royal wedding without a tabloid crasher." Jean-Pierre tried to smile, but she could tell the turn of events troubled him, too.
"What should we do next?" She shivered as the breeze turned cooler.
A wave splashed against the boathouse with a little extra force, enough to cause a fine spray of mist on her skin.
"I hope we will do what I've wanted all along." He withdrew a ring box from the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket.
Her heart stilled. Her mouth went dry.
Jean-Pierre, the father of her child, got down on one knee in the moonlight. She could hardly process what was happening. She'd expected a game plan. A strategy for coming up with a story. Not a heartfelt proposal.
Hope stirred within. Maybe their time together had cracked open his heart and made him realize he loved her after all.
That their common ground could be so much more beautiful than just co-parenting according to a contract.
"Tatiana." He looked up at her, his eyes as dark as the water below, his expression inscrutable. "You and César are more important to me than anything in the world."
In her old fantasies of this moment-the ones she'd dreamed up a decade ago-he'd led his speech with "I love you and I can't live without you." But she recognized that she wasn't speaking to her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, dammit. Jean-Pierre was a formidable man. A world-renowned athlete. A business tycoon with interests all over the globe.
For him to say she was the most important thing in his world-along with their baby-was saying a great deal.
"When I look at you holding our son in your arms, I want to give you the world. To make sure that nothing ever hurts you. To keep you safe forever." He kissed the back of her left hand and then the left ring finger. "Nothing would bring me more happiness than if you would be my wife."
Her heart pounded so loudly she wondered if she'd missed that he also wanted to give her his heart. But maybe he included that when he said he'd give her the world? Worry made her heart beat crazily as he opened up the ring box and withdrew a magnificent diamond, a huge, sparkling pear-shaped central stone with two smaller stones to either side. There was an elegant simplicity about it, but her longstanding interest in appearances told her that it was at least eight carats. If she was still a woman who cared about those things, that ring would have dazzled her.
It still dazzled her.
But had she missed hearing the one thing her heart most craved?
She swallowed hard.
"Jean-Pierre." She savored his name on her lips. How many times had she stenciled it on notebooks or in her diary once upon a time, adding his last name to her first? "You know how nervous I can get. And I hope to remember this moment always." After all they'd shared the last few days, after the way he'd made love to her, surely that had nudged his heart into a more tender place toward her? "Do you...love me?"
It had cost her so much to ask. And she had her answer instantly. It was there, in the fleeting panic in his dark eyes.
The hesitation that told her this was the last question he wanted to field during a proposal of marriage.