He dropped the flower, pulled something out of his back pocket and held it up. Her lungs collapsed.
A ring box.
Hesitantly, he fingered a lock of her hair. “I didn’t put it in a big box and let you unwrap it. Our relationship is based on honesty. I didn’t want you to have to guess. So you know right up front that I’m asking you to marry me.”
“Why?” she blurted out because her brain was stuck. Her pulse was stuck. Everything was stunned into immobilization.
His stormy eyes roamed over her face. “There’s only one reason to marry someone, or so you’ve thoroughly convinced me. Because I love you and can’t live without you.”
God Almighty. Kris had been possessed by aliens. “Eh.” She waved it off. “You’re only suffering from a hormonal imbalance.”
Without missing a beat, he flipped the hinged lid and took the ring, holding it out between two steady, golden fingers. “It’s inscribed. Will you read it?”
Gingerly, she accepted the pale circle of metal—Holy Heaven, it was a huge, beautiful square-cut diamond exploding with fire—and read the inscription carved into the platinum. Her knees turned to jelly.
Stage Seven is Forever.
When she couldn’t speak, he said, “At Casa di Luigi, you told me I’d hit all the stages. But I missed one. Happily ever after.” He plucked the ring from her fingertips. “Will you allow me to put this on?”
This wasn’t solely a rescue, some elaborate scheme he’d invented to save her reputation. He was balancing the scales, legitimizing their relationship. Transforming her with his magic-wand-engagement-ring into Mrs. Demetrious.
“You’re crazier than a drunk June bug.” Or she was. She hardly knew which way was up. Was this some kind of setup? A different approach to publicity? “What’s happening with Visions of Black?”
“It’s a mess, but I don’t care. Resolving it is meaningless unless I fix us first. I can’t function without you. I can’t think, can’t concentrate. I need you more than I need to breathe. Please.”
He was truly hurting. The evidence was there, in his rigid stance and the pain in his tumultuous expression. Hurting, because he was in love with her, like head-over-heels, Romeo and Juliet, take-a-bullet-for-her in love. Refusing him might result in as much of a gutting as his lost career. What was she supposed to do?
Once, when she was still blinded by stupidity and had an overinflated sense of her ability to read this profound man, she’d have known what to say, how to act. He’d destroyed that in Dallas, and she didn’t know how to get it back.
“VJ, I messed up by not grabbing what we had.” Clearly disconcerted, he exhaled and shoved his free hand through his hair. “But I’m not afraid anymore. I’m on this side of the camera, in the middle of the scene with you, exactly where I want to be. Begging you to believe in me, to believe in happily ever after again after I broke your heart. What can I say to convince you I’m sincere?”
“That was a pretty good start,” she mumbled, her heart too busy duking it out with her brain to come up with a better response. “You can’t marry me. We’ve known each other barely a week.”
He cupped her chin, lifted it. The touch of his fingertips on her face almost split her in two.
“The length of our acquaintance is irrelevant, agapi mou,” he said, drawing her into his melty-brown eyes. “There’s been something between us from the first. You feel it, too. You knew immediately you didn’t want to marry that other guy. Why can’t I be certain in an instant that you’re the one?”
Where had this stuff come from? He’d blown far past romance instruction, far past any romance novel, into territory she’d never dreamed existed. With no experience and no clues, she didn’t trust herself, didn’t believe she could ever fathom the mind of Kristian Demetrious. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t real love? What if—
In a flash, the answer came to her. With the smallest bit of dawning hope, she asked, “What kind of car do you have? At home?”
“What? A BMW SUV. So I can haul around equipment.”
German. Still foreign and complex and incomprehensible.
“And a ’67 Mustang,” he continued as an afterthought. “I only drive it occasionally. It’s the quintessential American car, symbolic of my U.S. citizenship. What does this have to do with anything?”
A Ford. Kris had a Ford in his garage.
“With a 428 V-8 engine?”
When he nodded, tears finally burst the dam and flowed down her cheeks. It was the first engine she’d ever touched, the one she’d learned everything from. She could take the entire thing apart and rebuild it. One-handed.