He started, “Roxanne Dolly Neil—”
“Yes,” Rox said.
He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yes,” she said again. What, was that the wrong answer in this situation?
He frowned, lines gathering shadows on his forehead in the dim light. “You didn’t even hear what I was going to ask.”
“There’re only three occasions in a girl’s life when you hear all three of your names: when you are in deep trouble with your momma, when you are being served a warrant for your arrest, and when someone is proposing marriage to you. So, yes.”
“I might have been going to ask if you wanted to get a taco at one of the all-night food trucks down by the bars,” he insisted, his brilliant green eyes sparkling with laughter by the column of light from the cell phone.
The phone behind her vibrated again, shivering the bench under her legs.
She said, “You weren’t going to ask me if I wanted a taco, and you know it.”
“Perhaps I was going to serve a warrant for threatening the life of a member of the royal family.”
She thought about it and frowned. “I haven’t threatened to kill you lately.”
“I meant Willem.”
She pointed back toward the palace and the reception. “I saw how those people in there were looking at him. No court would convict me. Now you stop teasing me.”
“All right. I won’t tease you. Yes, marry me, lieveke. Always be my paralegal whom I can’t do without and my wife.”
“That’s going to be in our vows, that you aren’t allowed to tease me.”
“Then you’ll have to say ‘obey.’”
“I beg your pardon you son of a—”
“Kidding! I’m kidding you. I can barely get you to make me a cup of coffee when we’re in the office.”
“I am a licensed paralegal, not a naughty secretary. The only time that I made you a cup of coffee was that one time when you came in the office with a hundred and two-degree temperature and the shakes from the flu because we were meeting with Pitt-Jolie’s people that morning.”
He looked at her from the sides of his eyes, his mouth turning down. “You didn’t actually say yes yet. The stones are beginning to grate on my knee.”
“What? I said yes. At least twice. Why are you still down there?”
“But that was before I finished my—”
“Get up! Get up!”
“—sentence.”
She tugged on his shoulders. “Come on. Yes. I said yes. Now get up.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that glowed in the dim light of the cell phone that was buzzing yet again.
White diamonds surrounded a dark and brilliantly green rectangular stone. The gold band curved down into his fingertips.
“Oh, my,” she said and held out her left hand.
He slipped it onto her ring finger. The size was a little jiggly, if anything. “If you don’t like it, we can select another from the collection here or go to Paris for a few days and have one made.”
She looked up from the emerald and the ring into Casimir’s dark green, sparkling eyes. “I like this one.”
He slid onto the bench beside her and wrapped her in his arms, his mouth finding hers in the dim light from the cell phone. Even bickering, even teasing, she melted against his rugged body and slid her arms around his waist. His hand pressed along her curves, holding her.
His voice lowered, “Have you ever been made love to in a royal palace before?”
“No. Have you?”
“I probably shouldn’t answer that question. You think that I’m enough of a manslut as it is.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to know. Ever. Have you ever done it in this gazebo before?”
She felt his intake of breath against her, and he looked off to the side, as if he expected reporters or his sister to walk into the gazebo. “No.”
“Oooh. It’s like you’re a virgin. That’s hot.” She slid her hand down his back and grabbed his ass. “It’s like I’m taking advantage of the hot, young prince.”
“I’m two years older than you are.”
“Shush, my sweet, young prince. Let me show you the ways of wicked women.”
“And you have done the deed before in the garden of a royal palace?” he asked, his lips brushing her neck right in that soft place behind her jaw.
“Hey, you’re the blushing innocent, here. It doesn’t matter what I have or haven’t done.”
“I take that to mean that you haven’t.”
“Like I said, you’re the sweet, young thing, here, and I’m going to have you in this garden, out here, where anyone might walk in or see us through the leaves.”