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With an intake of breath, Ares searched her gaze. “So there’s no one else?”
“Just my shop,” she said, looking around her at the place she’d created, built with faith and friends and her own two hands. She looked down lovingly at her sleeping baby. “And Velvet.”
The hard lines of his handsome face blurred into an incredulous grin. “Her name is Velvet?”
She raised her chin, waiting for him to tell her he hated it. “Velvet Kourakis.”
He gave an intake of breath. “You gave her my name?”
“You said it was important to you,” she said in a small voice. “And even though we weren’t together, I couldn’t betray that…”
Leaning forward, he put his hand tenderly on their sleeping baby’s dark tufted head. He looked up, and his luminous gaze burned through her. “Thank you.” He looked slowly around the boutique. “This shop is exactly like you. All warmth and joy.” He blinked fast. “I wanted to give you my name, as well.”
Ruby looked away. “I couldn’t marry you.” Her voice was low. “Not when I saw your face at the wedding. You looked sick at the thought of marrying me. I couldn’t do that to you. Or to myself.”
“You were right.” He put his hand on her cheek. “Losing you forced me to realize that. You were right to leave me. You and the baby deserve more.”
Tears filled her eyes. Now that she’d seen him again, she didn’t want anyone else. She wanted only him.
“But I can be more,” he continued in a low voice. “If you just give me a chance. I love you so much, Ruby. If there’s anything I can do to make you love me again…”
She looked up with an intake of breath.
“You can’t,” she said hoarsely. His dark eyes looked stricken.
Shaking her head, Ruby whispered with a tremulous smile, “Because I never stopped loving you.”
Ares’s hard-edged face filled with fierce joy as he searched her gaze. “You love me?”
Wordlessly, she nodded.
Pulling her closer, he choked out, “But I don’t deserve it.”
“No,” she agreed.
“I was a selfish bastard.”
“Yes.” She paused. “But you have your finer points.”
His dark eyes were shining. “I do?”
“Definitely,” she whispered, putting her hand on his rough cheek. “Once you believe in something, Ares, you fight for it all the way. And you don’t fight fair.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It is if you’re fighting for us.”
“I will always fight for you.” Their eyes locked. Then, as if in slow motion, he fell to one knee before her.
There was a gasp across the vintage boutique. By now, everyone was holding up a smartphone.
Ares pulled a small black velvet box out of his dark cashmere coat.
“You brought back my ring?” Ruby said, creasing her forehead.
A smile lifted Ares’s hard features, making his dark eyes almost merry as he said gravely, “Not quite.”
After opening the box, he held up a small Edwardian-style ruby ring set in filigreed gold.
“A railway tycoon gave this ring to his bride in New York City a hundred and fifty years ago,” he said huskily. “The owner of the jewelry shop told me they were happily married for half a century. That’s what I want, Ruby. But fifty years isn’t nearly enough. I want forever.”
Her view of him shimmered with tears as she looked down at him over their sleeping newborn’s head. He took the ring out of the box.
“Will you, Ruby?” Ares held up the ring, and now there could be no doubt. There were definitely tears in his eyes, too. “Will you give me forever?”
The whole shop seemed to hold its breath.
Ruby smiled as tears streamed down her cheeks. She whispered, “A thousand times over.”
Joy lit up Ares’s face as he slid the ring onto her finger. After rising to his feet, he took her and the baby in his arms, and Ruby knew, before he even kissed her, that a thousand times forever wouldn’t even be long enough.
* * *
Their wedding was held in June in a sun-drenched flower meadow outside Star Valley, just below the peak of Mt. Chaldie.
