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I’ll never get tired of kissing this man.
“Is that a yes?” he chuckles, breaking off the kiss and holding my face in his hands so that the heat of his palms flickers against my cheeks.
“Of course it’s a yes,” I sing. “It’s a hell yes. It’s a fuck yes. It’s a yes and now put the ring on my finger, you handsome man.”
He grins and takes the ring box from the leaf-laden ground, takes out the ring, and slips the cool comforting metal onto my finger.
I hold my finger up to the sunlight, admiring how it glints and shimmers.
“How did you know my ring size?” I ask.
“I measured you in your sleep,” he smirks.
“Oh, sir,” I say, giggling, my voice brimming with sarcasm. “I am absolutely violated.”
He chuckles and squeezes me close to him, our noses tickling each other as we stare into each other’s eyes, into each other’s souls, consuming each other with everything we have.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“I love it,” I whisper, my voice shaking with love. “I love everything you’ve done. I love it all, Solomon. And I love you most of all.”
“I love you, my little dreamer,” Solomon growls passionately. “And that’s never going to change.”
Epilogue
Three Weeks Later
Solomon
“Oh, Solomon, you didn’t have to,” Jackie says, pulling the phone from the birthday wrapping paper.
I grin at her across the counter of her kitchen and then gesture down at my plate of scrambled eggs.
“Ma’am, after tasting eggs these good, you deserve a whole lot more. Believe me.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. It brings true happiness to my soul to make my woman’s mother light up like this.
Sophia stands off to the side, leaning against the counter, her eyes shimmering as she drinks in the sun-painted scene.
Her eyes have been shimmering a lot lately, flooding with happiness every chance they get. She tells me they’re tears of joy, and I believe her, but part of me thinks something else is going on, too.
Is it too early for pregnancy hormones?
Jackie laughs and shakes her head at me, looking almost identical to Sophia for a moment.
“You don’t have to call me ma’am,” she says.
“A man should be polite to his future mother-in-law,” I say. “But if it means that much to you, I’ll you Jackie.”
She laughs again, looking over at her daughter.
I devour the sight of her as well, standing there in her flowing spring dress, the same sort she was wearing the morning I proposed to her. She has her arms folded over her breasts, squashing them alluringly, and the mist-like fabric falls like smoke across the curvaceous beauty of her body.
Her engagement ring couldn’t look more perfect on her finger, winking at me with sunlight.
“You’ve picked a good one here, Sophia,” Jackie says. “And I’m not just saying that because of the phone.”
Sophia smiles and then steps forward.
There’s something official about the way she does it, rehearsed, as though she’s been building up to this moment ever since we started breakfast. It’s strange enough that she seemed too amped-up to sit down, and now my mind is going into overdrive, spinning around and around the possibility of what she’s about to say.
“I have something to tell you,” she murmurs. “I’ve already told Caitlin. But …”
She sighs, trailing off.
My heart stampedes in my chest. I almost blurt the words out, roar what I think it is, but there’s no way I’d steal the glory of this moment from her.
Caitlin is currently on a writer’s retreat in Europe, but she and Sophia seem closer than ever, talking on Skype almost every night.
Every time I walk into our bedroom and find my woman propped up with her laptop on her knees, talking with my daughter, I have to double-take to make sure I’m not seeing things.
I have to check that things truly have worked out so incredibly.
I’ll never take any of this for granted.
“What is it?” Jackie murmurs.
“It’s good news,” Sophia says, perhaps sensing some unease in the warbling tenor of her mother’s words.
“Say it, Sophia,” I rumble, rising to my feet, my smile making my cheeks ache.
Please let this be true.
“I’m pregnant,” she cries.
Jackie screams and dances around the kitchen, pulling her daughter into a dancing hug, and then I run around the partition and lean down and kiss the back of Sophia’s head.
She giggles and turns toward me, collapsing against my chest as Jackie retreats, clasping her hands together as she gazes at her daughter and her future son-in-law … and never mind that her son-in-law is a few years older.
None of that matters when we’re as happy as we are.
“Pregnant,” I say, putting passion into the word. I let my hand fall down to her belly. “I can feel it. I can feel them. I can feel our child, Sophia.”
Tears sparkle down her cheeks as she gazes up at me.
