Page 81 of For Better or for Ransom

They’d been walking through the cobblestone streets of the city for a few minutes, Sol still holding Luke’s arm. She was trying to think of something clever to say and tease him when he said: “There’s something I’ve been trying to tell you for the last few streets.”

Why did he sound hesitant? He was always so self-assured.

“Oh—kay,” Sol said. Now she was hesitant as well. “This is not about the agency again, right?”

He shook his head. “Look, I know I’m not the best detective in London.” He was the best-looking one. And Sol still had no clue what that was all about. “But Divya is. And I realized and told her: ‘I want to be in business with you.’ And, for some inexplicable reason, she agreed.”

“Not sure what you’re trying to tell me…”

Luke sighed. “I’m probably not the smartest, or the best listener, or the most fun to be around. I’m not even the sexiest person you’ve ever met.” She frowned. He definitely was. All of those things. “But I can see that you’re that and more and I’m crazy about you. If, for some inexplicable reason, you want to be in a romantic business with me, I’ll absolutely take you.”

Sol furrowed her brow. “Romantic business?”

“That sounded better in my head. Sorry, cara, I’m bad. But I feel I can’t ask you to marry me because you’re the one who was supposed to do that…”

“Just ask me already!”

He smiled, stopping in the middle of the street and facing her, the magic lighting of sunset starting to paint the sky in the most dramatic colors, the beach on the horizon. “Will you marry me then, cara?”

Sol returned the smile. “Sí.”

He grabbed her face with both hands and kissed her. He’d always been a purposeful kisser. She’d always thought his pillowy lips were skilled and his tongue simply mischievous. But that kiss was somehow different. Searing. More thorough.

“I think I’m about to faint,” she said when he released her lips.

He gave her yet another smile. “I had a surprise for you. I was going to do it this evening after our walk. I chose it yesterday. But maybe you’d like to come with me?”

She scrunched her nose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He laughed. “I know.”

“You’ve already proposed in the middle of the street on an island with the perfect lighting and background. I don’t know what else you could be plotting…”

“Come and see then.”

48

Luke

Sol hadn’t closed her mouth from the moment they’d got there. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I told you already, cara. I do.” Luke was lying down on the table, his T-shirt removed.

“I’m not sure if I can watch,” Sol said and perhaps she looked a bit pale. “Is it going to hurt him?” she asked the artist, who was holding the tattoo machine and was ready to start working on Luke.

“We put some anesthetic cream on his chest. It’ll still be a little tingly but not painful. It’s a small thing,” the tattoo artist said. He was a big, burly chap whose arms and hands were completely covered in ink.

Sol sighed, sat on one of the chairs next to the tattoo table, beside Luke. “Okay then. This has to be the craziest thing someone has ever done for me.” She sighed again. “The most romantic one too.”

Luke smiled. He was going exactly for that: crazy, romantic—and distinct.

He’d had the thought of inking a little sun, after Sol, over his heart on his chest the day before. He had even managed to shake Sol and Divya for a few minutes to consult at a little tattoo parlor in Palma, and made an appointment. Not even the fraught conversation he’d had with Miquel, where Ex Number One had mistakenly told Luke that Sol would never marry again, had dissuaded him from inking his skin with a symbol of his lover.

Sol

Sol took her eyes away from Luke’s exposed skin when the tattoo artist first put the needle on his chest. She was still feeling a tad queasy at the idea of her lover, her husband-to-be, voluntarily going through a painful situation just to make a point of how much he loved her—and how permanent he wanted to make that third marriage of hers. She gulped. Decided she needed some sort of distraction. Maybe entertain herself and Luke—tease him—while he was on the tattoo table being prodded. She sure needed the diversion.

“So, you warmed up to Leonardo, in the end?” The tattoo machine was humming incessantly in the background. The sound wasn’t exactly musical—or heartening.