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He cupped her cheek, strong yet tender. ‘Do you love me?’
‘It’s been less than two weeks—’ she said, drowning in his eyes.
‘And we’ve been lovers for almost as long. Do you want me?’
Her lips turned to his palm. ‘You know I do,’ she relented.
‘Then take the jump with me, Nora. Marry me.’
‘Because you told your boss this morning that you were going to ask?’ she said, from behind the last flimsy barrier of resistance.
Steel melted into a green-flecked tenderness. ‘Actually I told him that day I came back from the beach that I’d met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with…. He’s been champing at the bit to meet you ever since, but I didn’t want him to scare you off. I told my mother, too, when I asked her to pick you up. Thank God she kept that titbit from that bigmouthed sister of mine.’
‘Blake, you didn’t!’ Her retrospective embarrassment was huge.
‘If you take me, you get it all—my love, my children, my ever-loving, ever-annoying family, my interfering boss…I’ll admit I come with plenty of extra baggage, but you need a lot of baggage for a long haul, Nora. And that’s what it’s going to be for us.’
‘But still—’ Her freckled face crinkled anxiously as she strove to be sensible in a world gone deliciously mad. ‘A week and a half…. We can’t really know if we’re compatible after such a short time….’
‘That’s what long engagements are for,’ he said persuasively. ‘With my ring on your finger we can have a proper courtship. You can move in with me when you’re ready. Live with me for weeks, months, years—however long you need to feel safe in your choice of husband.’
His tone of martyred self-sacrifice made her want to laugh. ‘As long as that ultimate choice is you,’ she said wryly. He was so very big on offering her choices that had only one outcome!
‘Yes…’ He began to toy with the knot of the robe in a cunning way that made it suddenly fall apart. ‘And, having said that, I’d naturally prefer that we married before our first baby is born,’ he added, unable to resist the urge to negotiate better terms for himself. ‘My mother is very tolerant of modern morality but Scotty would have fifty fits if his god-children were illegitimate.’
With a little giggle and a sly shimmy, Nora let the robe fall open. ‘I suppose I can accept those terms.’
‘You mean it?’ he murmured, looking both delighted and indecently smug at his success.
‘I love you; why wouldn’t I love the idea of being your wife?’ She laughed joyously as he whirled her into his extravagant embrace. ‘And I especially love the idea that my indulgent new husband is going to let me drive his super-cool sports car whenever I want!’
Fortunately the champagne-fuelled celebrations had already begun down the hall and nobody heard the shrieks and growls that gradually dissolved in the sound of pure joy.
