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“I love you, Sable.”
She stared, mute, shaking her head. She’d come here to apologize, to get back on track with Eli—to give him the time he’d requested. She’d never expected a profession. He’d completely flipped that script.
“I wasn’t ready before,” he said. “The truth is I don’t want to be ready.” He brushed her cheek with his fingers. “I’ve never built something to last. I’ve never bothered trying. But with you…I want to build a future with you, Isa. Because any moment of the present where you’re not here is a dark, dark day.”
She blinked, hoping her twenty-dollar mascara held up and didn’t streak down her cheeks.
“I should have been braver.” He fingered the sleeve of the dress. “I should have brought this to you in person.”
“Eli Crane,” she said when she found her voice. “You’re the bravest man I know.”
“You’re the bravest woman I know.” He delivered the sweetest kiss to the center of her lips. “Do you still love me, Sable?”
His jaw tightened as he watched for her answer. The background and the din of chatter faded as she looked into his soulful, dark blue eyes.
“I fell in love with you a long time ago,” she told him. Worry ate into his eyes, and he swallowed thickly, but he had no reason to worry. “I haven’t had the good sense to fall back out.”
“No?”
She loved the hope that filtered into his eyes. She loved him.
“Not even a little,” she said.
He offered his palms and she accepted, sliding her hands into his. He helped her to her feet, standing with her, their clothes brushing as they stood close. Isa pushed her hands into his shorter hair and tipped her head back to study the scruff currently residing on his jaw.
“I prefer the beard.”
A flash of white teeth when he grinned swelled her heart and lifted her chest.
“I prefer you,” he said. “Always.”
“Always is a big commitment.”
“Always might not be long enough.”
Her eyes dipped as his lips came over hers and then…
They were rudely interrupted.
“He can handle it.”
Isa, lips still puckered, opened her eyes to find Tag standing next to them, his arm around Rachel’s shoulders.
“Making out in the middle of a company dinner isn’t professional,” Reese said as he joined their cozy circle.
“Yeah,” Merina told Eli. “PDA is more your brother’s forte.” She tipped her head to admire her husband.
“I only did that for the paparazzi,” Reese told her.
“I think the Cranes have a penchant for public attention,” Rachel said. “Tag never minded making a spectacle of himself.”
“Look at him,” Merina quipped. “He is a spectacle.”
“Don’t you guys have anywhere else to be?” Eli asked through his teeth. But he held fast to Isa, his hand warming her lower back.
“We don’t,” Rachel said, her wide eyes innocent—which Isa was quickly gleaning she was not.
Eli turned to Isa. “They come with the package. You don’t get one Crane without getting them all.”
“I like them all.” Isa stroked her fingertip over his scruff and along his full bottom lip. She belonged here in the circle of his arms. “But I only love one of you.”
“Me, I hope,” Eli said.
“It’s always been you.”
His lips lowered to hers, but she couldn’t keep her smile away when whoops and cheers came from Eli’s brothers and the women who had tamed the other Crane men. Isa tucked their cheers, and Alex’s raspy “ooh-rah” of approval, into her heart.
She was finally falling in love—with a man who had confiscated her heart and upended her life. And she knew Eli, sure and strong on his own two feet, would keep a tight hold of her as she did.
