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With a meaningful pause Jake allowed his gorgeous blue eyes to reflect a promise that Caitlin hardly dared believe.
He continued. ‘And now I’m planning on using some of that time and energy in keeping you one very happy and contented woman, Caitlin Ryan…for the rest of your life.’
‘What are you telling me, Jake?’ She still wasn’t convinced of the startling equation her fevered brain had helplessly arrived at.
‘Is it really so hard to comprehend?’ He smiled, ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’
‘You’re serious?’
Her breath caught on a gasp. She was giddy and light-headed at the same time, just as if she’d been spinning on a carousel.
‘I’m perfectly serious.’
Jake purposefully covered the short distance between them and took hold of Caitlin’s hands in earnest.
‘Don’t you get it? I love you and I want you to be my wife. I think you already know what a nomadic life this is, being on the road with a band…it’s never going to be a conventional lifestyle. I’d be lying to you if I said it would be.’
‘That’s a relief, because that wouldn’t suit me at all. I’m a bona fide rock chick now, remember? I have my reputation to consider.’ Caitlin’s smile was uninhibitedly warm. ‘Home will always be wherever we are together, Jake. There’s a big wide world out there and I want to see some of it. If you’re willing, you could show me, couldn’t you?’
‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’
Suddenly impatient, Jake pulled her into his arms and planted a hot, hungry kiss on her mouth. He heard the soft helpless moan she breathed as he gently withdrew. Drawing the pad of his thumb down over her cheek, he was deeply satisfied to see the mutual desire and longing that her pretty green eyes reflected back at him.
‘But I don’t want you to think that I’m not open to compromise regarding a more permanent home,’ he told her. ‘Eventually I’d like us to have children…buy a place in the country, maybe? A place where they’ll have plenty of space to play and grow up.’
Caitlin couldn’t help but be moved by his heartfelt declaration. To hear Jake say that he wanted them to have children, that he was more than willing to embrace the prospect and ensure that his own children did not have a lonely childhood bereft of family or siblings like he had done… Well, it was beyond wonderful.
She sighed. ‘I love you, Jake…I love you with all my heart. There’s no one I’d want to be the father of my children but you. Do you really want to marry me?’
‘Right now I can’t think of anything I want more than for you to be my wife. Except perhaps to have you naked in my bed.’
‘And us being married—it won’t cramp your famous rock and roll lifestyle?’
Jake grimaced. ‘The so-called rock and roll lifestyle isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For one, it’s bloody lonely out on the road for weeks at a time, and after a while one hotel room looks much the same as another…whether it’s in Islington or Istanbul. I’m never going to be a conventional nine-to-five husband, Caitlin, but I’ll always be there for you when you need me. That’s a promise.’
‘Then I suppose my answer to such a sincere and heartfelt proposal has to be yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
Lia put her head impatiently round the door, her chin jutted warningly towards Jake.
Grinning, Caitlin told her. ‘Jake has just asked me to marry him.’
Lia’s face was a picture. Tussling between giving them both a lecture and fighting the urge to smile, because of the way Jake’s twinkling blue eyes were all but devouring her friend, she concluded that it would be a crime against passion for the two of them not to get married.
‘Oh. I suppose that’s all right, then.’
Jake’s eyebrows flew up. ‘You mean we have your permission?’
‘You know very well that Caitlin doesn’t need my permission.’ With an irritated huff, Lia stepped out to survey them properly. ‘But when you care about people you naturally want what’s best for them.’
