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Leo stood in the restaurant doorway, shirt askew, hair mussed, eyes wild. He blew past the hostess and ignored the wide-eyed stare of the other patrons, eyes stuck on Amelia as he stomped across the restaurant toward her.
Heart a trapped bird in her chest, Amelia put a hand to her breast and tried to catch her breath. Her voice was gone—completely disappeared. She couldn’t say a word.
In the restaurant’s windows, Amelia saw three faces pressed to the glass: Camilla, Lucy, and Scarlett. They must have told him where she was. But why?
Leo came to a stop beside her table. He gave Ben a short, withering glare, then turned back to Amelia. They stared at each other for a long moment, the tension in the air shimmering until Amelia could hardly breathe.
When she was sure she couldn’t stand another moment, Leo dropped to his knees beside her and said two words on a gust of breath: “Marry me.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The words fellout of Leo’s mouth before he could stop them, and now they were out there, between him and Amelia, impossible to take back.
But how could he want to take them back? What he wanted was Amelia by his side, forever. Every night. Every morning. Every day. He wanted her laughs and her scowls. He wanted her sudoku skills. He wanted her pleasure-drunk expressions when she ate the center swirl of a cinnamon bun.
He was desperately, foolishly in love with her.
“What?” she answered, blinking rapidly.
He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out the ring. He didn’t even have a box for it, useless man that he was. He just held it between his thumb and forefinger and thrust it at Amelia’s chest. “Take it. It’s yours.”
“Leo, slow down.”
“This is so romantic,” the hostess swooned behind him. A smattering of applause sounded around the restaurants, quickly hushed by Amelia’s friends as they crept closer, listening in.
Leo didn’t know how he’d convinced Amelia’s friends to tell him where Amelia was. He’d banged on the bakery door and waited for a startled Camilla to show up, then he’d poured his heart out to her. Somehow, she’d been swayed.
Now he needed to do the same thing once more—but the stakes were so much higher.
“Amelia,” Leo said, voice raw. “I love you. I love you more than I thought was possible. I’m so sorry I pushed you away. I know I acted like an ass. I asked you to come to my company retreat with me and then I left you at your door like nothing had passed between us, but I was lying to you—lying to myself. I fell in love with you. I fell in love with your eyes and your eyebrows—”
“You fell in love with my eyebrows?”
“And the way you laugh. Kissing you is a revelation. I’ve never felt the kind of connection I feel with you. You make me want to be a better man. If I were decent, I would wait until I could prove to you that I’ve changed, but this is me, and I have to tell you how much I need you. I love you, Amelia. I love you so much I’m in pain when I think about it. I love you so much that I wish I could tear my heart out and give it to you. So take this.” He thrust the ring at her chest again. “Please, Amelia.”
“Leo, we’ve known each other two weeks.”
Gasps echoed around the room.
Panic nipped at Leo’s chest. “I know.” He sighed, then scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Shit. I don’t—”
A soft palm slid over his jaw. Amelia tilted his head up so she could meet his gaze again. “I can’t marry you, Leo. Not when we don’t really know each other.”
His heart cracked, a deep fault line he knew would never heal.
“But,” Amelia continued, voice tentative, “I…I love you too. And you don’t need to change yourself for me, because I love you exactly the way you are.”
“But you won’t marry me?” His voice was small and thin.
Amelia’s lips curled into a smile. “Well, we’ve known each other two weeks. How about you wait two more and ask me then? And if I still say no, you could wait two more. Give us time to think about it. Get to know all my horrible habits.”
Happiness was a nuclear explosion in Leo’s chest. “I love your horrible habits.”
She laughed. “Slow down, cowboy.” Her eyes were glassy. With a tremulous smile, she brought her lips to his and kissed him softly, tenderly. When she pulled away to the sound of polite (if slightly confused) applause from other patrons, Amelia wiped a tear from her eyes. She glanced down at the ring in his hands. “You kept it. Did you go back to the jeweler and buy the ring just for this?”
Leo sighed. He might as well come clean about it. “This is my grandmother’s ring,” he admitted. “It’s one of the only things I kept after Marlon bought my share of the house.”
Amelia’s eyes widened. “And you let me wear it all week?”
