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I marched toward her, hating the distance between us, but the ground was slick and I lost my footing. I went down like rhinoceros, a clumsy, fumbling mess. Andy approached me, careful to avoid the iciest patches, and extended her hand. I shuffled to my knees but didn't stand. Notyet.
"I want to grow old with you," I said, staring into her eyes. "I want you to remodel our place because I bought the apartment across the hall, and you're better at reengineering spaces than I am. I want to share every sunset with you, and every sunrise. I want to restore old homes with you. I can't remember how to do it alone anymore. I want to have entire conversations without speaking a single word. I want to let you drive me mad with that goddamn 'hm.' I want to fuck you in dressing rooms, and anywhere else you'll have me. I want to marvel at your knee socks every day. I want to host parties with you because you love them more than I hate them. I want to have a family with you even though that scares the shit out of me. I want to be the best decision you ever made. I want another ring on your finger and one on mine. I want you to be my wife, Andy, and I don't want to wait one moreminute."
"Hmmm," she murmured, and it killed me. It killed me because that little sound meant yes, no, maybe, and a million other things, but more than any of that, it meant she wasn't giving me a complete answer when I wanted it the most. She winded her way around thoughts, weaving them together slowly, precisely, and never at the pace I wanted. "You bought the apartment across thehall?"
I blinked up her. "Yes," I said with a fuck-ton ofhesitance.
Andy shook some snowflakes from my hair. "That will be a fun project," shesaid.
"Will that be our only project?" Iasked.
She urged me up, her hands gripping my forearms. "Of course not," shesaid.
"Give me a date, Kitten." I glanced away, barking out a laugh. "I'd suggest we fly to Vegas tonight but I know you want the whole big traditionalthing.”
“Not necessarily,” she said, shaking herhead.
I reached for her waist, dragging her against me. "Don't you dare lie to me. I've seen your Pinterestboards."
"When?" she cried. "How?"
"I look at your phone when you're in the bathroom," I confessed. My thumb passed over the band and stone under her glove. "How do you think I picked out thisring?"
"You really need to think about your stalker tendencies. Lingerie shops. Pinterest boards. It's getting out ofhand."
I shrugged. "Will taught me thattrick."
"That explains a lot," shemurmured.
"Let me tell you what matters to me. I want you happy and I want you to be my wife. Everything else is process. I care only about theproduct."
Andy laughed. "I was expecting a hard sell forVegas."
"Like I've said ninety-four times tonight, I want to be married to you," I said. "You can have any kind of wedding you'd like. You can also have a flight to Vegastonight."
Andy tilted her head to the side, her eyes twinkling as a small, secretive smile pulled at her lips. "What if we didboth?"
Chapter Seventeen
Wes
It wasn'tthe worst of times but this sure as shit wasn't the best oftimes.
In the best column, I was listing the nun's habit I nicked out of a countryside convent last night. No one fucked with nuns. Most people avoided eye contact with them altogether. Bad memories of wooden rulers and forced recitation of multiplication tables. This vestment was keeping me off the radar and doing a sensational job of concealing both my beard and myinjuries.
The convent also yielded a pair of granny glasses, tattered scarves, and a small purse loaded with supplies to treat my injuries. Gauze, alcohol swabs, antibacterial ointment, an old bottle of penicillin, a sewing kit, and a pair of needle-nosepliers.
That was where the best columnended.
As far as the worst of times went, getting shot was at the top of the list. There was a bullet lodged in my flank and I'd been bleeding, slow and steady, for hours. A cold sweat covered my body, my heart was wobbling in my chest, and I could only see straight if I squinted. That was fucking unpleasant but my only objective was getting to theport.
I'd spent the night on the run, zigzagging and backtracking to shake the secret police from my tail, and I didn't have the time to dig that son of a bitch out of my soft tissue. There was also the matter of my broken arm and the electrical current burns on my legs but I could manage those. The gunshot wound though, that thing was going to turn septic in a hotminute.
If those issues weren't enough to earn the distinction of Really Fucking Bad, I had a few more lined up. My CIA handlers had no idea where I was. I hadn't seen my partner Veronica in two weeks, and I suspected she was dead or close to it. My local liaisons were dead, both executed in front ofme.
A hostile foreign government had discovered that I'd been spying on them for a wee bit of time. The same hostile foreign government was pissed that I didn't fold under their charming interrogation techniques. I could only imagine they regarded my exit from their off-book detention facility—and all the guards I took out in the process—as an unwantedaggravation.
Based on the activity I'd observed as I made my way north toward the Barents Sea, that government had dispatched entire armies to root me out. They intended to find me and make an international example. Regardless of whether they succeeded at nailing my nuts to the wall, they'd also plan some primetimeretaliation.
