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Chapter Nineteen
Julian
I balanced my elbow on my bended knee to keep from fucking shaking. This didn’t go quite how I’d planned it. If it had, I sure as hell wouldn’t have painted her face and hair with fruit.
Her eyes followed my every move. “Julian, what are you saying?”
“What does it look like I’m saying?”
“You’re not saying anything.”
My heart beat furiously, but not from fear. It beat from relief at finally doing what we’d put off for so long. “I’m saying everything’s here and ready. You just have to say, ‘I do.’”
She moved backward. “What?”
“I realized this morning I never actually proposed to you.” I knew she understood, her mouth opened, then slowly closed, her lips resting in that familiar heart shape. “I love you, Phoebe. I’ll never love anyone else. Loving me hasn’t been easy for you. My job demands a lot, but you’ve always stood by me. There’ve been obstacles…some pretty fucking disastrous and some that required a huge leap of faith. But look where we are, baby. We were meant to be. You belong to me, Phoebe, just like I belong to you.”
Finally breaking her silence, she lifted a hand to her eye in time to catch the succession of tears. “Julian, you don’t have to…”
“I want our child to have as much of a normal life as I can give it. I’ve never been more sure of anything. So, Phoebe Nicole Ryan…will you marry me, right now?”
A tear rolled down her nose and landed on her bottom lip. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“I meant every damn word of it. Now I’m waiting for some words from you. One word, specifically.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. Phoebe never gave in that easily.
“I said yes.” Moving one knee closer, she positioned herself so that our noses almost touched. Her breath fanned against my cheeks. “You’re stuck with me.”
“You almost gave me a heart attack. You know that?”
She shrugged. “I like to play hard to get.”
“Not anymore.”
She shifted her body clumsily, looking over my shoulder. Phoebe knew me too well. She knew I wouldn’t give her a speech unprepared to back it up. “What the hell have you done?”
“Russ?” I called out, never taking my eyes off her. “You can come out now.” A side door opened from the far end of the greenhouse, and an elderly man with weathered skin and deep-set lines around his smiling mouth shuffled in.
“Did she say yes, Mr. Bale?”
Phoebe’s eyes glinted with humor. “Guess I was a sure thing, huh?”
Ignoring her jab, I directed my attention to the greenhouse owner. “She did, Russ. You ready?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, his old eyes crinkling as he took in the sight of us. “Would you two like to clean up first?”
My life had been full of twist and turns and hard choices. This wasn’t one of them. “Nope. This is perfect.”
The old man shrugged indifferently. “Have it your way.”
“Julian?” Phoebe asked, her voice full of questions.
Still on our knees, I took her hand in mine. “This is for us, princess. No one needs to know. After the baby, we can have any kind of ceremony you want—big, small, on a beach, a church, I don’t give a damn. But this is for you and me.”
She nodded once and dipped her chin.
