Page 25 of Pretty in Paint

I went around to the staff entrance and found it propped open. With my heart beating faster than usual, I opened the door.

I reached into the darkened space and found the light switch. Light exploded through the space, and it took me a minute for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw the beaming faces of everyone I knew in Springwood.

Rosalind, Derek, Charlotte, Violetta and Asher; Franny and her friends from the seniors center, Nova, Ivy and Dax. And in the middle was Luke. He wore his nicest pair of jeans, a pair with no stains, and a shirt with real buttons.

I took a tentative step farther into the room. “What’s going on?”

Luke stepped forward. I’d learned to read him in the months we had been together. He was happy, but the lines around his eyes screamed nerves.

“Mer, when you got here to help the shop out of a bind, youwere worried about job security and I was terrified not to have the one thing I needed to keep me sane. Six months later, I hope you know I’m the one thing you never have to worry about losing. Not ever. Because I know wherever I work, whatever I do, all I need to be happy is you.”

My hands were shaking, and I wiped them on my jeans. “I know, Luke. I love you so much.”

He moved closer and took my hands in his. “I love you too, and I don’t see any reason to wait to make it official.”

My breath caught in my chest as he lowered himself to one knee.

He took a box from his pocket. “Meredith, will you marry me?” He opened the box, and inside was a ring and a folded piece of paper.

“Of course, I will.” He stood and grabbed me around the waist. I hugged him hard, feeling the familiar strength of his chest and the smell of his skin. “What’s in the box, though?”

He lowered me down, took the gold solitaire ring from the box and put it on my finger. Then he took a deep breath. “You seem nervous. You have to have known I’d say yes.”

He nodded. “I was ninety percent sure, but I had an idea I wasn’t sure you’d like.” He took the paper out of the box and handed it to me. I unfolded it to find a stunning tattoo outline. It showed a hand holding a paintbrush. From the end of the paintbrush flowed an image that was as complex as it was beautiful. “Luke, what is this?”

He ran a hand nervously over the back of his neck. “The hand is mine. You can see the tattoos on the knuckles match mine. The picture I’m painting, well, the background is the Vegas skyline, since you lived there for so long, but one sign is for your marketing company and one is for Think Ink. There’sone star in the sky, since you came back to Springwood over a one-star review. This car driving in the foreground is the one that was at Road Ready Mechanics the first time we met. I…I can change things, or maybe you don’t like it at all, but—”

I kissed him to stop his rambling. “Just tell me.”

“It’s my hand drawing your world. The things that are important to you and the things that brought us together. I wanted to tattoo it on us both. A permanent sign of what we mean to each other.”

My heart gave a hard thump in my chest. It was the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for me. This was why Iloved this man. I didn’t need the Huxleys’ money or connections to be happy. I just needed someone who saw me and wanted every part of it.