Flicka knew that her eyes were too large, her expression toovulnerable, but she couldn’t snap her shiny princess shell shut or school her face into proper princess form.
He said, “I shouldn’t have left you in London, even if I thought I had good reasons. I did have good reasons. All of this that has happened—Piotr Ilyin and my father finding us, both of them kidnapping you and holding you hostage—is exactly what I was trying to prevent, and it happenedanyway. I should have explained. I should have stayed. I regret every second of being away from you. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I want to never be away from you again. I want to be your husband. Marry me, and be mine forever.”
Relief washed through Flicka, and her breath rushed back into her chest. She panted, trying to get enough air to answer him. “I—Raphael—”
“When I proposedon the plane, I thought you were going to leave. I thought you wouldn’t listen to anything less.”
Flicka blinked, trying to clear her eyes. “I didn’t know what to do. When I figured out that the passport was Gretchen’s,thatGretchen, I was so angry. It hurt all over again. It felt like it was my fault, that something about me was wrong, or that you didn’t loveme,not anything else that yousaid it was. That it wasn’t my age. That it wasn’t my family. It meant that you didn’t love me at all.”
“I love you,” Raphael said, “I have always loved you. I thought I was losing you, and I would have done anything not to lose you.”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the wetness inside. “I was going to walk off the plane at the layover. I was planning to dodge into the crowd and walkaway because I couldn’t bear it again.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice sharpened like he was trying to break through to her. “I’m sorry about leaving you in London, and I’m sorry you found out about Gretchen like that.”
“I should have heard you out,” she said, looking at their entwined hands. “I should have listened, and then you wouldn’t have had to propose on the airplane, and then your father andPiotr Ilyin wouldn’t have found us.”
He shook his head. “It didn’t matter. I knew that the first time I used that passport in Europe, my cover would be blown. Those police were already looking at me and comparing my face to their screens. It was only a matter of time before Interpol connected my passport to the missing person’s report my family filed. Interpol would cross-reference it, and myfather would have a data point. That’s all he would need, and I knew he would find me.”
“You could have traveled with your Dieter Schwarz passport,” she said.
He shook his head again. “The two of us with the same name, traveling together, looked less suspicious. It increased the chances of you getting away with using Gretchen’s passport.”
“You saved me,” she said. “You knew you were sacrificingyourself to save me.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I wanted to get away with it.”
Flicka looked up at his gray eyes, his strong cheekbones and jaw, and his full lips. She traced the scar—still livid pink—where the bullet had creased him across his biceps after her first wedding. She traced another scar down his ribs, one that had been caused by a maniac with a hunting knife when she was fourteen. Sheran her thumb over his bare, scarred knuckles. “I’d say you saved meagain.”
He said, “I should have proposed when we lived in London, or at least stayed and proposed a few years later. I’ve made so many mistakes. I want to do the right thing, this time. I want us to be together. I want us to be married. Marry me.”
This time, when he said it, it felt real.
On the airplane, his proposal hadfelt fake, like he was trying to pacify her or to divert attention from their false passports or just have a do-over from when he had married his first wife.
But this time, it felt complete. It felt like she knew why he was asking, and it felt like he meant it.
Raphael said, “Say yes, and I’ll never be able to leave you again. You won’t ever be able to get rid of me. I’ll guard you and bossyou around and tease you and keep you forever.”
Hot wetness dripped out of her eye, and she wanted to jump away from the intensity of this moment, slide into his arms, and let him soothe the roiling fear and ecstasy in her heart. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He laughed, and his gray eyes looked happy for the first time in the few weeks since they’d been stolen away to Switzerland. “’Til deathdo us part.”
She stared at him, but he hadn’t walked away from her. Indeed, he was promising to bind them together so that he couldn’t walk away again,ever.
Flicka said, “Yes.”
He leaned forward and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her and rolling over her on the bed to lie beside her. He laid his head on the other pillow, and his face relaxed into a broad smile. “I meant it the first timeon the airplane, and I mean it now. I want us to be married. I want to be your husband and watch over you. I want you to be my wife, so you have to do what I say. Because you’re going to promise toobey,right?”
“Now, youwaitjust aminutethere—”
He grabbed her and snuggled her to him, wrapping both his arms and one leg over her in a smothering display of affection. “At least as much as you’veever listened to me and done what I told you to.”
Which meant not at all, and they both knew it.
“M’okay,” she said, buried under his limbs. His arms weighed on her. Breathing was a little difficult. “Kind of claustrophobic in here.”
He said, “We can be married tomorrow in Gibraltar.”
