Malina flung her arms wide, beaming. “You’re in Greece! My boy’s been dreamin’ of goin’ there since he was a teenager. I’ve still got the postcard he taped to his wall, right next to the McRae poster. Ah, look at all his dreams comin’ true…” She actually dabbed under her eye. “Oh, I could justcry. Look at him. Look at you both. Life’s too short to not call it fate when it’s already called you home.”
I couldn’t help it. My gaze drifted over his shoulder toward the massive windows framing the Aegean Sea, the morning light pouring in like a spotlight. The wind shifted the linen curtains. The waves shimmered just beyond the glass. Still in bed, still in silk, still reeling from the night before.
For a second—just a second—Isaw it.
The two of us, walking hand in hand on the beach. Sunlight in his air, the breeze stealing our breath. The sea as our witness. Rings branding our fingertips as we slide them on each other.
And the instant it hit me, Callum froze, too. We looked at each other, and I knew he was seeing it too.
A wedding.Here. Just us, in our private little bubble, tucked away from the world in our own slice of paradise.
Malina sighed. “Oh, love,look. I see it all over their faces.” She pointed at the screen like she’d won the lottery. “They’re thinkin’ about it.”
Callum recoiled like he’d been electrocuted. “No. We’re not. I mean—no,” he said weakly, completely pale in the face now. “It’s been less thanone day.”
I wasn’t sure what possessed me—maybe it was because I was catastrophically in love with this man and had just survived alotof life with him. Or maybe it was because I knew this was a big deal for him. Introducing me to his parents meant something. And if they were meeting me, they needed to meetme.
That meant my humor. My bite. My snark.
It’s what made Callum and me fall for each other in the first place.
So I sat up, shrugging out from under his arm, turned toward him, and lifted a brow.
“Oh, so you just asked if I would marry you,” I said casually, “but now you’re suddenly not sure? That desperate to avoid it, Fraser? You need more time to decide?”
His scowl was instant. “What?No.”
Dougal let out a loud bark of laughter like he’d just witnessed the comedy set of the decade. “She’s a sharp one, my boy,” he said proudly. “Finally someone who’ll knock some sense into ye.”
Malina was cackling. “I like her. Oh, she’s perfect. Witty and gorgeous and not afraid to put you in your place. That’s the kind of woman who makes a manbetter.”
Callum shot me a look that was somewhere between betrayed and utterly in love, but his voice was soft. “Mon amour, I assumed you wanted a big wedding. Probably in those lavender fields at home you love so much.”
“We’ll plan a bloody reception there later!” Malina interjected before I could respond. “You’ve got the love, the location, the lavender-scented sex magicright now.”
My jaw hit the floor.
She leaned closer to the screen, her tone suddenly gentler, wiser, like this part mattered more than anything else she’d said.
“Marriage is aboutyou two.Whatyouwant. Not what the world wants from you, not what people expect. It’s about choosing each other again and again. Through the hard times, through the doubts, through the things you never saw coming. You don’t need a ballroom or a guest list or a three-hundred-pound cake. You just need the one person you can’t imagine your life without.”
Callum made a strangled sound in his throat and nearly dropped the phone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, looking skyward like he was praying for deliverance. “We hadn’t even decidedwhenorhowwe’re telling anyone,” he hissed.
“Either way, I suppose congratulations are in order.” She elbowed Dougal, who offered a gruff celebratory comment in return.
I stifled a smile, because Callum was like that, too. Everything he said hadpurpose, so to most, he was a man offew words. Broody, deliberate, always holding the best parts of himself back until he was sure you could be trusted with them. But when he let you in? God, there was no safer place to be.
Callum groaned. “Christ. And we didn’t even get to the fertility teas.”
Malina gasped and practically slapped her own thigh. “Oh, the teas!” She leaned in toward the screen. “Wait, wait, wait. There’s a lot of fertility talk flying about. What else is goin’ on here?”
The mood shifted.
Callum’s hand found mine, out of sight of the camera. His thumb swept over my knuckles, grounding me. The sadness didn’t hit as hard as it did a few weeks ago, but it lived dormant inside me.
I sat up a little straighter, exhaling through my nose. “It’s… not something we’re planning for right now.”
Malina’s brows lifted gently, reading the room.
