“Speaking of …” I held out my hand to him.
“Right, the ring.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small blue box he’d been clutching on my doorstep. Drew started to hand it to me then paused. “Do you want me to get down on one knee?”
I was about to shoot him down but I thought better of it. Why not make the man work for it?
“Actually, yeah. Idowant that. I’m probably going to end up telling the whole world about how you proposed to me, so…” I crossed my arms and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Make it good.”
“It’s my great honor, m’lady,” he said with a courtly bow.
Drew paused to make sure there were no stray screws or nails on the ground in front of him then lowered himself to one knee while staring into my eyes. As much as I wanted to look away I couldn’t. He held the box out to me, closed.
“My dearest Emilia,” he said with exaggerated flair. “I have loved you since the first moment we met.”
“Hardly,” I guffawed.
Drew grinned, looking proud of himself for making me laugh. “Your beauty is beyond compare. Your smile is like sunshine, your eyes are like chocolate, and your body…” His eyes scanned me up and down and his smile turned wicked. “Your body is a five-alarm fire.”
“Good to know—keep going,” I said with a smirk, willing myself not to blush.
“I could wax poetic about your virtues all day, but we do have other things we need to do?—”
“Always so practical,” I teased with an exaggerated sigh. “Would you be in this much of a rush ifIwas the one on my knees?”
His eyes went a little hazy. “Definitely not,” he said, his voice sounding strangled. He cleared his throat and got back into character. “My love for you has only deepened over time as I’ve come to appreciate your fire, your drive, your ability to juggle three conversations on your phone at once, the way you close your eyes and smile when you sniff hydrangeas.” I stiffened a little. Were we…still joking? Because that didn’t sound like a joke. It sounded likeme.Like the things I’d actually want someone to say when they were proposing.
You know, if this was real. Which it wasn’t.
“My one goal is to make you happy,” he continued, “and I will do everything in my power to make sure that every day you live is better than the last. Emilia Marino, will you do me the great honor of being my wife?”
He opened the box to reveal the ring, but I couldn’t look away from his face.
“Well?”
I realized that I was standing there silently, staring at him. I tried to play off how surprisingly moved I was by his proposal.
“Oh, right, sorry. Sure, yeah, I’ll fake marry you.”
He fiddled with the ring.
“It’s okay, you can stand up now,” I said.
“No, you wanted a real proposal, you’re getting a real proposal, all the way through to the finish line.”
He pulled the ring from the blue pillow and held it out to me. I reached out my hand and he slid the ring on.
I’d expected that it would be the wrong size but somehow Mr. Know-It-All had guessed correctly. The ring looked right at home on my finger, a brilliant diamond on a simple platinum band.
It wasn’t at all what I’d envisioned he would buy if he was trying to prove a point. The stone wasn’t hideously gigantic, or burdened by lots of embellishments. It was archetypical Tiffany setting; elegant and minimalistic.
“It’s lovely,” I said as I turned my hand back and forth. “What a shine.”
“Agreed,” he said simply. “So now that it’s official, can we get moving?”
I clutched my hands over my heart and batted my eyes at him. “Of course, sweetheart. Anything you want.”
He allowed a half-smile. “That’s what I like to hear, sugarplum. Now go get packing.”
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said over my shoulder as I headed for my bedroom.
