“Been waiting to do this right,” he murmurs.
I smile into the pillow. “I think you did it very right.”
“Not that.”
I hear his arm move. The nightstand drawer opening. Something small sliding across wood.
Then his hand appears in front of me. Holding a small velvet box.
My whole body goes still.
“Beau…”
“I know it’s fast.” His voice is rough. Low. Close to my ear, his breath warm on my neck. “I know we haven’t done things the usual way. But I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
He opens the box.
The ring catches the firelight and I stop breathing. It’s a golden stone…warm, bright, glowing in the low light. Set in a delicate gold band. It’s not flashy. Not oversized. It’s perfect. And the color…
“It’s a yellow diamond,” he says. And there’s something in his voice I’ve never heard. Something almost shy. My big, commanding, possessive man sounds nervous. “You always tell me how much you like my eyes. I thought you might like having a piece of me with you… all the time.”
I look at the ring. Then I turn in his arms and look at him.
His golden eyes. The ring. Identical. The exact same warm, pale gold that’s been undoing me since the fair. He found a stone that matches his own eyes and put it on a ring for me to wear forever.
Pink creeps up his cheekbones. My bull is blushing.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die right here in this bed because my heart is too full and my chest can’t hold it.
“Ina,” he says. “Marry me?”
I don’t say yes right away. Not because I’m not sure…I’ve never been more sure of anything, but because I need a second. I need a second to be inside this moment. To feel the weight of it. To look at this man…this quiet, stubborn, beautiful man who showed up on my porch and took my whole life apart and putit back together better…and understand that he’s mine. Really mine. That this is real.
“Yes,” I whisper. Then louder, because he deserves loud: “Yes, I’ll marry you, Beau Redding. You crazy cowboy.”
He grins. Big. Real. The kind of grin I almost never get…the one that breaks his whole face open and makes him look like a kid and the sexiest man alive at the same time. He slides the ring on my finger. It fits perfectly. Of course it does.
I hold my hand up. Watch the firelight play in the yellow diamond. His eyes looking back at me from my hand.
“There’s an inscription,” he says. “On the inside.”
I tug the ring up just enough to tilt the band. Tiny letters are engraved in the gold.
I Carry Your Heart with Me.
I burst into tears. Big, ugly, snot-running, full-body tears. The kind I haven’t cried since Lilah was born and they put her on my chest and I realized my heart was living outside my body. Beau pulls me onto his chest. Wraps me tight in his massive arms. His wide chest, warm and solid under my cheek. His scent …cedar, leather, home…surrounding me.
I cry and cry, and he holds me and doesn’t say a word. Just his big hand in my hair. His lips pressing soft against my temple. His heartbeat steady under my ear.
When I finally catch my breath…sniffling, hiccupping, definitely leaving mascara stains on his very nice sheets…I lift my head. Look into his beautiful eyes. The ones that matched my ring. The ones that saw me before I saw myself.
“You’re not going to let me breathe, are you?” I whisper.
He grins. That heartbreaking, earth-shattering, full Beau Redding grin.
“Not a fuckin’ chance.”
Seventeen
