‘Stop,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
Benjamin sighed and stood up, letting go of one of her hands as he touched gently beneath her chin and lifted her face slightly, so she was looking into his eyes.
‘Rose, I’m just going to say this before you interrupt me again,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘My father told me never to ask a woman to marry me unless I was certain I couldn’t live the rest of my life without her, and from the moment you came back toArgentina, I’ve known that I never wanted to know what it was like for you to leave again.’
Rose stared back at Benjamin, hardly able to believe the words that were falling from his mouth. She forced herself to stay quiet as he stared at her in the most tender way a man had ever looked at her in her life before.
‘This is not what I planned, because I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment, but when I walked in on you before I realised that I just needed to ask you. That the perfect moment was now.’
‘I don’t want you to marry me just because I’m pregnant,’ she whispered. ‘I can do this on my own, you don’t need to?—’
‘Rose,’ Benjamin said, reaching into his pocket and holding a diamond solitaire on a band in the palm of his hand. ‘Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
She stared at the ring, before looking up at Benjamin.
‘I’ve had this ring in my pocket since the day after you came home, so please, don’t think that I’ve only proposed because of the baby. It’s so much more than that, Rose,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘I love you.’
Her heart started to beat a little faster, even though the voice in her head told her that he was only asking her because of what had just happened. But as he slipped the ring onto her finger, she also knew that he hadn’t just rummaged up a ring in the last five minutes.He bought this for me before.
‘What do you say?’ Benjamin asked.
The weight of the diamond felt unusual on her finger. She barely wore jewellery, and if she did it was usually a necklace or a pair of earrings.
‘I…’ Rose wanted to say yes, but it all felt so soon, as if she was rushing head-first into something without giving it enough consideration.For once in my life, can’t I just say yes?
She looked at the hopeful expression on Benjamin’s face, saw the kindness within him, the love he had for her, and shecouldn’t help the smile that spread across her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, I will marry you.’
He let out a whoop and scooped her up into his arms, swinging her around as she protested, before he dropped her onto the bed and flopped down beside her, still keeping hold of her hand.
‘I’ve never been so nervous in my life,’ he said. ‘But this,us, it’s going to be amazing. Being without you, coming back to this house when you were gone, I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life in letting you leave without telling you how I felt.’
‘I need to be honest with you, Benj,’ she said, rolling onto her side so she could look at him. ‘The thought of a wedding without my mum right now, I can’t even imagine it. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to marry you.’
He leaned in and kissed her forehead, his lips lingering. ‘We can get married quietly, just the two of us, or we can wait. We don’t even need to tell anyone about the engagement until you’re ready.’
‘You’re sure? I don’t want to ruin this for you. I know how close you are to your family.’
He grinned. ‘We’re going to have our own little family now, and that’s all that matters. When you’re ready for us to tell the world, then we’ll share the news. Until then, we can keep it all a secret.’
She sighed and wrapped her arms around him, wondering how she’d ever thought they weren’t meant to be together.
‘You’re going to make a great dad, you know that?’ she murmured, trying not to cry.
‘You’re going to make a great mum, too.’
Rose lay in Benjamin’s arms, marvelling at how her life had taken such a wonderful yet surprising turn. Only weeks ago, she’d worried about whether she was making the right decision about her job, whether she was foolish to even travel to BuenosAires in the first place, and now she’d somehow stumbled into the future she was always supposed to have.
‘I keep forgetting to tell you, but a letter arrived while you were gone. I put it in the top drawer in the kitchen.’
‘Addressed to me?’ she asked.
‘Yes, addressed to you. It was handwritten, so I didn’t open it on your behalf in case it was personal.’
They lay there a while longer, but curiosity got the better of Rose and she couldn’t help going downstairs to take a look. The house was quiet, but when she found the letter and sat down at the kitchen table to open it, she saw the cat was sitting there, watching her. She’d taken to leaving one of the doors open a crack so he could come and go, and today he was blinking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure about his new residence.
Rose turned her attention from him and slid her fingernail beneath the seal of the letter, finding two pages of cream paper folded inside, with a striking cursive writing covering the pages.
To my beautiful daughter,
