He swore softly then. ‘I don’t mean to rush you. I don’t mean—it is obviously my wish, but there is plenty of time, my darling, for the rest of our lives.’
She turned away from him rather than answering, because her smile made it impossible to speak.
At her door, he kissed her goodnight on the cheek and then turned to leave. He couldn’t push this too hard. He knew it would take time for Genevieve to feel safe trusting him again, to know that he was worthy of all the love and faith she’d put in him before. But hell, he’d wanted to go inside with her more than he could say. Not just because his body was yearning for hers in a way he could hardly live with, but also because he couldn’t get enough of her.
Listening to her talk about her work, and how proud she was, how obviously good she was. Listening to her talk about anything, hearing her laugh and knowing he’d caused it. He just wanted to breathe the same air as her, for as long as he could.
For now, though, just the whisper of hope she’d given him had to be enough.
Dinner tonight?The text came through the following morning, and her heart lurched in response.
She had barely slept, but this time, her wakefulness had been caused by the most delirious happiness. Genevieve had lain awake in bed and replayed every moment, every touch, every look, until her heart was humming and her insides were twisting.
She tapped out a reply:Why don’t I cook?
I don’t want to put you to the trouble.
Nonsense. You cooked for me on the island. It seems only fair.
There was a lengthy pause before he responded:What can I bring?
He arrived with a bottle of wine and the biggest bunch of flowers she’d ever seen. Genevieve buried her face in the blooms to stop from launching into his arms and kissing him with all her passion and love. She arranged them in a vase while he uncorked the wine and poured two glasses.
She had thought she might feel ashamed of her apartment. She knew it was small, in a rough neighbourhood, and pretty cheaply furnished, but instead, when he looked around and had that same proud expression on his face, she just felt alive. Adored. Appreciated, for how hard she was working to achieve her financial freedom. Because she knew he saw that, he would never think she wasn’t someone who wanted to stand on her own two feet.
His money was so irrelevant to what they were. It barely even entered her mind to consider the disparity between them, despite his generosity with the hospital bills.
Genevieve had learned to cook from a young age, and she was very good at it. She made creamy garlic prawns for entrée, and then lamb for main course, as he had served them in Greece, and he ate it appreciatively, marvelling at how skilled she was in the kitchen, until she laughed and told him he really needed to stop.
His eyes lifted to hers, and the smile in the creases of his face shifted, sobering. ‘I can’t stop,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I told myself I wouldn’t rush this, but being here with you, in your apartment, there is a part of me that wants, more than anything, to press fast forward and start the rest of our lives now.’ He closed his eyes then. ‘I know it’s selfish of me. It’s just…for a brief time, I got to call you my fiancée, to know that you were, at least to the rest of the world, truly mine. I cannot wait for a time I can do that again.’
Her heart turned over in her chest and every single piece of her seemed to click in together. She felt the sting of tears in the back of her throat as she took a quick gulp of wine.
‘Well,’ she said, a little unevenly. ‘We never technically announced that our engagement was at an end.’
He stared at her without reacting, but because she knew him, she understood what that took for him to do.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to still refer to me as your fiancée.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Because of James?’
She blanched, and stood then, coming around to the other side of the table and manoeuvring herself into his lap. ‘No, not at all. This would be just for you and me.’
‘Are you saying—would this be real?’
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears as she nodded. ‘I think that’s a great idea.’
She couldn’t say who kissed whom first, but their lips connected and it was as though every star in the heavens went supernova simultaneously. Lights flashed in her eyes and her body rejoiced, as did her heart, at the certainty that she was with the man she was destined to find.
And the more she thought about it, the more she truly felt that destiny had had a hand in their meeting. The storm that had blown up out of nowhere, her hiring a sailboat just to feel close to her father—she could never shake the sense that perhaps it had been her parents, and Isabella, who’d somehow created the magic that had brought Genevieve to Nikos in the most unlikely of circumstances.
One week after dinner in Genevieve’s apartment, they were at Nikos’s luxurious Washington home, and without her realising at first what he was doing, Nikos was down on one knee, holding out another black velvet box.
Her heart stammered in her chest as she shook her head.
‘I never got a chance to propose properly,’ he said, clasping her hands. ‘And I want to.’
‘It was proper enough,’ she said, because that night remained in her memory as one of the happiest of her life.
