I’m well aware of Penny’s ice cream preferences. And her cookie preferences, her favorite shops, and her coffee order—both seasonaland regular. I can read her expressions, her mind, and predict with near certainty when she gets tangled up in drama. It’s like there’s a shift in the universe’s energy that only I can sense. Or so she thinks.
“Trust me. I have a surprise for you.” I know that word is going to send her flying high, and I can’t wait to see it and hear it.
“A surprise!” she shouts, drawing the attention of the few other people shuffling down the street despite the chill in the winter air. Surprises are rarer now that the season’s kicked off again, and we’re both back into the swing of professional hockey life. So that makes this one even more special to her. “Let’s go!”
She nearly drags me the rest of the way to Kitty’s Creamery, but she stops at the door, peering inside as she sees that things aren’t quite normal. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open, and her feet are tippy-tappy dancing. “Oh my God! Griffin!”
I reach for the door handle that’s shaped like a kitten’s paw with pink-painted claw nails and pull it open. Felicity is already coming around the counter, a huge pink bowl of Chocolate Orgasm ice cream in her hands. “Hi, guys!” The greeting is quick, and after she sets the ice cream on a table, she basically peels out, disappearing through the swinging door to the back.
“What did you do?” Penny asks, looking around.
Kitty’s Creamery is always a cat-themed pink-and-turquoise monstrosity. Today it has a few new touches that Talia and Dominic helped with, like the table covered in a white tablecloth, with a centerpiece of wildflowers I custom-ordered for Penny and a heavy sprinkling of multicolored confetti, and the Hawks jersey embroidered with “Mrs. Mahoney” laying over one of the chairs.
Taking her hand, I guide her to the table. Tears are already starting to fall down her cheeks, but she’s smiling happily. She knows what’s coming, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not about the surprise, but the process.
Once she’s seated, I pull a box from my pocket but leave it closed as I drop to one knee. “Penelope Nicole Lee, meeting you was and is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I fell in love with you inthat moment, before speaking to you, before touching you, before I really even knew you. I was drawn to the light inside you that glows so brightly that it can’t be denied. I am the moth to your flame, the yin to your yang, the hard to your soft.”
She giggles nervously. “You saidhard.”
She’s not usually one for twelve-year-old-boy humor despite the overabundance of time she spends with hockey players, but she’s excited, and it’s making her wiggle nonstop and say silly things. I love that about her, but I’ve got a whole speech memorized here, and I’ve lost my place. “Penny—”
“I already know what you’re gonna say.” She holds up her finger, stopping my speech, and using the deep voice that’s supposed to be an imitation of me, she says, “I can’t believe this girl is funny, fine, and thicker than a Snickers. Like, damn, I’m a lucky man.” She brightens even more. “Am I right?”
The whole thing I had planned to say is gone, simply evaporated into the ether of my mind. Shaking my head, I can’t help but laugh. “Completely right. There’s more, though.”
She presses her lips together, fighting to stay silent for what she acts like is an eternity, and not a quick few seconds for me to ask her the most important question of our lives. “How much I loved you then is nothing compared to how much I love you now. And I can only imagine that what I feel today will continue to grow deeper, wider, stronger. I can’t wait to find out, with you. So, Penny, will you marry me?”
“Yes! Of course! I love you too!” Every answer is shouted in my ear because she’s thrown herself into my arms, knocking me over and leaving me sprawled on the floor with her lying on top of me. Thankfully, I’m doing pretty good so far this season, and nothing hurts. Her lips find mine, sealing our new engagement with a kiss, followed by approximately one dozen more kisses when she begins smacking my face all over while I laugh at her infectious happiness. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m surprised at how excited she is about being my wife and me becoming her husband.
“Did we just get engaged at a kitty-themed ice cream shop?” she whispers, looking around.
I look around, too, remembering all the times I snuck into Kitty’s Creamery to inhale ice cream alone, and then to the one time I brought someone here. Well, thefirsttime I brought someone. Penny and I have become Felicity’s most regular of regulars.
“I fell in love with you in your parents’ kitchen. But this is where I think you started to fall in love with me,” I explain. “It was the first time I wasn’t the asshole you always thought I was, and though you gave me so much shit about it, I could tell you liked that I wasn’t as bad as you thought.”
She smiles, her eyes pointedly not meeting mine. She’s not agreeing, but I already know I’m right. That day might’ve ended with an explosion of a disaster, but I wouldn’t even change that now. Mostly because it brought Penny and me together, but it also nearly tripled her business in the span of a few months. After Georgina posted a photo of her engagement and wedding ring set with the captionCustom PLDesigns rings, Pieces of my heart, online custom orders started coming in so frequently that she sometimes has to turn them down.
Hell, if that catastrophe hadn’t happened, I don’t think the Hawks would’ve won the Stanley Cup, and Penny and I definitely wouldn’t have somehow gotten an invitation to a Mob boss’s very private wedding ceremony.
“Wait! Did you get me a ring? I wanna see what you think I’ll like,” she sputters, reaching to where the ring box fell when she tackled me.
She heaves herself up, propping her elbows on my chest. I don’t dare flinch or show a single sign of discomfort from her pokey elbows in my solar plexus, wanting to see her face when she opens the box I bought from the same place she ordered Georgina’s engagement ring box.
Except there’s not a ring in this box. There’s five of them.
“Whoa,” she says as the rings tumble to my chest. “What’s all this?”
I can feel the heat of a flush rushing to my cheeks as I explain. “I listen to you talk about stones and rings, and knew you’d want tocustom-design your own. But I wanted to give you the raw materials to do it with. This one is a marquis-cut three-karat diamond I think would be a perfect center stone.” Using my nose, I point to another. “That one has a bunch of smaller marquis cuts that would be good accent stones.” And another. “That one has a bunch of tiny round cuts for a halo setting, and the other two bands are eighteen-karat gold you can melt down.”
Her eyes are teary again; I’ve definitely hit her deep in the feels with my spiel. But in a good way, I’m certain. “You listen to me talk about jewelry?”
I blink, surprised that she’s surprised. “Pen, I listen to you talk about everything. And I will always listen to you talk, even when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do that sometimes, don’t I?” She laughs through her tears.
She does. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“When do you want to get married?” she asks. “After the season ends, I guess.”
