“Yes,” she panted. There was no way the microphones were picking that up, but KC’s hand gripped the back of her thigh, right under her ass, and pulled her leg around KC’s waist just as a deep, slick pulse of white-hotyes yes yesmade itself as distracting as possible.
“God.” Yardley couldn’t breathe, as KC’s hand found a place while her mouth found another. KC pulled away, just a little, and right when the cool night air was able to fit between them, Yardley opened her eyes.
KC was smiling, but she was also crying.
“Fuck,” KC laughed, her tears rushing over her cheekbones. She looked up at the fairy lights. “I had a very classy proposal planned, for the record. I love you.”
Yardley pulled down the skirt of her dress, laughing, too, and then KC was reaching into her pocket and taking Yardley’s hand and sliding on a ring.
Yardley smiled so hard that it made her cheeks heat. KC had definitely appealed to the greediest debutante that resided in her heart.
“One more thing.” KC held up a key tied on a ribbon. “Please move in with me. I don’t want to get buzzed up to your apartment ever again. The bed is hard and small. You took all the throw pillows with you, and now there is nothing to lean on or nap onanywhere in our house. And it’s not our house without you. It’s fucking dire.”
Yardley took the key, untied the ribbon, and retied it around her neck. “Yes. I will confess that I took the throw pillows on purpose. And I bought the worst mattress I could find for my apartment. In case you needed a push in this direction.”
“You bought it on the internet.” KC took a hold of the ring and gently pulled her closer. “You made me hike it up four flights of stairs.”
This kiss was soft. It felt like sayingI love you, over and over.
“Now,” KC said, with enough authority to make Yardley’s thighs clench. “Let’s go home now.”
“You don’t want to celebrate at the party?”
“The northwest corner of Atlas’s fence, just a few yards from here, has a gate. We can run along the side of the house with the hedges and make it to my car. At this time of night, we’ll be home in fifteen minutes, tops.”
“All my things are here.”
“You won’t need anything.” The promise in KC’s eyes lit Yardley’s inner thighs on fire all over again.
She looked at her ring. “Everything else I own does seem a little shabby right now.”
They ran out the gate, laughing in a very non-spy-like manner, and fell into the car, kissing before they could get their seatbelts fastened. “We’re engaged,” Yardley said against KC’s mouth. “My mama is going to be a menace.”
“Your mama already set up a Zoom meeting between me and her and the events manager at the country club. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, you’ll have to cancel that.” Yardley kissed along KC’s collarbone. “You can’t let her get the upper hand.”
“She has a whole vision.” KC had managed to wiggle her hand beneath Yardley’s dress, and now it was stroking hot up and over the top of her thigh.
“No,” Yardley breathed. “Absolutely not.” She set her hand on top of KC’s. “You are going to have to take me home. I’m an engaged lady. I can’t be compromised in a vehicle.”
KC shook her head. “So many rules.”
She started the car, and they drove home in the hushed dark, holding hands over the console. When they turned onto their street, Yardley watched the garage door lumber up. Light spilled through the cracks and out from beneath it, and even though she knew every corner of this house and had been here dozens of times since she moved out—had even spent the night at the end of more than one date with KC—it was transformed.
Probably it was silly for her to feel this way about a shift in the status of their relationship, she thought, caressing the ring on her finger. This engagement didn’t change that Yardley was already and always going to spend the rest of her life with KC if she could manage to. Being engaged, being married, wouldn’t make their relationship any better than one that didn’t include a ceremony or a piece of paper filed with the courthouse.
But KC was right, Yardley had rules. Her own rules. Her rule when it came to Katherine Corrine Nolan was to put a ring on it, forever and ever.
She looked down at her ring in the bright light of the garage, where it came into full sparkle, and what she saw was a symbol of her choice to give her whole self fully to who she was, and to her partner.
Shewasglad it was big, then. And not just because that made it pretty.
When the car shut off, Yardley didn’t even unbuckle before she kissed KC again, her fingers in her soft hair, heart in her throat. “Now I have to buy you a ring,” she said. “So everyone knows you’re taken.”
“I want a watch,” KC said against her mouth. “I liked Julia’s mention of an engagement watch.”
“You’ll have your watch, then.”
