Page 62 of Saving Mr. Bell

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What if I was going to ask you to be the star of my next documentary?”

He shrugged. “Then, yes.”

“Really?”

“Why not? Things are going well for me again and if there’s one person I could trust to portray me accurately, it’s you.”

I tamped down on the warm feeling in my chest and focused on my aim. “What if I was going to ask to you to join me in the search for undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest, and then when we find them, live with them?”

“Wherever you go, I go. It might be tricky to get a piano there, though. I might have to take up the xylophone.”

“What if I was going to ask you to marry me?”

“Then definitely yes.”

“Just like that?”

Rudolf shrugged. “You’re divorced and we’ve been together for almost a year, and I kind of love you.”

“Kind of?”

He grinned. “Just keeping you on your toes. You know I love you to the moon and the back. What were you going to ask?”

I maneuvered the box out of my pocket and passed it across, Rudolf’s mouth forming into an “o” of surprise when he opened it. “Oh, you really were going to ask that?”

As proposals went, it wouldn’t go down in the annals of romance, but I still felt better for it being out there, like a weight had lifted off my chest. “Does that change your answer?”

“Ask me properly.”

I took my seatbelt off and twisted round to face him. It wasn’t a bent knee, but it would have to do. “Rudolf Wenceslas Bell, will you marry me?”

“I would have done if you hadn’t used my middle name.”

“Expunge that from the record,” I announced to no one.

“In that case, yes,” Rudolf said.

It was the sweetest yes I’d ever heard, Rudolf yelping as I tried to pull him into my arms, both of us forgetting that I might havetaken my seatbelt off, but that he still wore his. We both fumbled for the catch, one of us eventually releasing him from it.

And it was the perfect moment. Because it was us, and because we worked. I was still smiling from ear to ear when I started the engine and flicked the radio on, Carol of the Bells playing on cue like some sort of cosmic sign.

The End

---