Page 108 of Tempting as Sin
She was, suddenly, more composed than he was. But then, she wasn’t the one who’d just been hit between the eyes with the news that he was going to be a father. She was just the one who was going to be a mother.
He was going to choke up, so he focused on remembering his lines and followed her up to the porch swing. “Right,” he said, sitting down with her. “Right. I planned this, but it was meant to be a bit further away. Time-wise.”
“How long away, exactly?” Her eyes were dancing, the dimples around her mouth showing. “How long were you planning to give me to miss you too much?”
He rubbed his nose and may have looked a bit sheepish. “A month, I thought. At least that’s how long I was willing to wait to try. Could’ve ended up being two weeks, though. I wanted it. Iwantit. Right, then. Give me a moment here.” He paused and collected himself, and she let him. Then he started. “I don’t want to change your direction,” he told her. “I don’t want to change your mind. I don’t even need to change your name, although I won’t lie—I want to. But I do need to share my life with you.”
She had her hand on his cheek, and it felt exactly right there. Gentle, and strong. He got off the swing, because now was the time, and got down on a knee.
He’d said the words on screen before. He’d even said them in his life before. It had never been anything like this. He pulled the box from his pocket, opened it up, took her hand again, and told her the rest of it.
These words, hehadthought out. These lines, he’d learned.
“There are millions of snowflakes in the world,” he told her, “and every one is different. There’s only one that’s mine. There are millions of hearts beating in the world, but only one that beats with mine. There are millions of promises in the world, but only one that’s mine to you.” He held her hand. He looked up into her eyes, and he’d swear that his heartwasbeating for her. “No matter how far I go,” he told her, “no matter who else I see, no matter who else I kiss, I’ll be coming home to you. Every time, from now until forever. You can bet your heart on it. You can bet your life.”
“Rafe,” she said. “You’re so beautiful. That’s so beautiful.” There were tears in her eyes, a smile on her trembling lips, and he’d swear she’d barely looked at the ring he’d spent hours choosing and had only received via courier yesterday. A platinum band with clusters of diamonds arranged like flowers on either side of a center stone that was two carats of pure flash. Feminine, graceful, floral, and so very Lily. He’d known the moment he saw it that it could have been designed for nobody else.
“It is?” he said. “You haven’t even looked at it.”
She was laughing, now, exactly like that day when she’d come back from Australia. When he’d been nervous, and she’d been sure. She slipped off the swing and knelt there with him, then put her hands on his face and kissed him, long and sweet and coming home. “I don’t have to look at it,” she said when she’d finished. “I know it’ll be perfect. And I’d rather look at you.”
“I love you, baby,” he said, because what else was there to say? “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, still smiling. He might be going to cry, though. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it, but he thought it could be happening. He kissed her so she wouldn’t see, but he thought she saw anyway, because she had her hand around the back of his head and was kissing him some more, with something in it that felt like comfort.
He got both arms around her, finally, and laughed out loud. The ring was somewhere. On the porch, he thought. But when she sat back at last, which gave him a chance to look for it, he froze.
“You’re bleeding,” he managed to say. “Lily.” He put a hand on her, low on her belly. Red. Wet. “Baby, I’m sorry. You’re bleeding.”
Alarm in her face now. Panic. She put her own hand there. And then—something else. Relief? What?
She was laughing again. “Tomato juice,” she told him. “I put it in my pocket when the horses came. I was holding it, before. I’d picked it. It was a beefsteak. It was big. Now it’s acrushedbeefsteak. Never mind. Oh, man.” She laughed harder. “That gave me a heart attack.”
He was laughing, too. She had her arms around his neck, and their heads were together, and he was finding the box and, finally, putting the ring on her finger. “There,” he said, watching it slide home with satisfaction that went all the way down to his soul. “That’s better. Now I can leave.”
Which was the wrong thing to say, of course. Not the right line at all. But oh, well.
Three days before Christmas, and Sinful was buried under a meter of snow. Good thing they weren’t in Sinful.
Rafe was standing in a tucked-away room just off a soaring-ceilinged, columned space whose French doors opened to a terrace looking out on subtropical gardens filled with birdsong, bang in the center of the exclusive Victoria Wedding Centre in Byron Bay. The facility included six other spaces to hold ceremonies, both indoors and out: two garden arbors, a meadow beside a waterfall, and three chapels. They were all empty, because Jace had booked the lot over a year earlier, months before he’d proposed to Paige.
“Planning wins battles, mate,” he’d told Rafe on the phone during the siblings’ four-way conversation back in July.
“I’m a battle?” That was Paige’s voice. “Nice.”
“Nah,” Jace said. “You’re a challenge. I didn’t want the media circling like vultures around my famous brother on our big day, that’s all. As long as the girls want it, though, bro, we should do it together. More practical, and Dad’ll be happy. Only one dinner jacket occasion required. We could charter a jet, too, and take everybody from the States, then stop in Brissy and collect the rest on the way down. Cost-effective.”
Rafe was already laughing, and fortunately, so was Lily. “Mate,” he tried to tell his brother. “Stunned mullet here. Success with the ladies much? That’s not how you pitch that.”
“No,”Paige said, and beside Rafe, Lily looked distressed. She wanted to do it with her sister, Rafe could tell. She loved the idea. Paige went on, “And I thoughtIwasn’t tactful, Jace. You tell me,‘Baby, won’t you and Lily be happier if we do this all together? Surely you want to be each others’ maids of honor, and Rafe and I want to be each others’ best man as well. And as you’ll both be enormously pregnant, it’ll be even more of a sideshow that way.’”
“You wouldn’t say that last bit,” Rafe said. “You’d say that there won’t be a dry eye in the house. All kinds of family. Sisters and brothers and babies, and Bailey as the flower girl.”
Now, the day was here, and so were all of them. All kinds of family, because Bailey was Lily’s for good now, and soon, she’d be Rafe’s as well.
Her grandmother had been moved from the nursing home to hospice care in late July, and one morning, she hadn’t woken up. Her heart had given up, it seemed, on trying to keep her abused lungs working. Or maybe she hadn’t needed to struggle anymore.
It had been a gentle death, and not the worst one, especially since Bailey had had time with her beforehand. Especially that last day, when Lily had girded her loins and talked to her about adopting the girl.
