"Whoa, don't get ahead of yourself, Annie. Tonight will be poignant, yes. But I was walking the streets thinking about tomorrow."
Her heart was racing, and it had nothing to do with the approaching opening. It was knowing this infuriating man. Loving him. "Tomorrow," she said.
He nodded and withdrew something from his pocket. When he held it up, she saw that it was a ring.
"It's nothing fancy," he said, "but it was my great-grandmother's, and I thought—well, I thought you might like it better than a big old diamond."
"Garvin..."
"Marry me, Annie Payne. Tomorrow, the next day, any day you want." He smiled, slipping the ring on her finger as her eyes filled with tears. "I love you, Annie, and I want to be with you."
She sniffled and glanced back at Gran's painting, could see the two of them out on the front porch watching the dawn come and listening to the tide and the gulls, and suddenly she could see her and Garvin and Otto and toddlers. Babies, she thought, so overcome at the thought of her future, she almost couldn't get the words out. "I love you too. Sometimes I think I have since I spotted you bidding against me in that ballroom."
"And you'll marry me?"
She smiled, feeling the weight of the beautiful, simple ring on her finger. "I'll marry you, Garvin MacCrae."
He touched one finger to a tear on her cheek and smiled with such tenderness she wanted to cry. "I'll live with you here in San Francisco or out in Marin or back home in Maine. Wherever you want, Annie."
"Where doesn't matter, Garvin. Here, Maine, Belvedere, some shack in the hills." She took his champagne from his hand, set it down, and, ignoring the first wave of critics and the first stunned oohs and aahs over Sarah Linwood's work, she kissed him lightly and whispered, "Wherever I'm with you I am home."
***THE END***