He shut the door behind him and moved to stand beside her bed. She was sitting up, her back against the headboard, and she looked beautiful. Well and rested. Her face was scrubbed, her hair loose, her nightgown fresh. A pitcher and a glass of water sat beside her on her nightstand.
“How do you feel?” he asked. She’d been asked the same thing countless times in the last few days. She had to be weary of answering, but she answered all the same, reassuring him.
“I’m bored silly.”
He gave her the barest of grins, but his heart contracted. “Have you ever been bored a day in your life?”
“No. I haven’t had time.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m not spending another day lying in bed, Michael. Tomorrow, life must go on.”
“All right,” he whispered, nodding. He chewed his lip, eyeing her glass of water, and then he took it and gulped it down. Lenka had refilled it before she went to bed as well as the pitcher beside it. He poured Dani another glass and set it down before shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Michael? Did you want to talk?”
He cleared his throat. They’d talked at length about the Butcher and her ordeal. They’d talked about the burnt remains that Eliot believed were Frank Sweeney. But they hadn’t talked about what came next. “I just need . . . I just need to hold on to you for a while. I’ll be gone when you wake, I promise.” He was trying for easy, for lighthearted, but when he met Dani’s gaze, she shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No. If I let you hold on to me again, Michael Malone, you need to be here when I wake. And every morning after that.”
He nodded, his eyes holding hers. “All right, Dani.”
“All right?” she asked. They studied each other, taking each other in, conversing silently.
“All right,” he repeated.
“And I think maybe we should move downstairs,” she said. “To your room.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. There’s a little more privacy and a much better tub. But we might have to make things more official if . . . that’s . . . going to happen.”
“Sign another six-month rental agreement?” he teased, but his heart was in his throat, and the ring in his pocket was burning a hole in his leg.
“I was thinking sixty years,” she said. Firmly.
“Sixty years in Cleveland? I’ll be one hundred years old.”
“Lenka and Zuzana will be almost two hundred years old. Not to mention Charlie. Do you think we might let Darby have a room in the stable? It wouldn’t take much to make it a nice little cottage.”
“So now you’re going to take on two jobless men as part of your load?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
He sat down on the bed beside her and reached for her hand. “I don’t think Darby is going to stick around, sweetheart.”
“No?” She sounded so disappointed.
His eyes were drawn to the picture of George Flanagan and Darby O’Shea, side by side, trying to be serious and failing. The St. Christopher medallion on the rusting chain was no longer slung over the corner of the frame.
“And what about you, Michael? Are you going to stick around?” Her voice was quiet. Mild. But when he looked back at her, her mismatched eyes were turbulent. Blue sky and dark earth, the whole wide world in one small face. For a moment he just allowed himself to look, to study the landscape he wanted to call home. Then he brought their clasped hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the space between her knuckles and her wrist.
“Yes, Dani. I am.”
He took the ring from his pocket and without waiting for permission or dropping to his knees, he slid it on her finger.
Her breath hitched, but he kept his gaze fixed on the ring, suddenly so nervous he couldn’t look at her.
It was too big. He’d been afraid of that, but they could get it sized or trade it for something she liked better. He’d walked into the jeweler on the corner of East Fifty-Fifth and Broadway that afternoon and walked out again fifteen minutes later, his wallet much lighter. It was a nice ring—a gold filigree setting with a garnet center—but he had no eye for such things. It was the girl he was sure of. The ring was just a formality.
Dani didn’t squeal or flare her fingers to study the effect as he’d seen other women do. She closed her hand into a fist, curling her fingers around the loose band as if she was afraid it would slide right off again, or worse, that it didn’t mean what she thought it did.
He brought her clenched fist to his chest, pressing it to his heart, and made himself meet her gaze. She was silent as her eyes searched his. She needed him to say the words.
“Will you marry me, Dani Flanagan?” he asked, his throat tight.
“Yes, Michael Malone. I will.” No hesitation. “But we’re going to have to live here. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
She exhaled in gusty relief. She must have been holding her breath because she hiccuped and then giggled.
Joy bubbled up in his throat, and his heart swelled beneath her fist. He smiled, unable to help himself, and Dani pulled her hand from his and gripped his face, pressing her mouth to his. But she was smiling too, making the kiss more shared laughter than intimate caress. He wanted to kiss her senseless, but try as he might, his mouth would not form the proper shape to accomplish the task. So he let himself grin like a fool and nuzzled her throat instead, wrapping his arms around her and tugging her down onto the bed.
The scent of her skin, so dear and so distinct, flooded him, and he stilled, his face buried in the crook of her neck. He wanted to pray. He wanted to confess. To moan the Rosary in humble adoration, but he suddenly didn’t trust himself to speak. His emotions were too close to the surface. Dani was whole and well and in his arms, and he was home.
“You aren’t going to tell me no again, are you, Malone?” she asked, her pulse thrumming against his lips, her hands stroking his head.