“I do.”
“I love you, too. I’ve loved you for so many years, and I was afraid to tell you. I was afraid if I let you know how I felt about you, I’d lose you.”
“Why?”
She dropped her hands and stepped back. “I don’t know. The fact that I was your agent, that I’m a few years older than you, that you went through women as fast as you went through underwear.”
“Hey.”
She laughed. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I played the field a little.”
She cocked a brow. “A little? Gavin, you were all over women all the time. And that’s fine. It was good for your image and good PR. I played it up as much as possible.”
He stepped up to her, smoothed his hand over her hair. “And you loved me. Didn’t it hurt you?”
She shrugged. “A little. But I did my job. I did what was best for you.”
He inhaled, blew it out, took her hand, and led her to the sofa. She sat, and he kneeled in front of her. “I’m sorry I never knew, never picked up on it. What kind of man does that make me?”
“It makes me a very good agent who made sure you never knew.”
He didn’t smile. He lifted her hand. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
“Not necessary. I have you now. It’s all that matters.”
“I really don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, Gavin, you do. As much as I deserve you. We belong together.”
He lifted up and brushed his lips against hers, feeling like the luckiest man alive. His heart swelled with so much love his chest felt like bursting.
This was what love felt like. This feeling of joy, of knowing you’d never be alone again, never feel like something was missing from your life; the feeling that you now had someone to protect, to keep safe from harm.
He got it now; he understood where his brother was coming from.
He’d die to protect Elizabeth.
He pulled a box out of his pocket. “This part I didn’t want to do at the stadium. I wanted it just to be the two of us.”
ELIZABETH STARED AT THE BLACK VELVET BOX.
She hadn’t expected this. She raised her hand to her heart, then looked at Gavin.
“Oh.”
He opened the box and inside was a princess-cut diamond in a platinum setting. And wow. The diamond was huge, the band covered in tiny sparkling diamonds, too.
It was perfect. Gorgeous and everything she could have dreamed of.
“Oh, Gavin. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He held her hand. “Elizabeth Darnell, I love you. I don’t care how old you are or how old I am. I want you to be my wife. I want to have babies with you if you want them, too. I want you to continue to love your career as much as I love mine. I want us to love and respect each other forever. Will you marry me?”
This time she didn’t try to fight the tears. She let them flow down her cheeks and nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, Gavin. I love you, too. And I’d be honored to marry you.”
He slid the ring on her finger and pulled her off the sofa and into his arms. On her knees, she met his lips with equal passion. Her carefully coiffed updo was gone in an instant as he pulled the pins from her hair and shook it out, his hands diving into the strands as he fell onto his back on the floor and pulled her on top of him.
God, it felt good to feel his body against hers again. She’d missed his touch, the way his hands glided over her back and to her hips, the way he dug his fingers into her as if he couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
She’d missed his passion, his almost desperate need for her, because she always needed him. Would it always be like this between them? She hoped so.
She lifted, stared down at him, smoothed his hair away from his brow, and listened to his heavy breathing, felt his heartbeat jamming away against her chest.
He tilted his head and smiled up at her. “What?”
“I was just wondering if it would always be like this between us. This hunger we seem to have for each other.”
He cupped her face and brought it down to meet his. “Hell, yes.”
He kissed her with such deep longing that she had no doubt he was right. Her heart melted, and so did her panties as he lifted against her, his erection driving against her sex. She planted her hands on his chest and surged against him, the need so powerful to have him inside her she quaked with it.
He broke the kiss, and she was breathless, especially when she saw the passion in his eyes. She sat up and began to unbutton her blouse, her fingers shaking. Gavin watched her undo each button, and try as she might to be slow and sexy, all she could do was fumble it.
Maybe him lifting and teasing her with his hard cock had something to do with it.
“You’re distracting me.”
He cocked a brow. “Hurry up.”
“Trying.”