Eventually, I’d finagle him into letting me drive all of them. A girl loved her toys, too.
After he closed up the garage, he took my hand and we walked to the house together. “It seems strange to actually have a permanent home,” I said in a thoughtful voice.
I’d spent years running all over the planet, but I’d never invested in a home. Yeah, Harper and I had purchased the condo in Miami together, but that was more of an investment than a home.
“If you don’t like this one, we can buy a different house,” he suggested.
Oh, hell no. “You had this home built custom,” I scolded. “And I love it.”
Marcus’s house was enormous, but it was a reflection of him, and I couldn’t have planned out a better home for us.
He let me into the house and disabled the alarm before he turned back to me. “I don’t want this to be all about me, Dani. Hell, I don’t even know if you want to live in Rocky Springs. I can live anywhere, but I can’t live without you.”
I threw myself into his arms, my heart so light it nearly floated out of my chest. “It’s not all about you. I don’t have a home, Marcus. I never bothered because I was too busy trying to chase stories. But this is where we both grew up, and my sister is here. It’s perfect.”
His arms tightened around my waist. “I just want you to be happy,” he grumbled.
I pulled back so I could look up at his face. “Tell me you love me,” I requested.
His beautiful silver eyes were flashing fire as he said obligingly, “I love you.”
I ran a hand along the dark stubble on his jaw. “That’s all I need to be ecstatically happy.”
He nodded and shot me a wicked grin that immediately had heat pooling between my thighs.
When Marcus smiled, my world turned upside down.
He clasped my hand and pulled me toward the kitchen. “I’m glad you feel that way, love, because there’s more.”
Bemused, I followed his lead. I wasn’t sure how much more happiness I could handle.
I stopped abruptly as we entered the kitchen. “What in the world…”
The kitchen table was full of items, but the first thing that caught my attention was two heart-shaped balloons attached to the most beautiful bouquet of red roses I’d ever seen.
One balloon said “Marry.”
The second said “Me.”
I covered my mouth, my emotions close to the surface. “I already said yes,” I reminded him in a tearful tone. “How did you do this?”
“I do have assistants,” he said. “You just haven’t met them yet. I had to enlist some help to get this stuff here while we were gone.”
I gently ran a finger over the roses, and then noticed that nearly the entire table was filled with chocolate.
“You have good taste,” I said in an amused voice. I recognized most of the names on the boxes and wrappings. Everything on the table was the best of the best in chocolate, and pricey as hell. He’d gotten everything from master chocolatiers from Switzerland to France, and one from the East Coast of the US.
More often than not, I’d settled for a candy bar from a convenience store. I wasn’t that picky about how I got my chocolate. But I wasn’t averse to trying some of the items Marcus had gotten. In fact, I was downright eager to tear into the collection.
He stepped up to the table and drew a bottle of fine champagne from its icy confinement, and then uncorked it and poured it into a beautiful pair of crystal flutes.
I accepted the one he handed me, my heart racing at the thought of how much trouble Marcus had gone to just to please me. “Thank you,” I said in a tremulous voice.
“It’s no more than you deserve,” Marcus told me as he took a sip of his champagne. “I never should have proposed in the bedroom of my damn jet. You deserve so much more than that. You’re my heart, Danica.”
I opened my mouth to answer him, to tell him that he was my everything, but I closed it again as I heard a high-pitched bark.
“One more thing...” His voice trailed off as he walked across the large kitchen and bent over to fumble with what looked like a crate of some kind.
I was flummoxed as a bundle of fur exploded from its confinement and hurdled straight toward me. “Oh, my God,” I squealed, putting my wine glass on the table so I could catch the small canine body. “Who is this?”
“You did say you always wanted a dog. Technically, this is a puppy, but he will eventually be full-sized,” he informed me.
I cuddled the squirming, excited puppy as I asked, “So it’s a boy? Is he mine?”
Marcus nodded. “Yours,” he confirmed.
I beamed up at him. “I’ll share him with you. He looks like a German Shepherd. Does he have a name?”
“Not yet. But he will when you give him one. And he is a German Shepherd. Tate has a male, and he wanted to breed Shep with a female before he got him fixed. This puppy is one of Shep’s offspring.”
“He’s gorgeous,” I said emphatically, laughing as the pup left my lap and started bouncing around the room and then ran back to me.
I stared at his collar for a moment before I reached out and tried to grab the shiny object attached to the blue collar.
It took me a moment to understand what I was holding.
“Is this mine, too?”
Marcus moved forward and offered his hand. I took it, allowing him to pull me to my feet. “If you’re still willing to accept it and everything that comes along with being married to a guy like me, it’s yours.”
I fingered the beautiful ring I’d snagged from the puppy’s collar, my eyes filled with happy tears. I got entirely choked up as Marcus took the ring, reached for my hand, and slid the incredible diamond on my finger as he added, “If you don’t want it, you’re too late. You’re mine now.”
“I want it,” I shrieked as he twirled me in the air.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t ready when I proposed,” he said huskily. “But you can cross another item off your bucket list. You got a proposal, even if it wasn’t all that slick.”
He’d just put an absolutely amazing ring on my finger, and he was apologizing? “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” he argued. “I don’t want you to ever regret that you married a guy who isn’t very romantic.”
Maybe Marcus wasn’t hearts and flowers every day, but I’d never doubt how much he loved me. This huge display just to propose to a woman who had already said yes was a perfect example of why I’d never think he wasn’t romantic. “I’d never regret you,” I said fiercely. “Never.”
His mouth came down on mine so quickly that he took my breath away. I moaned against his lips, my body needy as I opened to him willingly, letting him plunder my mouth.
I was on fire, and I wasn’t sure anything could ever extinguish the blaze.
My arms tightened around his neck, I pressed against him, feeling his enlarged cock through the denim of his jeans.
I hadn’t crumbled under his other assaults to my senses, willing to wait until he was completely recovered. They’d taken his sutures out earlier today, and I’d had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to resist our mutual hunger for each other much longer.