“Your game keeps improving by the minute.”
“Lucky for me we have all the time in the world.”
He smiles at me and it makes everything inside of me heat up. “So who won?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I walked out before they opened the accountant’s results. I’m sure we’ll hear all about it later though . . . but right now, I just wanted to be with you.” And it never gets tiring hearing him say stuff like that.
“So you don’t even know if you won?”
He smiles in a way that tells me he may have, he may not have and his ambiguity drives me crazy.
“I forgot. I wanted to show you something. Sit tight.”
I turn and watch Zane head into our villa behind us and return shortly with what looks to be a laptop case. “What are you doing with that?” I ask.
“Breaking the rules.” His grin is lightning quick.
“We said no internet—”
“You can punish me later.” He winks and presses a kiss to the side of my head as he sets the laptop on the table in front of us.
“What’s this?”
“I—uh—got wind of this video that was going viral that I wanted you to see.”
Such an odd thing for him to say but okay . . . “Of?”
“Of one of the best proposals I’ve seen come out of a match with SoulM8. “
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And you chose to come back here and show me this instead of seeing who won and hanging with the guys? I’m flattered.”
“I told you, I’ve got mad game.”
I start laughing as the computer screen springs to life. Zane hits a few buttons and then swears when our own image pops up on the screen. “Dammit,” he grumbles. “That’s what I get for borrowing Kostas’ computer.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s like the camera is stuck.”
I start laughing. “Can I just say I don’t want to know what he’s doing or recording so that his camera is stuck on his screen.” Images of women and more women and everything in between fill my mind. Zane grumbles a few more times. “It’s not a big deal. We can watch it later.”
“No, it’s really cool. It . . . it validates every reason I had for walking out on the contest with the guys. Shit. Just give me a second,” Zane says and I watch his very fine backside retreat into the villa on the screen in front of me. It must be pretty cool for him to be going to this much effort.
When it takes more than a second, I lean my head back on the chair and close my eyes.
“I think I’ve just about got it.”
“Mmm-hmm. Just tell me when and I’ll open my eyes because this sun feels way too good.”
“I think it’s ready,” a voice calls out from the other room.
When I open my eyes, it takes a second for what I’m seeing to appear on the screen in front of me.
“What are you . . . ”
And then it registers.
Zane is standing behind me dressed in a tuxedo. A full blown tuxedo. His smile is tinged with nerves and his eyes are locked on mine.
“Zane?” I turn to face him as he walks toward me.
“This video may not be for public consumption, but it’s something I want recorded.”
Every part of me shakes and trembles and I don’t know whether to sit or stand or walk to him or stay where I am. The only thing I do know, is that if he drops to his knee—or doesn’t—and asks me to marry him or doesn’t—no matter what he says to me, the answer is yes so long as it means I get to be with him.
That’s all that matters.
“Hey?” He looks at me, centers me, grounds me. “You okay?”
I nod frantically. “I’m not sure what to do right now.”
“Don’t do anything Cinder but stay just as you are.”
He crosses the distance to me—him in a tuxedo and me in a bikini—and I lean in and press my lips to his. I can’t resist.
“I have rehearsed what I want to say a million different ways. I have notes hidden all over this damn place of things I want to say—no, that I need to say—but there’s one that matters more than any of them. I love you, Harlow Nicks. You and your feisty temper and tell it like it is attitude. You and your soft heart and generous spirit. You and your slurping straws and mad Galaga playing skills. Sure, you played me at my own game to start this all . . . but it’s been me that’s been played ever since.”
He leans in and presses the most tender of kisses to my lips. “I love you and I’m going to keep loving you and telling you I love you until you’re sick of me. . . and then I’m going to tell you I love you some more.”
“Never.” I murmur and swoon because when he places his hand in mine, his is trembling.
I know it’s coming but I gasp when he lowers himself to one knee. “You once told me that you wanted the fairytale, Cinder. That you deserved the fairytale. And I couldn’t agree more. I want to give that to you. I want to be that for you. Will you marry me, Harlow?”
“Yes. Yes. Oh, and yes.”
Some may say it’s silly that I never even looked at the ring when he put it on my finger, but I didn’t. I was too busy looking at the man. My real diamond in the rough. The man I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with.