That’s all it said. Her chin started to tremble.
“That’s really all I need. Just you,” he rushed on. “My big-picture plan is to spend the rest of forever with you.”
Clover couldn’t breathe, but her heart was going a billion miles an hour as the meaning of what he was saying began to sink in.
“Yo, man on the platform,” one of the cops yelled from the sidewalk but sounded like he was ten blocks away. “You got a permit for this thing?”
“That’s it.” Sawyer picked his hand up from the windowsill, leaving nothing to stop her from closing the window on him forever. “That’s the whole thing. I can’t make it happen without that, so name your terms.”
Her terms? She didn’t have terms. Everything they’d put on that napkin at Vito’s—it was a game, a ruse, part of their fake engagement. None of it had been real. But this? God help her, she believed.
“Sir,” the cop yelled again. “I’m gonna need you to come down now.”
Both of them ignored the officer as Sawyer reached in his pocket and pulled out the emerald and diamond engagement ring and went down on one knee.
“I’m not asking you to think about it, Clover. Not again. I’m asking you to marry me because I love you. I love the way you laugh at the same spots in the movies as I do. I love that you could find the secret hidden charm in a million flea market finds. I love that you turn everything into an adventure that I want to go on with you. I love the way you chew your bottom lip when you’re anxious. I love that you curse in other languages. I love that you’re the first person I want to see in the morning and the last one I want to touch at night. I love that even without saying a word, you’ve out-negotiated me. Every time. I love you, Clover Lee.”
…
Sawyer held his breath, watching Clover as she stood behind the half-closed window. Barry was covered in flop sweat behind him, the crowd was getting bigger below him, and the cops were calling in for a ladder to bring him down. He didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was the woman in front of him. He’d put it out there. He’d gone about as big as he knew how. Now it was all up to her.
And she wasn’t moving. Or talking. Or doing anything but staring at him with a look on her face that he couldn’t decipher.
His gut twisted and the engagement ring suddenly weighed a million pounds.
Wracking his brain for something—anything—else to say, to do, to promise he came up empty. This was it. He’d made his play and failed. He dropped his gaze to the platform floor, dropped the ring back in his pocket as he stood up, and opened his mouth to tell Barry to hit the button that would lower them down when the window began to inch open.
“Don’t tell me you’re going already,” she said as she started to climb out of the window.
Relief swept through him as he took her hand and helped her out onto the platform. “I’ll stay for as long as it takes.”
“And if that means forever?” she asked looking up at him.
“Then forever it is.” In fact, nothing had ever sounded better to him.
She sniffled and wiped away a tear from her cheek. “You broke my heart.”
He gathered her close, offering up a silent pledge to do whatever it took to make it up to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever let it happen again.”
He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted it up so she could look at him and know he meant every word. “Not in all the forevers.”
“I love you, Clover Lee.”
“I love you more,” she said, rising up on her tiptoes and wrapping her arms around his neck.
“I think that’s something we’ll be debating forever, honey.” Dipping his head lower, he kissed her and thanked the fates and God and anyone else who was up there for getting him here because the big picture he’d been looking at all these years had been only a narrow glimpse of the possibilities of what could be. With Clover, he saw so much more.
Epilogue
Three Years Later…
The crowd at the Carlyle family cocktail party had changed. Instead of unmarried socialites and champagne glasses, it was family and…champagne—it was still the Carlyles after all.
Sawyer looked around, unable to stop noticing all the details that made his life so much more than it had been before. Clover stood next to him, her hair shining in the setting sun. Laura Lee and Phillip were laughing at something Hudson said while his fiancée rolled her eyes and chuckled. He’d always known his brother was hiding something, he’d never have guessed just what it was because he’d never looked close enough. Big brother fail for sure. Details mattered and thanks to the woman by his side he wouldn’t be missing those any more. Clover’s best friend Daphne was there, too, still looking a little jet-lagged after the girl’s trip to Nepal they’d taken. And then there was Helene who was chasing little Michael with his chubby toddler legs around the grand piano. Mikey, as they called him to differentiate Sawyer’s son from Sawyer’s father who Mikey was named after, had a handful of birthday cake mashed in his right hand and was running full speed ahead, just like he had from the day he took his first step. Like his father, there was no walking for that kid.
“You know, I think if my dad had lived to see this he would have changed his favorite view,” Sawyer said, curling an arm around Clover’s waist and drawing her in close. “I know I have.”
She smiled up at him. “There’s nothing quite like seeing your mom with apple crumb cake handprints on her Dior skirt.”
“I don’t think she’s even noticed.” The woman who’d spent her adult life scaring most of Harbor City’s society had become putty in the hands of her grandchild.
“Well, if she didn’t notice that I’m wearing these,” Clover lifted her hiking boot clad foot “then we can definitely say she’s baby crazy.”
“Maybe we should take advantage of that by letting her watch Mikey while we take a trip to South America,” he said, the plan already coming together in his head. “There’s a group in Peru that’s setting up a women’s business collective. I hear they need a negotiator to work out a deal with some international distributors.”
“Let’s do that next month,” she said, her eyes sparkling with that something that had sucker punched him the first time he’d set eyes on her.
“I know that look. That’s usually one that has me agreeing to things I never thought I’d say yes to.”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I think we need to work on a project to keep Mikey from getting lonely.”
“You want to take him with us?” He wasn’t against it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that wasn’t what she meant at all.
“Nope.”
Understanding dawned. “Number two?”
She winked at him. “Let’s make that happen.”