So far, the rain had held off, but the meteorologist predicted some crazy weather would move in at some point. If anyone doubted it, all they had to do was look up at the dark clouds moving in.
“The sky doesn’t look promising.”
“We won’t stay out here long,” Keith promised as they walked down one path toward the gazebo. Like the ones along the ground, the tiny lights strung in the gazebo were on, giving it an almost magical aura.
Almost as soon as they sat inside, the door to the building opened, and a hotel employee headed their way.
“Here’s the champagne you ordered.” The man placed a tray containing a wine bucket and two glasses down next to Keith. “When you’re finished, leave everything here, and someone will get it later.”
“Champagne. What are we celebrating?” Maddie watched Keith open the bottle and pour the bubbly liquid into the glasses.
“Our anniversary.”
“That’s not today. It’s tomorrow.”
Shaking his head, Keith handed her a glass. “Tomorrow marks one year since our first date. I don’t consider that our anniversary. To me, it’s the night we kissed in your kitchen. Did you forget about that?”
“No.” She rolled the stem of the glass between her fingers. “Both Jasmine and Cassidy called me a few days later, complaining because you’d turned them down. Before you, I don’t think any guy had ever done that to either of them.”
“Third-best decision I ever made.”
“Do I want to know what the first ones were?”
“Number two was following you inside the house that night.”
Keith reached inside his suit jacket, and even before his hand emerged, Maddie knew what she’d see when it did.
“Asking you to marry me is number one.”
She rarely looked at jewelry, but she’d never seen an engagement ring like the one Keith held. Leaf-accented vines in yellow gold and two rows of aquamarines, her birthstone, wrapped around a round diamond set in white gold.
“What do you say?”
“I didn’t hear you ask me anything.” Occasionally, being difficult was fun.
As she expected, Keith frowned. “Madison Dempsey, will you marry me?”
“How does next Saturday sound?”
“As in a week from now?”
He’d never given an indication he wanted something like the wedding going on inside, but maybe he did.
They’d enjoyed their trip to the island so much in December that they’d booked another trip for this summer, and they were leaving next weekend. “Instead of going to Puerto Rico on Saturday, we could fly out to Vegas and get married. Then on Sunday, we head to Puerto Rico as planned. When we come home, we can have a party or maybe a cookout with our family and friends.”
She’d already looked into the cost of flying to Vegas and changing their tickets to Puerto Rico. Although not an insignificant amount, doing what she had in mind would be a hell of a lot cheaper than planning a traditional wedding, even if it was smaller than this one.
Keith slipped the ring on her finger. Either he’d used something from her jewelry box to get it appropriately sized, or he’d been lucky because it fit perfectly. “Let’s do it. One thing, though. I don’t want an Elvis impersonator marrying us.”
“No Elvis. Promise.”
I hope you enjoyed Maddie and Keith’s story. Read on for excerpts fromThe Billionaire’s Homecoming, Brett Sherbrooke and Jennifer Wallaces’s story, andOne Of A Kind Love.