“I’m your mom. I’m going to ask you those things until I can’t ask them anymore.”
“Sure.” Harper shook her head, but there was an amused look on her face.
“We have a ride,” I told her. “And another one lined up for us when we get back. Don’t you worry, we have the trip planned all the way down to the second. At least, as far as transportation is concerned. I don’t want to wind up lost in a foreign country because we weren’t able to make the connections on time.”
“It’s not that hard to find someone who speaks English in a foreign country,” her mother told me. “You’re not going to have any issues with that one. But, there is something I did want you to know.”
“Oh?” Harper asked, but her mother was looking at me.
“Not you, dear, but your man here,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I want you to know that you have my blessing, just in case,” she said with a wink.
I flashed her one of my most charming grins. I hadn’t talked to her about proposing to Harper yet, but it was on my list of things I wanted to do that day before we left. Of course, Harper had no idea what I was thinking, and when her mother said that, she slapped her mother on her arm.
“What are you talking about?” she cried. “Do you have something planned that I should know about?”
“No, nothing like that,” her mother said with a shake of her head. “But I’m just saying with how good the two of you are together, and the fact that you are going to Greece and the fact that I want grandkids, you better get moving on things. So, I’m just going to throw it out there now that you have my blessing just in case the mood strikes, and you decide you want to get a ring or something.”
“Mom, don’t be pushy,” Harper said. “Things are going to play out as they are meant to, but we don’t need to rush anything.”
I knew Harper was trying to keep her mom under control so she didn’t get too pushy with me, but I could tell with the way she smirked she was excited by the prospect of a proposal. Of course, I was, too. I had the ring in my pocket, and I was just waiting for the right time to get down on my knee and ask her to be my wife.
Part of me wanted to do it right in front of her mom since it was because of her mother that we were together anyway, but there was another part of me that wanted to do it when we were in a large group of people. Of course, I could also wait until we found some beautiful location while we were abroad. Or I might not be able to control myself at all and ask her to marry me when we were on our way to the airplane.
All I knew was that I was in love with this woman, and I wanted to make her my wife as soon as possible. Now that I had her mother’s blessing, I had the green light to propose to Harper any time I wanted to. Now, I felt even more pressure to find the right time to get this ring on her finger.
She was too amazing to let slip by, and I had already come too close to losing her once. I wasn’t going to do that again.
She looked happy as she was sitting across from me, and I made her blush with a wink when we made eye contact. It seemed everything she did was simply perfect, and I couldn’t get enough of her.
I couldn’t wait for us to go to Greece, or for the rest of our lives after. It seemed we were on the brink of taking so many steps in our lives that I was so eager to take, it was hard to be patient and wait for the right time.
But, I also was a hopeless romantic, and I wanted to surprise Harper with a proposal that would take her breath away. It would be just one of many, many more moments in our lives when I would try to take her breath away, and I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when she saw the ring I picked out for her.
It was just a matter of time until I finally did pop the question, I knew that, but I was getting impatient myself.
I wanted her to be my fiancé. I wanted her to be my wife.
I just wanted her.
EPILOGUE
Harper
I wokeup to the warm sunshine on my face and a slight breeze playing with my hair.
The morning sun was rising in the sky, but the breeze coming in from the ocean kept the air cool. Trevor was in the little kitchenette putting together a fruit platter to enjoy for breakfast, then he said he wanted to show me something he’d found the other day.
I was, of course, curious to know what he had seen that he didn’t show me. He was so good about pointing things out to me when we passed them in the first place, I was surprised when he told me that he was going to take me somewhere else.
But, being in Greece, I didn’t care where we went. The country was so beautiful, I wished there was a way for us to think about moving here. I knew it would have to be something that happened in the future – likely quite some time in the future – but something that I wanted to keep in mind for the day that we retired.
He would have plenty of money from his career as a surgeon, and while I didn’t have nearly as much to contribute with my teacher’s salary, he made enough for both of us, so it didn’t really matter. I figured it would be something to bring up at some point on the trip, but so far, we had been so taken with all the things that we were doing, we didn’t have time to talk about much of anything but what we were doing in that exact moment.
I was so relieved to be on this vacation with Trevor. He told me he was going to need some time after losing Mrs. Elliot, and after he got caught up with the paperwork at the hospital, he was going to be taking this trip and he wanted me to go along with him.