The Bride (The Boss) (9 page)

What was I thinking? The man had bought me jewelry that cost more than a master’s degree. He would be fine with it.

Still, I wasn’t actually sure it was something I wanted to do. I had no idea
what
I wanted to do with my life. I’d hoped I would have figured it out before I was a quarter of a century old.

About an hour and a half after the men had gone off on their own, we heard whoops and laughter from outside.

“There they go,” Emma said with a weary sigh, her arms crossed as she looked out the glass wall at the wintery lawn. I saw four bodies, ghostly pale in the full moonlight, racing barefoot and naked across the snow, headed straight for the icy lake. Only one of them hesitated at the square hole cut into the ice; I assumed it was Michael, owing to the yelp of pained surprise we heard through the glass as the other men barreled past and carried him right over the edge.

“Poor Michael,” I said, shaking my head.

“He’s the one who’s desperate for my father’s approval,” Emma sniffed, not at all sympathetic.

Michael was the first up the ladder and onto the dock, and I turned away quickly. “Whoops, not looking.”

“I am,” Emma said with a mischievous smile. Then her eyebrows scrunched up and she grimaced as she turned her back to the window. “But not if uncle Geir is getting out.”

We heard the men come in, the rolling babble of three strangely identical voices—I hadn’t noticed that before, but Neil and his brothers all sounded remarkably alike—speaking in Icelandic. After they dressed and came back to the living room, it was like every trace of weird, distant Neil had been wiped away. He came to me with his wet hair slicked back from his face and wrapped me up in his arms, burying his cold nose in my neck until I squealed.

“Michael, you idiot, your lips are blue.” Emma slapped Michael’s shoulder and guided him toward the couch, where he huddled in his clothes, shivering uncontrollably.

Kristine jumped up. “I’ll get him a blanket.”

“And I’ll get him some whiskey,” Geir grumbled, clearly unimpressed by Michael’s lack of fortitude.

“Oh, the boy is perfectly fine,” Neil said with what could have easily been mistaken as a friendly laugh. It totally wasn’t. “Aren’t you, Michael?”

He gave Neil a weak thumbs-up.

“Well, I hope he proved himself,” I said, resting my hands against Neil’s chest.

“He
was
willing to jump into testicle-shriveling ice water to impress you,” Runólf pointed out.

“Well,” Neil said, resigned as he looked over at Michael. “I suppose it’s a start.”

“I think that went well,” Neil declared as we let ourselves into the house. He hit the master switch by the door and lit up all three levels.

“Oh, sure it went well. It went so well, you almost gave Michael hypothermia,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

Neil chuckled. “That’s what I said. ‘It went well.’ If Michael had actually gotten hypothermia, I’d have said, ‘It went spectacularly.’”

I would save my lecture about his attitude toward Emma’s fiancé for another time.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked, for the eleventh time since we’d left Runólf’s house.

“Well, the first ten times you asked me, I thought I did…but now…”

“Don’t be smart.” He reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “You have no idea how nervous I was.”

“I think I had kind of an idea.” I frowned. “Or maybe not. See, if my family hadn’t liked you, it wouldn’t have changed anything between us. But I get this crazy feeling that it would have changed us if your family hadn’t liked me.”

I could have slapped him, and he would have looked less stunned. Not that I would ever slap Neil. Though there were times he had sorely tempted me.

“You seemed tense,” I explained patiently. Maybe he hadn’t noticed his own mood. “You seemed like… I don’t know. Like something was riding on today. You haven’t been yourself since we left New York.”

He took both my hands in his and looked down at them as he held them between us. Squeezing my fingers, he promised, “If you perceived any amount of tension or you felt that I was…removed in some way…absolutely none of that had to do with you.”

“Okay. I trust you.” It was easy to say it, because I felt it to my bones. He had never lied to me before.

Well, except for during our one-night stand seven years before. But neither of us had been truthful that night.

We hung up our coats and went upstairs to the bedroom. In the master bath, I brushed my teeth and removed my makeup while Neil took out his contacts. He was unusually quiet, until he said, “I wasn’t sure, until the moment Runólf met us at the door, that I wanted to see my brothers today.”

“What?” It was all he’d been talking about for weeks. “I thought you were looking forward to seeing them.”

“I was.” He screwed on one lid of his lens case, and he didn’t look up at me. “Until I wasn’t.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I waited until he was ready to go on.

He took a breath. “The truth is…I was quite hurt that neither Runólf nor Geir came to visit while I was ill.”

A knife of sudden understanding pierced my lungs, and my inhale was painful. “Oh, baby—”

“It’s all right, now,” he assured me. “For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about how terrible it was that Runólf hadn’t come to visit me. We were quite close growing up. Geir was seven when I was born, Fiona was six. I realize that families grow and change and drift apart, but it hurt that they were willing to risk never seeing me again. That they were both…”

I reached over and put my hand on his on the countertop.

He looked up with a hesitant smile. “I understand now, seeing baby Annie. Death, just the idea of it… It feels contagious. When Emma was a baby, I obsessed over her safety. If I heard a story on the news about a child dying, I turned it off. I was so happy, it seemed like if I invited even the notion of death in, I would make it happen.

“Geir is getting older. His mortality is becoming more real to him. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to see his little brother suffering through cancer. And Runólf has a beautiful wife who had just given birth to that sweet baby when my condition deteriorated so badly. Of course he would want to protect them, even if the danger was imaginary.”

I shook my head. “I still think it’s awfully shitty. Not coming to see you, when it seemed pretty certain you weren’t going to make it.” I hated talking about that time. It made my throat close up.

“Sophie, believe me. It’s fine now. I made my peace over it.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Hurry up, you don’t want to miss the fireworks. We have a spectacular view.”

When I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in my fluffy bathrobe, Neil was sitting on the bed, already down to his black silk boxers. In his hands, he had a gift wrapped in elegant green paper. “I know we’d agreed to forego presents this year, but damn it, I couldn’t help myself. So, I bought you something.”

“As it so happens,” I began, heading to my suitcase. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist, so I got you something, too.”

It’s hard to shop for a billionaire. If he wanted something, he usually just bought it. So I’d had to get creative. I handed him my present and sat beside him to open mine.

He tore the paper off the box and lifted the lid. Inside, in an elegant silver frame, was an enlarged version of the photo we’d taken in bed together in Paris the year before, on New Year’s Eve.

Neil’s hands trembled as he lifted the heavy frame from the box. In a voice choked with emotion, he managed, “Oh, Sophie…”

“You said you wanted to always remember that trip,” I reminded him, smiling down at the photo of the two of us, damp from a post-sex shower and snuggled up in bed together. That night, he’d tortured me with a personal massager and poured champagne into my mouth full of his cum. It had been one of our most intense encounters, made more so by the knowledge that he’d start chemotherapy when the trip was over. We hadn’t known then what the future would hold. A year later, we had come through so much, and we were finally,
finally
becoming that couple in the picture again.

When he looked up, his eyes were a little misty. “Come here, you brilliant woman.”

Still clutching the frame, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight; I’d expected him to like the present, but I hadn’t expected it to move him so much.

“I’m glad you like it,” I said with a surprised laugh that was cut off by my lack of breath as Neil squeezed the hell out of me.

With a soft chuckle of his own, he released me. “Like it? Sophie, I love it. That night was the perfect way to start my year. And this is the perfect way to end it. The middle was a bit dodgy, I’m afraid, but the book ends are lovely.”

With one finger against the glass in the frame, he traced the line of my jaw. I shivered as though he’d touched me.

“Okay,” I said brightly, or else I was going to start blubbering. “I get to open mine now.”

“It’s nowhere near as thoughtful,” he said ruefully. “I’m embarrassed now.”

Tearing the paper off a Christmas present just thrills my materialistic little heart. I grinned to myself at the half-circle of birds and flowers stamped on the plain box. It was Carine Gilson’s logo. Her lingerie was to die for. I couldn’t wait to see what Neil had gotten for me.

I parted the tissue paper inside, and my fingers brushed a pool of the softest azure silk I had ever felt. Breathless, I lifted the nightgown by its slender straps and a reverent “oh!” crossed my lips as the ankle-length gown unfurled, revealing the designer’s signature lace embellishments.

“There’s a robe in there, as well,” Neil said. “Do you like it?”

“Do I…” My mouth dropped open. I rubbed the silk on my face. It was as soft as I imagined Lily Cole’s skin to be.

“Put it on,” he urged. “This is almost as much a present for me as it is for you.”

“How thoughtful,” I said wryly as I stood and let my bathrobe slip from my shoulders. Neil’s gaze raked appreciatively over my naked form as I lifted the nightgown over my head. The silk was absolute heaven, like the softest, sweetest oil slick. It floated to my ankles, skimmed my every curve, hugged my body perfectly.

Neil’s big hands closed over my hips, and he pulled me forward to nuzzle his face against my belly.

“Hey!” I jumped back, out of his grasp. “Your stupid beard is gonna snag my fancy new nightie.”

“Stupid?” he gasped, rubbing his hand over his jaw. “I thought you’d grown to like it!”

I tried to avoid his reach when he started to grab me, but he’s a tall guy and mostly arms and legs. There was no eluding him, and he tackled me to the bed, both of us laughing breathlessly. He rubbed his rough chin into my neck, making me squeal and squirm as he pinned me beneath him. And just as quickly as the moment had turned playful, it became tender. He lifted his head, smiled his crooked half-smile down at me, and stroked my hair back from my face.

“This is weird,” I whispered, gazing up at him, searching his eyes for something I wasn’t really sure was missing. “This house, this country, the language… It’s a whole separate part of your life. It’s like I didn’t really know you.”

“You knew me,” he said, sleepy, confident. “You just didn’t know me in this context.”

I flipped to my belly, relishing the slide of the silk between the duvet and my body. He slowly walked his fingers up my spine as I spoke. “No, seriously. I’m fascinated by this change.”

A smile curved his mouth, then he rolled to his back and pulled me against his side, cradling my head on his shoulder. He combed through my hair with his fingers and sighed contentedly. “I suppose it’s because I’m home. I spent a large part of my childhood here—the happiest part, really. When I was in the ICU, I thought I would die. And I thought…I can’t die without seeing my brothers again. And I can’t die before I take Sophie to meet them.”

A lump rose in my throat. In addition to our couple’s’ therapy, Neil had been seeing someone about the PTSD caused by spending weeks in isolation in the ICU, sedated and on a ventilator. He had a difficult time talking about those days, and I was worried for him now. “We don’t have to talk about that, if you don’t want to.”

“Actually, I’m not that bothered; it’s getting easier. And this isn’t denial. I feel relieved to be telling you all this. I want you to share every part of my life with me. And I want to share every part of your life with you.”

“We do sha—” I began, and his hand gently covered my mouth.

“Sophie,” he said softly. “Do shut up. I’m trying to propose.”

Propose?
My head went light and my chest got heavy. My eyes flared hot and watery, and my skin tingled.
 

It was the single best anxiety attack I’d ever had.
 

He eased his arm from beneath me as he reached with his other hand for something in the nightstand drawer. I sat up, certain my face was bright red from the blood pounding into it.

He leaned back on the pillows, turning a small clam-shell jewelry box like a Rubick’s Cube in his nervous hands. “Sophie… I love you. I’ve tried to think of a thousand different ways to say this poetically, but I really feel that the unadorned truth is utterly necessary right now. And if you don’t want to marry me, if you think it’s too old-fashioned an institution or against your principles, then that’s fine. Nothing has changed. I just needed to tell you… I love you so much that I regret having memories that don’t include you. I look back on my life before I met you and I see where you should have been. Some of my greatest achievements, the things I am most proud of, seem empty because you weren’t there beside me. You are the other half of me. And I would be so incredibly grateful if you would marry me.”

I lunged forward, grasped his head between my hands and kissed him hard. And by hard, I mean, our teeth scraped together unpleasantly. But I didn’t care.
 

I gasped when our mouths parted. “I love you so much.”

He smiled against my lips, his arms wrapping around my back. “Do you want to see the ring?”

I nodded.

He rolled me smoothly beneath him, settling between my thighs as my nightgown rode up. Braced on his elbows, he opened the box and handed it to me. Inside, a huge, cushion-cut yellow diamond flared brilliantly, surrounded by a border of smaller white diamonds, set in flawless platinum. It was absolutely gorgeous, and absolutely me.