“You knew me. You cared. You were my family. I could never have that with Stephen. He’d never get that side of me and I didn’t want to share it. I truly had no idea that this,” she circled her arm about their cosy love nest, “would happen. I’d never thought of you this way. Sorry.” She smiled as he slapped his hand over his heart in mock agony. “But you were already here.” She tapped her own heart. “I just didn’t know it yet.”
Dev yanked her into a long, slow kiss.
“So, if I had sent the damn flowers, would you have felt differently?” he teased a little while later.
“Nah, I still had the ‘not to marry him list’ as my back-up.”
“What else was on it?” he asked, curious now.
“He only ever used matching crockery.”
“Outrageous,” he agreed solemnly.
“Never, ever drank straight from a beer bottle.”
“Unforgivable.”
She paused. “And, most importantly, he never made my stomach hurt.”
“You want me to make your stomach hurt?” Dev asked, suddenly serious, turning to look into her eyes.
“Oh yes, my dearest Dev, I do. Always. It hurts when you’re worried, but it means I care, and it aches in a delicious way when you’re touching me, and I never want that to stop.”
Dev thought about all the times his own gut had seized and clenched and caused him untold agony in both worry and care over her. How it twisted and knotted with pure lust when he sometimes merely caught a glimpse of her.
“Gotcha. Love means having stomach pain. Simple. Should be written on a mug. Why did I not know this?” he laughed with her.
“It’s love, Devlin Fitzgerald. I may have been an actress for most of my adult life and said the words many times for money, for my job, but . . .” She took his face in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “I’ve never said them for real.” Frankie blinked a few times to halt the tears gathering. “I love you, Devlin, with all that I am.”
Hunger finally got them out of the bed, along with a definite need for coffee. He handed her a cup, which she inhaled gratefully. Her pixie crop looked astonishingly lovely on her and was already causing ripples in the style world. He forgot sometimes how famous she was. It was so irrelevant to him. To them. Her facial scar was already fading and if it never fully disappeared, well it was, as he’d said, a mark of her bravery.
“If we have a boy first, do we have to call him Donovan?” Dev asked.
Frankie spluttered out a mouthful of coffee and gasped. A smile spread across her face. No more daddy or parenting issues for her.
They talked about Francis and Mary Frances as if they were still living, breathing people, but not people they were choosing to spend time with. The important bit was no one was pretending that her birth father hadn’t been a very sick man who’d caused untold damage to so many innocent people. But she was learning to deal. And joking about their fantasy first-born son’s name was, he felt, a lovely way to do just that.
“Donovan Jones. Yeah, it could work.”
“Fitzgerald.”
“Jones-Fitzgerald,” they said together, laughing.
“But no,” she said, “I think our first-born should have a new name, not one connected to the past, if it’s all the same to you?”
She studied him in puzzlement as he gently took the mug from her hands. He reached behind the kitchen island counter and took a turquoise blue box from a drawer and handed it to her.
“I love you, Francesca Mary, hopefully soon-to-be Jones-Fitzgerald.”
“Oh, my!” said the world-famous actor and wordsmith. “How? When? I mean, oh goodness!”
He took the almost flat, pavé-set, sparkling three-circle diamond ring from its case and reached for her left hand. He’d chosen the design to reflect all the aspects of her life: practicality, her understated style and the connecting circles of her family – past, present and hopefully future. And as it nestled on her finger, looking so right, his heart filled.
“Marry me, Jones, and let’s spend our lives sharing and loving and adventuring together. Wherever it may lead us.” His gaze was steady, blue eyes intent on grey as he waited and waited for her answer.
She sniffed rather inelegantly, crinkling her suddenly teary eyes. “Shit, I need a Kleenex.”
Not quite the answer he’d been hoping for. But he was nothing if not obliging. He handed her one from his pocket and she blew noisily. To an outsider, this might seem the most unromantic of acceptances, if indeed that’s what it was. But to Devlin Fitzgerald, it was proof perfect of how she felt about him. She was so exactly herself with him, no fanfare, no razzle-dazzle diva behaviour. Just his practical, brave, wonderful Frankie.
And then she confirmed it.
“Yes, yes. Yes – loving, adventuring and sharing is exactly what I want to do with you. You’re my heart. My home. My family.” She kissed him. “My everything.”
The End
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