Now She's Back (Smoky Mountains, Tennessee 1)
Page 23
Quite a bold burglar. Emma ran into the bathroom and grabbed her hairspray as a weapon. She hurried back across the bedroom to the window, and finally managed to lift the sash, her hands shaking lest her attacker get there first.
She leaned into the screen. “I’m armed.” If you could call it that. “I’ll—” What? Spritz the intruder with firm hold? “Just get out of here.”
To her dismay, the screen fell out and fluttered to the ground. It must have hit the guy on the ladder because he uttered a few salty comments in a voice that usually made her heart dance between her ribs.
“Noah?”
“Ho ho,” he said. “What are you throwing at me?”
“It was a screen. Are you okay?” She set the hairspray on the floor as he came up. “Do you know how high this is?”
“Give me a hand before you tell me.”
He put his hand out and she took it, and they both struggled to get him over the window ledge. He tumbled into the room, sprawling at her feet, and the clothing that sifted through her hands was—velvet?
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her down for a swift kiss that expressed delightful intentions and distracted her from his velvet and his ladder.
Suddenly he pushed his hand into his pocket and started swearing again. “Turn on the lights, Emma. I’ve lost it.”
“Lost what?” She switched on the lamp and found him dressed in a Santa suit too short and far too ample for his lean body. He came up with a black velvet box, brandishing it.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Oh? You have doubts?”
Four years ago, he would have gotten angry. She would have been wary. They’d have argued at cross-purposes. Tonight, he lay on her floor, looking ridiculous, laughing at the idea of her doubts.
“Not a single one,” she said, so full of love she might expand and burst right through her brand-new roof. “Except about your outfit.”
“I borrowed it from Brett. My pillows are somewhere in the apple orchard by now. They blew out while I was negotiating the ladder.” He opened the box to a simple, glowing, emerald-cut ruby flanked by two diamonds. “You’ll take this? And me?”
She knelt beside him, holding out her trembling hand. “Whenever and wherever. It’s perfect, Noah, and so are you, for me.”
He grinned as he slid the ring onto her finger, his own none too steady. “The ruby was Mom’s. She wanted you to have it, if you want it, because a Gage must never take any act of love for granted.”
Emma covered his hand with hers, sheer happiness somehow clouding her sight.
“The diamonds are from your mom. She said they were Nan’s. Nan gave them to her when you were born, and your mother felt that adding them to this ring would be a gift from both of them.”
Emma collapsed into his arms.
He held her so close they breathed in tandem. “The ring is from me,” he said, “part of both our pasts, and a symbol of our future, because I love you with everything I am, and I am whole because you are the better part of me.”
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460344293
Now She’s Back
Copyright © 2014 by Anna Adams
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