Unsuitable

.” A circus clown who couldn’t believe the dumb things they did scored applause; that the audience loved them despite their propensity to be a proud idiot and fall down.

“Okay.” Reece was still behind the action, still reeling from the enormity of this. He shook his head. “Where does that leave us?”

“Where do you want to be?”

He reached for her. Moved so one of his long legs was behind her and she was encircled by his strong arms. She had never felt safer.

“In your heart, in your life, in your bed, Audrey. No matter what.”

His hands roamed all over her, checking, re-familiarising, bringing new energy, new vigour to her limbs.

She was strong and capable without him, but she’d trade alone for loved and be super-charged. His lips were in her hair and he murmured nonsense words as his hands came to rest over her belly. He made her giddy. He made her want.

“I’m a lousy cook. I got another promotion, and I’ll need to travel. I don’t know how to do twins.”

He laughed. His whole body shook. She didn’t think he was going to quit. And they weren’t quite done here. “Stop it so I can ask you something.”

He got himself under control. He brought his forehead close to hers. “It had better be to marry you.”

The husk in his voice made her lose her breath. She grazed her nose against his; this surprising, gorgeous, delightful man, who she loved so deeply. She wondered what she might accomplish with him by her side.

“Or what?”

He laughed. “What the stuff, I can do sin.”

“You do know I am hopelessly domestically challenged.”

“You do know I love you past anything you can and can’t do.”

She choked on a sob and honoured his mother, a single parent who hadn’t had the choices, the advantages she’d had. “I’m probably too old for you.”

“Do they make lingerie for pregnant women?”

She laughed. “I’m too tired to think about that.”

“Then ask me to marry you and sleep in my arms till you’re not tired anymore.”

She smiled at him, smiling back. She would never tire of smiling at him, seeing the love in his eyes. An extraordinary man who’d made her old life unsuitable and her new life a miracle.

“Reece with a c McGovern, will you marry me?”

He kissed her. Too soft, too brief. Too shockingly beautiful. Breaking away to tease. “What, no bended knee?”

She tried to move to give him what he wanted. She’d go to her knees for him because of everything he meant to her; love and respect and family and work, and lives of dependence and independence, and all the tangled states in between.

He stopped her shifting, tightened his grip around her. “Yes, yes, yes, Audrey. I’ll be your carer.” He kissed her, too quick again. “Your lover, your husband, your wife, father to your children, supporter of your career, maker of your meals, doer of your laundry. I want all of it, the noise, the tears, the frustrations, the laughter, the ambition, the crazy joy. But if we can afford it, please can we keep Cameron, because twins in a two career family, we’re going to need the help.”

“I hope you’re good with boys.”

He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand and then went still. “We’re having boys?”

“It’s going to get wild, isn’t it?”

He blinked and all his sorrow was washed away. “It’ll be hell. And I’ll love you all the way through it.”

She kissed him with no finesse, with bumped noses and scraped teeth, with hunger that smoothed out to a banquet of his lips and tongue, his hands in her hair, hers on his face.

And their hearts beating unsuitably fast, but arguably, appropriately, thrillingly, together.