He loved that she sounded so breathless. So filled with anticipation.
‘I really do,’ he confirmed.
‘That’s good, because I’d almost started to think this morning was a hallucination. Too perfect to be true.’
‘You’re carrying my baby. Which only means that you belong with me. For ever.’
‘For ever,’ she echoed softly, almost a question.
And finally, Jake stepped forward and took her face in his hands, an infinitely tender gesture.
Then he lowered his head and kissed her. Slow, deep, intense. And she wrapped her arms around him, held him close and gave herself up to every exquisite second of it.
A second chance she had feared she would never get.
And then, when the kiss finally ended and he set her slightly back from him, Jake moved to the side, gesturing to the small copse of trees in the near distance. Rubber figs, flooded gums, blue gums. And suddenly, in amongst them, she spotted a shadowed area and her eyes narrowed instinctively.
A sleep system, with a basher and hammock, swayed lightly in the breeze. And little lights besides.
‘What is this?’ she breathed.
‘Go and find out,’ suggested Jake, so sure, so confident, that it sent a current of electricity pulsing through her veins.
Flávia had no idea how her shaking legs carried her over to the area. She only cared that she got there. And when she did, she realised the lights were tiny, twinkly, solar-powered stars.
‘Not that it can ever compare to the canopy of stars in the jungle.’
‘When the trees aren’t so dense they cover it.’ She laughed as best she could when she could barely breathe.
She was nervous, yet she didn’t know why. Carefully, she slid to sit on the hammock. More for something to do than anything else.
‘Pretty good,’ she managed. ‘Though there’s only room for one.’
‘I’m fine here,’ he told her, his voice sounding even more strange.
And then he dropped on one knee and she realised he’d pulled a box out in front of her, and her heart stopped. Or raced. She couldn’t quite tell.
She’d spent the day thinking he was discussing a patient case, wondering if he’d even remembered she was here. Instead, it seemed he’d been racing around getting changed, buying a ring and setting up this scenario.
As though nothing else had been on his mind but her. It was touching.
‘Flávia Maura, you are the most complex, complicated woman I’ve ever known. And yet, you’re also the most genuine and straightforward. You’ve been stealing your way inside a heart which I didn’t even know I had, ever since the first moment. You make me feel things I’ve never before felt in my life, and now I know what it’s like, I can’t ever imagine going back.’
‘Me, either,’ she whispered.
Her head was spinning and twisting so fast it might as well have been on a coaster ride. Everything he was saying was almost too much. Too dreamlike. Too perfect.
‘I don’t see my life without you in it.’ And she loved that it sounded more like a vow. ‘And I know for a fact that Brady feels the same. You saved me, Flávia. You saved both of us and I love you. Marry me.’
‘I love you, too,’ she choked out. ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.’
Then, as Jake slid the most stunningly simple ring onto her finger, she realised she had never, ever felt so complete—so right—before. This time, when he drew her into his arms and kissed her, she knew it would never end.
This wasn’t an end. This was just a beginning. And she couldn’t wait to start the rest of her life with the man who had saved her just as much as he told her she had saved him.
* * *
They were married a month later in a quiet, closed ceremony in the botanical gardens where they had first got together. Eduardo gave her away, whilst Brady shared the responsibility of best man with an astonished Oz.