“Carrie,” he says as he gets on one knee. “Please marry me. I can’t live without you.”
“Yes!” I shout as I leap on top of him. We fall to the ground in the perfect position—me straddling him with our lips only an inch apart. The only problem is our rambunctious pup who’s misreading the mood. It’s not playtime anymore.
“Chester, scram,” Eli says as he jumps on top of us.
I pull the ring out of the box and slip it on my finger. It feels perfect.
“Chester!” I say, getting his attention. “Go get it!”
I toss the ring box into the other room and he runs after it. “Chewing on that will keep him busy for a while.”
“Brains and beauty. My fiancée is a double threat.”
“A triple threat,” I tell him as my hair tickles his face.
“What’s the third threat?”
I sit up and pull off my shirt with one swift movement.
“Lay right there and I’ll show you.”
He grins as I take off the rest of my clothes to make this engagement official.EpilogueEliTen Years Later…“I could have taken you to Hawaii, Paris, Tokyo, Fiji, anywhere but here,” I say as I look at my beautiful wife.
“I wanted to come back here for our tenth anniversary,” Carrie says with a grin.
“The Amalfi Coast, Mykonos, London.”
“Stop,” she says with a laugh as she grabs my arm and pulls me to our golf cart. “This is going to be fun.”
“It’s going to be something,” I joke, even though any activity with Carrie is fun. She’s my favorite person in the whole world.
She’s given me four wonderful children and ten amazing years. Somehow, I love her more now than I did when we got married. Our love is like a fine wine, growing better with age.
It’s a cloudy Thursday morning with rain on the forecast, so we practically have the whole course to ourselves. The kids are hanging out with Carrie’s amazing parents who are visiting at our place, which means we don’t have anywhere to be today except by each other’s sides.
“You go first,” I tell her as we wait around the tee.
“All right,” she says as she leans over and places her ball. God, those shorts… Her ass kills me every time. She’s the sexiest woman in the world.
I snap a quick pic of her bending over in those sexy white shorts and she turns around with a glare when she hears the click. “Last guy who did that to me found their phone in the bottom of a pond,” she says with a grin. “Hey! I wonder if it’s still there.”
“I’m not going to check,” I say with a laugh. “I waded through enough dirty ponds for you.”
She gives me those sad puppy dog eyes and my resolve breaks.
“I would wade through an endless amount of ponds for you,” I admit.
She laughs as she gently slaps my chest. “Stay on the grass, Callaway. I don’t want you sloshing around and making a mess in our cart.”
“Enough chit chat. Grip it and rip it.”
She grins as she lines up and takes her shot. My girl smacks the ball and it lands on the fairway a decent distance away.
“Not bad,” I say with a nod. “I’m impressed.”
She’s all cocky as she struts back, pretending the golf tee is a cigarette. “I guess I’m a natural.”
“Wait until you see this.”
I strut past her and set up my ball. I’m keeping my head down like it said to do in the YouTube tutorial and I swing as hard as I can.
Carrie bursts out laughing as my club slams into the ground a foot away from my ball. The vibrations rumble up to the tee and it makes the ball fall over.
“What a shot!” she hollers as she runs over to me. “What is that? Two centimeters? Must be a new record!”
“Cayman Islands, Barcelona, Anguilla,” I go on.
“Stop! We’re playing the full round,” she says, still laughing.
Even though we’re terrible, we have a blast on the course. I throw my ball more times than I hit it, but hey, we’re not counting strokes. We’re here for fun, we’re here for each other, and we’re here to relive the first time we met ten wonderful years ago.
By the time we get to the seventeenth hole, the sky opens up and rain comes pouring down.
“Does this remind you of something?” Carrie asks with a mischievous grin as the rain drenches us on the green.
“I’m getting hard just thinking about it.”
“That’s a stroke I’d like to see,” she says, biting her bottom lip as she gives me a sensual look.
The rain is pouring down on us, soaking everything. Anyone who was out here is probably fleeing to the clubhouse or to their cars. We’re completely alone out here now.