The Bride (The Boss 3)

My eyes slid closed, and I almost fell asleep right there in his lap, but something stirred in my brain. I sat up, and he slipped from my body with a little sigh of relief. I took his face in my hands. “I have an idea.”

“I fear I am finished for the night, darling,” he said wryly. “I am still recovering from a very traumatic transplant.”

I snorted. “No, you pervert. I think we should stay here a few more days.”

We were supposed to leave the evening of the second, and I knew Neil was already panicking about the thought of missing that first day he could go back to work. I saw the sharp spike of fear in his eyes, like I’d just told him I was considering canceling his birthday.

“Think about it,” I went on quickly. “We can leave Sunday night, you can be back on Monday. Do you really want your first day back in the office to be on a Friday? You’d be so frustrated.”

“That’s true,” he said cautiously. “But I feel like the longer I delay…”

“Your company will still be around when you get back. Porteras and Auto Watch will still be around. Let’s just spend a few extra days together.” I chewed my bottom lip as I watched him consider. “We just got engaged. Let’s enjoy the moment, before we have to go back to reality. Please. For me.”

He sighed, and I knew from the sound of it that I had won. “I can’t say no to a damned thing you truly want, do you know that?”

“I do.” I leaned my cheek against his neck. “And you know it’s the same for me.”

“Come on,” he said, patting my bottom. “Let’s go up to bed.”

Snuggled beneath the thick blankets, I toyed with the ring around my finger. I lifted my hand, and I could still see the stones glittering, even in the dark. It was a nice ring, but it paled in comparison to the other gift he’d given me tonight. Neil was worth a thousand times more than any diamond, no matter the cost.

His lips brushed my shoulder, and his arm tightened over my waist. “I can never sell this place now, you know. It’s the place where I proposed, there’s too much sentimental value.”

I smirked to myself and wriggled down closer to him. “So, I got three things I wanted for Christmas.”

He growled and buried his face in my neck.

* * * *

Neil and I decided not to announce our engagement right away. He wanted to wait for the perfect time to tell Emma, in person, when we were all together. My mother would be the first person to hear, but I could hold off calling her until we got back to New York.

Our additional three days in Reykjavik were relaxed, happy, and totally boring. We ignored our phones, slept in, snacked a little too much, and prepared for our upcoming return to reality.

I’d worried that it would be strange, going back to life in New York after spending so much time in England. Having a life at all again, after cancer had isolated us from the world for the past year. We’d slowly been coming back to normal since Neil had gotten out of the hospital in August. But returning to our Manhattan apartment after the holidays felt like an official stamp; the hellish past year was over, and now we could get on with our lives.

I called my mom on our first night back. While Neil was on a video conference with Valerie and a man from a German publishing company, I paced the huge living room, trailing my fingers along the back of the leather couch as I got the courage to place my call.

“How was Iceland?” she asked right away. “Was everybody nice to you?”

She’d asked me the same thing after my first day of kindergarten. I had to smile. “Everyone was great. Neil’s family is really nice. I’m actually calling because I have some news.”

“Oh?” The sudden high, tight pinch to my mom’s voice clued me in that she might know what was coming.

“Neil asked me to marry him.” This felt more awkward than I’d expected it to feel. “And I said yes.”

There was a split second of silence. Then she said, “Honey, that’s great.”

“Is it?” Suddenly, I wanted her approval about this more than anything.

“No! You’re way too young. What were you thinking?” she shrieked.

“I was thinking that my boyfriend, whom I love very much, proposed to me, because he loves me so much that he wants to make that love legally binding in public.” My back teeth gritted so hard, I swore I could hear the enamel shearing. “I guess I was thinking, ‘wow, we’re perfect for each other, and I’m incredibly happy.’”

“Let me guess, he made some grand romantic gesture on a boat or something? Some textbook move like putting the ring in a glass of champagne?” She made an impatient noise. “Sophie, you are twenty-five years old. That stuff might work on you now, but ten years down the road—”

“He proposed to me on New Year’s Eve. A little bit before midnight. We had just come from Christmas with his family, we were in our PJs and exchanging gifts with each other alone,” I interrupted. Like hell I’d let my own mother paint me as some stereotypical vapid child-woman who’d say yes to anything, so long as there was a yacht involved. “There was no grand gesture. He didn’t even get down on one knee, and the ring didn’t fit. I know you desperately want this to not be a thing, but it’s a thing. You can either deal with it, or—” Go fuck yourself, my brain finished for me, but I decided to end with a stuttered, “—n-not.”

“How can I deal with this? You’ve never introduced me to a boyfriend before, and suddenly, it’s ‘here’s this middle-aged man I’m dating, and by the way we’re getting married.’ You can’t just keep dropping this shit in my lap!”