Whiskey Beach Part 125

"I'm also fond of celebrations. You have blueprints up here." She moved to the table he'd uncovered, studied them. "Eli! You've started on plans for your office. Oh, this is great. It's going to be fabulous for you. You're adding an outside entrance to the terrace? It's a great idea. You can go in and out, from right in there, sit out and contemplate. You didn't tell me!"

She spun around.

"They're just preliminary. I wanted some of it down, and to find out what could be done before I showed you."

"Well, preliminary or not, it's a good reason to pop a cork."

"That's not why."

"You have more."

"Yeah, it's a lot more. See, the architect left this s.p.a.ce here unnamed. This area we're standing in, the bath over there. I asked him to just draw it up, basically, and leave it blank."

"More plans." She turned a circle, then another. "There's so much you could do with it."

"No, not really, but you could."

"I could?"

"You could have your studio."

"My- Oh, Eli, that's so good of you, so sweet, but-"

"Hear me out. Your clients or students-whatever-would have the entrance here, off the terrace. It's three floors up, but h.e.l.l, if they're coming to exercise, the climb's part of it. If you're doing the senior yoga deal or whatever, there's the elevator. And there's this area here. You could have your ma.s.sage therapy room. I'm working here, north wing, private, so none of this interferes with me. I asked Gran what she thought, and she thought it was great, so you've got the go-ahead there."

"You've been doing a lot of thinking."

"I have, and it's all been about you. About us. About Bluff House. About, well, somedays. What do you think?"

"Eli." Overwhelmed, she wandered the s.p.a.ce, could see it, just see it. "You're handing me one of my dreams, but-"

"You could reciprocate, and give me mine."

He dug in his pocket, pulled out a ring.

"It's not the one I gave Lindsay. I didn't want to give you that ring, so I asked Gran if I could have another. It's old, and one she especially loves, and wanted it to go to you, someone she especially loves. I could have bought you one, but I wanted you to have something that's been handed down. Symbolic. You're big on symbols."

"Oh G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d." She could only stare at the perfect square-cut emerald.

"I didn't want to give you a diamond. Too conventional. And this, anyway, this reminded me of you. Your eyes."

"Eli." She rubbed the heel of her hand between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if to keep her heart beating. "I just ... I haven't gone here. I haven't thought of this."

"So think of it now."

"I thought we'd talk about me moving in, officially living together. Taking that next step."

"We can do that. If that's all I can get for now, we can do that. I know it's fast, and I know we've got big mistakes behind us. But they're behind us. I want to marry you, Abra. I want to start a real life with you, a family with you, to share a home with you."

He swore he could all but feel the ring burn in his hand like a flame, like life. "I look at you, and I see all the somedays, all the possibilities of them. I don't want to wait to start, but I will. I'll wait, but you have to know you not only helped me come back, to really see the life I wanted and could have, but you're the life I want."

Her heart didn't stop beating, but it filled. She stared at him as the windows behind him washed pink and gold with the setting sun. And she thought, There's love. There it is. Take the gift.

"I love you, Eli. I trust my own heart, I learned to do that. I think love is the most powerful and most important thing in the universe, and you have mine. I want yours. We can make the life we both want. I believe that. We can make that life together."

"But you want to wait."

"h.e.l.l no." She laughed, all but flew to him. "Oh G.o.d! Here you are. The love of my life."

With her arms tight around him, she found his mouth with hers, sank and sank and sank into the first kiss of the new promise.

He swayed with her, holding on. "It would've killed me to wait."

"Some happy you just have to grab." She held out her hand. "Make it official." When he slid the ring on her finger, she put her arms around him again, held her left hand up to the sunset light. "It's beautiful and warm."

"Like you."

"I love that it's old, that it's been pa.s.sed down through your family. I love that I'm your family. When did you ask Hester for this?"

"When we took her flowers, after going in to see Eden Suskind. I couldn't ask you, didn't want to ask you, until that was over. It's new now, for both of us. Take the s.p.a.ce, Abra, take me, let's just take it all."

"All is exactly what we'll take." She pressed her lips to his, soft, long, loving. "And then we'll make more."

The ring on her hand caught the last rays of the sun, flashed, as it had for Landon women for generations.

Then it gleamed in the quieter light, as it once did in an iron chest washed up from the wrecked Calypso with its canny captain, onto the sh.o.r.es of Whiskey Beach.

BY NORA ROBERTS

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Sacred Sins

Brazen Virtue

Sweet Revenge

Public Secrets

Genuine Lies

Carnal Innocence

Divine Evil

Honest Illusions