you to leave. I want you to stay. Here. With me. So I thought you should know that, you know? That I’m not asking, but I will ask. Unless you tell me right now that I’m doing way too much and you feel, you know, suffocated—”
“Samir,” she said gently. He clamped his mouth shut and thanked God she’d stopped him. He’d never babbled so much in his life. His palms might be sweating, actually. “You can’t ask me to marry you right now,” she murmured.
Even though he’d known that, logically, his heart still staggered a little bit. Not that he’d show it.
But then she said, “I’m still married. Legally, I mean. And even though it means less than nothing to me, I don’t want you to propose to a married woman.”
His heart stopped staggering and started pounding, louder than a stampede of stallions. “But, to be clear,” he said, “once you aren’t a married woman…”
Her eyes danced like starlight. “Once I’m not a married woman I will go with you to the nearest registry office and become a married woman all over again.”
Even as joy suffused him in a bright, brilliant cloud, even as he smiled so hard he hurt his own damn face, Samir shook his head. “A registry office? I don’t think so, love.”
“What’s wrong with a registry office?”
“Oh, nothing. But I want to see sunlight through stained glass windows hitting a white dress…”
“I am not marrying you in a white dress!” He wasn’t particularly offended by that, since she giggled as she said it, and slid an absent foot up and down his calf, too.
Still, he feigned outrage as he demanded, “Why the hell not?” Beneath his hand, he felt the baby kick, but that wasn’t especially unusual now; the poor kid was up at all hours of the day and night, demanding attention.
“For one thing,” she said wryly, “I’m definitely not a virgin.”
He shrugged. “But you gave your virginity to me. So the virginity will be present. I have it.”
“Oh my God,” she snorted. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“What? It’s true!”
“Did that even count? It lasted, like, five seconds.”
What could he say? Fifteen-year-olds weren’t noted for their longevity. So, lacking any proper defence, Samir decided to tickle her instead.
“Stop!” she shrieked. “I’ll wet myself!”
“I’ll stop if you agree to the dress.”
“I haven’t even agreed to the church!”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have reminded me.” She squirmed beneath him, gasping out her laughter, but he didn’t let up. “The dress and the church.”
“Samir! I’m serious! I’m going to pee!”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he said gravely.
“Fine! Fine, oh my God, stop!”
Even after he let up, she couldn’t stop laughing. He started to worry that she actually would wet herself—her bladder wasn’t particularly sturdy these days. But eventually, she calmed down.
“You’re awful,” she said, in a voice that suggested he was nothing of the sort.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m in love.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she kissed him so hard he almost forgot to breathe.
18
A week passed uneventfully, except for that one night when they built a campfire on the beach and Ruth managed to drop her phone into it. But apparently that wasn’t unusual behaviour for her, so ‘uneventful’ was definitely the word.
They were on the beach again, in the daylight this time, when the big event finally came. Ruth and Evan were actually building sandcastles, and taking it all quite seriously, too. Evan brought out a ruler at one point, which Samir hadn’t exactly expected from a blonde behemoth of a blacksmith, but he wasn’t really one to judge. Especially since, at that very moment, he’d been feeling Laura up quite shamelessly beneath the cover of the ocean.
When she said his name the first time, he thought she was telling him off.
“Sorry,” he grinned, because he wasn’t sorry at all.
Then she clutched his arm in an iron grip and half-shrieked “Samir!” and he realised she wasn’t complaining about his hand on her arse.
“What? What is it?”
She’d looked up at him with her teeth bared in an unsettling grimace. “I’m pretty sure I’m having contractions.”
“You—your—it—” For at least three seconds, his brain plunged into uselessness as if the power had been cut.
Then, just as suddenly, his mental capacities returned.
“How sure? How does it feel? For how long? How fast?”
“Quite sure,” she said. “It hurts. They started a couple of hours ago—”
“What?”
“And now they’re maybe… every ten minutes?”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain!” she said. “I thought I might be imagining