The Prince's Devious Proposal - Holly Rayner Page 0,24

skin. “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“I think you must be feeling the way I’m feeling,” he said. “This can’t be coming from just me. It’s too powerful. Do you feel something for me?”

“I do,” she said. “I won’t deny that I’ve been caught up in the whirlwind. This has been an incredibly intense couple of weeks. And I’m so glad that I know you. I do want us to have a relationship. I want to see what this can become.”

“All I’m really asking is that you lean in,” Petr said. “Your mind is telling you to be cautious, to be reserved. To look before you leap.”

“Yes,” Naomi agreed. “I’m trying to be sensible.”

“But I’m asking you to listen to your heart instead of your head,” Petr said. “What is your heart saying?”

Naomi closed her eyes, trying to shut out the voices telling her that this was a crazy idea. Trying to listen to the pull of her emotions, strong and steady as the waves on the beach. Washing her toward Petr.

The logical choice was to wait. To take her time, to be sure of what she was doing. That was what her sister would counsel her to do, she knew, and what most of her friends would advise as well. If he really wanted to marry her, surely he could wait a year, get to know her a little better.

Then she thought about how it had felt to give in to his proposal that they fly off to Barcelona.

It had been wild. Careless. Foolhardy.

Amazing.

I’m willing to bet that your best times are still ahead of you, he had said.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe by saying yes to this proposal, she would be embarking on another great adventure, just as she had when she had accepted his gift of a plane ticket. And unlike the trip to Barcelona, a marriage was an adventure from which she would never have to come home. It would become her new reality.

Could she really do that? Could she agree to something that would change her life that drastically?

Well, she reminded herself, it’s not as if you are enjoying the life you have now all that much.

That was certainly true. At present, Naomi’s world consisted of work and home. Nothing more. She liked her home life well enough, but it would be fair to call it dull, to say that she was in a rut. She binge-watched TV programs every night while eating the same four meals over and over. She went running every morning along the same route, with no variety to speak of. She had stopped communicating with her friends, and it had been so long now that she knew that if she reached back out to them, things would be awkward.

Her family was gone. Sarah was all she had left, and Naomi’s sister had a family of her own. They emailed one another on occasion, to check in, but that relationship wasn’t enough to sustain anybody.

And then there was work, which had been pure hell lately.

Thinking about that life, about the things it contained and everything it was missing, made this decision feel a lot easier all of a sudden.

Naomi wouldn’t be giving anything up by saying yes to Petr. Not anything she was attached to, at any rate. She would be allowing herself to embrace something new and exciting, something that would shake up her world, and she wouldn’t be losing anything at all.

She looked at him. He was so excited. So eager. He wanted so badly for her to say yes.

And Naomi realized that that was what she wanted, too.

It still felt crazy. It was crazy. But did crazy have to mean bad? Hadn’t it been kind of crazy to board a bus and drive all over the country with the Desert Flowers? Hadn’t it been crazy to stand on a stage in front of thousands of people every night and sing about her feelings?

And those had been some of the best experiences of her life.

Maybe this would be the same.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked him. “You’re not going to regret it later, or want to take it back?”

“Definitely not,” he said. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel about someone the way I feel about you, Naomi. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to wait any longer.”

“When would we get married?” she asked, unable to believe that she was entertaining this.

“Are you saying yes?”

“I must be insane.”

“You’re saying yes.”

“I am,”