My mouth opened. What could I say? I licked my lips.
He reached out and took each of my hands in his own. “Thank you for letting me get all this out. I don’t even deserve you, not after I let you down the way I did. Not after I hurt you. But I’m going to be an undeserving asshole and ask you anyway.… Will you give us another chance?”
I opened my mouth and closed it, stunned. Our gazes locked and held. I couldn’t breathe and it sure as heck looked like he was holding his breath, too. Maybe we’d both die from lack of oxygen out here and sometime in the spring, some unsuspecting jogger would happen upon us, frozen and then thawed in this exact position. And they’d launch an investigation to find out why we’d died.
And the cause would be sheer stupidity. On both our parts.
I blinked and bit my lip. “There would have to be rules…” I began.
His brow dipped in earnest and he nodded slowly.
“You know, because I love rules so much…” I continued. “And I can make much better rules than you can.”
He blinked, concern clearing. He was on to me.
“Before you tell me what they are, I agree to all of them.”
“Is that wise?” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, then tugged my hand toward him. He was slipping a ring on my finger. “Your great-grandmother’s ring! I gasped in surprise.
“Nope. That’s your ring. To be resized at our earliest convenience. I can’t ask you to marry me because we’re already married. And asking you to not divorce me seems backward.”
I pulled my hand back and looked at my hand. “Now tell me bout your job, because I have a sneaking suspicion that you were at work to give the presentation and you left to catch a plane.”
He nodded. “Accurate.”
I raised my brows at him expecting him to elaborate. He didn’t. “Well? What happened? Did you lose the job?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “I don’t know. Probably.”
“You don’t seem to care all that much.”
His eyes fixed on mine, and he looked at me, really looked at me like he was looking at me for the very first time. Like he was laying eyes on an awe-inspiring work of art. His eyes traced the contours of my face, my hairline, my neck, my ears. Like he was soaking it all in.
Something about that, the way he looked at me, stole my words, blocked my throat. And there was this pressure inside my chest, like suddenly my heart hurt with every beat.
“It was a matter of perspective, Kat. I wanted that job, yeah. I really wanted it. But fuck if I didn’t give a shit about whether or not I had it once you were gone. It was like….” He shook his head. “Like nothing good was worth having if you weren’t there to share it with.”
Well, talk about melt-inducing. My shoulders slumped and my spine softened and I melted right into him, bending forward and catching my hands around his neck to pull him in to kiss me.
We kissed, and we kissed, my mouth opening to his and our lips fusing together, speaking the language of love that had been so difficult for us to express with our words.
I held his head to mine and his hands clamped on my waist, scooting me close to him. Soon, we were pressed up against each other and breathless. Our lips parted and there were tears on my cheeks. He expelled a breath of surprise and reached up to dry them. “Please don’t cry anymore, my beautiful Katya. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never have a reason to cry again.”
“Even though you’re going to be stuck with me hunting bugs in the Den for the rest of our lives?”
“Cranberry, if it’s with you, it’s going to be ten times more fun than anything else.”
I smoothed my thumb over his cheek and smiled. “You’ve absolutely ruined the knees in your suit pants by now.”
He smiled. “Worth it.” He picked up my left hand, the one that bore the ring he’d given me and kissed it. I noticed, then that he wore his ring, still. He’d never taken it off.
“So if you just walked out of the board meeting and went to the airport, how did you have my ring with you?”
He smiled. “I had to run by the house to get my passport for the trip. I grabbed the ring at