Page 86 of Vows of Blood
If I didn’t know better, I’d say I made him blush. He smiles his crooked smile and looks away for a moment. “My dearest Isabella, I’ve turned you into a deviant.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I ask him.
“That’s a good question.” He pulls the rag he keeps to wipe his brow out of the back pocket of his jeans and hands it to me. “Put that in the sink for me, please?”
I take it from him and turn around. I run a little water over it and squeeze it out. “You know, I was just thinking about heading out to the market today?—”
I turn around and he’s down on one knee, a ring in his hand. I stare at him in puzzlement.
“Never got to do it like this,” he says. “We missed out on so much, Isabella. I want to do this right, make it official again.”
I look at the ring. It’sbeautiful. The diamond in the center is huge. With my being a stay at home mom and his earning amodest living at the factory in town, there’s no way he could afford this.
“I had a little cash left over from before,” he says, reading my mind. “Used it to get the ring when we landed a year ago.” He takes a deep breath. Oh, my God, I think he’s nervous. “I was going to propose to you then, but?—”
I wrap my arms around him, kissing him warmly. He holds me in his arms and whispers, “Is this a yes?”
“Yes,” I respond immediately. “I’ll marry you a million times over, Alexei.”
He stands and takes my hand, sliding the ring on my finger. “You’re the only woman I want. The only woman I’m ever going to want.”
I kiss him again and he lifts me off my feet in joy. Oh, how I love this man. I’ll marry him again and again and in every lifetime. We’ve been through hell together and come out in heaven, hand in hand.
