Page 244 of Tangled with the Tight End

When she pulls back, she’s smiling. “Winona O’Connell.”

“I love the sound of that.”

“Should we elope? Tomorrow?”

I laugh, half-tempted to take her up on it.

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. And … no.” She smiles, smoothing her hand down my cheek. “I want to marry you and live with you—to start our life together. But I want a wedding too. All of it. The fluff and silliness of picking out flowers and dresses and taking dance lessons, going to cake tasting, the whole thing. We’re only doing this once.”

“You’ve got that right,” I say. “Only once. Only with you.”

We lie on the beach together, her draped across my chest, me running my hands in lazy strokes down her hair and back. I could stay here forever, but after a while, that feeling of too much sun starts to kick in, so we pack up, grab a smoothie at the stand near the safari bus, and take the drive and ferry back to St. Thomas.

“I’m going to be your wife,” Winona says again as we’re pulling into the driveway of the villa.

I just chuckle. “That isn’t a surprise to you, is it?”

“Your proposal was.”

“It surprised me too,” I admit.

She reaches out when I kill the engine and cups my face. “Look at you being all spontaneous. Declan O’Connell, I hardly recognize you.”

“You’ve bewitched me body and soul,” I say, wagging my brows and quoting the movie she forced me to watch a few weeks ago.

“Quoting Darcy?” She smiles and kisses me, leaning over the console, then rising to her knees to better reach me. Her elbow connects with the horn and the sound blasts through the courtyard in front of the house, bringing our friends running out onto the driveway.

“Oh my gosh!” Winona shouts, covering her hands with her face.

“Let’s go share the news,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “We may as well, now that I’ve sounded the horn.”

I chuckle. Life will be many things in the years ahead. None of it will be boring.

Winona jumps out of her side of the car, rushing over to Cass and Daisy and shouting, “Declan proposed! I said yes!”

Daisy grasps her hand and looks down, with good reason, for a ring.

“Oh, yeah. Well …” Winona smiles over at me. “We don’t have a ring.”

“I do. It’s just …” I stride past our friends into the villa. “Give me a minute.”

I head to my room, pulling the box out of the top drawer in my bedroom. Then I rejoin our friends out on the driveway, dropping to my knee in front of all of them.

“Winona, will you marry me?”

“Yes, again,” she says. “Yes to every time you ask.”

I slip the ring on her finger and stand, pulling her to me for a hug. She holds her hand out for her friends to look at the ring. The guys clap me on the back, congratulating me.

Later that evening, after dinner, Winona and I are snuggled together on the hammock while our friends play chicken in the pool.

She holds her hand out, admiring the way the ring reflects the light.

“I was going to get something bigger, but I knew you’d want something you could wear when you’re working with patients,” I tell her.