Page 71 of Hooked

I frowned.

Perhaps my frown was their cue, because in that moment, five children came bursting out of the vegetable garden, swords in hand.

“You’re in danger again, fair maiden,” Johnny called.

I laughed. “I have a terrible habit of being in danger. What’s to be done, soldiers?”

“We have to take you to the one place you’ll be safe,” Ansel said as he grabbed my hand and towed me toward the flower garden while the others formed a perimeter around me.

“And where is that?”

“The Never Kingdom,” Tyson declared.

It seemed Falstone had instructed them well. “We must hurry then,” I said, lifting my skirts so that I could dash into the flower garden.

As expected, Falstone waited for me there. He was a statue again, but instead of a proud, noble stance, he had one hand pressed to his heart and the other reaching forward, a look of desperate entreaty on his face.

“What is this?” I asked the children. “Surely a statue cannot protect me.”

Gretchen pulled on my arm until I crouched and tilted my ear for her to whisper in. “He only unfreezes when you kiss him.” She burst into a fit of giggles, her fingers pressed over her mouth and her shoulders hunched.

I scrunched my nose at her cuteness and chuckled as I turned to statue-Falstone. “Perhaps you are the one in need of rescuing, not me.” I went up on my toes and gave him a chaste peck on the mouth.

He unfroze immediately. “Fair maiden,” he said, sweeping into a bow. “I think perhaps you are ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to join in a lifelong game.”

I took in a small gasp of air. “What kind of game?” I asked, breathless.

His eyes delved into mine, reading them, and as he did his expression softened. “The greatest, most grand adventure you could imagine.” He took a deep breath, looking nervous and hopeful. “A lifetime of putting up with me—as your husband.”

A smile bloomed across my face and I stepped closer to him, taking the edges of his coat in my hands before tilting my face up to look at him. “Yes.”

A slow grin stole across his face as he slipped a hand around my waist. “You said yes?”

“I said yes,” I reaffirmed before taking his head in my hands and bringing his mouth down to mine.

He banded his arms around me, practically lifting me off the ground again.

The children whooped and hollered, dancing around us in a circle as we ignored them, happily getting lost in each other.

After several long moments, he pulled back, letting me rest my head against his chest. “I thought you said you’d never marry.”

I grinned. “That’s before I met you.” I looked up at him, probably with stars in my eyes. “And I thought you said you’d never grow up.”

He looked at the children around us. “Who said anything about growing up?” he asked with a grin before returning his lips to my own. “I have every intention of growing young together.”

My own smile lit my face as I imagined the adventures that this man would take me on. If anyone could keep me young, it was Porter Falstone.

The End