Page 84 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

“I’ll take it,” she said.

The reception was in a tent behind the garden, string lights over long tables, and a cake Lucy had made herself, the lemon elderflower they’d chosen at the tasting, the one Tessa had requested by name.

Tessa cried when she saw it. Gabriel cried when he saw Tessa cry. Ronan took notes.

Knox found Lucy at the dessert table, standing beside the cake she’d spent hours building.

“It’s acceptable,” he said.

She hit him with a napkin. “I will end you.”

“It’s transcendent. I’m trying to be better at compliments.”

“Try harder.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist. She let him.

Ronan appeared beside them, holding a champagne glass and a copy of his emotional intelligence book, several pages tabbed.

“I’ve been analyzing the success metrics of this relationship,” he said. “The data suggests a ninety-four percent probability of long-term viability.”

“Only ninety-four?” Lucy asked.

“The remaining six percent accounts for unforeseen variables. Croissant quality. Real estate fluctuations. The possibility that Knox will revert to his previous emotional avoidance patterns.”

“I’m standing right here,” Knox said.

“I’m aware. The analysis accounts for your presence.” Ronan opened the book to a tabbed page. “Devney says I should tell you that I’m happy for you. Those are her words. I’m providing them verbatim.”

“Tell Devney we’re happy, too.”

Ronan nodded. He walked back to his wife, who was dancing with the baby in her arms, slow and swaying, the two of them moving like they had all the time in the world.

Gabriel appeared at the dessert table, stealing a lemon bar off the display.

“Lucy, these are still incredible.”

“I know.”

“Knox, you look less like a man calculating depreciation tonight.”

“It’s the lack of a tie.”

“No, it’s the lack of fear.” Gabriel grinned. “Engagement looks good on you.”

“You’re early, Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s grin froze. He looked at Knox, then at the small motion of Knox’s hand toward his jacket, and Lucy watched it land on him, and for the first time in years Gabriel shut his mouth and stepped back to give them the floor.

Knox set down his glass. He turned to Lucy, and in front of the cake she’d built with her own hands and a tent full of the people they loved, he got down on one knee.

“Knox.” Her voice came out thin.

“I ran the numbers.” His hands weren’t steady, and he let her see them. “Every projection, every variable I could name and a few I couldn’t. They resolve the same way every time.” He took a small box from his jacket, because he was Knox and he planned everything. “I want the bad croissants and the rolling pin you keep threatening me with. I want Sunday dinners where your father takes me apart at chess. I want to be standing in your kitchen when you’re ninety and impossible.” He opened the box. Inside was a ring she might have chosen herself, low and plain and close to the finger, a band that would never catch on a piping bag, the kind of ring a man picked when he’d thought about her hands. “Marry me, Lucy. I’m done watching this part from across the street.”

The tent went quiet in pieces, table by table, until there was nothing left but the string lights overhead and her own heart beating too hard.

She looked at him down on one knee, the most controlled man she’d ever met, kneeling on the grass with nothing left to hide behind. She thought about how easy it would have been to hate him forever, and how she’d gone and done the harder thing instead. She’d told everyone she didn’t cry at weddings. She was crying.