Page 115 of Fallen Hearts

“Mason. That’s not possible.”

“Sure it is. Get out of bed. Walk down the hall. And come into my bedroom.”

My heart thudded inside my chest. He couldn’t possibly be serious? If Mason was here, he’d have told me he was coming. Wouldn’t he?

“Come on, sweet Pia. I’m waiting for you.”

With that, he was gone. Mason had literally hung up on me.

I’m waiting for you.

It wasn’t possible.

Even so, I swung my legs out of bed, stopped at the mirror briefly, looking at my reflection, and then numbly made my way down the hall. Feeling foolish, I stood in front of his door, looking around.

Nothing.

And then I pulled it open. Gasped. And nearly fainted.

There were white flower petals and candles everywhere. But the reason all breath was sucked from me was Mason himself.

Down on one knee, waiting for me.

Before I could register that fact fully, he began talking.

“I was scared, Pia. And still am. But I realized that being afraid of losing you was a ridiculous fear since I was already doing just that.”

If he only knew how true his words really were, what I’d almost done tonight.

Mason was here. On one knee. It was taking some time for it to all sink in.

His hand rose up between us.

“It was my mother’s. Nothing grand, by any means. Will you marry me, Pia? I love you and want to run Heritage Hill with you. Make the heritage our own.”

His mother’s ring.

Will you marry me?

“Your job?” was all I managed.

“Retired cop doesn’t have as ominous a ring to it as I expected.”

He was retiring from law enforcement. Staying here.

Asking me to marry him!

“Mason,” I said, as if he were sitting across from me at the kitchen island and not kneeling below me, hand raised with his mother’s ring, asking me to marry him. “I never told you I loved you.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

He knew it all along. As if I’d hidden it well.

“I do,” I said, still in shock. “I do love you, Mason. So much that I was going to tell you tonight, I couldn’t do it. There’s no way I could be in a casual relationship with you.”

“Can you be in a long-term committed one? As in, the rest of our lives?”

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