Page 15 of Savage Claim

His smile didn’t slip an inch. If anything, he looked even more annoyingly smug. “Well, I’m grateful that you made the right choice.”

I shook the bouquet at him. “I will smack you with this.”

His laughter bounced off the walls around us. “Come on,” he said and offered me his arm. I thought about walking around it, but I didn’t really know where we were going, so I slipped my arm into the crook of his elbow.

Lorenzo keyed us into the penthouse, and I had to bite back a gasp. White fairy lights had been strung up around the penthouse, and every flat surface seemed to be filled with more vases of the same flowers that I was holding.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“A date that will not be ruined.”

I glanced up at him. “You’re sure of that?”

He hummed in reply, and we put my bouquet in the only empty vase available. I had never been given flowers before. I had half-convinced myself that it was because I didn’t like them but they were so pretty. I reached out and touched one velvet-soft petal and smiled.

Lorenzo reached out and took my hand. “Are you ready for dinner,dolcezza?” he asked. I nodded and followed him out to the balcony where a table was beautifully set and waiting for us.

“When did you find the time to do this?”

He looked positively smug. “When I want something, I get it, remember?”

“How could I forget?” I asked with a littleharrumphand sat when he pulled out my chair.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to the crown of my head. “Fucking brat,” he murmured fondly into my hair.

Lorenzo sat across from me, and from somewhere within the suite, a waiter appeared with a tray bearing our dinner. Once everything was placed on the table, the person seemed to disappear into thin air.

I looked out at the view and back into the suite and, finally, at Lorenzo. “I don’t know what to say to any of this.” Everything was hitting me like whiplash; so much had happened in the last seventy-two hours, and I wasn’t sure that I was processing any of it.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “Just share a meal with me.”

So, that was what we did. We ate and made small talk as best we could, and it all felt so wonderfully…normal. For the first time, it felt like Lorenzo was just the man that I fell in love with without all of the other things that had gotten in the way.

“I like when you smile like that at me,” Lorenzo said when the conversation had settled into a lull.

I blinked. “What?”

“You were smiling at me just now,” he said. “You looked beautiful.”

Heat rushed to my face. I knew that he wanted me, and he’d said that he loved me, but I didn’t think I would ever get used to anyone telling me that I was beautiful, let alone someone as gorgeous as him.

“I like that blush even more.”

I covered my face with my hands. “Stop.”

He reached across the table and pulled them away. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”

“I don’t think that will ever happen.” It didn’t matter how Lorenzo saw me. He was an anomaly. The rest of the world wasn’t like him.

But he wouldn’t hear of it. “Then, I’ll keep saying it.”

A part of me wanted to dive under the table and hide; another part of me wanted to argue, to say something sarcastic to distract him. “How long do you plan to do that?” I asked in all sincerity.

“How about I tell you for the rest of our lives?” he asked. Lorenzo pushed out of his chair and dropped to one knee.

My heart began to pound in my ears. “What are you doing?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a ring box. “I know I asked you this before, but it wasn’t right how I did it.” He opened the box to reveal a beautiful ring: a blue diamond haloed with smaller white diamonds set in a platinum band. “Will you marry me, Isabella?”

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