Page 11 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
I laughed, wrapped my arms around her from behind, pulled her back into me, kissed the side of her pretty neck, and said, “Nah. I’ll take you for a walk in the rain, and then I’ll take you to lunch. How’s that?”
She snuggled back against me and said, “I like that plan.”
Outside, the fresh wind still blew, bringing a fine rain with it, and Hope pulled a soft white hat over her hair and stuffed her hands in her pockets. But when we got onto the beach and she felt the full force of it, she spread her arms wide, laughed into the wind, and ran to the edge of the shore in her polka-dot gumboots. The gulls dove and screamed into the wind, and Hope whirled, twirled, danced into the storm, into the day, overcome by happiness. She was as overwhelmed as I was, maybe, by everything this day had brought, but so much more able to express it.
I went to join her. I couldn’t have done anything else. I was taking her hand, spinning her around, then pulling her into my arms and dancing along the firm sand at the water’s edge as the waves hissed and roared and broke around our boots. The wind and the water offered up a rhythm impossible to resist, and I danced to their music with Hope, turning her, twirling her, spinning her around. I danced her backwards and forwards along the shore, and finally, I dropped her back into a low dip, her back arching like a bow, everything in her body trusting me not to drop her.
She came up laughing, her eyes sparkling. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I can sing as well,” I told her. “Maori talents.” Talents I never used anymore, but something about being home, and being with Hope, seemed to bring them out in me. “But right now, I need you to come with me.”
She didn’t ask why this time. She just did it. I led her over to the spot where the sand turned to grass, into the shelter of a gigantic, gnarled tree whose mighty branches twined and twisted close to the ground.
“I have something I need to tell you,” I said. I touched one of the huge, swinging beards, the clumps of aerial roots that provided a dense layer of shelter that shielded us from the gusting wind and occasional spatters of rain. “This is a pohutukawa. In this case—a grandfather. An important tree for an important occasion.”
“Oh?” Hope asked. “What kind of occasion? Or do you mean today? Today did feel important.” She put her hand up to the side of my face in that way she had that got under all my defenses and said, “Thank you for that. Thank you for talking, and for listening, and for compromising.” As if she knew how hard all of those had been for me.
I had to smile. “Sweetheart. Do you really not realize that there’s part of this I haven’t done yet? Turns out it was just as well, because I guess you weren’t ready. But now…I think you are. Least I hope so.”
I finally recognized the emotion I was feeling. I was nervous. I didn’tgetnervous, but I was anyway. I wanted to give Hope whatever her dream was, but I didn’t know what that looked like. She might wish afterwards that I’d done it differently, in a more romantic setting. I should wait until tonight, when I’d take her to a flash restaurant. Or hire a helicopter, maybe. Make it more special.
I shook my head, chasing the doubts away. “Harden up,” I muttered, and Hope looked more confused than ever.
“What?” she said. “Did I…”
I hauled in a breath, reached into the pocket of my own anorak, and did it. The thing Karen had said. I knelt down and sank a knee straight into the rough, wet grass of my homeland.
She looked down at me. “But you said…I thought…”
“I told you I wanted to do it on the beach.” My heart was galloping away with me, my breath coming short, and I hauled myself back under control as best I could. “I got a bit ahead of myself last night, but I’m doing it properly now.” I opened the red leather box with its gold scrolling,Cartierspelled out across the top, and showed her what was inside.
I took her left hand in mine, noticed in some detached corner of my brain that her hand wasn’t steady, and maybe mine wasn’t, either, and said it. “Hope, I love you. Will you marry me?”
“It’s…” Her eyes were shining. “It’s too much.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not enough. But it’s a start.”
“Hemi,” she said helplessly. “No. It’s so gorgeous.”
The breath of a laugh left me. “You’re meant to say ‘Yes,’ you know. I’m not getting any younger down here.”
She laughed, but there were a couple tears on her cheeks, too. Hope hated to cry, but she was crying anyway. She reached out with both hands and tugged me to my feet. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll say it again. And I love you, too.”
If I’d been nervous before? I was floating now. I took the ring carefully from its velvet nest, shoved the box back into my anorak pocket, and picked up her left hand. The surf wasn’t pounding any harder than my heart as I slid the diamond-encrusted platinum band onto her slim finger.
I had the first part of what I’d told her I wanted. My ring was on her finger, and even the gloom of the day couldn’t dim the three carats of flash from the round stone in the center, or the delicate curlicues of platinum around the setting that said “Hope” in a way my eye, and my heart, had recognized the moment I’d walked into the shop weeks earlier.
The ring was bright, it was beautiful, and it was absolutely and completely feminine. In other words, it was perfect.
“It’s yours,” I told her, still holding her hand in mine. “And it always will be.”
After that, we walked some more, both of us quiet now, our arms around each other, until even Hope had had enough rain. And then we went back up to the apartment, changed into dry clothes, and went to lunch in a cafe.
You could say it wasn’t glamorous, but it was right all the same.
“So,” I said when I was tucking into a beef and mushroom pie and a bottle of Waikato Draught and realizing once again how much New Zealand had to teach the world about food, “I’m thinking this means we’re good to get married this week.”
“Very restrained of you.” Hope smiled at me from over her pumpkin soup. She was all but glowing. She took my breath away. “Why do I imagine that the first way that sentence was formed went something like, “Now that that’s settled, we’re getting married this week”?
