Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(97)

She clapped her hands to her mouth, dimly aware of other passengers in other gondolas watching intently, elbowing one another and pointing.

“I love you, Natalie, so much that I…” Julian’s breath hitched and his words were tremulous. “I can’t express it, not in a hundred books or a thousand poems.” He opened the black velvet box to reveal an antique diamond ring that glittered in the setting sun. “But I can offer you this symbol of infinity—my infinite, boundless love for you—and ask you to marry me. Will you?”

“Yes,” she said in a tiny voice, and then half-laughed, half-sobbed at the audience straining to hear. “Yes. Yes, of course! Oh, my beautiful love, yes.”

The people in the gondolas burst into cheers and applause, as did those watching from a bridge above them. The musicians and singers started up a lively song, vibrant and celebratory.

Natalie heard none of it, saw none of it. Only him. She sat beside him and let him slip the ring over her finger. His kiss tasted of his salt tears, and her own, and then she pulled away and held his face in her hands.

“You already asked me, didn’t you?” Natalie said, a beautiful, hazy memory tugging at the corners of her mind. “I remember…”

“Yes,” Julian said. “I already asked.”

“And I said yes,” she said. “I said yes to you, even in my dreams.”



The End