Need You for Mine (Heroes of St. Helena)(85)

“Asking you to be mine. Completely and forever mine,” he said, and she felt all that hope start to blossom, so full her chest expanded. “And I hope you’re still willing to let me be yours. To let me be your friend, your lover, your everything. I need you, sunshine, and if you choose me, give me a second chance, I promise to spend the rest of my life making your world as extraordinary as you are.”

He took her hand and placed a kiss right in the center of her palm. “I love you, Harper.”

She wasn’t sure if the sidewalk was tilting or if she was shaking—either way her world was spinning at his words. His sweet words that made her breath catch and her heart sing.

“I chose you weeks ago, remember?” she said and saw the moment it registered. “And I would choose you again and again, because I love you too.”

A small hint of a smile started in his eyes, then spread. By the time it hit his mouth she was in his arms and he was kissing her. Kissing her as if he were saying, Mine.

“Do you think this was for show or did they really just get engaged?” a pocket-sized woman in bifocals and a sheath dress said from the sidelines. “I didn’t see a ring.”

Harper looked over and found Lulu Rous with her entire team. They’d watched the whole moment and looked as swept up as Harper.

“Oh, it’s real all right,” Adam said. “As for the ring, you might want to add a little pocket inside the boxers for occasions like this. Because if your customer is a real man, then love happens.”

“Are you taking notes?” Lulu asked Chantel, who was scribbling frantically, and Harper knew by the excitement in the woman’s eyes that she liked what she saw. “Real men love. Brilliant.”

“When you meet a woman like Harper, it becomes the truth.” Adam wiggled his pinky finger, and that was when Harper saw her grandmother’s ring. It had seen her grandparents through a lifetime of love and belonging and family. That Adam knew she’d want to wear Clovis’s ring proved how clearly he saw her.

“Marry me, Harper,” he said. “Marry me and be mine. Because I want to wake up to catch a glimpse of you every morning for the rest of my life.”

“Only if you promise to be mine.”

Adam’s mouth covered hers in a kiss that tasted like the beginning of forever, and she felt herself fall, felt the rush take over. Only this time she knew she wasn’t falling alone. Just like she knew that wherever they ended up, they’d be there to catch each other.





Eight Months Later . . .

How about this? Is this any better?”

Harper opened her eyes as wide as they could go and gave her brightest smile.

Adam took his time to study her thoroughly, his gaze taking in every inch of her dress, her bare legs—and everything in between. “Perfect.”

“I was talking about my eyes.” She batted them. “Do they look misty?”

Adam grinned. “Like you’re about to burst into tears. Maybe we should just tell everyone the truth today.”

“What? No. Today is about Frankie and Nate.” It was a day to celebrate their growing family with friends and loved ones. Which was why Harper and Adam had made the long trek from Colorado Springs a week early. “Do you know how hard it is to carry around twins? The woman deserves a baby shower twice this size.”

Harper glanced across the vineyard, through the acres of grapevines, sagging with spring blossoms, to the gathering of friends and family at the far side, and she felt her heart pick up. Round tables adorned with yellow roses and violets lined the patio, while cream-and-blue bootie decorations hung from every oak tree and fence post on the Baudouin winery. It was like a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting, only no one was playing a part. This was real life.

Harper’s real life.

“It’s not too late to go back to the house and hide out.” He pressed his mouth to her ear, and Harper closed her eyes. “Maybe in bed.”

“We just left bed.” Moments before they’d arrived, in fact. And when she was with Adam there was no such thing as hiding. He loved and cherished every part of her equally. “I still have bed-rumpled hair and your handprints on my dress.”

“That’s what newlyweds do.” His hands gripped her hips, and he walked her backward under an oak tree. “We might as well take advantage of it.”

“Nobody knows we’re married.” Harper’s eyes fluttered closed as his mouth worked magic. “Plus, we’re already late.”

“You don’t look like you care all that much that we’re late.”

“I look like this all the time,” she whispered. “It’s the look I get when I remember that this is real.” When she remembered that two weeks ago Adam had officially finished his IC command and was coming back to St. Helena with a lieutenant promotion under his belt, and that she’d opened a branding and marketing company that had already signed five huge accounts—including Lulu Allure.

Best of all, it was the look she gave when she remembered that they’d officially started their lives together.

“It’s real, sunshine. This was real from the moment I kissed you.” Her breath caught at the look of fierce adoration and love in his eyes as her husband of three days leaned down and kissed her in a way that had her heart melting and her toes curling. “And it gets more real every second I’m with you. Every second you’re mine.” Adam wiggled a brow. “Plus, I read in that magazine of yours that there is no better place to practice having a baby than at a baby shower.”