It meant denying her own desires, though, something she still struggled with.
“Absolute silence,” he observed. “I take that as a yes.”
“It’s not anything I would change about you.”
“Maybe what your mom said hit a little close to home?”
“Maybe. Brian—”
“Sometimes I think, you know, I was your first guy, so I wonder if you wish you’d…explored a little more.”
After everything they’d just shared? Was he serious right now? “I hate that something like that would even cross your mind. Have I done anything to make you doubt me?”
“No. You’re an angel. All my life I’ve never given two fucks what anyone thought of me. Then you come along, and it’s all I think about: if I’ve done something to make you realize you’ve made a mistake yet. If anything I’ve said or done has pissed you off or made you think ‘fuck that clown.’”
“I’d be lying if I said you’ve never pissed me off.” She chuckled. Oh, yeah, they’d had their share of disagreements, and he did have a bit of a temper. But he’d never gotten out of line, and the makeup sex alone was worth the fight. “But it’s okay. Because I love you just as you are. You aren’t perfect, but neither am I. All that matters is that we’re perfect for each other. If I’m where you are, Brian, I don’t need anything else.” I want it, she amended silently. But I don’t need it.
His expression smoothed out in relief. She stroked his cheek, troubled, wondering what was making him question so much lately. It wasn’t just her mother’s words tonight. Now that she thought about it, this had been going on for a while.
Maybe he was questioning his feelings for her? Oh, hell no, she wouldn’t even start to go there. It was bad enough when she stared at her left hand and daydreamed a ring being on her finger. She couldn’t start wondering if he was considering leaving her or she’d drive herself truly insane.
“Are you happy?” she asked on impulse.
“Couldn’t be happier.”
“Then we’re all good. I’m sorry about earlier tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it.” His lips curled in the wicked little smile she loved. “You know, I don’t think I’m quite done with you yet.”
Jesus Christ. Maybe her parents should have a party every weekend.
Chapter Four
Christmas morning dawned, but in this part of Texas it would probably never be white. The morning light streamed through the bedroom window, hitting Candace right between the eyes. Brian’s chest was warm under her cheek, and she planted a kiss on it before raising her head to look at the clock—a little after nine—and then his peacefully sleeping face. Ordinarily she’d let him snooze, but there were more pressing matters this morning. “Baby?”
His head turned toward her on the pillow, but his eyes didn’t open. “Hmm?”
“Can I open my present now?”
Both of his arms came around her and he tugged her back down, snuggling her close. “Impatient.”
“That’s easy for you to say, I let you open yours last night. Please?” It had been a week since her parents’ Christmas party, and he hadn’t dropped one hint about what her present might be. She was about to explode.
“In a minute!”
She giggled at his mock-angry tone as he pulled her even closer, so that she could hardly breathe. And how could she complain? Best way to spend Christmas morning ever. But she hadn’t been this excited about something since she was a kid. Even so, she managed to doze off again wrapped in his cozy arms. When she woke again, he lay facing her, smiling as he played gently with her hair.
Glancing at her watch, she saw another hour had slipped by. “Now?”
He gave an adorable scoff. “Good morning and merry Christmas to you too.”
“I’m sorry.” She scooted forward and gave him a kiss. “I’m just excited.”
“I’ll show you excited.” Brian grabbed her hand and attempted to pull it under the covers while she squealed and fought him. Because if they got started, it would be well after noon before they stopped. Laughing, he gave in and sat up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. “All right, all right. I’m up. In more ways than one, thank you very fuckin’ much.”
“Oh, you’re always up,” she teased, springing up after him. “Where is it?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her while he adjusted himself in his pajama pants, and she gave him an exasperated look. “Not your dick. I know where that is.”
“Can’t help it. You in those silky pink PJs. Does it to me every time.”
“I could wear ratty flannel footie jammies and it would do it to you.”
“True.” He gave a cursory glance around. “Let’s see. Where did I hide it again? Hmm.”
“Oh, stop. I’ve waited long enough!”
“Okay, but go in the kitchen or something. I don’t want to give up my hiding place.”
Candace couldn’t scramble out of the room fast enough, but stopped to give him a kiss along the way. In the living room, she turned on the Christmas tree lights and then headed to the kitchen to make coffee and start breakfast. Her heart pounded the entire time, and though she tried not to get her hopes up, to tell herself it didn’t matter what her present was, she couldn’t help herself. She’d be the happiest girl in the entire world if she had his ring on her finger.
Checking her cell as she waited for the coffee to brew, she saw Macy and Samantha had both texted her merry Christmas messages and asked what Brian had given her. I don’t know yet, still waiting on him, she told them both.
Ghost says he knows what it is!, Macy sent back. The evil bitch. Why’d she ask, then? The central heat kicked on, and Candace almost went to turn it off. She was burning up. By the time Brian took his dear, sweet time strolling into the kitchen with something hidden behind his back, she struggled not to combust.
“I hope you like it,” he said, looking somber.
Now that the moment was here, panic filled her chest. Oh, God! What if this was it? But it probably wasn’t. But what if it was? If so, it was a lifetime commitment. She wanted it, she wanted it more than anything, but to know everything you wanted in life was within your grasp… oh, she needed a moment.
“Coffee?” she asked, hearing the high-pitched edge in her own voice as she turned and reached for the cups she’d already pulled down from the cabinet.
Brian caught her hand, halting her. “Later.” From behind his back, he brought out a flat package wrapped in shiny gold paper. Her breath caught. It wasn’t a little box, but…she would love whatever he gave her. Smiling up at him, she took it. Given its shape and weight, it felt like a picture frame.
“Can I open it now?”
He was watching her closely. “Sure.”
As she gently began peeling the tape away from the end, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Jesus, woman. You damn sure didn’t grow up in the Ross household. Christmas morning was no-holds-barred. Usually involved a foot race and a fist fight. Tear into it.”
Eschewing years of ingrained propriety, she dug her fingernails into the paper and ripped. It felt good. She kept ripping until she held in her hands a framed sketch—the close-up of her face he’d done the other night. “Oh!” she breathed, immediately struck nearly speechless by his exquisite work. “It’s beautiful, Brian.”
He grinned. “I wanted to frame the other one, but I thought, you know…”
“Not exactly something I want hanging in the living room,” she agreed with a laugh, going up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. “I love it.” Which was absolutely true. He never failed to remind her how lucky she was to have someone so gorgeous, funny, cool and awesomely talented in her life. Sure, she’d have loved if this were The Big Day, but it would come.
He still looked at her in that odd, watchful way, though. She felt his gaze even when she looked back down at the drawing and studied it, marveling at the time and effort he’d obviously put in. She traced her fingers along the glass, following the delicate lines
. She’d never be able to create something so beautiful, so perfect…
Wait a second.
Her finger paused on one little detail. In the drawing, her cheek rested against her left hand. And there was a ring…
She didn’t wear a ring. Not on that finger. She didn’t even have a…
“Brian?” Candace lifted her gaze to his, pointing at what appeared to be a diamond ring on her finger in the drawing. “What is that?”
“That? Huh. Where did that come from?”
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, I remember now. That…” He turned and walked from the room. She stood frozen to the spot, and just as it occurred to her that maybe she should follow him, he returned holding a little box wrapped in the same shiny gold paper. “…is this.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She looked up at his beloved face and opened her mouth, but no sound would come. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
With a tender smile, Brian took her portrait from her shaking hands and laid it aside on the nearby counter. “Do you want to open it?”
Candace nodded. That much she could do. He handed it to her, and this time he didn’t have to instruct her on how to appropriately open a Christmas gift. She tore into that thing like her entire future happiness lay inside…which, of course, it did. What she revealed was a typical small velvet jewelry box, and inside…
“Oh, my God, Brian,” she breathed, the tears spilling freely. “Oh my God.”
It was like nothing she’d ever seen but it was everything she wanted. It was black. Black gold. A large princess cut black diamond. But around the solitaire, it was frosted with tiny white ones, and the contrast was breathtaking. It was so him… and since she’d met him, and he’d saved her from everything she thought she knew or had been told about herself, so her. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
She threw her arms around his neck, still unable to take her eyes off her ring in its box. Brian squeezed her so tight her feet came off the floor. “Thank you,” she said over and over. Thanking him, thanking God for him, she didn’t know. Both.
“Let’s not forget the most important part,” he said, gently setting her back on her feet and releasing her but keeping hold of one hand. With his other, he took the ring box from her. As she stared at him uncomprehendingly, he went down on one knee, the swift movement forcing an exclamation from her lips.
“I’d kind of hoped to do this somewhere more romantic than our kitchen,” he said though her gasping and crying. “But it doesn’t matter where we are. I love you, Candace.”
“I… love… you,” she managed, a sob punctuating each word. Too bad that for the rest of his life he would remember her being a blubbering fool at this moment. She scrubbed furiously at one cheek and then the other with her free hand.
“You look gorgeous,” he assured her, as if he knew what she was thinking. “In fact, this is how I love you best, I think. PJs, hair up, no makeup…the way only I get to see you.”
“Bawling my eyes out?”
“I don’t mind that as long as they’re happy tears.”
Oh, they were. The happiest tears she’d ever shed.
He squeezed her hand. “We’ve been through a lot together since the first time we met. I think if we can get through all of that, we can get through anything.”
“I think so too.”
“And there’s no one else I’d rather have at my side through whatever life throws at us. You’ve been so much more to me than my girlfriend. You’ve been closer to me than my best friend. You’ve been a partner. I mean, only someone who loves me unconditionally would want to give up everything to work at Dermamania and put up with my bullshit all day every day. Don’t think for one second that I don’t realize that. I just had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that you do care that much about me. I found it hard to believe.”
“Oh, Brian, don’t you know—?”
“Shh. Let me say this. I’ve wanted so much to marry you for the past fucking year—hell, longer— that it’s sometimes taken everything within me not to just blurt it out. But I wanted to make it special. I wanted it to be right, not just for me but for you. I hope I haven’t misjudged the timing, but I don’t think I have.”
He hadn’t. Oh, God, no, he hadn’t.
“So if you want to be by my side every day, then I want you here forever. I want you to be my partner not just at the shop but in life. I want you to have my name. I want—I need for you to vow in front of me and God and everyone that you’ll be only mine for the rest of your life. I’m already used to you being here, but I can’t let myself depend on it like I want to. Because I keep thinking, ‘One day she could be gone, and then where the fuck would I be?’ Right back in the gutter again.”
She bit her lip, mesmerized by his eyes and his words. He drew a shaking breath, glancing down, and let go of her hand long enough to pull the ring from its velvet box. Holding it with the tips of his fingers, he back gazed up at her.
“So, Candace Marie Andrews, will you do all that crazy shit I just said and marry me?”
“Brian Lorenzo Ross, yes!” She launched herself down at him, knowing he would catch her. Knowing he would catch her for the rest of their lives.
“What the hell! You had to ruin it by using my middle name,” he laughed as she rained kisses on his face.
“Well, you used mine, so there. And I love your middle name.” Then he began to try to capture her kisses with his lips, and her mind scrambled again. At some point the ring ended up on her finger, a perfect fit, which was good. Because they ended up on the kitchen floor, rolling around madly making out between laughter and her lingering crying fit. Eventually they moved to the couch, where they sat and kissed and talked and talked, staring at the Christmas tree. It had been a long time since Candace had felt so carefree. Since she’d felt she could breathe. She hadn’t realized what a burden her bare ring finger had been until it finally had some weight on it, and she couldn’t stop looking at her ring. It was just…perfect. Too perfect for words.
“You know my mother,” he warned eventually. “She’ll demand grandchildren. And I think she has the ability to make them manifest by sheer force of will.”
“Well, that’s okay, right?” she asked shyly, feeling a blush rise in her cheeks.
He grinned at her. “It’s okay with me. I’d rather not throw caution to the wind just yet or anything, but if it happens…yeah.” He trailed his lips down her jaw while he slid his hand under her PJ shirt to stroke her bare belly with the back of his fingers. “I think you’d make a terrific mom. I’d love to make you one.”
She shivered. “Keep this up, and I’ll beg you to make me one now.” Truth was, she couldn’t wait. She would love knowing a part of him—of both of them—was growing inside her. “But I’m afraid my mom would work black magic on us if she thought it would stop it from happening.”
“Don’t worry. Your mom’s evil powers are no match for mine’s baby-making vibes.”
“You’re probably right.”
“When do you want to tell them?”
“As soon as possible. I want to sing it from the rooftops. I want to call Sam and Macy too—although Macy said she knew what you were giving me. Ghost told her.”
“Are you serious? Damn him. I told him not to, just because I figured she might torment you. The pitfalls of our best friends being together, I guess.”
“Oh, it’s okay. If he were going to propose to her, I would want to know beforehand. He’s not, is he?”
Brian shook his head. “Not that I know of. But give him time.”
The thought of Ghost and Macy tying the knot made her want to laugh out loud with joy. If most people thought Candace and Brian were an unlikely couple, then those two were damn near impossible to imagine together. But beautiful. No one who saw how much they loved each other could deny that.
Candace caught Brian’s face betwee
n her hands. “At the risk of sounding extraordinarily sappy, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. You’ve given me the best Christmas ever.”
“I’m glad, babe. You don’t know what I’ve gone through trying not to let my cover get blown. I could tell your mom got to you at the party, so I debated proposing that night, but I had to try to see it through. I already had this planned before I knew she’d said anything, though. I want you to know that.”
That’s right, he had. He’d mentioned it in the bathroom before her mother nearly caught them. “So this is why you’ve been a little weird lately? Were you nervous?”
“I was going apeshit. Ask Ghost.”
“I can imagine what he’s listened to,” she laughed. “You did great. You totally had me going with the drawing.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “Seriously? You thought I’d do something that lame? Of course, in some people’s opinions, the whole thing was pretty lame.”
“Ghost’s, I assume?”
“Exactly.”
She laughed. “Well, I didn’t think it was lame, even if it had only been the drawing and not a ring. It’s beautiful.”
“I can do a drawing for you anytime. It’s not something I’d do for your Christmas present.”
“There are lots and lots of things you can do for me anytime, Brian Ross, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them every time you do them.”
“Oh yeah?” He leaned forward and nuzzled her neck. “Then why don’t I carry you into the bedroom and do some of those things? Before we go sing from the rooftops.”
“Yes, please and thank you.”
He pulled her from the couch and up into his arms. Kissing her all the way, he carried her as if she were feather-light to their bed. Her husband-to-be. Her fiancé. She could hardly believe it, though she’d known all along, in her heart, it would happen.
His hands roamed her body, sliding against her silky pajama top. Teasing her nipples to aching little peaks. She gasped and arched against him. He took the opportunity to slide her pants down a bit, so that the first little red-and-black heart tattoo he’d given her was visible just above her panties.