She looked down. Her boobs were about to make an appearance. She tucked them back in place and tightened the belt. “Okay, I’m ready. Now what?”
He cleared his throat again. And then he started talking in that voice he used whenever he recited poetry.
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;”
She recognized the Shakespeare sonnet immediately. No truer words were ever written about the power of true love. And as those words floated up on the hot summer air, a knot swelled in her throat, and her eyes got all misty, and tears started flowing like water. The book and the poem and the pebble against her window. Who said romance was dead in the twenty-first century?
“Don’t cry, please,” he said when he’d finished reciting the poem. “I know you can never forgive me for what I accused you of, but I’m hoping against hope that you will forgive me. Because I don’t want to abandon a child, Courtney. And the truth is, I don’t want to abandon you either.
“We may have started out trying to one-up each other, but that changed somewhere along the line. The truth is, you’ve done nothing to hurt me. In fact, I owe you for just about everything. There are people who regard me as some kind of hero because I gave my research to Linda Petersen, who is probably a much bigger hero than I am. And I would never have taken even that small step without you.
“And most of the tenants of Dogwood Estates seem to think I was the one who went to Jeff and convinced him to save those apartments. You did that too.
“Everything I’ve become over the last few weeks is all because of you. And your kindness to the tenants should have told me right from the start that you weren’t like Allison.
“So I know you can’t forgive me, but I’m hoping. On bended knee.” He got down on his knees and looked up at her out of those big, dark, sad puppy-dog eyes.
“Oh, for God’s sake, get up, you silly man. And get out of the heat.”
He grinned. “Okay. I’m coming up.”
She met him at the door. “So will you forgive me?” he asked.
She nodded, tears streaming down her face. “Will you forgive me?”
He cocked his head. “I’m sorry about that too.”
She shook her head. “No. That was my fault. All my fault. How on earth can I expect you to trust me when I didn’t trust you?”
He cupped her face and swiped her tears away with his thumbs. “We both got played, Courtney. A long time ago. And I guess it’s not easy to come back from that. It’s not always easy to trust when you’ve been hurt before.”
She nodded. “I only cared because I love you. I never would have called you on it otherwise. I truly believed that you were a player, Matt, but you’re not. You don’t fit the boxes I’ve labeled. You never have.”
“So, are we going to do this? The last time a woman told me she was pregnant I immediately got down on one knee.”
“What?” She blinked. “Really?”
He cocked his head. “I thought you knew about Allison.”
“I know she played you, but—”
He took a step forward into the apartment and closed the door behind him. “One day I’ll tell you the whole story. I only just learned all the details this morning. But suffice it to say that I would have been trapped by that woman were it not for Aunt Pam’s quick thinking. Who, by the way, has a surprising amount of respect for you. Something about the way you stood up to Daniel’s ex-fiancé when she wanted to turn her wedding into a three-ring circus.”
“Really? Pam likes me? To tell you the truth, she intimidates the crap out of me.”
He nodded. “Well, that too. Pam also thinks we should name the baby George after my grandfather, which is not a suggestion so much as it’s a command.”
“Let’s hope it’s a girl, then.”
He pulled her into a kiss so sweet and so hot it buckled her knees. He pulled back a little. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
She’d waited all her life for someone to ask that question. But for some reason she hesitated in her answer.
He nodded. “I’m not worried about my campaign, and I’m not asking because of the baby. And I’m not even worried about your eventual answer. I want you to know the truth about how I feel. I’m tired of waiting for my real life to start. And the truth is, in the last few weeks, I found myself. That would never have happened without you. And it’s so clear to me now. My real life is right here, right this minute, with you. So if you want to wait, that—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m tired of waiting too. Let’s elope.”
He laughed. “No way that’s happening. But we’ll let Amy and Willow plan the shotgun wedding, okay?”
And then, just like Mr. Right, he pulled her close for another long, erotic kiss before he hoisted her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom, where he made slow, beautiful, soulful love to her.
Epilogue
Courtney had planned hundreds of weddings for other people, but when it came to hers, she let Amy and Willow handle every single detail. Her friends worked overtime, and the wedding took a mere four weeks to plan.
On the day before Labor Day, she stood in the small room off the vestibule at the Laurel Chapel staring at herself in the mirror.
“I remember your mother in that dress,” Sid said as he gave her shoulders a squeeze.
“I have a picture
