He takes my hand in his, moving his thumb over my ring finger, sensation dancing, and teasing and making me want to let out a song of bursting joy.
“I love you, Tessa Jacobs. I want – I need – to spend the rest of my life with you. I need to be the father of your children. I need to own you, and I need you to own me for the rest of our lives. We belong together.”
“Oh, Trent,” I say, voice cracking.
“Will you marry me?” he says, reaching into his suit jacket and taking out a ring box.
He opens it with a fluid flick of this thumb, displaying a sizable diamond set within an elegant silver band, winking in the morning sunlight.
I stare as my chest feels like it’s going to burst.
I’ve imagined this moment so many times, Trent Tanner offering me a ring and a wonderful life to go along with it, but this is so much better than I ever could’ve imagined.
“Yes,” I whimper, and then make my voice loud and ecstatic and love-filled. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He slides the ring onto my finger and leaps to his feet, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close to him. I gasp as our lips meet in a conflagration of lust, love, belonging, and closeness.
“I love you so damn much,” I whimper when the kiss comes to an end and we hold our lips close together, our breath painting the other.
“I love you more,” he growls. “I’m so happy you said yes.”
“Is that why you were acting weird last night?” I tease lightly, my voice love-filled and shimmery with tears of pure euphoria.
“Yeah.”
He smiles brightly, warmly, lovingly.
He smiles like I never imagined Tanner Trent could.
But here he is, the man I’ve crushed on for most of my life, smiling at me in a way only I can make him.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you could tell,” he goes on. “You can read me as easily as I can read you.”
“That’s love, Trent,” I whisper.
“Forever, Snapshot,” he says, leaning in for another kiss.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Trent
I like the feeling of a tool in my hand, on my knees in our living room as I sand the floor. I don’t use an electric sander. I like to work my muscles, to feel my body straining with the effort of making our house even more beautiful.
The house was in good shape when I purchased it, but a man’s nothing if he can’t find ways to improve his woman’s world.
And, fuck, I can’t deny that I love the way it turns my woman on when she catches me like this. She’ll stand in the doorway and watch me, and I’ll let her pretend she’s being sneaky when we both know she’s not.
Then she’ll let out a shivering sigh and I know how badly she needs it, how achingly her body is screaming out to be touched and pleased and captivated.
I take a break from my work, letting a smile move across my face, bright and happy and still partly unbelievable.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I proposed and she said yes, and life just keeps getting better and better.
Angela has booked more acting work. Tessa’s mom, Caitlin, has gotten engaged to her boyfriend Liam. And my woman has set up a freelance photography service that’s keeping her busy in Youngtone and all throughout Maine.
Helping her to quit that diner job filled me with so much joy, a whole mass of it clashing through me like lightning.
Now she can spend all her time on her talent, the way it should’ve been all along.
She is my Snapshot, after all.
She should be, well, snapping some shots.
I run the sander along the floor again, sitting up to appraise my work. It’s been a long hard day, starting at six in the morning to get some business stuff sorted, and then heading down to the gym to coach the children’s kickboxing class, and then coming home to work on our house.
My woman has been out with a client all day, taking family photographs, and then heading to the neighboring town to sort some wedding stuff with her mom. I love how seriously my angel is taking the wedding preparations, approaching it with the same enthusiasm that ignited my desire for her during our first hike.
That hike…
I dream about it sometimes, wondering how it’s possible to fall in love in a single morning.
But it is. I’m proof of it.
“Trent.”
I look up to find my fiancé standing in the doorway.
My insides stir and my cock gives a jerk. I know I’ll never stop feeling this soul-crushing need for her no matter how long I live, no matter how many moments we share.
My eyes flit over her summer dress and her curvaceous body before settling on her face, on her pursed lips, and her narrowed eyes.
I rise to my feet.
“Tessa, what’s wrong?” I growl.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she says, walking slowly into the room, her lips shaking like she’s going to burst into tears any second.
I wrap my arms around her and pull her against my chest. She doesn’t care about the sweat coating me. She grips onto my side, digging her fingernails in as though she never wants to let go.
I rest my face against the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. It always brings me back to our first kiss, to the way she shivered and blossomed for me.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I say, even as an instinct rises inside of me, roaring at me that I know.
But I don’t dare let my imagination run wild on this.
What if I’m wrong?
“I was with Mom sorting wedding stuff,” she says, disentangling herself and pacing up and down the room.
She waves her hands as she talks, as though she’s got too much energy and doesn’t know what to do with it.
“And I
