Three months ago, I’d made lemon blueberry ricotta pancakes. And today? It was peanut butter cup pancakes—with my homemade chocolate ganache syrup.
I snuck down the stairs and as I reached for my cast iron skillet from the top cabinet—a Christmas gift from Linda last year—there was a soft thud as something hit the edge of the pan. Something was inside.
That was strange.
I pulled it down and there in my fancy pan was a soft looking velvet box.
Not just any box…. A ring box.
Nerves fluttered through my body, riding the rushing wave of my blood like a log flume as I set the pan down and lifted the box in my hands, opening it slowly.
Huh. It was empty.
“Looking for this?” A deep voice said behind me.
When I swiveled around, I found Liam down on one knee. A diamond winked at me as a beam of the rising sun streamed into the kitchen window, catching an edge of the solitary engagement ring he held in his hands.
Tears. So many tears flooded my eyes that I could barely see him through the rippling sheen. He hadn’t even asked me yet, and I was already a mess.
Liam sniffled and tugged the hem of his t-shirt to dab at the corner of his eye. “Fuck, Chloe… don’t start that. I’ll never get through this.”
My sob morphed into a laugh and I covered my mouth, falling to my knees to kneel in front of him. I covered his hands with mine, the diamond pressing into my palm as I squeezed his hands.
“Then we’ll have to do it together.”
He smiled, shifting our hands so that he was gripping mine gently while we knelt nose to nose. “I had to ask myself a year ago when we first got together, How do you show someone that they’re your whole world? Because I had no idea. We’ve spent a year watching romantic comedies together and I studied them… or rather, I studied your reaction to them. Were you the kind of girl who wanted to be led into a dark room, only to discover I’d taken you to Tiffany’s in the middle of the night? Should I write a song and sing it to you on an airplane through the intercom? Should I hold a boombox over my head and play it outside of our bedroom window?”
Tears streamed down my face, but my lungs trembled as I held my breath to keep myself from sobbing. I pressed my palms to Liam’s damp cheeks, swiping his tears away.
“But every movie we watched, you had something to say about the proposals. They were too cheesy, too showy, or too generic.” His lips twitched into a smile. “No matter the scenario, you had strong feelings about proposals… usually negative.”
I laughed and wiped my sleeve beneath my eyes. “Because none of those proposals were you proposing to me.”
“So, what do you say?” Liam lifted the ring higher in the air, but I hardly looked at it. The ring itself didn’t matter at all.
“To what?” I arched my brow. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”
His adorably boyish grin spread wider as he leaned over and hit play on his phone. The song, In Your Eyes filled the kitchen.
“I’m just a boy, kneeling in front of a girl… asking her to marry him. Even though there’s no perfectly timed snow or fated random book with my number scribbled in it. There’s no surprise party planned with all our friends waiting beyond a curtain, or original song composed just for you. I realized there was no way to make this proposal anything like a movie. Because this isn’t our happily ever after… This is our happily just beginning.”
He paused, taking my hand and slid the ring halfway to my knuckle. “Chloe Dyker, will you marry me?”
Still kneeling, I leaned forward, sliding the ring all the way onto my finger and wrapped my arms around his neck, whispering, “As you wish.”
Thank you so much for reading Chloe and Liam’s steamy romantic comedy! If you loved Sugarlips, don’t miss the start of it all in Neil and Elaina’s second chance romance, Beefcakes!
Looking for more books in Maple Grove?
Meeting You (Prequel and FREE!)
Capturing You (Maple Grove #1)
Healing You (Maple Grove #2)
Sweet on You (Maple Grove #3)
Remembering You (Maple Grove #4)
Directing You (Maple Grove #4.5)
Or get the Maple Grove Box Set of Capturing You, Healing You, and Sweet on You for only $6.99… which basically gives you one book for FREE!
Maple Grove Novellas:
Holiday Intercepted
Bewitching You
Grateful for You
Sleighing You
About the Author
When Katana Collins was younger and stole her mother’s Harlequins to read beneath the covers with a flashlight, she wanted to read about the tough as nails heroine. The perfectly imperfect girl with quirks and attitude and sass. And the anti-heroes who were anything but “Prince Charming.” Forget the knight on a white horse … she wanted the bad boy on a motorcycle.
So, now, she writes those romance novels she craved to see on the shelves all those years ago—the sassy heroines. The badass heroes. She penned her first romance novel back in 2012 and now, a few years later, she is a Top 100 Amazon Best-Selling author with 15 published books, in a wide range of contemporary romance genres (Paranormal, New Adult, Small town, Erotic Suspense … you name it!).
She lives in Portland, Maine, with an ever-growing brood of rescue animals: a kind of mean cat, a doofy lab, a very mellow chihuahua, and a very not mellow cairn terrier puppy ... oh yeah, there's a husband somewhere in that mix, too. She can usually be found hunched over her laptop in a cafe, guzzling gallons of coffee, and wearing fabulous (albeit sometimes impractical) shoes.
She loves connecting with booklovers like herself, and fellow sassy storytellers, so feel free to drop her an email, visit her on her website. She also loves connecting on Instagram, Facebook or in her
