Chapter Eighteen

Charlotte

One Month Later

“Hey Chaz, there’s a client who’s booked the penthouse at the Planters Inn for a proposal but wants us to go by and make sure everything is perfect. Can you do it? I’m meeting Noah at that gala in fifteen minutes, and Gemma says she’s hung up in traffic.” McKenzie’s chased me all the way down to the parking garage, just as I was getting ready to go home.

I sigh. Some things never change.

“Sure,” I say, climbing into my convertible cherry-red Challenger. Well, I think to myself with a smile, some things do. In the month since I’ve been back, I’ve been determined to keep the promise I made to myself that night Liam rescued me. I’m a little heartbroken still—I miss Liam more than I thought I would—but I’m riding the waves and staying afloat, taking it as it comes. I’ve realized I can’t control anything. Well, there are still plenty of things I can control, but Liam isn’t one of them.

“Thank you!” she says. “He’s left a list of what he wants you to do.”

“My kind of guy!” I joke.

It’s almost dark when I get to the inn, and the trademark vintage carriage lights flicker enticingly at the ivy-covered, stone-pillared entrance. McKenzie’s client couldn’t have picked a more romantic place to propose with its soaring ten-feet ceilings, charming fireplaces, and antiques. After telling the front desk who I am and getting the room key, I go upstairs to the room. It’s beautiful, with a sumptuous four poster bed, and pink roses—my favorite—everywhere. This guy is amazing. She’d better say yes.

I look around for the list McKenzie said he’s left, but I can’t find it. What I do find, though, is a sweet, chocolate lab puppy with soft brown eyes and enormous feet in the bathroom.

I bend down to pet him, and he bounds up to me, tail wagging furiously as he licks my face. “How did you get here, little guy?” I say, scratching him behind the ears. I didn’t know the hotel allowed pets.

I hear the door open and close. Shit. I wrangle the puppy back into the bathroom.

“Coming!” I call out. “I haven’t found the list you left, so—”

I stop short as I step back into the room and come face-to-face with Liam. I’ve never seen him in a suit before, and he looks sexy as sin. I, on the other hand, had planned to hit the gym after work and am wearing workout clothes. I inwardly groan, realizing it’s just like the last time. I am destined to continually be humiliated in front of Liam. I stand there, speechless, trying to figure out what he’s doing here. And why is he taking off his coat and unbuttoning his shirt?

“I got a tattoo,” he says.

“Oh,” I say dumbly.

He shrugs out of the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a magnificent phoenix rising on his right bicep.

I smile. “That’s perfect. Have you checked everything off your bucket list now?”

“Well, not quite. There’s one more thing. That’s why I’m here.” Taking a breath, he says, “The bucket list was a map, but it wasn’t a map to the guns. It was a map to you.”

“What?” I stare at him, trying to process what he’s saying. He takes a step closer, but then stops, unusually unsure of himself.

“When we were in Malaysia, the guy at the tattoo shop who made the medallion mentioned that I told him I was waiting for the woman I love when he asked if I wanted a tattoo. That didn’t make much sense to me until I found some drawings I’d made of the tattoo I wanted to get. This.” He gestures at the ink on his arm. “The phoenix.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The phoenix represented everything—where the guns were, and what I had to do to be worthy of the woman I’d fallen in love with. The woman I’d promised to come back for. You, Charlotte.”

I hold my breath, then remember to release it. “You remember what you said at the airport in Playa?”

“I remember everything, sweetheart. Falling in love with you in Playa del Carmen last fall, and then falling in love with you all over again in Mexico. You are my destiny. If I was torn from you a thousand times, I’d find my way back to you every single time. You were always mine, Charlotte. I dreamed of you constantly when I was in India, even before I woke up from the coma. I didn’t remember it, but I was still replaying our love story in my dreams.”

He looks down, shifts his feet. “I also remember seeing you at Kenzie’s a few weeks after Playa del Carmen. I’m sorry for that. I was afraid of putting you in any danger, so I didn’t say anything. I figured I would just carry out the mission and then come back for you and explain it all. It was wrong, and it almost cost me dearly, because then I lost my memory. You taught me the second time around that I don’t have to do it all alone, that I can trust the people I love, and who love me back, to share the burden sometimes. But at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. My whole idea in taking the job Gray offered was to make enough money to quit the team and come back for you. And since I couldn’t claim you until I’d completed the mission, I put things on the bucket list that would lead me back to you. The weekend in Vegas, the salsa lessons, the tattoo, the mile-high club…” He grins. “The kinky sex. They were all things I wanted with you.”

There’s a little yap and I look at him questioningly. “You said you wanted a lab from a shelter. I picked this little guy up this morning.” He opens the bathroom door and the puppy tumbles out, jumping and licking both of us.

“But you travel too much for a dog.”

“I used to travel too much for a dog. Now I’m a celebrity.” His eyes twinkle, and then he becomes serious. “Actually Noah, Walker, and I are starting our own security consulting company. I quit the team. I can’t do it anymore. You know why?”

I shake my head.

“You know my motto—don’t underestimate the power of fuck it.” He grabs my chin, tilting my face up to look at him. “Well, I give a serious fuck about you, Charlotte, and I don’t want to lose you again. I want to wake up next to you every morning and go to sleep next to you every night with your naked body curled against mine. I’m not sweet, accommodating, solid, dependable, or predictable, but I’m the man for you. No one in this world can love you like I do, or distract you when that brain of yours starts overthinking everything, or take that control you hold on to so tightly every once in a while.”

Tears are spilling over onto my cheeks and he wipes them tenderly with his thumb, then hands me a folded piece of paper. “I know how much you like lists, so I made you one outlining my plan.”

I unfold the paper and read number one: Say yes.

I look up, and Liam is on one knee, the ring he bought in Puerto Vallarta that I wore during the happiest week of my life in his hand. “I can’t give you a perfectly ordered life with a picket fence, but I can give you all the love I have. Charlotte, will you marry me? For real this time? It’s the last thing on my bucket list. Marry the girl of my dreams.”

“Yes. Yes!” I launch myself at him and he catches me, burying his face in my hair before he tilts my chin up and kisses me. He was right. When I stopped holding on to everything so tightly, when I gave up trying to control it all, I got everything I always wanted. He pulls back slightly. “I love you, baby. I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper, my heart so full I think it’s going to burst.

He slides the ring onto my finger, and then says casually, “There are a few more things on the list.”

“Oh?” I look down at the list again. “Strip,” I read out loud. I look up at him. He’s rolled his sleeves up, and he’s looking at me with that dark need in his eyes that sets a fire burning inside of me. I quickly kick off my shoes. “You got some music for me?”

He fiddles with the sound system in the room and music begins to play. I turn around and shake my ass a few times before slowly shimmying out of my yoga pants and tossing them at him. He catches them with one hand, his eyes never straying from me. I lift my shirt inch by inch until it’s just past my breasts and then it follows the trajectory of my pants. I unclasp my bra, enjoying the murmurs of approval he makes as my breasts spring free, already heavy and aching for his touch. But I don’t step closer to him. Instead, I tease him a little, starting to pull off my panties and then stopping.

After the fourth time, his eyes narrow. “Girls who play games should know the rules.”

“What?” I say innocently. “There wasn’t a time frame.” He’s next to me now, and he wraps my hair around his hand, using it to tug my head back. He looks like he’s going to say something, but instead he kisses me hungrily. “I love this. I love us. And I love that I get to do this forever with you.” He pauses, then adds, “Now I’d suggest you take those panties off and read the next step before smart-ass becomes red ass.”

I’m smiling as I read the next thing on the list: Put on the blindfold. “There’s a blindfold?”

“On the bed.”

Oh. I walk over to the bed, somehow impossibly aroused by the fact that I’m naked, while he’s fully dressed in a suit, sleeves rolled up. There’s an assortment of things on the bed, kinky things, and my gaze flies to his. His slow smile is my undoing. He doesn’t say anything, just walks over and places the blindfold over my eyes himself, tying it behind my head.

I feel a flash of panic, but then his hands are on me, caressing my skin and I let out the breath I had been holding.

“Now I can’t read anything else on the list,” I say.

His low chuckle is close to my ear. “Lists are overrated. I think I’ll just wing it.”

“But—”

“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ve got you, baby.”

I smile. “Yes, you do. Always and forever.”

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