BEST DAY

“Y es yes yes yes!”

I said yes times four, because one didn’t seem like enough for my boyfriend.

This is the best day of my life.

The excitement buzzing in my veins is so off the charts I cannot sit still.

I’m having dinner with the Hottest Man on this Earth at the top of one of Chicago’s premier skyscrapers. The city skyline twinkles with night lights, and a set of standing heaters blazes around us, protecting us from the cool wind. Tiny electric candles flicker down the path where my man led me out into this very terrace.

He sits across the table and neither of us is paying attention to the exquisite food the chefs brought out to us.

We can’t stop touching, reaching across the table to touch and kiss each other.

My brain keeps seizing and going back to only minutes ago, when I heard him say that he loves me . . . that he wants to marry me . . .

Oh god, he wants to marry me.

This man has the power to turn anything ordinary into extraordinary. A men’s shirt. A green grape. A pair of necklaces. A ticket to a baseball game. An office visit. An evening. A bed.

Well, today Malcolm Saint turned my average weekly workday into the day that I became his fiancée. His one and only ever fiancée.

We are officially . . . engaged !

And Malcolm looks so very pleased with himself right now, his lips curled, his dark hair a little tousled by the wind, watching me through dark-as-night lashes as he leans across the table to refill my wineglass.

He won’t take his eyes off me. Thoroughly and unashamedly, he watches me with happily dancing, liquid green eyes as he sets the bottle back in the silver bucket that stands near our table, and as he does, I inhale the cool breeze.

We’re both still dressed for the workday, but Malcolm rocks his office attire, while I look a little bit secretarial. He discarded his sable jacket and tie a little while ago and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, and I’m in a pencil skirt and button-down top, my hair tied in a haphazard bun at my nape to keep it out of the wind.

“What are you thinking?” he asks softly as he takes my hand once again over the table and traces his thumb along the back of mine, dipping it into the hollow of my palm.

I smile at him as the silence stretches between us. The kind that is laden with words.

Words like: Are we doing this? Yes, we’re doing this!

“I’m playing your proposal again in my head,” I admit, laughing. “I’m ridiculous, I know.”

He laughs softly and lifts my fingers to his lips. “Do you want me to ask again?”

A devil’s twinkle appears in his eyes, and I bite my lip and nod.

His voice thickens. “Marry me, Rachel.” He leans across the table, his hand on the back of my head as he pulls me in to meet his lips.

“Yes,” I breathe a second before he kisses me, slow and languorous. “I love you, Malcolm,” I whisper as I touch my tongue to his.

“I love you too,” he husks out against my moving lips.

When we pry away from each other, my heart feels swollen in my chest with love for him. I glance at my hand and yes . . . there’s the proof, the bright ring on my left hand, near where his thumb is still tracing the side of my palm.

I’d never seen a more brilliant diamond in my life.

The ring belonged to Malcolm’s mother; it sits high in a pretty platinum band, and the rock glitters, bright and alive, even with only the moon and candles from which to refract light.

I cannot believe that this ring, this gorgeous ring, is now on my hand. Exquisitely big, sparkly, perfect. It’s all I can do—just look at the ring that Saint gave me. That Saint just slipped onto the fourth finger of my left hand.

I look at it adoringly even as Saint looks at me .

Six feet plus of pure ruthless businessman, one with the force of a thousand storms. This eternally mysterious, phenomenal man was never in my plans. I was certainly never in his .

But now marriage is our future together.

Now my ultrahot fiancé is leaning back like a czar in his seat, watching me with that penetrating gaze.

Saint has been the very symbol of a player, the most wanted billionaire bachelor in Chicago, for quite some time. And I know with certainty that his guy friends and annoying female groupies are going to bust a brain vessel when they hear that we got engaged. Not to mention my friends and mother probably having a fit of panic and excitement.

“The girls are going to freak out. But I want to see their faces when I tell them.” I grab my wineglass and take a sip. “Did the guys know you were going to propose?”

He takes his phone out, thumbs off a text, and sets it aside. “They do now.” He grins.

And his eyes look so very liquid tonight, my legs feel rubbery at the sight.

He pushes his chair back to make room for me, and I quietly go around the table and settle down on his lap.

Saint has the perfect arms; they hold me just right. Close, but not too tight, saying I’m here , but not you’re trapped . They kind of coax me to lean on him—coax me, not demand me. He is confident and this is how he attains what he wants, always with patience and persistence. He likes earning what he has.

He holds my head in one hand and thumbs my lips a little bit, as if preparing them for his kiss. “I’m going to kiss you. Everywhere. All night.” He brushes a ghost kiss across the corner of my mouth, and I’m not only ready for another kiss, I’m eager for another kiss. I’m dying for a kiss that won’t end until morning.

Anticipation buzzes in my veins as I melt into his hard, warm chest and feel his lips press softly into the other corner of my mouth. I sigh contentedly, and then Saint lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles and inspects the ring, getting a small frown as he studies it. “We need to get this resized.”