Royal Wedding (11 page)

So serious! He didn't even smile.

Never sure what I'm supposed to do when he looks at me so seriously and says “I love you” like that. I know he does—his love is like this beautiful sea around us, warm and dependable and tranquil and calm, a place where dolphins can safely frolic and play.

But even here, on
vacation,
I'm seeing shadows in those lovely brown depths . . . and I'm getting the feeling that there's rough weather ahead, with dark, deep waters, where you can't see the bottom.

If I could have any wish, it would be that we could just stay here forever under this crystal-blue sky, in these nice warm shallow waves, and never have to face the harsh realities I suspect lie ahead.

But I suppose everyone who comes here wishes for that. Who wishes for storm clouds and wind-tossed seas? Only idiots.

Oh, here comes Mo Mo on the boat, with dinner.

CHAPTER 17

1:00 a.m., Sunday, May 3

Sleepy Palm Cay, The Exumas, Bahamas

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Must write this quickly because I don't want Michael to wake up and discover me out of bed writing in my diary in the bathroom like a lunatic.

But I found out what the shadows in his eyes are all about, and why he's been looking so serious lately. I knew there was something. And it
isn't
because he's passing another kidney stone, been cheating on me with a music blogger, or that he wants to break up so he can have a normal life.

It's the complete opposite of all those things.

I started getting suspicious this evening when Mo Mo brought a helper with him—he'd never done that before when setting up for any meals. The helper was a professional chef named Gretel.

Mo Mo set up a little table for two in the sand, looking out toward the sunset, with a white tablecloth and two rattan armchairs. Then he sank a couple of tiki torches into the sand and lit them.

Meanwhile, Gretel was setting the table and laying out all the food, which I couldn't help noticing included several things that have lately become my favorites, such as grilled shrimp in pasta with mozzarella, jumbo lump crab cakes, and tuna tataki.

Also, Michael had actually gotten dressed—and I was pretty sure it wasn't just for Gretel's sake, because he'd changed out of his board shorts into real pants—long khakis—and a white button-down shirt.

I also spied a bottle of champagne sitting on ice in a silver cooler.

I didn't
want
to think anything was going on other than a nice Saturday-night dinner, despite what the press (and Tina Hakim Baba) has been saying for AGES. I love romance novels, too, but as I keep telling Tina, in real life things don't always work out that way.

But suddenly it seemed possible Tina could be right for once. She's been asking me some odd questions lately, though I thought they were related to her breakup with Boris, or her love of
The Bachelor
.

“Which do you think is more romantic,” Tina asked me not even a week ago, “finding an engagement ring in a conch shell or a champagne glass?”

“Neither,” I had replied. “Both are better than a big public proposal, like on a Jumbotron, which you know is the worst, because what if the person being proposed to wants to say no? She'd feel terrible.”

“I know, but if you had to pick one.”

“A champagne glass, I guess. Sticking a ring in a conch shell would probably kill the conch if there were one alive in the shell.”

“True,” Tina said.

“Which did
The Bachelor
do?” I asked her.

“Oh,” she said. “Uh, conch shell.”

“Typical,” I said.

So when I suddenly saw Michael had put on a shirt, I thought,
What if it isn't because he simply feels like dressing up for dinner? What if he's going to propose?

Of course there was that ever-present voice of self-doubt in my head (that probably all those people who see me in magazines would never believe exists, because of the way I project myself publicly) that whispered:
Don't be an idiot. He's not going to propose. He's going to announce the news that he can't take it anymore, and break up with you!

But as Mr. Spock would say on
Star Trek
, that's not logical. No one brings a woman all the way to the Exumas to break up with her. So I quickly squashed that voice.

My next, more rational thought was
Or what if he has
a ring
in his pocket?

I decided Paolo was right: I
do
need to enjoy my diamond shoes. Not only enjoy them, but start dancing in them.

So I ran inside and showered and put on the nice sundress that Marie Rose had, thankfully, packed for me. Then I added some mascara and came rushing back out, my hair nicely combed (since, whether I was getting broken up with or proposed to, I didn't want it to be while I was wearing a swimsuit, my oldest Havaianas, and Michael's own New York Yankees T-shirt with the holes under the sleeve, with my hair in a ratty knot on top of my head).

But even though I'd been
very
quick, by my estimation, Mo Mo and Gretel and the boat were long gone, and there was only Michael standing there . . .

. . . at the end of a path of pink rose petals someone had scattered from the porch of the cabana, where I was, to the little table, where Michael stood, holding a glass of champagne for me.

“Thirsty?” he asked. Behind him, the tiki torches were flaming merrily away.

Okay. I was probably not getting broken up with.

“Um,” I said. “Sure.” I followed the trail of roses through the sand to where he was standing and took the champagne glass from him. “Thanks.”

He smiled and clinked my glass with his and said, “Cheers,” and all of my insides (and some of my outsides) seemed to melt because I saw that the playfulness in his smile reached his eyes, and though the darkness there might have been as deep as the ocean beyond the reef—which was quite serious, because Mo Mo had warned us there were sharks there—he was finally welcoming me to dive in. In fact, he was grinning ear to ear.

“Okay,” I said, lowering my glass. “What is going on?”

“What do you mean?” He lowered his glass, too. “Nothing's going on.”

“Something is definitely going on. There are rose petals scattered on the beach and you're smiling in a weird way.”

“I'm merely enjoying a romantic meal with the woman I love. Is that so wrong?” He pulled a chair out for me, the one that had the best view of the sea and the sunset, which had turned the sky a dramatic pink and periwinkle blue.

“It's weird,” I said, taking the seat. “I love you, but you're acting very weird. You have a weird look in your eye. You've had it for a few weeks now. Don't try to deny it. I thought you were having another kidney stone.”

Michael handed me a napkin. “It's a tragedy when a man can't enjoy dinner with the woman he loves without being castigated by her as weird.”

“I didn't say
you
're weird, I said you're
acting
weird.”

“You also said you thought I was having a kidney stone.”

“Well,” I said, “you know how you get.”

“Apparently I do not, since I thought I was behaving in a perfectly normal manner.”

“No, you are clearly hiding something from me.”

“I can assure it's not a kidney stone.”

“Well, then, what—?”

That's when something hard struck my lip—something that had been inside the champagne glass. At first I thought it was a strawberry—everyone loves cutting up strawberries and sticking them on the side of champagne glasses, which is simply annoying, as it takes up a lot of room where delicious champagne could be.

But then, when I looked inside my glass, I saw that what was in it was not a strawberry, but something that glittered like metal. And stone. A large, glittering white stone on a platinum band.

My heart stopped, and not from a myocardial infarction.

There was no sound (since my heart was not beating) except the sound of the waves gently lapping up against the white shore and the occasional call of a far-off bird. We were the only human beings for miles around (I'm not including Lars and whoever else from the RGG security detail was stationed on the next island over, scanning the area for incoming boats and spy drones).

It was only Michael, me, and the birds (and dolphins and millions of fish a few feet away).

I looked from the ring up at Michael.

“What is this?” I asked him, raising the glass.

“I think it should be pretty obvious,” he said. “It's an engagement ring. I thought you'd like it because the diamond's laboratory-grown. I know we said we weren't going to get married, but I'm tired of never seeing you anymore, and this seems like the most practical solution to the problem.”

Then, before I knew what was happening, he'd dropped to one knee beside me in the sand, put his hands over mine, and looked up into my face.

“I can take the ring back and get a natural diamond if you want,” he said, “but I thought you'd like this one since it's conflict-free.”

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Had there ever been a more down-to-earth, more Michael Moscovitzy proposal in history?

“No,” I said. “It's perfect.”

“You've barely looked at it. Here, try it on, at least.” He took the glass from me, tossed the remains of my champagne into the sand, then fished the ring from the bottom. “I hope I got the right size. You never wear rings. Tina helped me guess—”

“Tina?” The ring slid neatly onto the third finger of my left hand, where the large colorless diamond caught the rays of the setting sun and flamed like the fire at the end of one of the nearby tiki torches. “Tina knew?”

“Of course she knew. Well, some of it.”

This explained everything. I can't believe poor Tina kept herself from breathing a word of it to me.

“Do you like it?” Michael asked again. He actually looked a little anxious, but also excited, like a kid at Christmas. Or Hanukkah, to be exact.

“I
love
it.”

I lowered my head to kiss him, because obviously when a man has gotten down on one knee in the sand to propose to you with a lab-engineered diamond, the natural thing to do is wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him, quite deeply, and for a long time, as the ocean waves lap gently around you.

“But, Michael,” I said a little while later, after catching my breath, “I thought we were going to wait to get married until—”

He'd had his arms around my waist, and his head was resting quite comfortably against my chest, in a sort of dreamy way. But when I said the thing about how I thought we were going to wait, his head jerked up.

“I'm sorry, Mia, but I'm tired of waiting,” he said, in a decidedly unromantic manner. “We can't even live together, thanks to those vultures in the press. Think about it, because I have, a lot. What if something were to happen to you? I wouldn't be the first person they'd notify. I doubt anyone would remember to notify me at all. I wouldn't even be allowed into your hospital room—”

“Oh, Michael, how can you say that? It isn't true.” I ran my fingers through his thick dark hair, still slightly damp from his shower and giving off that irresistibly fresh, clean scent of his. “First of all, nothing's going to happen to me—”

His gaze was filled once again with dark hurricane clouds, and I realized
this
was what had been troubling him all along. “How can you say that after what happened to your stepfather?”

“Michael, we all loved Frank, but you know he was terrible about following up on his medical care. Nothing like that could ever happen to me, because I'm very proactive about my health.”

“Fine, but what about those protesters? Or your stalker? Next time it might not be only an orange that gets thrown in your direction.”

“Yes,” I said patiently. “But that's why I have the Royal Genovian Guard. There's nothing Lars would love more than to take a bullet for me—”

“
I
want to take a bullet for you,” Michael said, his hands curling into fists in my lap.

“Michael, that's the
last
thing I want.”

“I don't understand why you're arguing with me about this. Do you not
want
to marry me?”

“Of course not! I mean, yes. Yes, of course I do, but—”

“But what?”

“But I don't want you to ask me because you feel like you have to, or because you want to take a bullet for me, or because you feel pressured to do it—”

“Mia, I'm a grown man. No one can pressure me into doing anything I don't want to do.” He looked quite fierce as he said this, his dark eyes flashing. There wasn't a hint of shadow in them anymore. They were very clear. “I want to marry you because I love you, and I want to spend as much time as I have left on this earth with you. And the most practical way for me to do that is by marrying you. Now, do you want to marry me, or not?”

I slipped both my hands into his. “Yes, Michael Moscovitz, of course I want to marry you, more than anything. But—”

“Good.” He lifted both my hands and kissed them, then laid them back down in my lap and rose from the sand. “Now eat your crab cakes before they get cold.”

Really, has there ever been a more sensible—yet loving and romantic—husband-to-be in the entire world? Probably, but you never see or hear about them because they aren't the kind that get written about in books or shown on movies and TV. They just go about their business, getting things done. Like Albert, the prince consort of Queen Victoria. No one ever hears anything about him (except for prank calls about having “Albert in the can,” and of course references to a certain genital piercing, which in historical fact the real Prince Albert did not have, and of course, as we all know from having watched
Sex Sent Me to the ER,
can actually be quite medically dangerous to both the pierced and their sex partners).