Page 242 of Titus

The cello continued to play softly behind us, and I looked around again, taking in the candles flickering in the twilight, the roses spilling from every arrangement, and the soft strains of music drifting through the ocean air.

Everything about this felt like me. The colors. The romance. The timeless elegance. Every single detail.

My eyes slowly lifted back to his, and my breath caught.

Oh my God.

I hadn’t designed this for mysterious guests. I’d designed it for myself.

For this moment.

For us.

I looked back at him, and he smiled.

“You designed all of this,” he softly said.

“I see that…”

“You chose the flowers and the candles. You created the most beautiful, timeless atmosphere through the colors you chose and every detail you incorporated.”

He stepped closer, and I sucked in a breath in response to the emotions that were threatening to take over my composure.

“I told you to design this event exactly as you’d design it for yourself because I wanted you surrounded by everything you loved tonight.”

I just stared at him. My God.

His smile softened. “I tried to ask you out by hiring you to do this exact thing on this yacht when it was in Europe, but you were rejecting me at every turn back then.”

A laugh escaped him while I smiled.

“I was going to create a fake event just to spend time with you and convince you to date me.” He glanced at the people who’d apparently known about the plan and grinned. “I believe your response was that you weren’t going to cancel on a client just because I offered to pay you more.”

“I remember that,” I said through a laugh. “You were actually going to pay me to plan a fake event so you could date me?”

“Little did I know,” he continued, “that rejection would send me on a journey with you that I never imagined I’d take with anyone.” He smiled as he stepped closer. “Because somewhere along the way, I stopped imagining you as someone I’d like to spend time with…” tears immediately filled my eyes, “and I started imagining you as someone I could spend my life with.”

A tear escaped, and he reached up and brushed it away.

“Catalina Veléz… preciosa… mi amor,” he said softly. “I have everything I could’ve ever wanted in this life.” He smiled. “Everything except one thing… someone to come home to.”

Another tear fell.

He reached for my hand. “Someone to wake up beside, someone to laugh with.” His thumb brushed my cheek. “Someone to grow old with.”

I clutched my chest, trying to stop a joyful sob from bursting out and turning into a complete mess.

He smiled, then slowly lowered himself to one knee. I couldn’t stop staring at him, this man I was so grateful I’d allowed myself to love, who was now looking up at me as if I were the center of his entire world.

He reached into his pocket and opened a black velvet ring box, and I actually stopped breathing. Nestled against black velvet was a gemstone unlike anything I’d ever seen. It wasn’t a diamond. The center stone glowed in the candlelight, shifting between soft champagne, peach, and the faintest blush of pink.

It looked like the sunset surrounding us, the final few moments before the sun disappeared beneath the ocean.

“Titus…” I whispered.

His smile softened. “It’s called a Padparadscha sapphire.”

I looked at him. “A what?”