As soon as he asked, the driver rushed in front of us with two small bottles of champagne and set them on one of the park tables.
“Please. You already went through the trouble.”
“Merci bien,” Henry said to the driver, who left with a quick nod.
“You speak French.” I took the small bottle from him.
Of course, he did. He’d spent almost ten years in Canada. I swallowed. This was why we were here, really. There was so much we didn’t know about each other.
He ran his fingers across my cheek. “It was required. I hated it.” He sipped his wine—no doubt wishing he was drinking something stronger. He set his mini bottle down and ushered me down the garden path, beyond the trees where the Eiffel Tower stood in the distance.
“You hated it because it reminded you of the girl who broke your heart?”
He shook his head. My heart squeezed a little when he stuffed his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket. How did I miss that?
“No,” he said. “It reminded me of the girl who stole my heart. Being without you all those years, I was barely alive. You took everything when you left. I hated that I’d been so close to being incredibly happy…with you.” He met my gaze.
“I stole your heart?” I smiled.
“That’s why no one else will do.” He unclasped his hand to reveal a black velvet box on his palm. He opened it and offered me the gorgeous diamond ring, an emerald cut with tiny diamonds around the band, bigger than anything I’d stolen in my time. “Would you marry me?”
I threw my arms around his neck, spilling champagne on the two of us.
Fourth Rule of Con: never fall for the mark.Good thing I was retired.
“Yes.”
I gazed into his brown eyes and at his bright smile. Henry was part of a fairy tale I never thought could be mine. But in the end, in spite of all the bad, all the years I’d spent alone wandering from one con to the next, I’d found my way back to him. Henry was my one great love. After all this time, he belonged to me.
