Every Zola in the room perked up. Including Marie.
“You’ve already heard this, sweetheart, but I’ll say it to them now, since they were the ones to take care of you when I screwed things up.” He turned back to the four other pairs of unnervingly green eyes lasered onto him. “What I did—the way I manipulated the situation with my brother, the way I twisted her feelings and hurt her—there’s no excuse for it.”
“Damn right, there’s not,” Matthew muttered.
But Lucas continued. “I hurt the most important person in my life because I was doing what I’d always been taught: making money. It was only after I lost her that I realized how little any of that matters. She’s the only thing that counts.”
Marie’s hand landed on his shoulder with a soft squeeze. She’d heard him say this many times before and probably would again until Lucas finally convinced himself it was enough (she’d already assured him it was).
“I know I don’t deserve her. But I’m here because I want to spend the rest of my life proving that I can be the man she deserves. That I can be worthy of the love she gives me.”
“So how can we trust that?” Lea asked.
The others murmured and nodded.
It was a fair question. More than fair.
“Because I love her,” Lucas said simply. “I love her more than the air I breathe. More than anything I’ve ever known. More than all that money I made.”
“Which,” Marie put in, “he gaveawayto prove the same thing to me, by the way. A company worth, how much did you say, Lucas?”
Lucas turned. “My shares were worth just under four hundred billion dollars.”
Every mouth in the room fell open. Even Nina and Nathan looked surprised—two people who also originally came from extraordinary wealth.
“You can trust me because I’d rather cut off my own arm than hurt her again,” Lucas said flatly. “I’ve spent every day since we’ve been together trying to prove that, and I’ll do it every day moving forward too.”
“You’d give that up for her? And the lifestyle that came with that kind of money?” Kate asked.
Lucas shrugged. “What lifestyle? I worked eighty hours a week for twenty years, had no real friends, and a family that saw me as a piggy bank. If that’s success, you can keep it. I’d rather wash dishes in our kitchen and come home.”
Matthew studied him for a long moment. “That’s all very nice. But promises are easy to make. Easy to break, too. What are you actually going to do about it now?”
Lucas looked around the room, taking in the faces of the people who mattered most to Marie. Her siblings, her nephews and niece, the chosen family that had shaped her into the woman he’d fallen in love with. This was his moment—not just for Marie, but for all of them.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small velvet box he’d been carrying for weeks, waiting for the right moment. Marie’s eyes widened as he slid off the couch and dropped to one knee in front of her.
“Oh my God,” Joni whispered.
“I was going to wait to do this,” Lucas said, looking directly into Marie’s shocked green eyes. “I wanted to show you how dedicated I am to our life. Help you get the bed and breakfast going. Learn French. Get us through the birth and anything else you need. But I want our family to be whole when our daughter comes into the world.”
“Daughter?” Kate asked with interest.
“We don’t know yet,” Marie said quickly, though her hands had flown to her mouth.
“She’ll be perfect,” Lucas said with absolute certainty. “Because she’ll be just like her mother.” He took a breath and continued, his voice steady despite the magnitude of what he was doing. “Baby, I know I hurt you. I know I’m not the man you thought you wanted when you were younger. But you changed everything for me. You made me want to be better, to build something real instead of just accumulating power and money.”
He opened the ring box, revealing the simple diamond that had caught his eye at an antique shop in Bordeaux. Beautiful but modest, with none of the ostentation that had characterized his former life.
“I gave up everything I was told mattered to build a life with you, but that’s not a sacrifice—it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done. You want me to throw away the rest, I will.”
“The rest?” wondered one of the kids—Tommy, he thought. That kid seemed cutthroat, even at twelve. “How much are we talking about?”
“Hush,” said his mother.
“Enough to take care of my family,” Lucas said, though his eyes hadn’t wavered from Marie’s face. “I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to get rid of it because I want to be able to take care of you and our babies for the rest of our lives. But don’t marry me for money. Marry me for love.”
Marie was crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks.
