As the evening wound down and our family began to drift back toward the farmhouse, I found myself alone with Evangeline on the beach, her ring glinting in the starlight.
"Any regrets?" I asked, echoing her question from the night we'd watched her interview.
"Only that we waited so long," she said, then paused. "Actually, no. I think we needed all of it—the separation, the misunderstandings, even the shooting. We needed to learn who we were apart before we could be together properly."
"Very philosophical for someone who just agreed to marry her bodyguard," I teased.
"Former bodyguard," she corrected. "And future husband. I like the sound of that better."
I pulled her close, breathing in the scent of her hair, still hardly believing this was real. After months of uncertainty, of loving her from a distance and wondering if we'd ever find our way back to each other, we were here. Together. Forever.
"I love you, Mrs. Banks-to-be," I murmured against her ear.
"I love you too, Mr. Future-Royal-Consort," she replied, then pulled back to grin at me. "Think you can handle the title?"
"As long as it comes with you, I can handle anything."
She kissed me then, soft and sweet and full of promise, while the gentle waves lapped at the Sicilian shore and our family's laughter drifted from the farmhouse. It was perfect—not because everything had been easy, but because we'd fought for it, suffered for it, and chosen each other despite every obstacle the world had thrown our way.
We were going to be magnificently, chaotically, completely happy. And we were going to start right now.
