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But two weeks ago, it hadn’t been Stevie.
And now, Stevie was the only choice.
Seeing her was a gut punch he hadn’t anticipated. She was more beautiful than he remembered, even here in this tiny little house, with bare feet.
Perhaps she was even more beautiful.
But that wasn’t why he had chosen her.
The media frenzy surrounding the plane crash was incredible. It was a storm. Speculation and sensationalized headlines. There were endless fan edits of pictures with him and… Women who were mainly not Stevie, but photographs that had been taken from stock photography sites of female pilots, with love songs playing in the background, and it made absolutely no sense to him, but they were going around the internet with alacrity.
But there wasn’t much to be done about that.
Still, the action that he had to take in response to it had become abundantly clear.
Stevie was, for lack of a better way of thinking of it, the people’s choice.
She had saved his life. And the world was entranced by the idea that this scrappy American girl had been all that separated a prince from his untimely doom.
Yes, he could’ve gone on and married Drusilla. But there was no point to it. It would never accomplish what marrying Stevie would. And, his marriage to Stevie would end all of her problems. He had enjoyed listening to her talk. About how she would change the world. He had decided that she would be good for his country.
Good for him.
“I… Was that a proposal?”
“Yes.”
“It came across as more of a demand,” she said.
“Stevie, I think you and I know there is no question.”
While he could not allow his attraction to her to be the driving force behind his decision, surely she must feel it now? Surely she must…
He was offering her a life of luxury and there was no shortage of chemistry between them. Why would she refuse him?
“Well, there is,” she said, crossing her arms and looking up at him, her expression filled with mutiny. “Because I am not a yes-woman. And I’m not a plaything. I have a life. Here. In this house. I have a garden. I have a business.”
“Currently your garden is under a foot of snow, and I imagine your business is not operational considering you don’t have a functional plane.”
“That’s just a season,” she said. “All around. Time changes things.”
“This could change things more than just seasonally.”
It was then he realized that her sisters were standing there. Staring.
“Stevie,” one of them said, her voice a breathless rush.
“I think your sister thinks you should marry me,” he said.
“Don’t speak for me,” she said.
“My apologies.”
“I’m Daisy,” she said.
She looked to be about five years younger than Stevie.
The other girls were…girls still. And he imagined that Daisy was doing a lot of the day-to-day caregiving.