Her raised glass glinted in the candlelight, and she joined him in a drink. The aroma was earthy as fresh-plowed fields after a spring rain. With the tip of her tongue, she caught a drop at the corner of her mouth. “Delicious.”

Rising onto both knees, he reached into his pants pocket and removed a small, rectangular box tied with a red ribbon. He handed it to her.

As if the slightest tremor would cause the pretty, little thing to detonate, she stiffened. Throat clenched, she stared at the box and struggled to breathe. A tiny box. The tiny box she longed to be given one day by a man who looked at her the way Richard looked this very second.

His full lips spread in a wide smile. “Just open it.”

Did she really want that day to be today? True, the box was an odd shape for a ring, but it was doubtlessly a jewelry-sized box. The backs of her hands prickled. They hardly knew one another. She wasn’t ready. “Richard, I—”

“Trust me.” He placed a hand on her knee. “Open it.”

The satiny bow slipped free, and with fumbling fingers, she lifted the lid to reveal…a silver house key nestled in a bed of crimson tissue. Breath returned to her body in a rush, even as she struggled to make sense of the gift.

“It’s a match.” He held up the front door key. “It’s yours if you’ll have it and the house that goes with it. Yours and mine.”

She froze. Honestly, she would have been less stunned by a diamond solitaire.

“Told you I had a surprise.” He chuckled. “Welcome home.”

The box suddenly felt like a thousand-pound weight. Hands shaking, she lowered it onto the blanket directly between them. “I don’t know what to say—”

“Mrs. Raffensburger passed away last year, and thanks to a brilliant realtor, one Claire MacMillan, her daughter sold me the house at an amazing price. It’s rustic, but I’ll have the whole place gutted, just like my apartment. The renovation will take some time—time I think we need to finish what we’ve started. But don’t worry, when we’re both ready, I’ll get down on one knee and do it all by the book.”

Shadows pranced over hand-hewn logs and licked the low ceiling. To her, the house was aged to perfection.

He bent his knees and draped his arms over them, spinning the glass between his fingers. “San Francisco changed my life. Did I tell you the conference centered on a field called medical informatics?”

Afraid of snapping the stem, she loosened the grip on her own glass and shook her head. Naked enthusiasm flared in his gaze.