Bright Midnight by Halle, Karina (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

guess I have the experience of a traveler, but I also know what it’s like to be looking for a home, a place to settle your bones and feel welcome. I want this farmstay to be that for everyone who visits here, and I like to go above and beyond and help make that happen for people, whether it’s giving personalized tours on our new (non-commercial) fishing boat, or letting children bottle feed the baby cows. As long as they leave with a satisfied smile on their faces and a heart full of memories, then I know I’ve done my job.

Of course, with Anders and I being so busy, we have to remember to carve out time for each other. Every night over dinner we check in, then we have a drink, put the phones and computers away, and find ways to just connect. It keeps us in this together, working as a team, not just on the farm, but on our relationship, which is just as important.

It’s not the most perfect relationship in the world. We fight sometimes. We’ve had second chances. We’ve had many rocky starts. Cynics might say that first loves should be left in the past, that we had too much baggage to weed through. But the truth is, I love him and he loves me, and that’s enough. It’s more than enough. There’s nothing better than true love.

So, while our relationship might not be perfect, it doesn’t matter because it’s our relationship. And it’s worth everything.

“Want to go for a ride?” Anders asks me.

I snap out of my thoughts and look over at him. While a lot of the guests are in their winter gear, settling down on the picnic tables with drinks, watching the northern lights, he seems eager to go somewhere. He has that adventurous gleam in his eyes, the kind he gets when he’s about to put me on the back of his motorbike.

“In the snow?” I ask.

“On the spark,” he says. “Come on.”

His gloved hand grabs mine and he leads me toward the driveway where the kick-sleds are parked. He pulls one out and gestures for me to sit down on the seat.

“Sit.”

I do so, resting my feet on the skis, and then he leans over and hands me a bottle.

“And hold this,” he adds.

I turn it over in my hands. A small bottle of aquavit, of course. I have no idea where he was keeping it.

“I don’t know why you insist on me drinking this,” I tell him. “I’m never going to like it.”

“Tastes change, Shay,” he says.

“Mine don’t,” I tell him as he starts to push the sled. I turn my head and grin up at him, the aurora of purples and greens flashing behind his head. “After all, I’m with you.”

“Ha,” he says dryly, and then the spark starts to pick up speed as he kicks faster and faster toward the small hill at the end of the driveway where it goes onto the road.

“Wheeeeee,” I cry out, hugging the bottle of booze to me with one arm, while my hand grips the edge of the chair, holding on. Kind of scary when Anders is driving, but so much fucking fun.

We go along the road for at least fifteen minutes, heading toward town, nothing but the soft sound of the skis on the snow and Anders’ heavy breath as he pushes us along. We go gliding through the thick forest at some points, feeling like we’re in a frozen fairy-tale, then by the water’s edge, where the snow has melted a little and turned to ice.

Finally, we come to a stop, though there’s nothing around us.

I look around, confused.

Then I look up at Anders. “What? You tired already?”

He doesn’t say anything back, though. Instead, he has this grave expression on his face. Now, Anders is still Anders, and he’s still prone to a lot of brooding from time to time, his mood swings not out of character. But I haven’t seen this kind of look in his eyes for a long time.

I mean, he’s looking intense.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He presses his lips together, rubbing them in a nervous gesture, then comes around the front of the kick-sled. Stands right between the skis in front of me. Reaches down and gestures for the bottle.

I wordlessly hand it to him, watching as he pops the cork out and then takes a huge swig straight from the bottle, wincing.

“Is it the aurora? The northern lights? Are they messing with your brain?” I ask him as he swallows it down, shuddering a bit. He wipes the back of his mouth with his gloved hand, then drops down to his knees. For a moment I think he’s doing so just to place the bottle of booze on the snow beside him, instead of giving it back to me.

But after he does that, he doesn’t get back up.

And he’s barely looking at me either. In fact, his eyes are closed as he unzips a pocket on his parka and that’s when it hits me.

Oh my god.

Oh my fucking god.

Is he…proposing?

“Anders?” I whisper, my heart in my throat, too afraid to read into this, too afraid not to.

He licks his lips, eyes opening to meet mine just as he brings a velvet jewelry box out of his pocket. “Shay…”

He holds the box out and, with shaking hands, opens it to show a diamond ring that takes my breath away. The aurora above us is bright enough to hit the ring, making the diamonds sparkle, like polar lights of its own.

I stare down at the ring, eyes wide, my heart loud in my head, a million brilliant butterflies unleashed in my stomach, like the polar lights are glowing inside me.

Is this happening?

Is this really happening?

“Shay,” Anders says again, taking in a deep, trembling breath. I bring my gaze up to meet his eyes and I’m melting on the spot, he looks so fucking handsome and nervous and adorable all at once. “I was planning to do