Chapter 41
Natalie
Three days later, I stood in a garden in front of the Eiffel Tower, dressed in white. My feet were bare. My hair was free, blowing easily in the breeze off the Seine. I held a bouquet of wildflowers that I’d picked up from a local market along the way. The crown necklace at my throat. And Penn waited for me at the end of the small walk in a gray suit.
My heart beat a rhythmic drum inside my chest. Excitement and disbelief. Three days didn’t seem like long enough to arrange all of this, but we’d done it. Officially, our elopement wasn’t legally binding until we signed paperwork back home, but all that really mattered to me was the here and now. Symbolic or legal didn’t matter because, soon, I would be his.
I didn’t falter as I continued the remaining feet to stand bef
