Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
I sighed. “She said ‘that type of woman’ didn’t deserve to wear your grandmother’s ring. And you said her thinking was archaic, that she should be happy that her child found real love, and that you were taking ‘the god damned ring.’”
“I wish you would have mentioned this to me sooner,” he said. “Because none of that was about you. It was all about Catherine.”
That didn’t make any sense. Catherine was rich and successful and had a rich, successful husband— Well, she’d had a rich successful husband. “I’m not following.”
“Mother is furious about Catherine’s divorce. It’s quite the scandal among all of her friends. It’s one thing for a man to cheat on his wife and leave her. It’s another thing entirely for a woman to do it.” He rolled his eyes. “They can sit on the pool boy’s face, that’s socially acceptable, but they’d better stick to the ‘till death do us part’ clause.”
“That pool boy thing is oddly specific,” I said quietly.
“Mother doesn’t want Catherine to have grandmother’s ring because of Catherine’s infidelity, and because she was the one to call the marriage. She demanded that Catherine return the ring, and Catherine did. I went to get it back,” he reassured me. “Do you think we would have stayed the night under Mother’s roof if she’d said those things about you?”
“But it’s okay for her to say them about your sister?” I argued.
“No, of course not. But I can’t control the relationship between my mother and my sister. I can protect you from all that society nonsense and expectation.” He studied me, and I realized my face was probably doing the betrayal thing again. “You were terrified.”
“I was.” There was no sense denying it. “I thought you were finally going to realize that our worlds are too different, and you needed to cut me loose.”
“You also thought that I was going to propose to you.” He wouldn’t let me get away without addressing that. I’d known, on some level, that would be the case, but I wished I hadn’t brought it up because of the hurt he couldn’t quite disguise. “You were afraid of that, too?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way.” Now that the ring issue had been cleared up, I didn’t want to ruin dinner by hurting his feelings.
“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take it. You thought I was going to propose, and you approached it with all the enthusiasm of a person going to get a root canal,” he said.
Another fair observation. “I also thought you might be breaking up with me.” Although, I hadn’t worried about that until the car on the way over, when I was desperately searching for reasons not to panic about a potential engagement.
I’d been more afraid of the proposal than of losing him.
What did that mean?
Looking across the table at him, in the glow of the soft golden lighting in the otherwise dark room, the candle in the center of the table casting flickering shadows over the sharp line of his jaw and picking out the reddish highlights in his black hair, my heart squeezed. Of course, breaking up would have been worse. So much worse.
And that’s when a little stab of disappointment, like the needle-sharp tip of a much wider blade, pierced my chest and blossomed into breathless pain under my ribs. Disappointment. I was disappointed that he hadn’t proposed.
“I was afraid.” I shrugged helplessly. “Breaking up and getting engaged are opposite each other on the reason-for-a-fancy-dinner scale. How was I supposed to get my hopes up for a proposal if it meant those hopes were going to be obliterated by a break-up?”
He waited for more, because damn him, he could read me like a large print book.
“And I’m still afraid of commitment, okay?” I said softly.
“If I had proposed,” he began, and cleared his throat. “If I had proposed to you tonight, what would your answer have been?”
“I would have said yes,” I answered automatically.
He thought about my answer, tapping one finger on the tabletop as he did. I wanted to say more, but adding to the statement would feel too much like digging a hole.
Finally, he broke his silence. “You were right about one thing. I wanted to talk to you here tonight because I knew you wouldn’t make a scene about what I needed to tell you.”
My gut cramped with dread. Or maybe it was the prospect of eating the by-now-room-temperature scallop arranged pretentiously on my little plate.
“I’m giving the ring back to my sister,” he began cautiously. “Because she’s getting married again. To your brother.”
He was right about one thing. I wasn’t going to make a scene. I was going to make a hole in the floor as my rage summoned the magma from the core of the earth up to meet the raging temperature of my fury. “The hell she is!”