Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ANTHONY

Conversation with Emma

I’m arriving today.

What type of booze should I bring?

Mother’s bar is never empty.

So we’re looking at a restock situation.

Can the prenup be your Christmas present? I’m going through some shit at work, and I haven’t had time for shopping.

Mother said you’ve found your stranger-wife?

There have been some developments.

Oh, do tell?

I’m marrying a woman I want to marry.

Dammit, Anthony. Not again.

My bedroom smells like Rosie.

I spend almost all night awake, soaking in her scent and the memory, half-heartedly palming my dick, because nothing could feel like she does. Also because my bed is very clearly broken.

For me, desire has never been an unanchored thing—it’s about wanting a person, liking a person—so it’s been months since sex has mattered to me. But now I’m filled with a hollow ache. A need that lights every moment.

I want Rosie.

I need her.

It’s insane, absolutely divorced from any sense of reason or logic, but I don’t just need her to marry me. I want to call her my wife.

So at the breakfast table the next morning, I ask my mother if I can have the Smith family ring.

She refused to give it to me for Nina.

Maybe it’s perverse, to want the ring attached to my parents’ miserable marriage, but it’s a family heirloom—a symbol. And I want to change what it means to be a Smith.

My mother watches me shrewdly as she spreads marmalade on her toast. Finally, she says, “Yes, you can have it. It never brought me any luck, but your grandmother loved your grandfather well enough. I suppose two out of three isn’t bad.”

“You approve?” I ask, not wanting to care, and caring anyway. My mother is a difficult woman, but I’ve never doubted her love for me and Emma. She’d do anything, literally anything, to push us onto what she sees as the right path. It can be an obnoxious quality. Still, she’s right more often than she’s wrong.

“Rosie’s young and willful.” My mother pauses for long enough for peak drama before adding, “and probably exactly what you need. You have my approval and my ring.” Then she shocks me by taking my hand from across the table and squeezing it. “I’m proud of you, Anthony.”

“For finding a woman who’s willing to be a substitute bride?”

“For letting someone care about you.”

An ache pulses in my chest. I’m tempted to bat away her remark, but it’s an old impulse, and I don’t do it. Besides, I know she’s right. Rosie does care about me. She challenges me to push past all the boundaries I’ve raised for myself—and I’ve tried to do the same for her, because I care about her too. It’s a bone-deep kind of caring that’s staggering, given that we’ve only known each other for such a short time.

In a screwed up way, I’d thought Nina was safe. I’d never felt lost to my feelings with her. I’d certainly never stayed awake all night because I was thinking about her or worrying about her.

So I just nod and take a bite of my toast, precluding further conversation about emotions.

“Emma is arriving today,” my mother says after a moment.

“I know. She texted me.”

“I hope you two get along this time.”

“We’ll do fine as long as she doesn’t disrespect my fiancée in front of me.”

I’m referring to the second-to-last time I saw my sister—at a dinner party at my house six months ago. She’d taken the opportunity to tell me my fiancée was a terrible person who was only interested in me for my money. She’d said it in front of Nina, who’d made the bold declaration that anything that was said to me could be said to her.

Nina had turned to me, her nails digging into my arm, and asked if I was going to let my sister disrespect her.

The answer was no. I might have suspected Emma was right, but she was still in the wrong. Our mother had been belittled in a million different ways by our father, and I wasn’t going to allow anyone to do that to my partner. So I’d asked Emma to leave, she’d said gladly , and we’d barely spoken for months.

My mother smiles at me. “We both know Nina deserved it.”

“No. She didn’t deserve to be disrespected in her own home. No woman deserves that.”

Her expression shifts, her lips quivering, and for a second I’m filled with the horror of having potentially made my strong, iron-spined mother cry. Then she takes my hand again and squeezes it. “There you go, my boy, making me proud again.”

Rosie insists that we go Christmas shopping before our picnic, because she still needs to find something for Claire and I require gifts for my mother and Emma. So we do, and even though I usually loathe shopping almost as much as I do staff meetings, I have fun. Rosie befriends the shopkeepers, gets us deals, and finds out the back-story for each and every purchase. It’s a completely different experience from my usual approach of get it done.

Afterward, she and I head out to the rose garden with the basket my mother’s cook prepared for us. She had the foresight to include a couple of wool blankets with the basket, thank God. I wrap both of them around Rosie, but it doesn’t seem like enough to protect her from the weather. A frigid breeze keeps whistling around the wall partially closing off the rose garden from the rest of the estate.

I’m guessing this isn’t how Rosie imagined her picnic. It’s definitely not how I imagined giving her the ring today.

“Let’s go back to the house,” I say. “We can eat in there.”

“No way.” She gives me an amused glance. There’s something beneath it, though. A disquiet I’ve noticed since she arrived in her Jeep. “It’s not every day I get to be in a real rose garden. I was promised my bucket list picnic, and I intend to have it.”

“Most of the bushes are covered with burlap. It’s not exactly scenic.”

She glances at me, smiling. “But there are a few roses in bloom in the middle of winter. That’s magical, and you can’t convince me otherwise with any talk of varietals or a warm winter. But I have to say…you look pretty cold.” She opens her blanket, unfurling it as if it’s a bird’s wing. “Why don’t you come in here and warm me up, big guy?”’

My mouth gets dry, and I push toward her, letting her engulf me in the blanket cocoon before I tug her onto my lap and adjust the blankets to cover both of us. She instantly leans back into me. “I spent all of yesterday morning in your lap. I think I could get used to this.”

“Good.” I wrap her up in my arms, finding a thread of perfect in the moment. “I like having you in my lap. I think it should be a daily occurrence. You know, there’s hot chocolate in that basket.”

She leans forward to open it, everything in me arresting at the sight, but then she stops and glances at me over her shoulder. “I have something for you.” A smile pushes across her face, like the sun through the clouds. “Fair warning. It’s kind of dumb. But you know…you’re the man who has everything.”

“Until very recently, I had nothing.”

There’s a gleam in her eyes, but it fades quickly, and I sense worry bubbling beneath it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have put the ring in the basket.

Maybe this is too much, too fast.

Oh, hell, it’s definitely too much, too fast.

But then she pulls a small package from her purse. It’s wrapped in green paper, and I give it a shake as I take it from her, feeling excitement wrap around my disquiet. I can’t remember the last time I was excited by a present. Probably when I was a little kid, brought to the stables to meet Sweetcheeks the First.

“Should I open it now?”

“I don’t know, Rule Breaker. Christmas is in less than twenty-four hours. Should you?”

She shifts in my lap, moving her legs so she’s straddling me, one thigh on either side of my legs, and my dick instantly starts to get hard. She presses into it, giving me a mischievous look that only makes it harder. “You really are going to kill me.”

“Open your present first. I want you to die happy.”

“That’s not what’ll make me die happy,” I say, but she just watches me, waiting. And even though I usually don’t like opening gifts in front of the person who gave them to me, I don’t feel the usual thrumming of self-consciousness with her—the stiff behavior that comes from being uncomfortable. I never have.

I tear the wrapping paper open.

There’s a folded rectangle of thick paper, and on top of it, a little music box—the kind with the metal tabs visible. I glance up at her and then turn the crank, grinning when “Time After Time” starts playing.

“How’d you know?” I ask.

Then I set it down, still playing the song, and wrap my arms around her, blankets and all, and stand up. She laughs in delight as I set her on her feet and start waltzing her to the music. The blankets are still wrapped around her, whipping in the wind. And when the music stops, I pull her to me for a kiss. Her lips are cold against mine, and there’s something desperate about her kiss as she raises her hands to the collar of my coat and uses it to pull me closer.

I wrap my arms around her and kiss her back, trying to assure myself that this gift, this kiss, means she doesn’t regret yesterday, and not that she’s trying to break the news to me gently.

She’s the one who pulls away.

“The paper,” she says, panting slightly, and I stoop to retrieve it, unfolding it as I stand.

My lips part as I realize what I’m holding. “ Rosie .”

My gaze finds her. She’s watching me eagerly. “Rosie, this is…”

I don’t have words.

It’s a drawing of my unicorn—of the Ware—just as I described it to her. It’s as if she took it out of my head and brought it into being, and for a moment, I let myself get caught up in the dream of having it.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “I’m not that great at drawing, so I got Jake to help me. I…wanted you to have a picture of your unicorn. Even if you don’t get to keep it.”

“I love it,” I say, even though that’s not totally true.

I love that she wanted to do this for me, but it hurts to see on paper what I’ve only seen in my head. It makes what I’m losing feel more real. Maybe it’s meant to. Maybe this is her way of trying to push me in what she sees as the right direction.

You should let her , the voice inside me whispers.

I glance at her, and she’s watching me with excitement in her eyes. “I know you don’t think you can do it, Anthony, but I really, really think you can. I want to help you.”

“Rosie,” I say, folding the paper and pocketing it so I can take her hands. “I don’t want to be one more person who carries you along in their tide. I want you to pursue your dream.”

“But what if this is it?” she asks, her eyes fixed on mine. “What if I want to help other people? Joy thinks that’s what my purpose is, and I thought about it a lot last night while Jake made that sketch for me. I think she might be on to something.”

“Then you’ll find a way to do it and be damned good at it.” I lift her hand for a kiss. Then I kiss her cold lips again, softly this time, and tell her against them, “Thank you.”

She hugs me to her and says, “Thank you . I love it out here.”

“In the cold?”

“In any weather. But I’m no fool. Let’s open that basket so we can get some hot chocolate. Ooh, wait…” She pats the pocket of her coat. “My phone’s buzzing. Someone texted me. It may be my brother.”

I decide this is it. This is the moment.

After she checks her phone, she’ll look up, and I’ll already have the box out.

When she stares down at her phone screen, I open the basket, my heart trying its best to thump right out of my chest. I pick up the little velvet box, waiting, my heart in my throat.

I look at her, eager for her to finish—worried about what she’ll say when she does, but a gasp escapes her and she drops her phone. Her eyes wide and startled, she sucks in her bottom lip as she focuses on the box in my hand.

I expected her to be a little surprised, but something about her expression sets me on edge.

“ Anthony .”

“Open it.”

She lifts it in shaking fingers, then flips the top open. The diamonds and emeralds sparkle in the sunlight streaming into the garden. “Oh my God.”

I laugh as I take her hand. She gives it to me, tears trailing down her cheeks, and I remove the ring from the box and slide it onto her finger. It fits perfectly, almost as if it were made for her, for this moment. The center stone is a square-cut diamond, surrounded by a larger square of tiny emeralds, set in a white gold band.

“ Anthony ,” she says again. “This is…”

“I thought about getting you something new, but this is a family ring.” I smile. “My family hasn’t had the best history with relationships, but I’d like to change that. I want us to change it. Will you do me the honor of being my wife, Rosie?”

More tears stream down her cheeks, and I’m an idiot, because it occurs to me for the first time that they may not be happy tears. She’s not smiling. Her lips are trembling, and there’s a little line between her eyebrows that looks like it’s creased her face for the first time today, at this exact moment. She looks like someone just kicked a puppy in front of her. She’s upset, maybe even devastated.

“Oh, Anthony,” she says, almost on a sob. “I can’t marry you. I think you should marry Jake’s person. The accountant.”

I’m the puppy who got kicked.