Page 47 of Forbidden Dark Vows

I wait for her to say more. When she doesn’t, I say, “But…?”

It takes her a beat too long to answer, giving my heart enough time to start tearing in two. She’s going to hand the ring back to me, I think. This is the part where she says it’s been fun, but she doesn’t want to get married.

“There’s no but.” She shrugs. “I don’t care about you going down on one knee, Harry. That’s not our story. This is.”

“It is?”

I’m still trying to process what she’s saying. She doesn’t want me to take the ring back. I glance at her finger, and it’s still there, and she hasn’t said yes, but it doesn’t matter because we’re not like anyone else, and this isn’t a fairytale.

I lean closer. Our lips meet, and the room spins when I close my eyes, but Ruby is right here, keeping me grounded.

“We do need to figure out where we go from here,” she says, when I pull away.

I nod. We can’t keep running forever, and besides, we don’t need to run now. Celia will know that we’re engaged to be married, and there’s nothing she can do to stop us. But I want to give Ruby the best of everything, which means that I need to go home at some point and start paving our future path with gold.

“Come with me to New York. Not right now. When we’re ready to leave. I want you to come back with me to New York, Ruby.”

Her gaze drops to the empty champagne bottles on the table. “I want to tell my dad. I don’t want him to hear it from the cops. I… I know that he’ll be happy for me. For us.” Her eyes widen as the word ‘us’ lingers in the air.

“We’ll go see your parents first.” I check out the time on my wristwatch. “Or we could call him now. Chicago is six hours behind the UK.”

“How do you know that?”

“From business meetings with British clients.”

I shake my head to clear it, grateful the room has stopped spinning so violently thanks to the half pint of water I downed. I’m not in the right headspace to think about work, so for the moment, it’s staying outside of our bubble.

“Okay.” Ruby is even more beautiful when she smiles. “Let’s call him.”

I take her hand and ask the landlord if we can use his telephone to call home and give our folks the good news. I’ll pay for the calls, of course. He points us in the direction of the phone out the back, in the dingy hallway between the bar and the kitchen, and we make an international call to Ruby’s dad.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Dad? It’s me, Ruby.” She grins at me, her eyes dancing. I know her smile is really for her dad, and that’s okay.

I hear the gentle buzz of his voice from the handset although I can’t decipher what he’s saying.

“We’re in Scotland, Dad. A place called Gretna Green.” There’s a pause during which Graham must ask what we’re doing here. “We got engaged, Dad. We’re going to get married.”

There’s a brief silence followed by Graham’s excited congratulations. Ruby covers the mouthpiece with her hand and grins at me. “I think he’s excited.”

I wonder if he knows that his wife has had us tracked down by the police.

“Dad,” Ruby says, “don’t say anything to Mom. I’ll tell her when I get back.”

She’ll know soon enough anyway, but I guess if Graham knows nothing about her reporting Ruby missing, she’ll either have to explain the whole story or keep quiet about it when she finds out.

“No, Dad.” Ruby’s smile is still wide—her dad’s approval obviously means a lot to her. “No, we haven’t thought aboutwhere we’ll get married yet, but I promise I won’t do it without you. You’re walking me down the aisle, remember?”

Graham must ask about me then.

“Harry’s fine. He sends his love, Dad.”

She ends the call and throws her arms around my neck. I know how she feels. It’s as if inviting Graham into our secret has made it finally feel real for us both, and now she’s ready to tell the whole world.

Minus her mom.

It’s something that they will have to work out between them, but I already know Celia will have to work hard to regain her daughter’s trust after this.

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