Page 76 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

I stiffen. After my experience with Thomas and the lobby, my nerves are stretched tight. But I also know if it were anyone else offering, I would accept it.

“Thank you.”

I hand him the bag. Surprise passes over his face. “It’s light.”

“Thirteen pounds and foldable.” I grab my crutches and head for the door. “Much better than that massive thing my mother used to push me around in.”

“Wait.”

I glance back over my shoulder, confused by the sudden intensity on his face. “What?”

“Where’s your wedding ring?”

My stomach drops. I yanked the ring off in the taxi on the way to the airport the night of our wedding and shoved it into a spare makeup bag I’d had tucked in my purse. I hadn’t put it back on since, couldn’t even bear to look at what I’d once seen as a symbol of possibility. Of love conquering all odds.

“In my purse,” I finally say with a nod to the black bag hanging from a hook by the door.

“Bring it.”

My fingers tighten around my handgrips. “I’m not wearing it.”

“Not yet.”

A different tension builds between us as we face off.

“Why is it so important to you?” I finally ask.

He moves toward me, each step ratcheting up my heart rate until it’s pounding so hard I wonder if he can hear it in the quiet of my apartment.

“You’re my wife.”

“For now.”

His eyes harden into shards of blue ice. “For now,” he repeats. “If I’m even going to entertain the possibility of your proposal, you will wear the ring.”

I want nothing more than to walk to my balcony and throw that ring as far as I can. An urge, I acknowledge with no small degree of irritation, that would only shoot myself in the foot.

“I’ll put it on if we reach a mutual agreement.”

“Done.”

He grabs the purse and offers it to me. Grudgingly, I take it. He reaches around me and opens the door, his eyes never leaving mine. I’m the first one to blink, the first one to look away. Foreboding whispers across the back of my neck as I make my way out into the hallway. An apprehension that I’ve just agreed to something that will be harder to walk away from than I can comprehend.

The car ride is short and silent. I frown as we pull up outside the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre.

“We’re negotiating here?”

“I reserved the Denon Wing for an hour.”

My jaw drops. “You did what?”

He stares at me for a moment before getting out of the car. I watch in stupefied silence as he gets my wheelchair out of the trunk and unfolds it before opening my door and extending a hand. I want to take it, which is why I don’t and instead shift myself from the car into the wheelchair.

We enter the museum and are quickly whisked past world-renowned paintings and sculptures to the Denon Wing, an ornate hall that plays host to crown jewels, sculptures by Michelangelo, and a trove of Da Vinci paintings. Our guide speaks quietly with Rafe before heading back toward the reception desk.

Leaving us alone among priceless works of art.

“Did you do this just to prove how much money you have?”

---