Page 33 of Dirty Husband
"It isn't the only way I play." I move a little closer. So I can lower my voice. "But it is my preference. If you're curious…"
"We're not having sex, remember?"
"I remember what you said."
She pours tea into two tiny ceramic mugs. They're a shade of copper that matches the pot. And they're small. Barely two shots worth. "I don't think we're going to tell my father that." Her hand brushes mine as she hands me a cup. "Though it would distract him from the other questions."
"He knows about the other men?"
"Well…" She takes a small sip. "Not anyone recent. I've been focusing on easier things. Mostly Dan Brown." She lets out an easy laugh. "I don't understand how he reads those books over and over again, but he does. He adores them."
Dan Brown's popularity is somewhere on the very long list of things I don't understand.
It would be easier to make a short list of things I do understand.
Negotiations. The upsides of alcohol. How to make Jasmine come.
"I guess… we don't have to tell a complete lie," she says. "We could say we got back in touch. Had a—"
"Whirlwind romance?"
"Does a helicopter count as a whirlwind?"
I can't help but laugh. I forget how funny she is.
I sip my tea. This one is better. Sweeter. And knowing she fixed it—that warms me more than anything.
"We can tell the truth," I say. "I made you an offer you couldn't refuse."
She raises a browreally.
"For a date."
"Our meeting at your office was a date?"
"We had drinks."
She laughssure. "Why not?"
"I made you an offer you couldn't refuse. Then one thing led to another. And I knew I had to have you. I knew I had to ask for your hand."
She considers it for a moment. Nodsokay. "How did you do it?"
"Like this." I set my mug down. Pull the jewelry box from my pocket.
Her eyes go wide as I pop it open. "Shep, that's huge."
"You don't like it?"
She stares at the ring. It's perfect for her. An antique emerald cut stone between two smaller ones.
They call it a forever ring. One for the past, one for the present, one for the future.
The sentimentality is another item for the long list of things I don't understand.
But it does move her.
She doesn't want to melt over the ring. She doesn't want to stare with wide-eyed wonder. She doesn't want to sigh as I slide it on her finger.
