Page 96 of Her Billionaire Boss
“Not at all.”I was getting used to dining experiences that were guided by the chef, not the person eating the food.
Is this the life you want?I asked myself.Is this better than what we had in California?
Shut up, I scolded my doubts.The only reason I was even asking those things of myself was because I was afraid.Because I wanted to run, the way I always wanted to run when things seemed too good to be true.
My boyfriend, who I loved so much that I sniffed his shirts sometimes because I missed him while he was in the other room, the guy who was so sexually compatible with me that we were building a kink club together, was going to propose to me tonight.And here I was, trying to sink it all before he even asked the question.
A sommelier entered with the first wine pairing and the appetizer course.I was sure both were delicious,but when I sipped from my glass, it tasted like licking wood.
It was better to rip this off like a Band-Aid, I decided.“What did you think we needed to talk about?”
He couldn’t look me in the eye.
What if he wasn’t proposing?What if he was—
“Are you breaking up with me?”I blurted.
“What the fuck?”came out of his mouth so fast, I knew I was wrong.“Why would you—”
“Fancy restaurant, so I wouldn’t make a scene?”I tried to explain, but it sounded so absurd to me.Why would he do it in a private room if he wanted to avoid a scene?“I’m sorry.I’ve been freaked out about this all day.And now you’re saying you want to talk...either you’re breaking up with me or you’re proposing.”
Why did I say that?The words had spilled out by themselves.
“I mean—” I started, but I didn’t get to finish my sentence before his whoop of laughter interrupted me.
“Seriously?”He tilted his head like a dog that couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thrown the imaginary tennis ball yet.“Wait, you thought I was going to break up with you?”
“Y-yes?”It irked me a little that he seemed to find the notion foolish.“Or propose.”
“If I was going to propose to you, it would be in an underground bunker with three sealed vault doors so you couldn’t bolt out of panic.”
Fair.
“We go out to eat all the time.Why would this be something bad?”he went on, adding, “Or something you apparently view as bad.”
“I don’t view it as bad.”I decided to get it all out in the open, because it was going to eventually get there, anyway, and honesty saved time.“I heard you talking to your mother.When you were arguing about the family engagement ring.”
His eyes lit with recognition, and he uttered a long, drawn out, “Oh...”
“Yeah.So.You can probably see why it was one or the other?”I squirmed in my chair.I hoped he would understand why my thoughts went to those options.“Based on the fact that your mom really, really doesn’t like me, and your insistence on taking the family ring against her objections...it could have gone either way, right?”
To my relief, he nodded.“Yeah.Out of context, maybe I would have come to the same conclusion.But what did you hear?”
I hated remembering that night, how small and unimportant I’d felt standing outside the parlor doors.“Not much.I wasn’t eavesdropping.I came looking for you and heard the two of you.I was waiting outside to make sure I didn’t interrupt anything and—”
“What did you hear?”he asked, his tone a little firmer.
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’dhada 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?”
