Page 80 of Faking I Do
Bodie exchanged words with the man and woman. The woman clamped her hands to her hips while the man shoved his hands in his pockets and looked to his feet. A few moments later the woman slipped the ring off her finger and tossed it across theroom. My heart skipped a few beats as the ring bounced across the floor and came to land under a table a few feet away.
I knelt down, trying to catch a glimpse. There it was. I crawled toward it, past a man’s legs, finally grabbing the ring in my hands. As I stood, Bodie reached for my hand to help me up. He took the ring from my hand and knelt in front of me.
“Lacey Cherish, I know this isn’t the way you pictured things, but I need to ask you a question.”
My stomach knotted, my throat closed. I couldn’t make a sound if I wanted to, so I nodded. Even knowing this was fake, that it didn’t mean a thing, that he was doing this only for the pictures, my heart still surged in my chest.
“Will you marry me?” His eyes shone. He was putting everything he had into this performance. Without even thinking, I knelt down in front of him.
“Yes,” I whispered. The word came out like a cross between a croak and a whisper.
He slid the ring onto my finger and my heart nearly burst. Feeling like I was floating on a fluffy cloud and looking down on the entire scene, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled his head down. He resisted for a flash of an instant then his mouth was on mine. Applause erupted all around us, drawing me back from my dreamy cloud, back to where I knelt on the floor of a restaurant, back to where reality slammed into me like a two-by-four to the gut.
Bodie stood, helping me to my feet. “Think they got some good pictures?” he muttered under his breath.
Pictures. That’s right. This was a stunt, staged solely for the purpose of getting the pictures he promised to the reporter. Of course. Confusion and hurt meshed together, shielding my heart, cutting off any ridiculous hope I might have had that a teeny, tiny part of Bodie’s performance tonight had been something beyond that . . . a performance.
“Yeah.” I swallowed the ache of disappointment rising in my throat. What did I expect? That after a night of mind-blowing sex he’d want to throw caution to the wind and make our fake engagement into something real? I didn’t have anyone else to blame but myself. This had all been my idea, part of my master plan. All he’d done was gone along with it, even when he didn’t want to.
“Good.” He brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “What do you think about the ring?”
I hadn’t gotten a good look at it yet. As he led us back to our table, I held my left hand out in front of me. A giant yellow stone sparkled and glittered. Square-cut and set in a platinum bezel surrounded by small white diamonds, it exceeded anything I might have hoped for. “It’s beautiful.”
His hand brushed my hair back from my face. “So are you.”
“Look over here, now.” Our waiter held Bodie’s phone up, ready to capture the photo we needed.
I pasted on a smile, the kind I figured a woman who found herself newly engaged might project. Fortunately for me, it didn’t require much effort. Despite his reluctance to admit his dad and pops were in over their heads, he’d really come through for me. And here I was, engaged to the man of my dreams. Fake engaged, I reminded myself.
I swallowed back the irony, trying to keep it from gobbling me up. “Did we get what we needed?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Bodie let go of my hand to finish wiping the chocolate frosting onto a napkin.
“How about one with a kiss?” the waiter prompted.
“Um, sure.” Bodie set the napkin down and held out his arms. “How about it, Sweets?”
For the camera. For the publicity. For the town. I reminded myself of all the reasons I should want his kiss. And tried toignore the reality that I wanted his kiss because he was Bodie. And I’d been falling for him for years.
CHAPTER 40
BODIE
I grabbedShotgun’s leash as I came to a stop outside the Phillips House. Lacey had been working nonstop for the past three weeks. So had everyone else, making it impossible for me to sneak over and dig around the yard for my granddad’s stash. The outside sported a fresh coat of light gray paint. The windows sparkled and shined. The weathered wood had been replaced and a new white railing surrounded the large wraparound porch.
Between following up on leads for the cigar ring and trying to hunt down the pit bull fights, I hadn’t been out to check on things for a week or so. Any sign of the holes from the supposed armadillo infestation was gone, although I wondered if my dad or Buck had been more to blame for trying to find my granddad’s stash of cash. Either way, the whole yard had been replaced by a fresh layer of sod. That was going to make it incredibly difficult to do what I needed to do. But I was running out of time. If I didn’t get out here in the next day or so, not only would my family be going down, but so would Lacey and her dreams of salvaging Ido.
Lacey stood on the edge of the lawn, a hose in her hand, watering the new grass. Her hair piled on top of her head in a messy updo and the shades sitting on her nose hid thosegorgeous eyes. I hadn’t seen her for over a week and the sight of her filled me with an unfamiliar feeling, one I didn’t feel comfortable exploring. Not now, maybe not ever.
“Hey, Deputy,” Jonah stepped onto the porch as Shotgun and I exited the truck.
“Jonah, what are you doing here?” The last time I had seen Jonah Wylder he’d been wrapped in chains and protesting the close of the warehouse. It was nice to see him doing something helpful for a change. Lacey had that effect on people. She was really turning the town around, getting everyone to work toward a common goal.
“Needed a little tuck pointing around the chimney.” Jonah shrugged. “Guess I should have followed in my old man’s footsteps a while ago. Turns out I’m a damn good mason.”
“Good for you.” I shifted Shotgun’s leash to the other hand so I could shake Jonah’s.
“Sorry about all that ruckus about the warehouse.” He tucked his hand into his pocket and cast his gaze to the ground.
