Page 19 of Romanced By the Silver Fox

Genie sits back with a satisfied expression, like I just confirmed something for her.

“So this proposal. I get the feeling it wasn’t quite what you intended?” She hesitates. “Almost like…you proposed by accident?”

“Yes… and no. I lost my head for a minute. It felt like— like we were closer to a reunion than we are.”

Genie strokes my cheek. I close my eyes and lean into her touch. She caresses my jawline with infinite tenderness. When I turn into her palm and plant a kiss in the center of it, she sighs.

“Oh, Grant…”

“I know you aren’t ready to hear this, but I still love you. There is no one else for me. I want you to be my wife.”

“There’s the little matter of you’re breaking my heart the last time we tried this.”

“I told you, that was my worst mistake…”

“No,” she says. “Don’t say it was a mistake. Because it wasn’t. You chose to leave me. It was very much on purpose.”

“You know why I left.”

“I do.” She looks at me with sorrow in her eyes. “Because you didn’t trust me.”

I stare at her in complete shock. What on earth is she talking about?

“I lost my job six months before our wedding.” Even now, I feel the sting of that loss. My gut squeezes tight with an echo of the frustration and shame that haunted me then. “I couldn’t marry you then. Not without being able to provide for you. For our family.”

“I could’ve supported us,” she argues, clasping her hands over her heart. “I was making decent money. But you pushed me away because you had this ridiculous idea in your head that I’d start to hate you if needed to lean on me for a while.”

“I was trying to be the man you deserved. One who could stand on his own two feet. It’s taken me a while, but I am that man now.” I take her hand in mine. “That’s what I’ve been trying to show you this week.”

Genie sighs, running a hand through her hair.

“Grant.” She shakes her head. I obviously don’t get it. “This time together has been wonderful, but it’s not reality. What happens when we need to get real? What if you lose your job again? Or something happens to our health? What if—”

“I’ve worked hard enough, and made enough money, that we’ll be protected. Reality doesn’t have to touch us.”

“You know what I mean. There’s only so much money can do for us. We still need that foundation of trust.”

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. As much as I’d like to argue, she has a point. Time to put up or shut up. If I want her in my life, there can’t be any more secrets.

“Speaking of trust…” I begin. Genie groans. I smile. I might not be a dad, but I can Dad joke with the best of them.

“I’m trusting you with this. The seed money for FLB? The basis of our endowment? Is because I won the freaking lottery.”

Genie’s shock reminds me of my own face the day we found out. “What?”

“I have this betting pool with my friends,” I explain. “We set it up a few years ago, when I first came to the Connecticut office. Every week, our pool played the lottery like clockwork. It was just for fun. Nothing we took seriously. We all kind of forgot about it.”

“I remember hearing about a multibillion dollar payout…” she looks at me in shock. “That — that was you?”

“Yeah,” I shrug. “Fortunately, the state allows lottery winners to stay anonymous if you claim it through a trust. Long story short: the five of us are set for life.”

Genie looks at me in wonder. “So FLB Trust…?”

“Stands for Five Lucky Basta—” I stop, embarrassed. “Boys. We’ll call it Five Lucky Boys.”

Genie reaches out to stroke my hair. “You are not a boy. That’s part of what I love about you.”

I freeze. Does she know she said that?

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