Chapter Two
“It’s the ultimateirony,” Vesna said, coming out of a headstand pose to sit in lotus style and continue to amuse her roommate.“Longest dry spell.Ovaries shouting out alarms for the past two years and what do I do?Take charge and plunk down a wad of cash with an executive matchmaking, arranged-marriage firm.”
Ayana knew all this.She dreaded it.And felt guilty that she’d taken over some of the communication with the wannabe groom in Denver because he was a night owl, and Vesna went to bed early and had also been traveling on work projects.Ayana had only arrived home from her latest season working for a river cruise company based in Europe last night.With the sun’s rotation being what it was, she’d been able to communicate with Cam Saunders for her roommate when necessary.
She wasn’t sure it was a good match for the lighthearted and practical Vesna, because sometimes Cam seemed warm and funny and pretty easygoing but other times he overthought and came up with the most esoteric rabbit-hole ideas, which she’d enjoyed popping down with him too much.
Sometimes she’d felt like she was cheating, although Vesna had asked for her help.She’d told Vesna she was done just as Vesna said that she had accepted an in-person meeting with her potential groom.Ayana could barely hold back the shivers about that thought.
“But now disaster.”
Ayana shoveled more noodles in her mouth.Finally, Vesna was coming to her senses and abandoning the mid-nineteenth-century ball-and-chain idea.
“Last weekend, I finally met my soul mate,” Vesna wailed.
“Huh?”Ayana paused mid-bite.
“In the Panera Bread line.I was ordering soup and struck up a conversation with Mr.Cute, Right, and Amazing and… I just knew.”
“Knew what?”
“How can you look like a dryad or some mythical fairy creature in the forest and have not one romantic bone in your body?”Vesna demanded.
She head-tossed her long, curated brunette barrel curls over her shoulder in a move that reminded Ayana of a thoroughbred horse.
“I committed to meeting a billionaire—I can google and read between the lines and count.”
“Useful skill for an accountant,” Ayana teased, a little uneasy with how Vesna was so keyed up and glowing about a man she’d just met.
Not that marrying a rich stranger was any better.Ayana couldn’t imagine giving up an ounce of her hard-won agency to any man—stranger or known—for any amount on a balance sheet.
“And then I meet the man of my dreams.But I have to make a decision now because I’m supposed to go to Denver in a few days.But Ryan is perfect.”
“Why put so much pressure on yourself?”Ayana asked.
They’d been roommates for a few years, and the situation worked because Ayana was usually gone for weeks or months at a time working on cruise ships.She loved the travel, the tips and being mostly off grid.
“Your biological clock has years before it murmurs, much less shouts.”
“Easy for you to say,” Vesna shot back.“You’re just hitting your mid-twenties.Practically a baby.I want kids.Two or three at least.”
“You’re only thirty-two.You have oodles of time and enough bank to go the sperm donor route.Why bring a man into it?”
Vesna’s mouth dropped open.“The man is the best part,” she said.“My mom raised me and my sister alone, no help from my dad who ran off with his personal assistant in the dumbest cliché ever.With Cam, I would have had a business deal that already inked the severance package if we divorced, settled custody, and child support.I would have been set—working or not working when the kids were young.”
“That’s a business deal, not a marriage,” Ayana countered.
“I thought marriage was business… or it could be,” Vesna wailed.
“But now you’re thinking of throwing oversure thing”—Ayana did air quotes—“for a dude in Panera Bread.How is that seizing your future with a clear-eyed, smart-heart, cool-headed strategy?”
Vesna blushed to have her words from when she’d texted Ayana about her scheme and asked if she could help with some of the communication thrown back in her face.
“It’s not,” she said softly.“And yet I think I need to go with my heart, with Ryan.When you know, you know,” she said defensively.“Standing in line when he turned around and made a little joke about the wait, I looked into his clear blue eyes—like a Greek body of water—and felt like my world finally tilted and I’d come home.Soul mate.Finally.”
Ayana opened her mouth to say… something, but it would probably be mean.Vesna had become a friend over the past three years—an easy roommate, who didn’t ask too many questions.Vesna hadn’t had the weird upbringing Ayana had endured, so she was free to spout off abouttrue love.Vesna was a believer.Princess Bridewas her favorite movie.Ayana had never heard of it and didn’t believe in fairy tales, but within a week of her answering Vesna’s online query for a roommate, Vesna had streamed the movie, peppering it with commentary, tears, and snacks.Twice the first week.
Ayana had survived but still didn’t believe.
