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How, I wondered in the back of my brain, have I managed to get engaged to a man I can’t read? Like, what kind of lunacy was that?
“You can open it later.” Embarrassed, I started to put the box back in my purse, humiliation a copper taste in the back of my mouth.
“No,” he said. “No, please, I’d like to open it now.”
I handed it back to him and wiped my sweating hands on my gown. Which was shit for that kind of thing, actually. The netting stuck to my fingers.
Clayton pulled one end of the red ribbon that made the elaborate bow on top of the small box and it was like he was pulling my stomach with it. I reached into my purse and grabbed my glasses.
My own armor, maybe.
Or maybe I just wanted to see his face clearly when he opened my present.
He pulled off the thin lid and lifted the antique gold pocket watch out of the box.
“Veronica,” he breathed.
“I saw it in a shop on Lucas Street. I mean, it’s a little silly, I guess. But it does keep time. The guy at the store said it was owned by a cattle rancher in the area in the 1800’s.”
He turned the watch over and hit the small knob that popped open the front.
“That inscription was there,” I said, wanting some distance from it if it was too much. Though the inscription was part of the reason I bought it. Because the woman who gave her husband this watch over a hundred years ago had had more courage than I did.
“For you, forever,” he read.
“It’s—”
He said nothing, just stepped toward me, stalked toward me, really, so fast and with such power I took a step back and my head hit one of the mirrors. And then he was kissing me. His hands cupped my face, like he was holding me still. Like I might possibly run?
Please.
These kisses, like he was trying to communicate something to me with his tongue, were a huge part of the reason I said yes when he asked me to marry him. Because this felt so important and real. His hands on my body. His tongue against mine.
It filled me with power, the kind of power that was bigger than I am.
It was epic.
He pulled back, rested his forehead against mine. “Thank you,” he breathed. His breath smelled like mint and me.
“Thank you,” I said back, and we smiled at each other. I beamed with all my heart, and his lip curled in a half grin, barely there.
“I might have messed up your hair,” he said, pulling me away from the mirror. The flower he’d tried to put back fell to the floor.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Leave it. I don’t think that flower was meant to be.”
He clicked open the watch. “We need to head downstairs.”
“Right.” I smoothed my dress and reached to take off my glasses.
“Leave them,” he said.
“Jennifer—”
“Hardly matters. Leave them. The whole point of tonight is for you to enjoy yourself. To have the kind of party that you deserve. I want you to enjoy tonight and you can’t do that if you can’t see.” He touched my glasses, straightening them on my face.
“Well, when you put it that way.” I twisted my lips. “Though I don’t know how much of tonight will be enjoyable.”
“Try,” he said.
The idea of flaunting this relationship to Dallas’s elite made me want to cringe. But I considered it my going-away gift to Dad and Jennifer. I’d do this dumb thing because they wanted it, and then I was done.
Because in one month’s time my life as a King would be over and I’d be a Rorick.
Veronica Rorick.
With so many hard consonant sounds I was practically a fortress. I loved it.
He kissed me again. “See you down there.”
After he walked out of the dressing room I folded forward, putting my hands on my knees.
Jesus. That man I was going to marry was so damn potent.
“Oh, my gosh! Ronnie!”
The whirling dervish that was my half sister rushed into the room. She was just a few months younger than my sister, Bea, because my father was a cheating asshole and barely waited until my mother was in the ground before making his mistress the next Mrs. King so he could continue his search for a son in the wombs of his wives.
I should hate Sabrina, by rights, but it was impossible to hate Sabrina.
Shallow as a puddle, but sweet as sugar.
“You are a dream!” She was all lit up from the inside because the girl loved a party and tonight’s was going to be a good one. A blowout, as she called it. “You’re gorgeous. That dress! Your hair! That necklace! Are you sure about the glasses?"
“Sabrina,” I sighed.
“Of course, your call. Totally your call.” She stood in front of me and beamed. She was lovely and I couldn’t help but smile back at her. We both had my father’s dark hair, but her eyes were dark, too. Sabrina used to be a roly-poly preteen but in the last few years she had sculpted herself into the kind of perfection that made Jennifer giddy.
