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Donny shoves a plate of cake into my hands. “Ready?”
“For cake? Always.”
“To go see the ring.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” I take a bite of cake and let it melt across my tongue. “My God, this is fabulous.”
“Aunt Marj is great with cakes. She taught my mom to make a chocolate cake that’s to die for. I’ll make it for you sometime.”
“Donny Steel in the kitchen?” I laugh. “That’ll be the day.”
“Yeah, not really my thing.”
“Not mine either. Thank God for Trader Joe’s.”
He laughs as we walk back into the house, through the kitchen, and down the opposite hallway from where the bedrooms are. We pass the library, where we had our first time. Of course, then he left me stranded in the closet for an hour. Not Donny’s finest moment, but he’s more than made up for it since.
Donny stops in front of a closed door.
“My dad’s office,” he says before knocking.
“Who do you think’s in there? Talon’s outside.”
“Just double-checking.” He slides the door open.
The office is large and looks, well, like an office, with gorgeous wood furniture and a beautiful oil painting of a pure-black horse on the side wall. Donny walks toward the painting.
“The safe’s under here.”
He carefully removes the painting, and lo and behold, a safe appears. He turns the combination lock and—
He stops.
“What?” I ask.
“I’ve never opened this safe before.”
“But you have the combination?”
“I do. Dad gave it to all of us when we turned eighteen.”
“Then he won’t mind, will he?”
“No. He won’t. He says everything in here is our business. He wouldn’t have given us the code otherwise.”
“So what’s the issue?”
“It’s just… It feels weird. Like I’m about to see something I shouldn’t.”
“It’s okay. I don’t have to see the real ring.” I hold out my left hand and let the orange sapphire dazzle in the artificial light of the office. “It can’t be any more beautiful than this one.”
“You make the ring beautiful, Cal.” He brushes his lips over mine.
I warm, ready to melt into a puddle right here in Donny’s father’s office.
He turns back to the safe and finishes the combination. “I want you to see it,” he says. “If I have it my way, it will be yours someday.”
He opens the safe and pushes some papers out of the way.
