AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe you should.” Nataliya’s words hung there between them for several silent seconds.
Finally, Jenna asked, “What?”
“Maybeyoushould propose to Dima.”
Jenna felt her lungs seize, and then she gasped, her lungs filling again. “You’re not serious.”
“Why not?” Nataliya got a mischievous look on her face. “I’ll leave you to chew on that. I need to go eat some soda crackers, or I’m going to puke.”
Jenna was still pondering thatWhy not?as she dressed for lunch. Dima was supposed to be done with his video conference calls in time to join her.
She’d donned a flowy nineties retro dress with wedge sandals and chunky jewelry. Her blond hair hung loose around her shoulders, silky and smooth from her trip to the salon after her phone call with Nataliya.
Dima had told her to dress nice because they were going someplace special for dinner.
So far, everything they’d done had been special.
She couldn’t find the scarf she’d brought to wear with this dress, so she pulled her case out to see if it had gotten left inside.
“You are not leaving me over this!” Dima’s cold, autocratic tone had her spinning around to face him.
His expression closed, he stood in the doorway, a brooding and physical barrier.
“I’m not leaving.” But what did he mean bythis?
“You’re packing.”
“Um, no. I’m looking for my scarf. Why would I be packing?” Jenna finally focused on the tabloid in his hand.
From where she stood, she could see a picture of her and Dima while they walked along the Corniche. “We knew word would get out. We’ve hardly been discreet about this vacation.”
He’d held her hand wherever they went, when it was acceptable to do so. They arrived and departed in the same car. They’d made no effort to obfuscate her presence in his family’s home.
More to the point, why would she leave Abu Dhabi just because the inevitable had happened?
“I have no desire to hide that we are dating,” he assured her, though his tone said anything but.
She nodded, agreeing. “So what has you so upset?”
“I am not upset.”
“Okay.” Honestly? He didn’t look so much upset as, well, angry. “Are you mad about something?”
“I thought you were leaving.” He glared at her suitcase.
Why would he think that? Even if she had her case out? “Because the media picked up on the fact we’re dating? I’m not that thin-skinned.”
Besides, the only people she worried about finding out already knew. And they didn’t care. Not her family. Not his.
Nataliya had been sending Jenna teasing texts about Dima, and humorous memes about morning sickness, ever since they got off the phone.
“We’re not just dating,” he said firmly. “We are lovers.”
That would feel more romantic if he had said it with a smidge more emotion and less chilly factualism.
“True.” She reached for the paper. Something in the article had to be the reason he was acting like this. “Here, let me see.”
He held tight to the newspaper. “If you haven’t seen it, you don’t need to.”
