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Vi smirked and held her hand toward Zach, who was in charge of retail operations. “Take it away.” While he slid the behemoth ring from her finger, she caught Braydon’s eye. He was her cousin who was most like Coop, or at least he was most like Charles Cooper Pearson the Third before he fell in love with Violet. “My cousins should know what type of ring suits me.”
“More than your intended?” Coop smirked back.
“Braydon, show me a ring you’d want your fiancée to wear.” That command amused her cousins.
Chad, who ran the entire operation now, drew his brothers back to a large box lined with black velvet and filled with shiny things.
“Dotty would approve of that ring,” Coop murmured
Grandma Dotty had worn her ring on the catwalk for an up-and-coming designer during fashion week. Dorcas Hepshut claimed to have heard about Dotty’s strutting skills from one of Xuri’s rejected models.
“I’m setting us up for a happy marriage.” Vi drummed her fingers on the display case glass. “I want us to live our lives for ourselves, not striving to be what people think we should be.”
Coop took her hand. “That statement just proves you’re still the same passionate, vivid woman I fell in love with.”
Vi scoffed.
A few feet away, her male cousins were eavesdropping. They began whispering to each other and pointing at rings.
“It’s this one,” Braydon said with certainty.
His brothers agreed.
And when they presented it to Coop for his approval, he nodded. “It’s her.” He slid the wedding set on Violet’s finger.
The feature stone was amethyst, oval cut. It wasn’t too large or too small. Smaller diamonds framed the stone, making it look like a purple-centered daisy. The wedding band crisscrossed the engagement ring band, forming what looked like small leaves.
Vi loved it immediately. She smiled at her cousins and at Coop.
“This is a vivid ring for a vivid woman.” Coop stared deep in her eyes. “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” His smile was as soft as his words were uttered. “I love you, Vivi. Will you marry me?”
There was no need for him to ask again. But he was a romantic, through and through, and her fate, as evidenced by his quotingRomeo and Juliet.
“My answer, Shakespeare, will always be yes.” And then, to prove it, she kissed him.
Epilogue
As the youngest sibling, Maggie Summer was used to being last.
Last one to get braces, a bra, and a boyfriend. Last one to earn a driver’s license and a graduate degree.
And now…
She stood against the wall at her sister Violet’s engagement party in Boston and realized all her sisters were either married—if you counted Aubrey’s impromptu foreign ceremony—or were getting married. While Maggie…
Maggie’s former fiancé was marrying her oldest sister Kitty this Christmas. And although Maggie no longer loved Beck and had come to peace with the marriage, she had no date.
Violet had taken pity on her and had agreed to fix her up with a prince from a foreign land who was a graduate student at Harvard. But the man was a no show.
Maggie gripped the wilted red rose she’d been holding for the past hour, the sign to her blind date that she was Vi’s sister.
She tossed it on a nearby table just as a man came in the door.
His gaze swept the room, caught on the rose, and then lifted to Maggie’s face.
He was gorgeous. Clean cut, dark hair. Intense green eyes. Chiseled cheekbones and regal bearing. He wore a dark suit and tie and hadn’t stopped staring at Maggie. That had to mean he was smitten, right?
He was everything a girl in need of a fake boyfriend was looking for to get through two weeks of wedding events.
