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She was right—this wasn’t how ring shopping should be. This shouldn’t be how people got engaged. Without love, it was simply a transaction, another contract to be signed.
As soon as they caught her stalker, this could end. Lark’s plan to extricate them from the fake engagement kept running through his head. It could work. Itwould.All they had to do was catch the stalker before he did anything else that was awful. Then he and Avalynn could break off the engagement without any lingering damage.
She would be free to find someone shereallyloved.
And so would he.
He focused on the sparkling diamonds nestled in black velvet the jeweler had laid out on the modern concrete coffee table.
Next to him, Avalynn was completely still.
The jeweler was middle-aged with silver hair that swooped off his forehead with all the pomp of a man who pimped diamonds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Thankfully, her manager would be writingthatfat check. Julius’s bank account couldn’t handle it.
“Do any of the rings catch your eye, Miss Ray?” the jeweler asked.
She cast her gaze over the rings. Silver, gold, white gold, platinum. Diamonds of all shapes, but none of them small. Julius’s palms were beginning to sweat.
“Uh…” She unfurled her delicate finger from her fist and pointed at one. “I guess this one.”
The jeweler snatched it up, and with a hand sporting a white cotton glove, he removed the ring from the velvet and held it up to Avalynn. “May I?”
She nodded, and he slid it onto her ring finger.
Julius felt the air being sucked out of the room on a collective gasp. He’d stopped breathing a long time ago. Hell, probably the minute he offered to stand in as the body double to a guy on a sex tape.
Avalynn held out her hand and studied the ring. Then she shook her head.
The ring came off and went back into the velvet for some other bride to choose. This went on and on until finally Avalynn let out a loud sniffle.
She plastered her shaking fingers over her face.
Julius placed his hand on her spine. “Everybody out!” he barked.
The room cleared in seconds, leaving only him, Avalynn and about thirty million dollars’ worth of diamonds.
“Oh, Julius. This is all wrong!” Her cheeks wore blotches of red.
He took the chair the jeweler abandoned and twisted toward her. On instinct, he took her hands in his.
Their gazes met.
“If we’re supposedly engaged, we’d better get used to this.” He squeezed her hands lightly.
She held them tighter.
Just breathe, honey. We’re going to make this all better very soon.
Or I’ll die trying.
He chafed his thumbs lightly over hers. They needed to sell the story that they were engaged. They needed to save her image.
He also liked touching her.
God, he’d been wanting to touch her this way forso damn long.
Until now, he never realized how much.
