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The saleslady was already moving forward. “Can I help you?”
Yeah. I need a new brain.
“I need a ring,” he said. “An engagement ring.”
She beamed at him. “Are you surprising someone?”
She had no idea.
“You bet,” he said gruffly.
The saleslady nodded as if he was Solomon the Wise and pointed him to one of those footstool things. “Sit.”
Okay. So it was a chair. He sat.
After ten minutes of looking at rings and pretending he had a clue, he was in trouble. Who knew engagement rings came in anything but small, medium or large? He could disassemble an M16 in seconds and fly a Blackhawk through a shit storm. The difference between marquise-cut and princess-cut, however, was beyond him.
He grabbed his phone and thumbed through his contacts. He needed a female. One with engagement ring experience and an inside line on Mia’s tastes. Maybe Piper could be his lifeline.
What does Mia like?
Then, in case Piper thought he was simply picking up sandwiches and not positively dying here, he added, in rings.
He poked a few rings while he waited for her response.
When it came, it was suitably enthusiastic.
Are you doing it? For real??!!!
I want to get her something nice, he texted back, trying to be subtle.
The saleslady pulled another tray. The rings looked ridiculous in the palm of his hand, all delicate and ethereal. He had no idea how Daeg had managed this. Too bad he didn’t have a family heirloom he could pop out, but he was damned certain his mom was still attached to her rings, even though his dad hadn’t been the biggest prize.
“It’s hard to choose, isn’t it?” The clerk gave him a sympathetic smile. “Just look for the one that winks at you.”
He had no idea what she was talking about.
Classy, Piper texted. Simple. Elegant. Pick one.
A ring caught his eye, and he tugged it carefully out of its velvet nest. Some kind of pinky-gold, it had two rows of smaller diamonds like beads on a bracelet surrounding a big, round stone. He could imagine this ring on Mia’s finger. It was warm and beautiful, and it...winked?
“This one. I’ll take this one.”
* * *
MIA HAD EXCELLENT REFLEXES. She caught the box Tag tossed her one-handed, without looking up from some spreadsheet she was working on. She’d brought order to the office, and he had a feeling she’d moved on to ordering him. Strangely, he didn’t mind.
“You throw things at me, sailor, and I have good grounds for a hostile workplace lawsuit.”
“It’s a gift, not a hand grenade.”
That made her look. “I know it’s not my birthday. I don’t think I’ve overlooked any major gift-giving holidays. Is it national secretary appreciation day?”
“Open it,” he said gruffly.
She stuck her tongue out at him, which just made him think about other things she could do with it. Things like kissing. It was all too easy to imagine her pretty pink tongue tormenting him. Like she’d done last night, after her impromptu pool party had broken up and he’d taken her back inside. The soldiers he’d fought with could drink a bar dry. Not Mia. Two of those frozen girly drinks, and she’d been buzzed. She was cute when she wasn’t quite sober.
He knew the minute she opened the box, because she froze and made a little noise he’d definitely never heard before. He didn’t know why he cared if she liked his ring or not. It wasn’t like they were really engaged, so he didn’t need to figure out her ring size or whether she was more traditional or modern. Hell. He hadn’t even known there were more than three kinds of engagement rings before his off-island visit had taught him rings came in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
The ring in the box was definitely a large and had cost him enough money to purchase a small car. A really, really good small car. But he’d looked at it in the jeweler’s case and imagined it on her finger. She deserved a real ring, even if she didn’t know it.
“It’s...nice.” She looked from the ring to him. “You’re not going down on one knee? Isn’t that how this is supposed to work?”
“You didn’t tell me getting down on bended knee was part of the deal,” he said. They had a fake engagement. If he’d gone and chosen a real ring, that was on him. When his phone buzzed, alerting him to a new email, he was glad for the excuse to look away as she took care of business, sliding the ring onto the appropriate finger.
His CO had sent him a status update. The team was meeting in San Diego in a week and a half. A week after that, they’d be deploying to South America.
