Page 103 of Her Billionaire Boss
“I wish it wasn’t.I wish it was the way things were.I wish I’d been raised to see people as more important than money.But I’m grateful someone finally spoke up about it.”He looked down, and I thought it was a gesture of shame.I was about to reassure him when I realized he was reaching into his jacket pocket.
He said, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m not getting down on one knee,” before I even saw the signature blue of the ring box.
I covered my mouth and backed up.
“But I know your first instinct is to run, and by the time I manage to get back up, you’ll already be at the airport.”He opened the box and held it out.
Inside, the clearest, most colorless diamond I’d ever seen in my life winked up from a simple, thin platinum band.
“Don’t run,” he said in a pleading near-whisper, closing the already negligible distance between us.Maybe it was a test, to see if I would step back.To see if I would literally pull away before I did it figuratively.
I gazed up into his eyes, lost myself in the love and fearful hope there.I couldn’t speak, at first, so I shook my head slightly.Then, realizing how disastrously that could be misinterpreted, I managed to rasp out, “I won’t.”
He took the ring out and tossed the box over his shoulder with a slanted smile.“What do you say, princess?Wanna get married?”
I giggled through a sudden burst of furiously happy tears.
But as quickly as that euphoria took me, it died away under the weight of doubt.
No, not doubt.
Reality.
He picked up on my change in emotion immediately, the ring poised at the tip of my finger.“What’s wrong?”
“Your mom.”Would she even come to our wedding after the way I’d reacted the last time I’d seen her?She still hadn’t spoken to me or to Matt.
“Okay.Some unresolved issues.But you’re not marrying my mother, and she’s not in charge of me.Was what you said nice?No.Was it true?Yes, and I agreed with it.Next?”
“You’ve been engaged before.I’m your sixth fiancé.”It wasn’t that far off from being the sixth spouse.
His brow furrowed; his eyes went pained.“That’s...true.”
“Did you give that any thought before you bought the ring?”I asked, as gently as could when my heartwas on the line.
He nodded.“I did.Maybe not as much as you would find appropriate, but I did think about this.”
“And?”I had to know what conclusion he’d come to that made me different from the others.
“And I realized that I’m proposing to you because I want to spend the rest of my life with you.Not because I’m afraid I’m going to lose you.”He shrugged, as if he were helpless in the face of the truth.“This is the first time I’ve bought an engagement ring that didn’t feel like an insurance policy.Every other time, whether I was proposing or accepting a proposal, that I didn’t do it because of a gnawing in the pit of my stomach that convinced me that if I didn’t legally bind someone to me, I would lose them forever.”
“You don’t feel that way about me?”I needed him to clarify that.I needed to know that this time, it would work.
Because I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to love anyone else.
“No.”He shook his head firmly.“No, Charlotte.I knew that this time, I wasn’t doing this to keep you.I was doing this with the full knowledge that you were more likely to run away than to stay, ring or not.”
In other words, “You know that if I wanted to say no to you, I could.”
“Exactly.”He let out a relieved exhale.He still held the ring and my hand, one little push away from finality.
I could say no.I could run.
I didn’t want to.
“To be one hundred percent clear: I wouldn’t be afraid to say no to you.You’re not binding me to you.Even if you wanted to, it wouldn’t work.If I were going to run, I would,” I warned him.I let the realization sink in.He had to know that I meant it.Then, I added, “But I’m not going to run.My answer is yes.I will totally fucking marry you.”
He pushed the ring onto my finger; it didn’t quite fit as snuggly as I’d like something so expensive to fit.I would be on high ring alert until we got it sized.It didn’t matter.He took my face in his hands and his mouth covered mine, and we stood there in that ugly office, losing ourselves in each other.
