by Anne Leigh
One day maybe the Gods of Binary Coding would grace me with a woman as caring as her.
“Bishop wanted to tour Portofino at this time of the year.” Her answer was immediate, but the love in her eyes when she spoke of his name didn’t leave.
“Ah. Going for a romantic stroll along Piazetta this time, huh?” They usually went on mountain/hiking adventures so this was new. I nodded my head and gave her a thumbs up. “Good guy.”
“The best.” Another smile. “He says hi by the way.”
“Tell him to call me. We should hang out for a game one of these days,” I replied, to which she answered with a light nod.
Bishop Cordello.
USA Rugby’s shining star.
One of the highest paid athletes in the country.
An upstanding man who donated half of his earnings to charities.
My VP’s Tau frat brother.
A week after we’d hired Kara, Sanjay received a call from Bishop. He’d basically talked to my VP and asked him to kick anyone’s ass if they made a play for his girlfriend.
What he didn’t know was that his girlfriend could kick anyone’s ass all by her own.
I’d seen her shut down anyone who flirted with her as fast as one could swat a fly perched on the window sill.
Bishop had visited her so many times in the office that we were bound to become friends.
What a lot of people didn’t know was that as great as he was on the field, he was also a highly intelligent guy.
Anyone who could beat me in Catacomb by a hundred points had to be a genius.
Because let’s face it, I hadn’t earned a gaming prodigy title at twelve years old without a mantle to my name.
We neared her office and she gestured with her hand, “Keep your company afloat when I’m gone, okay?”
“I’ll try, princess. I’ll try,” I smirked and didn’t dare set a foot inside her office, especially after calling her that nickname.
She wasn’t a princess.
Hardly.
She was a queen, all by her own.
Bishop
Long distance relationships weren’t everyone’s cup of tea.
I practiced under the heat of the California sun for eleven years, four from college and the rest for the Warriors, the country’s number one rugby team.
We’d won in the Rugby Sevens at the Olympics.
The prestige that came with being an elite athlete was something I’d enjoyed for over half a decade.
The spotlight wasn’t something I clamored for, but it was there.
Sometimes I put myself under it, but most of the time, I let others shine.
My charity, Cups for Golden Hearts, had enough funding to last another decade and it kept growing. The idea came up when Kara and I took a trip to Africa and we were both bewildered and sickened by the lack of vaccines for children who needed it the most. That by having the vaccines or the medicine that they needed, their lives would be saved.
Kara and I had managed the charity for a month and then it exploded into something bigger than both of us, so we needed help.
We enlisted the expertise of people who loved to be in the spotlight. We didn’t have to look far. Her mother loved the limelight and so did mine.
So we let them take over the fund-raising events and they had been very successful.
They were going to continue being the heads of the charities as long as they kept out of our personal lives. And by personal lives, I meant that Kara’s mom needed to stop berating her daughter’s inadequacies in her eyes. Kara’s mom thought I was joking, but she’d learned how serious I was when I pulled her out of the guest list at the charity’s launch party because she’d kept talking about how Kara should lose ten pounds so her dress would fit better.
My woman was fine as she was. She didn’t need to lose anything.
Her mother was livid that she didn’t get the chance to mooch with Hollywood A-listers, so from then on out, she hadn’t said a peep about her daughter’s shortcomings.
Kara didn’t need me to defend her. She’s done it for years, but I figured it was time for her mother to stop the BS and let her daughter be.
On the bright side, her mother and my mother got along fine. They were forces to be reckoned with and with their assistance, our second charity, Puppies and Hearts, launched successfully last month.
“Hmm…” Her body stirring beside me lifted my thoughts away from the charities and parental units. “What’re you thinking about?”
I’d tired her out from our lovemaking and even after all these years, she’d wake up when she could feel me thinking beside her.
“I think it’s time for me to retire,” I said with finality. “I’ve been talking to Rikko and he’s onboard with the idea of me joining his business.”
Rikko was making headway in the food imports business, and I’d been his sounding board for years about modernizing the manufacturing and distribution processes that he hadn’t hesitated when I asked him if he had room for me.
It was time to put my college degrees to use.
She didn’t say anything. Kara always let me speak out, she let me spell it out for her.
“I want a house by the Bay,” I said, gently caressing her arms. “I like your place babe, but I think, maybe, if you’d like, for you to take on my name.”
She turned on the lamp beside her and her blue eyes, the ones that had captivated me from the first time we met, were widened in shock. “Bishop Cordello, don’t tell me you’re proposing to me right now. In our bed.”
I loved how she called it our bed. She referred to everything as ‘ours.’
We were spending time at her place, an apartment in Capetown, a few miles away from her office where she’d been named VP two years ago after Sanjay, my Tau brother, had retired and moved back to his hometown of Seattle to pursue a career in politics.
For the past few years, I’d called my two-bedroom apartment in Marina del Rey my place, but a month ago, I’d contacted a San Francisco-based realtor to find me a three-bedroom house with enough room for my wife and my kids to grow up in.
“So, you don’t want to see the ring I got you?” I challenged, as I sat up, her light green bedsheets falling to the sides and I was as naked as the day I was born.
She cupped her hands to her mouth and she said, “What? Are you serious?”
I reached under the bed and pulled out a small box.
“For any convex polyhedron, the number of vertices and faces together…” I said, watching her eyes start to shine with tears.
Her voice shook as she finished, “Is exactly two more than the number of edges.”
It was the most remarkable equation; the only way I could perfectly describe my love for her.
Euler was the coolest physicist and right now, he was giving me much-needed game. I was trying to convince my long-time girlfriend to marry me, to be with me forever.
She was my equal in every way.
She was twice the woman that I deserved, much like the equation.
“Marry me, babe? Make me the happiest man alive,” I said, my hands on her face as she processed what I was saying. “I’ve been meaning to ask you for the longest time. I took a long-ass time because I wanted to be ready for whatever came next. Do the whole nine yards with me – the house, the kids, the dogs, maybe Pepper can have a brother or a sister, or maybe a cat, everything. Spend your life proving to me that I’m wrong about Boyle…”
She laughed, and moved so her long legs could straddle me, the thin light blue silky satin she wore did nothing to hide the body that I’d worshipped all these years, “Yes, yes, YES!”
I slid the ring that her best friends, Anissa and Hanna, helped me pick out. I’d asked them for their ideas and we had a private group chat going, each of them high-fiving me with multiple thumbs-up emojis and faces with hearts every time Everlasting Diamonds, the Canadian jeweler I’d contacted to design Kara’s ring, sent me their suggestions. The three of us agreed on the 3-carat dia
mond, showcased in a four-pronged setting, with sapphire stones elegantly sprinkled around the band.
The sapphire reminded me of the color of her eyes when they darkened with love and desire for me.
The ring fit perfectly on her dainty hand. A hand that I pressed tightly to my chest.
As I gazed into her eyes, I soaked in the presence of the woman who had held me steady throughout the years, the one who never failed to give me encouragement and much-needed boosts when the rigors of training got to me and the distance between us tortured me.
Her soft lips met mine and her luscious body slowly sank into me, catching me off-balance, her left hand, the one that held the added weight of her engagement finger, clasped on my left ring finger.
“Does this mean you’re going to replace this one?” Her touch ghosted the black tungsten that hadn’t left my finger since I’d graduated from SDU.
The ring from the rare metal was her graduation gift for me.
I shook my head, “Maybe I could wear it on my right hand. I don’t want to stop wearing it.”
She’d given it to me as a reminder that she was with me wherever I went. I didn’t need the reminder, but the engraving inside always comforted me whenever I was hundreds or thousands of miles away from her.
Under ample lighting, the letters G-R-A-P-H-I-T-E beamed from the inside of the ring. I’d traced it in the dark many times and it always made me feel like she was right there with me, through the best and the worst and all the times in between.
Kara said that the most stable form of carbon made her think of me.
That my strength and determination was unparalleled in her eyes.
Her soft lips met mine and as we stumbled into bed once again, an overwhelming feeling overtook me.
If happiness was a solid matter, then it took the shape of the woman in my arms.
And whoever theorized that contentment wasn’t an achievable goal, all they had to stop for a second and look at Kara through my eyes and they would know…
Without
A
Doubt
That contentment was an indisputable reality.
To YOU
My husband: Whenever I doubt myself, you always tell me to just keep writing. Here we are, book number 8 and you keep joking that I’ll have more than twenty books by the time I’m done with this writing gig. Hold your horses, buddy. Just one at a time. Thank you for all the love and support throughout the years. You mean everything to me.
My daughter: You definitely keep me on my toes! It’s the biggest honor to be your mama.
For my family: My anchor, in everything.
My friends in and out of the book world: You make me laugh and I treasure friendships because of all of you, grazie.
Our Creator: For all the trials and the blessings, I am so grateful.
You, my dear readers: When I type the beginning of the story, I don’t ever think of you. I just write how my characters want me to write. When I’m done with it, I ask myself, “Is this something worth reading about?” If I can answer yes, then it’s at that moment I decide to publish it. Thank you for taking the time to share my characters’ feelings and journeys with me. Writing is now a part of me. When you share your thoughts/reviews about my books, I enjoy writing just a little bit more.
“I write because I love it and for no other reason. The minute I stop enjoying it will be the exact moment I will stop writing.”
Anne Leigh is a 30-something-year-old who refuses to let the calendar dictate her age. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Nursing. She likes to write about strong women and equally strong guys who grapple with their emotions when faced with something as intangible as love.
She lives in Los Angeles with her family. With her crazy schedule, she gets frustrated at L.A. traffic and needs an escape to keep her sanity, which thankfully her characters provide.
She didn’t think of publishing her stories and when she finally did, she’s truly appreciative of every, single person who found the time to let her characters become parts of their world.
She appreciates all the readers who leave kind comments/reviews on where they purchased the book because without them, all her stories would remain locked up in a thing called “computer.”
She’s always happy to find new friends and would love to hear from you via:
Facebook: Like her Official Author Page for book updates:
Author Anne Leigh
E-mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @ Anneleighauthor
Love Unexpected Series
Love Unexpected
Love Unmatched
Love Untouched
Fight or Fall
Love Undefeated
W Duet
W
A
Sports and Elements Series
Graphite