“Truly, I do, and I’d like to know you better. I hope you feel the same way about me, and if you do, this is our chance. We may not have another.”
Karen pursed her lips, staring at the ceiling, seeming to be considering what he had said.
Finally, she cocked her head to one side. “Which date would this be? Six?”
“Let’s forget last fall and call it our first.”
Karen smiled. “I’d be willing to celebrate that...I’m in.”
Three Months Later
They had both enjoyed the play. A revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, it portrayed two newlyweds with very different personalities who had just returned from their honeymoon. At one point, the free-spirited wife had convinced her straight-laced husband to climb out the window of their apartment, mount a fire escape, and sit down to dinner with a strange man who has taken up residence on the roof of their building. Karen laughed until she began to cry and Mark had to give her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.
As they left the theater, Karen had asked if they could return to Chocolate Heaven for dessert, and when he’d taken her home, they had kissed, truly kissed, for the first time, Mark feeling pleased at being one of the few to make it safely to first base.
Other dates had followed, the symphony, dinner at Karen’s apartment, dinner at Mark’s house, movies, sailing in the harbor, and, even when it was cold, long walks on the beach. Three dates had quickly become six, and Mark soon stopped counting.
It was if they had begun to date with different expectations than they’d had the first time. They chose activities because they both enjoyed them, and although they might spend a rainy Saturday afternoon cuddling on the sofa in Mark’s living room, they would have told anyone who asked that they were good friends and aspired to nothing more. They had talked of marriage, of course, although neither had asked, “Will you marry me?” They had spoken of “If we were married,” and “suppose we were married” and, more recently, “when we are married,” so Mark felt reasonably sure she would accept his offer of a ring.
He held it between two fingers and smiled as the diamond caught a ray of sunshine and split it into the colors of the rainbow. He knew Karen would like it.
Their discussions of marriage had become more frequent since their visit to a jewelry store one Saturday afternoon about a month earlier. He had been picking up a bracelet his mother had left to be repaired, some problem with the clasp he had never completely understood. He and Karen had been sitting with her on the porch, munching on tea cakes and sipping iced tea before walking down King Street to browse through the antique stores, and his mother had asked if they might stop by the jeweler while they were out.
While Mark waited for the clerk to wrap the bracelet, Karen had wandered around the store, admiring a couple of necklaces before glancing at the rings.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” she had exclaimed just as the clerk handed Mark the bracelet, wrapped and ready to take home. Both men had moved to the counter where she stood, gazing at a gold ring with a single solitaire diamond. The clerk had slipped the ring on her finger, saying that it should be viewed while being worn, rather than in isolation. It had fit perfectly.
“It’s so pretty, I hate to take it off,” Karen had said as she returned it to the clerk.
Mark had not reacted to her comment. He took it as a hint, but he had not wanted to spoil the opportunity to surprise her.
They had spent the remainder of the afternoon looking at antiques, and Mark had selected a small table for the entryway of his house.
“It’s perfect,” Karen had told him as he made the purchase. “We…you will enjoy it.”
That evening, he had delivered the bracelet to his mother. He knew she had taken the bracelet for repair two weeks earlier and he thought it a bit coincidental that she had waited until Karen was with him before she asked him to retrieve it for her. When his mother put her mind to something…
He shook his head as he wondered if Karen had been a part of her plan or whether his mother had correctly assumed she would be drawn to the engagement rings once she found herself in the store.
He shrugged. Once, he would have been irate had he thought Karen to be working in league with his mother. Now, it didn’t seem to matter.
Word that they were going to the theater had spread through their families like a fire running through dry leaves. His mother had knocked at his door shortly before he left to get Karen with a gift card to a restaurant near the theater.
“They have a wonderful dessert menu and they are open late,” she had told him.
Karen’s mother had dropped off a necklace for her to wear. Even Emily had called to wish him luck with the Ice Queen.
“If anyone can melt her heart, I’m certain it’s my big brother,” Em had teased. “Go to it.”
As a result, he’d made certain no one knew he planned to propose tonight.
He had pondered how to offer Karen the ring. He chuckled as he recalled motion pictures in which the man knelt before the woman, spouting a flowery declaration of love.
“I have known you but a few short months, but in that time, you have become dearer to me than life itself. I can no more imagine continuing to live without you than I can imagine living without food to eat or air to breath. Would you make me the happiest of men by doing me the high honor of becoming my wife?”
He smiled at the image of him on one knee, words such as these pouring from his mouth. He might be able to do it without laughing, but he was fairly certain Karen would not maintain a straight face. It might be a good story, though, to tell their mothers, and it was certainly the account to give Vicky.
He had a friend who had once arranged for a ring to arrive with dessert, perched on a scoop of ice cream. The waiter who had served dessert had not noticed the ring, reversing the desserts and placing the ring in front of his friend rather than giving it to the future bride.
When another friend had become engaged, her ring had sparkled atop a massive slice of chocolate cake. She had failed to spot it nestled amid swirls of ganache, and her soon-to-be-fiancé practically leaped across the table, grabbing her hand, restraining her from taking her first bite of cake, ring and all.
He decided the simplest strategy would be to tell her he loved her and to ask her to marry him.
“Except I don’t love her,” he insisted.
True, his feelings for Karen had grown over the last several months. She was beautiful, a nine-point-five, he reminded himself, smiling as he recalled all of the trouble that rating had caused, but far beyond that, he admired her intelligence, her honesty, her sense of humor, and her liveliness. He doubted she had ever thought ill of another person. He enjoyed being with her, not only holding her and kissing her, but walking along the street beside her, sitting in his favorite chair reading while she painted, cooking dinner together in his kitchen, or arguing politics—like his mother, she was insufferably liberal and, like Mark, she loved to argue.
She was what he wanted in a wife.
The thought that he might be falling in love had crossed his mind many times, but he had always chased those thoughts away, unwilling to be ensnared by love again.
Love had betrayed him, blinding him to Lucia’s real feelings. And love was persistent. Whenever he thought of Lucia, something that was happening less and less often thank God, his old feelings came roaring back.
He would not fall in love again. Besides, Karen plainly did not love him, and a relationship in which only one party loved the other was doomed to failure. The marriage they had vaguely discussed would be one of friendship and convenience. They had agreed that was what each wanted, even if they’d not agreed it was to be with each other.
He would not tell her he loved her. She would surely see through the lie, and despise him for telling it. If she accepted his declaration, it would create an awkward situation, one in which she would feel the need to return the sentiment, lying to him about her feelings, causing him to despise her, or one
in which she simply let his words pass without comment. He certainly did not want any of those scenarios when he asked for her hand.
He did plan to surprise her with his proposal, and the thin, flat box in which the jeweler had placed his mother’s bracelet was perfect. A flat, square box, wrapped in white with gold dots spread across the paper, it could not possibly be mistaken for a ring.
He slipped on his coat and glanced in the mirror. Navy suit, white shirt, navy tie with thin red stripes. He nodded.
“Let’s do it,” he whispered.
Picking up the box, he walked out to his car.
***
Karen clasped her mother’s diamond necklace around her neck and stepped back to view herself in the mirror. It sparkled even brighter than usual against her black dress, seeming especially elegant since it was the sole piece of jewelry she had chosen to wear.
Her mother had been curious when she had asked to borrow it.
“Special occasion?” she had asked, her eyes sparkling in anticipation.
“Not really. No occasion at all.” Karen had smiled, certain her mother was hearing wedding bells.
She recalled stopping at the jewelry store to pick up a bracelet Mark’s mother had taken in for repair. While the clerk had retrieved the bracelet and showed it to Mark for approval, Karen had wandered around the store. She had always admired the pieces displayed in the store’s front window, but she knew there was nothing in this store’s inventory even approaching her price range. She had inspected several beautiful necklaces and practically salivated over a gold bracelet set with deep blue sapphires before stumbling on the engagement rings just as Mark had finished paying for the repair.
She had been nervous, just allowing the clerk slip her favorite ring on her finger so all three of them could admire it, nervous both because she could guess the ring’s price and because trying it on with Mark standing beside her seemed…it almost seemed as if he had suggested she slip it on, although he hadn’t, and if it had been his suggestion, it implied a proposal.
Karen smiled. She was allowing her imagination to run away with her. Of course, she still wondered if their visit to the jewelry store was a spur-of-the-moment request from his mother as it had seemed to be, or whether there had been an unspoken plan.
It was true she and Mark had dated constantly for the past three months. At first, they had seen each other weekly, then a couple of times a week, finally, it was unusual for a day to pass on which they were not together for a few minutes at least. Even so, they had only spoken of marriage in rather general terms.
Three months was not a long time, certainly, though they had known each other longer than that. Karen believed their first round of dates, the one ending after their hike in the mountains, had been torpedoed by a series of misunderstandings. They had spent an entire evening dissecting those first three dates, each of them identifying unspoken assumptions they had made and unwarranted conclusions they had reached about the other person.
This time around, she had thought twice before saying anything that might seem negative and she was learning to read Mark’s feelings. He, in turn, seemed to have made an effort to express those feelings more freely.
Three months. She had dated Richard for the same length of time. She frowned as she thought of him.
He’d badgered her for two of those three months to sleep with him, but, although she’d been more physical with Richard than she had been with almost any man up to that point, he’d not been satisfied. He’d made passes at her constantly and more than once, had spoken scathingly of women who insisted on reaching their wedding nights as virgins, although she had never told him that was her intention. Finally, he had become insistent.
For weeks, Mark had refused to share Richard’s description of what had happened that night and he had rebuffed her attempts to tell him her story. Her imagination had suggested all sorts of scenarios Richard might have invented to justify his behavior, so she’d been rather impressed with him when she had finally pried his account out of Mark, finding the general outline to be not far from the truth.
The details were another matter.
“Plastered my body against his? Writhing under him? In his dreams.” Karen’s face had been almost purple, she was sure. “More like being held in a vise and struggling for air,” she’d exclaimed.
“I wore nothing under my dress?” She hurled a throw pillow across Mark’s living room. “How dare that lying piece of swamp scum say something like that?”
She originally had anticipated a single date with Richard, but he had been persistent, clamoring to see her, unrelenting in his campaign to attract her attention, finally wearing away her defenses, causing her to accept the inevitability of their marriage. The one good product of the time she had spent with Richard had been the realization that she could be satisfied with the prospect of a marriage not based on love, a realization that made it possible for her to accept Mark’s invitation to three dates. Three new dates.
Karen laughed. It had certainly seemed a better choice than the collection of cats that Vicky had suggested.
Karen stepped back from the mirror and inspected herself. She’d had her auburn hair cut earlier in the week, and it contrasted nicely with her black dress and heels. The sparkling diamond popped, as she had hoped.
Perfect, she decided.
She walked to the window and peeked out at King Street. Why had Mark planned a special dinner?
When her mother had asked, her response had been vague, and her mother had pressed her.
“A man does not plan dinner at Charleston House on a whim or because it’s…it’s the second Thursday of the month. He must have a reason.”
Karen had shrugged. “If there’s another reason, he hasn’t shared it.”
Could he possibly plan to propose marriage?
She had put Richard off when he had done that two months after their first date and he had redoubled his efforts to win her. The emerald necklace and the matching earrings he had given her for Christmas two weeks later had laid in the bottom of her jewelry box for weeks.
She had not wanted to put them in the mail, she had not wanted to run into him by accident if she took them to his office, and she had no intention of asking him to come to her apartment to retrieve them. Finally, she had wrapped them securely in brown paper and cajoled Vicky into making the delivery.
She felt that refusing a proposal from Mark would generate a very different response. Mark would not offer a second time.
Not that she would think of refusing his proposal. She had strong feelings for Mark. He was handsome, he was kind, he was good. She smiled. “Good” was not a word one frequently used to describe another person.
She found him easy to talk with, fun to spend time with. She felt happy whenever they were together, regardless of what they might be doing. Everything she would want in a husband.
At times, she almost felt she loved him, but she always banished such thoughts. Love was a complication she no longer craved. Besides, Mark didn’t love her, it was clear, and a one-sided love relationship was a recipe for disaster.
The clock in her living room struck seven. Whatever he was planning, she would soon know.
***
Mark parked in front of the restaurant and helped Karen out of the car. She began to walk toward the entrance, but stopped and turned when she realized Mark was not with her, finding him bent over, rooting through the back of the car.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No. No problem.” He emerged from the car, a wrapped package in his hand.
“Is that a present?” She eyed the box curiously. It was the wrong size for a ring. She looked up to find a serious expression on Mark’s face. “Is it for me?”
“It is.” He smiled.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Can I not give you a present simply because I want to give you one?”
“Yes, but…” Her tentative response drew another smile and Karen recalled how
when she first knew Mark, he never smiled, except to be polite. She liked the change.
“I’ll give you the present later.”
When they were seated, Mark placed the package on the table between them.
“Are you trying to make me curious?” Karen demanded.
“Definitely. Am I succeeding?”
Karen hissed playfully. “I’ll pay no attention to it until after dessert.”
She struggled to avoid looking at the package, but her eyes refused to stay away. She noticed that Mark smiled every time her eyes strayed.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” She frowned in pretend anger. Mark seemed to realize she was not serious and he smiled again.
“I am.”
She glared at him. No matter what the issue, men had always backed down when she had done that, but Mark simply sipped from his glass of wine.
She decided that while a tantrum might work, it would be so inappropriate that she would never live it down.
“Please,” she begged. “Please let me open it. It is mine after all.”
“After we order dessert. You can open it then.”
Karen waited patiently while the waiter cleared the table and brought dessert menus. Opening the menu, her eyes fell on the triple-chocolate pound cake, and she placed her order without looking further. Mark seemed to read and comment on the description of each entry, even the cherry torte, even though Karen knew he despised cherries. Finally, he selected the cake too.
“You’re cruel,” she told him.
As the waiter turned to leave, Mark handed the package to Karen. “This is for you. I hope you like it.”
Karen noticed his eyes cut away from her as he offered her the gift and she heard a light tremor in his voice. Their banter about the present had been uncharacteristic for Mark. He was nervous. She should have realized.
Karen inspected the package, turning it over and shaking it gently. Clearly it was not a ring. Too large for earrings too. Too large for a pin. Likely it was not a necklace either, since a necklace would come in a long, thin box. A bracelet, perhaps? Maybe it’s not jewelry. She frowned, trying to figure out what the present might be.
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