“He and Vee have known each other for years,” Owen said, materializing at Sam’s side. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Good old O. Always had Sam’s back. But right now he wished Owen hadn’t picked today to choose some bling for his beloved, because then he might’ve had a chance to escape unscathed. Now he was in for a penny, in for a pound.
“Fine,” Kimberly said. “Since you two have so much history, she must know what a commitment-phobe manwhore you are.” She snatched her handbag from the counter and hugged it to her chest. “So I wouldn’t invest too much in a ring that you’ll have thrown in your face before long.” And on that parting shot, she spun on her heels and stalked out of the store.
The bell tinkled merrily in the silence.
“Wow.” Owen tracked the violent swing of Kimberly’s hips as she stormed past the jeweler’s window. “Nice preproposal pep talk.”
“Yeah.” Sam’s mouth twisted in the same motion as his gut.
Commitment-phobe. Manwhore.
Was that how Vee saw him? Was that how he saw himself? He mentally shook his head. Overthinking was not usually one of his character flaws. He’d come here to buy Vee a damn ring, and that was what he’d do.
“You’re still going to go through with it?” Owen bent down to rest his forearms on the counter, his smug face pointed at the rows of rings. “Popping the question to Vee tonight?”
“That’s the plan.”
One which he hadn’t really detailed to Owen since his mate was pretty easy to avoid with his long hospital shifts. As far as Owen knew, he and Vee were still carrying out the you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours plan. That their plan had veered a little off course was something he wanted to keep to himself.
“I’d love to be a fly on the wall tonight, but alas, duty calls.” He tapped the glass. “What about that one?”
The salesman rushed over and drew out the tray, delivering a machine-gun patter about the clarity of the diamond and blah blah blah. Sam tuned him out and scanned the velvet case. The rings all looked pretty much the same to him, other than the price tag. The salesman concluded with the ring’s value, turning the golden band this way and that so the diamond sparkled. As if blinding Sam was enough to ensure a sale.
“Not sure,” he said. “The rock’s pretty tiny.”
Owen tipped his head to one side. “What’s your budget?”
Sam shrugged. “Don’t have one.”
He hadn’t really thought about the cost. Money wasn’t an issue; he’d thought he’d just grab the first moderately priced ring that Vee could sell again after their deal was done. Like bonus pay.
The salesman’s smile turned sharklike. “A true romantic. Nothing tells a woman you love her like a 2.08 carat total weight pear-cut diamond.” He swooped down to pull a second tray out of the cabinet, this one containing rings with four and five digits printed on the little white cards.
Owen straightened. “The crazy chick was right about one thing, wasn’t she? You don’t want to spend too much on a ring that—” His mouth snapped shut as he gave the salesman’s suddenly curious stare a side-eye. “That she might not like,” he finished lamely. “Some women are very particular about what they want in an engagement ring. Luckily Gracie liked the one I chose.”
“Describe your prospective fiancée,” said the salesman. “And then I can point you in the right direction.”
A spidery sensation exploded in Sam’s stomach. Asking a guy who’d only just scraped through with a pass mark on his school essays to describe Vee?
“Uh.” He shot a glance at Owen, now examining him with some interest. Likely his eagle-eyed mate who was used to making on-the-spot diagnoses had noticed the heat crawling up Sam’s neck. “She’s, uh, into fashion and shit. And she’s a mum.”
The salesman nodded and smiled, as if Sam were spouting love sonnets.
“Um. She’s pretty independent.”
“Stubborn, too,” Owen supplied. “But in a good way.”
“Yeah, stubborn. But she works hard to provide for her daughter on her terms. Oh—
and she has dark hair, blue eyes, and a knock-out smile.”
The salesman nodded again, but this time more slowly. “Yessss. But that doesn’t tell me what sort of woman she is or, more importantly, how she makes you feel. Start with that,” he said sagely. “How does she make you feel? Then we can find a ring to show her how you feel.”
How did Vee make him feel?
She made him feel as if he’d just finished a difficult carving and it’d come out ten times better than he’d hoped.
She made him feel like he was skidding toward an unseen cliff, but that she was his parachute so he was good to go.
She made him feel like she was his, and he was hers.
Owen turned sideways, leaning a hip against the counter and folding his arms in a go on, I’m listening pose.
Shit. He couldn’t admit to any of those things.
“She makes me feel…” Words caught in his throat then he caught the curious concern in Owen’s eyes. “Good. She makes me feel good. Happy. Like everything is ka pai and I’m her Superman.”
Where the hell had that come from? He cringed. Even the salesman wasn’t buying it.
Owen lifted an eyebrow. “When we were in high school she used to look at you like you were Superman,” he said. “Don’t tell me you never noticed it.”
“Bullshit.” Sam selected a random ring from the tray, his fingers suddenly feeling like overcooked sausages. He dropped it. The ring clattered on the glass top and the salesman grimaced as he picked it up and handed it back to him. “She had a thing for that guy in her year, MacDonnell. He was a prefect or something, involved in the debating team, which she joined for a while, too.”
“Tim MacDonnell,” Owen said easily. “He moved to Auckland in our final year and became a lawyer. Vee was crushing on him right through high school, but as far as I know she never even spoke to him.”
“There you go. MacDonnell was her Superman, not me.” He dropped the ring into the salesman’s palm. The man got busy putting it back into the tray and pretending he wasn’t listening to every word.
Owen chuckled and shook his head. “Jeez, and I was supposed to be the one who had no experience with girls back then. Why do you think she was always hanging around the farm?” He held out a warning finger. “And don’t say because of Tui. How often did you hear Tui bitch about our smelly sports kits stinking up the house and us making too much noise for her and Vee to talk without shouting? Tui always wanted to go to Vee’s house, but Vee somehow got her way and they ended up at yours.”
Sam frowned. He’d never really thought about that. Vee had always just been…there. With his little sister. Under his nose but mostly as invisible as any of his sister’s other friends who’d come around. Until that day when he’d finally noticed her, but by then he was old enough to know that he should leave Vee alone.
He waved Owen away. “If anything, it was just a schoolgirl crush. Remember when Tui liked Cody’s older brother? He used to come around to tutor her in math and science. I’d catch her making cow eyes at him over the kitchen table. Next thing you know, she’s got the hots for a kid in the soccer team.”
“Just a schoolgirl crush, eh?” Owen said. He rolled a shoulder forward. “Guess Tui would’ve pitched a fit if you’d tried to hit on her best friend.”
She definitely would have then and she didn’t seem to be too happy about it now. But what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, as the saying goes. By the time his little sister figured out that he and Vee were out of the friend zone, she would be back home and he would have his house to himself again. Why did that leave him feeling hollow instead of relieved?
“Haven’t you got somewhere to be? Other than with your nose up in my business?” He gave Owen a threatening look that he’d inherited from his ma. One that said any more back talk and she’d clip his ear.
Owen chuckled and pointed a gun-shaped finger
at him before turning away to look at the display case of earrings. The sales assistant, figuring he’d have better luck making an easy sale with Owen, hurried over to deliver his sales pitch.
Sam looked at the rows of sparkling rings, the pit in his stomach growing and expanding until it felt like he had a boulder in there. The sales assistant rang up Owen’s purchase, and when it looked as if his friend was going to come back and needle him again, Sam kept his eyes on the ring trays and lifted a hand. Owen had known him long enough to interpret when enough was enough. He didn’t push and headed toward the door.
“Good luck, mate,” he said and the bell tinkled.
Sam’s gaze kept skipping between two rings on two different trays. One was a simple solitaire, pretty and functional. The other nearly four times the cost, with a sapphire almost the same color as Vee’s eyes. A sickly bass thudding started up in his eardrums. This was the ring that he would choose if he were ever to propose to Vee for real.
His blood pressure continued to rise as he looked back at the less expensive ring that was still nothing to be sneezed at but it wasn’t Vee. It wasn’t the type of ring that he would look at on her hand in the future and remember each time that he did, the emotion and intensity of his feelings as he’d selected it for her.
“Not an easy choice, is it? Take your time.” The salesman returned, but his expression of ‘will you just make a decision?’ counteracted his words.
Sam felt as if he’d been out in the sun for too long. He needed a drink, preferably with something alcoholic in it, and he needed a cold shower because he was pretty certain he was stinking up the jewelry store with nervous, feral sweat.
How does she make you feel?
How do you feel about her?
“Choose already, dickhead,” he muttered under his breath.
“Pardon?” the salesman asked.
So Sam tapped a finger on a ring. “That one.”
Vee was going through the motions with a smile on her face that felt like rigor mortis was setting in. She sat, sandwiched between Sam and Isaac on the Ngatas’ back deck, her stomach uncomfortably full of hangi, and yet at the same time butterflies the size of fruit bats were having a party in there, too.
Thank God for the wine in her hand. Liquid courage was an understatement.
She tried to listen to the conversation flowing around her, everyone playing their part of providing an enjoyable evening with the Wrights, but an old Phil Collins song was stuck in her head.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight…
She swallowed another sip of wine, slanting a sideways glance at Sam. He was slouched comfortably in his chair, one arm loosely draped along the back of hers, and every now and then he’d stroke her shoulder. And Vee would startle and shiver every single time, as if Collins’s drum solo had blasted into her ear.
Tonight. Sam would propose tonight—their last night with the Wrights.
Unless he’d changed his mind. Of course he’d changed his mind, she reassured herself as Ariana and Tui carried out the makings of dessert. Sam had pulled her aside after Julia’s baby shower with an odd look in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. He told her Eric had called his father to inform him that he planned to sign the papers then and there.
“We did it, babe. Thank you.” Then he’d kissed her, a lingering kiss that made her toes curl. But that’d been the last time he’d touched her intimately for the rest of the afternoon.
There was no reason to go ahead with the on bended knee production because they’d done what they’d set out to do. Fool the Wrights into believing they were a happy, settled couple. A family.
Ariana placed an enormous pavlova covered with whipped cream and slices of kiwifruit on the table. Tui set down a stack of dessert bowls next to it and grinned at Eric and Julia.
“Dig in quick,” she said, “before my greedy brothers eat it all.”
Isaac laughed and reached for the knife. “I’ve got some manners, you know. Guests first.”
Uncle Manu, seated across the table, rubbed his hands gleefully. “You fellas are in for a treat. Ari makes the best pav in Bounty Bay.” His weathered face crumpled into wrinkles, the flicker of the citronella candles strategically placed around the table dancing over his toothy grin.
The sharp smell of citronella suddenly caused Vee’s stomach to lurch sideways. She stood, her chair scraping backward. She forced an everything’s okay smile on her face. “Count me out. I’m stuffed.”
“You okay, hon?” Nat asked from next to Manu. Ruby was in her lap, eyeing up the pav and chanting “pudding” over and over.
“I’m fine. Just too much kumara, I think.” Another faked smile. “I’ll just go for a quick walk to burn some of dinner off.” She didn’t dare glance at Sam’s face as she backed away from the table and headed off the deck.
The sun dipped behind the hills in a blazing trail, painting the dusky sky all shades of pink and orange. There was hardly any wind so the only sound accompanying her as she crossed the grass to the horses’ paddock was the chitter of cicadas. Tui’s old horse, Storm, cropped grass at the fence line. The mare looked up as Vee drew closer and nickered softly. Heedless of the fact she was no longer a young girl going through a horse-crazy phase and that she wore one of Bountiful’s pretty summer dresses, Vee climbed up on the heavy wooden farm gate and sat astride it. Storm clopped over and blew a puff of warm air from her nostrils onto Vee’s leg.
Vee laughed, stroking her white and brown nose. “Good girl,” she crooned. “It’s been a while since I came to talk to you, hasn’t it, my friend?”
“She’s not the only one.”
Vee jumped at the sound of Tui’s voice behind her. Damn, but that woman was as stealthy as a cat when she wanted to be. She arched around, watching as Tui moved to rest her folded elbows on top of the gate. Storm whickered a greeting and abandoned Vee to poke her nose against Tui’s forearms.
“We’re not kids who tell each other everything now.” Vee swung her leg over the gate so she sat facing the paddock. Three more horse-shaped silhouettes grazed in the distance under the spreading branches of an old macrocarpa, which looked like a giant black umbrella now that the light was fading. “Were not even really friends.”
Tui unfolded her arms and scratched Storm’s huge jaw. “We should probably make an effort, being that you’re about to become my sister-in-law-to-be.”
Vee’s hands, on either side of her thighs, gripped the rough wood hard enough to bruise her palm. Good thing, too, as she nearly fell off the gate. She whipped her head toward Tui. “That’s not still happening. The Wrights are a done deal.”
Tui tossed her head, her thick curls spilling down her back. “You always were so bloody unobservant.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You want examples?” Tui flashed her a sharp smile. “’Cause I can give you examples. Patrick cheating on you right under your nose is only one.”
It’d been Patrick who had driven the final nail into the coffin of their friendship. They’d slowly grown apart after high school, no longer besties who were more like sisters. But even though longer and longer stretches of time and distance had kept them apart, they’d still remained close with hour-long catch-ups on the phone every couple of weeks. But when Tui had dared criticize the father of her unborn child—and Tui was not known for her tact—Vee had felt betrayed and defensive, withdrawing into herself until Tui had pushed her and a massive flaming argument ensued that had hacked apart their relationship.
But it hadn’t severed it completely. A part of Vee ached for her friend, desperately wanting to connect with her again but having no idea how.
“You want to hear you were right?” Vee peeled her hands off the fence and brushed them down her skirt-covered thighs. “You were right. Patrick was everything you accused him of and more.”
“I didn’t want to be right.” She gently pushed Storm’s big head out of her face. “And you’ll never know what it cost me not to run that
fucker down with my bike for what he did to you.”
Vee’s heart flipped into her throat, and for a moment, completely clogged it. Heat prickled at the corners of her eyes and she widened them, blinking rapidly to chase away any tears that dared show themselves. “You would’ve totaled your bike, Tu, and that turd-bucket was so not worth it.”
Tui laughed and a more comfortable silence eased between them as she continued to stroke Storm’s nose. “You’ve been so busy faking how cool you are tonight that you didn’t notice Sam disappearing for a bit after he’d helped clear the dinner dishes away, did you?”
Vee frowned. “Where did he go?”
“His truck, I expect. Bet you didn’t notice the bulge in his jeans when he came back to the table either.” Tui sent her an arched look, probably because Vee felt her jaw sag. “Jeans front pocket, I mean.”
“Um. No?”
Tui rolled her eyes. “My brother has a ring-case-sized lump in his pocket. Wouldn’t occur to the dumbass to take the ring out of the case so it wasn’t so bloody obvious what he was up to.”
“He’s not up to anything.” Vee’s voice came out a little bit higher than normal, more like a squeaky hinge. “He doesn’t need to anymore.”
Storm, who’d grown bored with the lack of apples coming her way, moved off, flicking her tail in disgust. Tui leaned back on the fence, resting her chin on top of her folded arms. “Maybe he wants to.”
“That’s insane.” Vee had planned the words to come out in a scoffing tone, but to her ears they sounded kind of breathy. Hopeful.
“Are you gonna say yes?”
“Do I have any choice but to?” Vee swung both legs over the gate and climbed down. She smoothed her skirt with trembling hands, a sick feeling rising in her stomach. “With the Wrights watching I can’t very well turn him down, can I?”
Tui straightened. “And if the Wrights weren’t watching?”
Vee’s breath evaporated, drifting away into the evening sky where the first star had appeared. What would she say if there was any chance he meant it? She pulled her shoulders back and steadied her shaking chin. “We both know Sam doesn’t do monogamy, so it’s a moot point.”
Break Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 5) Page 18