Put a Ring On It

by Beth Kendrick

  “This is real?” She had to keep asking. “You’re serious with all this?”

  “It’s real. I’m married.”

  There ensued a long pause while she tried and failed to process his confession. “You married someone else because of a zipper merge.”

  “I’m sorry, Brighton.”

  “Don’t be.” She stopped shivering as adrenaline rushed through her. “I don’t want your pity. I hope you and what’s-her-name—”

  “Genevieve.”

  “—are deliriously happy together. But odds are, you won’t be.”

  “You’re bitter.” He sighed, paternal and concerned. “You have a right to be.”

  “I’m not bitter; I’ve just read the research on divorce rates. One to three years of dating is the sweet spot for marital longevity. Not one to three hours.”

  “I don’t care what the research says. When you know, you know,” he informed her. “And maybe one day, you’ll find someone who’s a better match for you.” He sighed again, then got down to the business side of the breakup. “Text me when you’ve had a chance to calm down. I still have a few things at your apartment. There’s no hurry, but—”

  She hung up on him and drew back her arm to fling her phone into the sand. She stopped herself in time, forcing her body to relax. Destroying her phone wouldn’t solve her problem. It wouldn’t teach Colin a lesson or make him realize that he’d just made a massive mistake.

  But she’d find something that would.

  She tucked her phone into her purse, located a tube of lip gloss, and strode purposefully back toward the bar.

  • • •

  From the moment Brighton stormed into the Whinery, she could feel the pull of the tractor beam from across the room.

  Her heart was pounding, and she made every effort to silence her brain up there in the executive suite of her skull. The CEO is fired for the night. Adjusting the lapels of her black blazer, she threaded her way through the crowd of starry-eyed women. “Hey,” she said to the back of Jake Sorensen’s leather jacket. “Is that drink offer still good?”

  He made her wait for a beat, then turned around to face her. With one look, her anger subsided, washed away in a surge of hormones and unspeakable impulses.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he drawled, his dark eyes glinting with amusement.

  Brighton crossed her arms over her chest. “Says who?”

  “Lila Alders.” He smiled at her and her whole body felt fizzy. “She said you were too good for me.”

  Brighton scoffed. “That’s just one person’s opinion. Lila doesn’t even know me.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “Buy me a drink.”

  He stood up, offering her his barstool. “You said you don’t drink.”

  She slid onto the stool. “I usually don’t. But people change their minds—just ask my fiancé.” She stopped and corrected herself. “Ex-fiancé.”

  “She’ll have a glass of champagne,” Jake informed the bartender.

  “Champagne is for celebrating,” Brighton pointed out as the bartender handed her a delicate glass flute.

  “You are celebrating.” He raised his glass, which appeared to her untrained eye to contain scotch. “Here’s to changing your mind.”

  Brighton took a sip of the light, bubbly booze, then put down her glass with a sharp clink. “We dated for two years and he just broke up with me over the phone. Because he met someone else. Like five minutes ago.” She finished the rest of the champagne in two big gulps.

  Jake slid his scotch over her way.

  “Thank you, but I really, truly don’t drink hard liquor. I’m only making an exception for the champagne due to extraordinary circumstances.” She leaned toward Jake, her eyes narrowing. “Get this: He married the woman he just met five minutes ago.”

  He loomed over her, so tall and so good-looking and so very obviously bad for her. “Damn.”

  “I know.” She threw up her hands, brushing her fingers against the sleeve of his jacket. “Some random woman named Genevieve.”

  Jake went completely motionless. The smoldering, speculative spark in his eyes flickered out.

  “Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too.” Brighton dug into one of the little silver candy dishes and helped herself to a handful of miniature Krackels. “Two years versus two seconds. He said he took one look at her and he ‘just knew.’ What the hell does that even mean?”

  Jake devoted all his attention to her, shutting out the music and laughter and carousing with his intensity. The way he looked at her made her feel like the only person in the world. She realized that this was a practiced technique of a lifelong lothario, but she didn’t care.

  So what if he was a player? Right now, she wanted to be played with.

  “How could he do this?” She pounded the bar top, nearly upending her empty champagne flute as the bartender handed her a full one. “We have one stupid fight about a zipper merge, and then, bam! He calls me crying, he’s made a binding legal commitment to someone else, the end.” She shoved another piece of chocolate into her mouth.

  Jake looked incredulous. “He was crying?”

  “Yes! And I love him. I tried to be a good girlfriend, I really did. I spent so much time helping him study that I could probably pass the bar exam at this point!” She could feel the champagne starting to take effect, and she helped herself to another sip. “But none of that matters, apparently, because she’s ‘the one.’ I can’t compete with ‘the one.’”

  Jake dismissed this with a quirk of his brows. “I give it three months, tops. He’ll come crawling back.”

  “I don’t want him to come crawling back!” Brighton declared, although she wasn’t sure this was true. “I never want to see him again.” She startled a little as her text alert chimed. Kira was checking in:

  This is going to take a while. Sorry X1000. Be back asap.

  When she glanced back up, Jake was still watching her intently. “That’s a pretty serious suit you’ve got on.”

  “Yeah, ’cause I’m seriously successful.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s what pisses me off about this. He kept harping about how I wanted to marry a lawyer, but I never cared about that. He was the one who couldn’t stand the fact that he failed the bar.”

  Jake seemed skeptical. “A lot of women would care about that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not one of them. I want a partner, not a sugar daddy.” She made a face. “Gross. I’d never want to be dependent on a man like that.”

  “Maybe that bothered him,” Jake suggested. “Maybe he wanted you to need him.”

  “Then why’d he propose?” Brighton challenged.

  “Why’d you say yes?” Jake shot back.

  “Because.” Brighton nibbled her lower lip, considering. “He was the guy I always saw myself marrying. Stable. Sensible. Like me.”

  Jake smiled down at her again. “He’s not that stable if he married a stranger with no warning.”

  “Touché.”

  “Maybe that’s why you liked him.” His tone turned conspiratorial. “You want a little chaos on some level.”

  She shifted in her seat, acutely aware of the whisper of her silk blouse against her skin. “I don’t. Trust me.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “I don’t. I like ten-year plans, balanced portfolios, and predictable outcomes.”

  “Okay.” He kept watching her as though she were the most captivating woman on earth.

  “So what am I supposed to do now?” she said. “What would you do if this happened to you?”

  “I would spend a solid decade drinking and buying expensive shit and socializing with strangers.” He started to say more, then thought better of it. “Hypothetically.”

  Brighton snapped out of her emotional death spiral and regarded him with renewed interest. “Hypothetically, h
mm?”

  That smoldering, speculative spark had returned in full force. “You know what you should do?”

  “What?”

  “You should marry a stranger, too. That’d show him.”

  Brighton burst out laughing. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious. He’d never get over it.”

  “Please.” She took another fortifying sip of champagne. “Do I look like the kind of woman who marries a stranger?”

  “You could do it.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I won’t even wear a thong.”

  His gaze intensified.

  “Sorry. Overshare. See, this is why I don’t drink.” She tipped back her head and pressed her fingertips against her temples. “Ugh. What am I going to do?”

  “That’s the great thing about being single—you can do whatever you want.”

  “What do I want?” She mulled this over for a moment. And then the answer presented itself. “A shot of whisky.”

  He frowned. “But you just said . . .”

  “Forget what I said. I changed my mind again. Come on, do one shot with me.”

  He rested his hand on the bar behind her. “This is a bad idea.”

  “Good.” She angled her shoulder until she pressed into his arm. “It will change the whole trajectory of today. Instead of remembering this as the night Colin married someone else, I’ll remember it as the night that I did shots of whisky and threw up all over the hot guy with the great watch. Bartender, two shots of . . .” She turned to Jake. “What kind of whisky is good?”

  “You’re going to hate it all,” he predicted.

  “Okay, well, what kind will I hate the least?”

  “Try this.” He handed her his glass. “It’s Macallan.”

  She peered down at the amber liquid. “I thought that was scotch.”

  “It’s scotch whisky.” He smiled at her evident confusion. “What we call scotch is really whisky from Scotland.”

  “What?”

  “As opposed to whisky from Kentucky, which is bourbon, or whiskey from Ireland, which is whiskey with an e.”

  “Whisky, Scotch, and bourbon are all the same thing?” Brighton stared at him. “My mind is blown. I learned something new today.”

  “Great. Now taste something new.” He tapped the glass in her hand.

  She took a tiny sip of the Macallan and gagged. “Maybe I’ll stick with champagne.”

  “That should cut down on the throwing-up factor.” He caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for a refill of Brighton’s glass.

  “You are a refreshing change of pace from the men I normally meet.” She rested her cheek against his arm for a moment, then picked up his wrist and tried to discern the time through the watch’s cloudy, scratched glass faceplate. “You could fix that, you know,” she murmured up at him. “I could fix that.”

  For the first time, he moved away from her, freeing his wrist from her grasp. “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “It has so much potential. It could be amazing.”

  “Potential is a myth,” he said. “I’d rather deal with the here and now.”

  “Me, too.” Her whole body felt flushed, and for a moment, she imagined she was a different kind of woman. The kind of woman who could work a skirt suit and closed-toed pumps like a backless dress and stilettos. The kind of woman who let good-looking bad boys buy her drinks on a school night. “The here and now is really working for me.”

  • • •

  Two and a half glasses of champagne later . . .

  Brighton shrugged out of her suit jacket and rested her bare elbows on the glossy black bar top. “This is the best night ever!” She beamed at Jake, who now sat on the stool next to hers. Their shoulders, arms, and thighs pressed together as they surveyed a growing collection of empty glasses. “Are you having fun?”

  He paused long enough to drain the rest of his Macallan. “Yeah.”

  “Good—you definitely did not look like you were having fun when we first got here.”

  “I’m making up for it now.”

  “Oops.” She frowned as she felt one shoe slip off her foot and tumbled to the floor. “So? What next?”

  He inclined his head. “You tell me.”

  “No, no, no. I’ve made enough bad decisions already today.” She yawned. “You tell me.”

  “If you’re done here, I can call a car to take you back to wherever you’re staying.”

  “That’s it?” She couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice. “You chat me up, buy me drinks, and now you’re just sending me back to breakup purgatory?” She shook her head in despair. “It’s this outfit, isn’t it? And the pearl earrings? And the fact that my name isn’t Genevieve and I don’t wear thongs?”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off by pressing her index finger to his lips. “It’s because I’m a normal person with a normal job and a normal life and you’re, like, some indolent rich guy who looks like he should have a British accent and a vast estate in Provence.”

  His lips twitched. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You’re also clearly bored out of your mind.”

  “I assure you, I’m not bored right now.”

  “No, I mean in general. Ennui: You have it.” She gave up searching for her shoe as she sank back in her seat and crossed her legs. “So don’t waste the whole night buying me drinks and being agreeable. Do something with me.” Her voice held a note of rebellion she hardly recognized. “I dare you. Do something with me that you’ve never done with anyone else.”

  He gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. “I’ve done a lot of things with a lot of women.”

  “I’m sure you have. Hence the ennui.” She circled the crystal of his disintegrating watch with her index finger. This time, he didn’t pull away. “Get creative. As long as we don’t end up in a cop car or the emergency room, I’m game.”

  An obviously drunk guy wearing a white baseball cap and the desperate miasma of an over-the-hill frat boy descended upon them.

  “Jaaake,” he slurred. “Jake, my man, Jake Sorensen.”

  Jake acknowledged him with a nod and a tight half smile. “How are you, Buddy?”

  Buddy turned to Brighton with a leer. “Who’s your lady of the evening?”

  Her champagne buzz evaporated as she assembled all her social defenses. “Brighton Smith.” She tried to appear sober as she offered a handshake.

  Buddy blinked at her with bleary eyes. “That’s a weird name.”

  She and Jake exchanged a look. “So I’ve been told.”

  “You look like you’re all business, honey.” Buddy’s breath smelled like the floor of a tavern. “Are you hooking up with this guy or taking a deposition?”

  “Good seeing you, Buddy.” Jake got to his feet and offered his hand to Brighton. “We’re on our way out.”

  “I bet you are.” Buddy practically fell over in his attempt to convey wink-wink-nudge-nudge solidarity. He recovered his balance, then warned Brighton, “Don’t get attached.”

  Brighton gave him a flat, cold stare.

  “This guy isn’t relationship material.” Buddy slung one arm around Jake’s shoulder. “You and me, man. We’re alike.”

  Jake had to use both hands to extricate himself from the man-hug. “See you later.”

  “We’re both wounded.” Buddy grabbed Jake’s shirtfront. “No one understands us.”

  Brighton stifled a laugh. Jake looked appalled.

  As Buddy rambled on, Brighton collected her bag and lost shoe. Jake finally escaped the existential frat boy’s clutches and hustled her out of the bar. “Sorry about that.”

  “No need to apologize.” Brighton couldn’t help laughing at his obvious horror. “I understand. You secretly wounded man-whores have t
o stick together.”

  He scrubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “Buddy and I are not the same.”

  “Well, obviously not. You’re way better looking.”

  “That’s true.”

  The note of challenge crept back into her voice. “Back to what I was saying. Defend your title as ‘designated rebound guy.’ What are you going to do for a type A corporate drone whose trusty, dependable fiancé just married some stranger with no warning?”

  Jake looked at Brighton. Brighton looked at Jake.

  “Let’s get married,” he suggested in the same tone he might use to ask if she wanted to grab a soda.

  She held his gaze for a long moment. “You’re insane. And drunk.”

  “So are you,” he pointed out. “You said you wanted to do something I’ve never done with any other woman.”

  She maintained eye contact, trying to assess how serious he was.

  He looked pretty serious.

  “You’re bluffing,” she said.

  He didn’t blink. “Try me.”

  “You don’t even know my middle name.” She furrowed her brow as she considered the logistics. “And it’s Friday night. Even if we did agree to get married, there’s no possible way. All the courthouses are closed.”

  He pulled out his smartphone with an air of determination. “Prepare to watch an indolent rich guy get to work.”

  chapter 6

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Brighton asked for the third time as she checked her seat belt and crossed her ankles.

  “Yes.” Jake settled into his expansive leather seat. “Calm down. You said you were game, remember?”

  “But small aircraft have a terrible safety record.” Brighton had to speak up to be heard over the hum of the engine.

  “Yeah, Gulfstream is famous for cutting corners.” Jake shook his head. “It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

  “You mock me, but I speak the truth.” Brighton ticked off the facts on her fingers. “Statistically, private planes are at much higher risk for loss of control, mechanical failure, collision with terrain . . .” She clutched the sumptuous padded armrest. “Aren’t you looking forward to being married to a woman who memorizes aircraft safety statistics?”