Mr. Black's Proposal (3 page)

Andy bounced into the living room and was across the hall before I could stop him.

“I’m going to go get the cupcakes ready. And I promise I’ll keep a close eye on them,” he said, when I opened my mouth to protest. “Don’t worry. No burning them this time.”

“I thought I’d smelled something burning in my apartment this morning,” Lucas said, a smile twisting upward on his face.

“Bye, Andy!” I said. He was already out the door.

“So,” I said, turning back to the man holding the bouquet of red roses. I crossed my arms. “Mr. Black.”

Chapter Four

Lucas

Steph crossed her arms with iron-clad determination written all over her face. There was something else on her face, too.

“Uh, you have a… a smudge of something on your forehead,” I said. It was a huge smear that looked like dirt.

Steph raised her eyebrows in surprise, and then raised her hands to her face.

“Oh, crap!” she exclaimed. “The cocoa!”

“Cocoa?”

I couldn’t tell she was blushing through the cocoa, but her eyes widened and she squeaked. She turned away, disappearing into the small bathroom. I heard her splashing water on her face. When she came out, the smear was gone and wet tendrils of her blond hair were sticking to her cheeks. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone looking so adorably disheveled. She assumed her cross-armed position of determination again.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“Firstly, to pay for the last invoice,” I said. I pulled a check from my pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it and her lips puckered. I almost thought she was going to tear it up, but then she set it on the couch arm instead. Her eyes were cast down to the floor.

“Thank you,” she said. “I—I’m sorry about Otis.”

“Oh, Otis? He’s fine.” I waved it off. “You have no idea the kinds of things he’s eaten that he’s not supposed to. One time, I brought home a plastic bag full of donuts-”

“Stop right there,” Steph said, wincing as though she could see the aftermath already in her mind. “Don’t make me feel even sicker than I already feel.”

“Are you sick?”

She looked up at me and laughed once, as if I was joking.

“I had a little too much to drink last night.”

“Not at the party?”

“No! I don’t drink at parties I’m catering! That would be—”

“Unprofessional. Right, right.”

Her cheeks pinkened.

“Afterwards,” she said. “When I got back to the bakery.”

“You went back to work after that?”

“What else could I do? I needed to get my mind off things.”

“And that’s how you get your mind off of things.”

“By whipping up a batch of carrot cake cupcakes and drinking myself tipsy, sure. Yeah. It’s a start. I wouldn’t have had to get my mind off of anything if you hadn’t gone and asked me such a stupid question!”

I frowned.

“Stupid?”

“Why did you ask me to marry you? In front of your mom? You were drunk, right? Is that your excuse?”

I shook my head.

“No, I wasn’t. And I didn’t think I needed an excuse to ask someone to marry me.”

“I’m not someone. I’m a complete stranger.”

“We slept together.”

“That was a one-time thing.”

“It happened twice.”

“Then it was a two-time thing,” she said, not missing a beat. “And I thought I made it clear it wasn’t going to happen again.”

“You made that clear after the first time, too.”

Her flush turned to a fire-red blush on her cheeks. She swiped away the strands of hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Look, I don’t even know why you would ask me so soon.”

“I like you.”

“Lots of guys have liked me. None of them have handed me a chunk of diamond and asked me to spend the rest of my life with them after knowing me a week.”

I breathed deeply. Leaning against the couch, I tried to explain.

“My mom’s been asking me to find a suitable girl.”

“Then find one! You know tons of girls.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s just another way of saying the exact same thing,” she said.

I thought about my dad, and all of the women he’d been with. I thought of my mom, stringing along younger boyfriends as trophies to flaunt in front of her friends. I thought of all of the brothers and sisters I might have out there right now. I would never know about them. I didn’t want to be that man. But I’d never learned any other way to be.

I swallowed. My mouth was dry.

“It is complicated. Many, many complications.”

“Sounds pretty simple to me. Get one of your fawning supermodel girls—”

“I don’t want them!” I said.

Steph pressed her lips together. She seemed like she had run out of patience.

“Wait here one second,” she said.

She went around the couch and pulled a laptop up from the floor. I waited while she clicked a few buttons. Then she spun the computer toward me.

I cringed, rubbing the bridge of my nose to block out the angry feeling that was welling up inside of me.

She’d done an image search for
Lucas Black date…
and the result wasn’t pretty.

Or, rather, they were pretty. They were all gorgeous. Supermodel after supermodel. What had she been expecting? I shrugged my shoulders.

“There isn’t a single girl repeated on the front page,” she said.

I frowned and leaned forward. There was no way that was true. But as she scrolled, I saw face after face. Most of them I didn’t even recognize.

Fuck. This was me. I was just like my dad. My mom was right; I needed to settle down.

“Why do you think that is?” she asked, probing.

“My relationships don’t last very long, I guess.”

“Is that because you’re always asking girls to marry you?” she asked. “Is that how you scare them away at the end of the night?”

“You’re the only one I’ve ever scared away with a marriage proposal,” I said. “For better or for worse.”

She set the laptop down and turned to face me.

“Lucas,” she said, “Why did you come here?”

I paused.

Because I love you.

Because you’re the most intelligent, funny, beautiful woman I’ve ever met.

Because I still want to marry you.

None of those answers would work. She had nearly jumped across the room the last time I’d told her I loved her. I swallowed them back and smiled, a tentative smile.

“I’d like to start over,” I said. “Is that alright?”

“Start over?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Sure. I’ll go down to the bakery, and you bring in one of your girlfriends, and we’ll do everything over again.”

“Steph—”

“What?” She sighed.
Exasperated
. No girl ever acted exasperated with me. If I wasn’t so worried about losing her, I would think that it was adorable.

“I’m not seeing anyone right now, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise.”

I sat down on the couch next to her. She stood up as soon as I sat down. I stood back up.

“Okay. What do you want?”

I spoke carefully, trying not to make things worse.

“I want to take you on a date.”

“Fine. Where?”

My mind went blank.

“Uh. Where?”

“Yes. Where were you planning to take me on a date?”

“Well, actually, I hadn’t even gone that far, to be honest. I had planned on you saying no and slapping me across the face again.”

Her face contorted in a short grimace.

“I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

“I’m sorry for proposing to you so abruptly. How about Saldane’s?”

“What?”

“For our date. How about I take you on a dinner date tonight to Saldane’s?”

Her eyebrows raised at the name. Was that too fancy? But then she softened. Her shoulders relaxed back.

“Sure,” she said. “I would like to go on a date with you. As long as, you know…”

“What?”

“No proposing.”

“You got it,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

I leaned forward to give her a quick kiss, and her body stiffened. Instead, I gave her a brief kiss on the cheek and straightened up. I was going to leave before I went too far. Just looking at the curve of her neck made me ache to kiss it.

But I had to wait.

I was going to do things right this time.

“When I said you should marry her, I didn’t mean tomorrow.”

“Shut up,” I said.

I was trying to get ready for the date, but Jake was being a pain in the ass. And Otis wasn’t helping, either. He was shedding so much on my pant legs, I didn’t even bother trying to defur myself. I could ask Alex for a lint roller before I left.

“I think generally speaking, in today’s present society we’re expected to date a woman before slinging her over our horse and riding into the sunset.”

“Shut up. You kidnapped your stupid fiancée, so don’t go getting on a moral high horse with me,” I grumbled.

“Was it Clint’s bet that made you do it?”

“No! I thought she would say yes, okay?”

“Why would you think that? Especially after she told you she wanted it to be a one-time thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does
one-time
mean
forever-and-ever
to you?”

“Look, I admit I was stupid. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jake said.

“Can we move on now?”

Jake held up his hands in surrender.

“Moving on.”

“I have to get this date right. It’s my last chance.”

“I’d say it’s your first chance, considering you’ve never been on a real date with Steph before.”

I ignored Jake. He sounded way too much like he was on Steph’s side of things. Instead, I held up a tie to my neck.

“Does this look good?”

“Try the other tie. The striped one.”

I pulled it off of the bed. One end fell to the floor, and before I could pull it up, Otis had pounced and snapped it up in his jaws.

“Otis! Give me my tie back!”

Otis shook his head, my tie locked in between his slobbery jaws.

“He thinks you’re playing tug of war,” Jake observed.

“Otis! Let it go!”

“Might as well let him have it. You’re not going to wear it now anyway.”

I yanked again and Otis let go. The momentum sent me tumbling backwards. I fell back onto my ass. Otis jumped on me, licking my face.

“Ah!”

Jake looked down at me with disdain. I don’t think he’d ever had a dog slobber on him in his life. It wouldn’t be dignified, and Jake’s middle name was dignity.

“You have dog hair all over that suit.”

I dropped the slimy tie and brushed at my shoulder. I got fur all over my fingers.

“Shit.”

“This isn’t going to work, Lucas. Put the dog out and let’s start over.”

“I don’t think Steph will mind a little bit of dog fur. Otis and her seemed to get along just fine.”

“You mean, before he ate her red velvet cake and vomited it up all over your carpet?”

“Even after,” I said, pondering. “She cared mostly about if he was going to be okay.”

“Well, isn’t that touching?”

Jake looked unimpressed. And the last thing I wanted Steph to be was unimpressed. I had to stick with Jake’s advice if things were going to work. I needed her to know that I would do anything to win her over, including getting every strand of fur off of my clothes before our date.

“Okay,” I said. “Otis, you have to go out now. Out!”

Otis was too happy chewing on my discarded tie to listen to me. I took the end of the tie and pulled him through the doorway to the other room. He looked balefully up at me before I closed the door on him.

“It’s okay, Otis,” I said. “We’ll hang out later. Wish me luck, okay?”

Otis sneezed and turned away. I didn’t know if dog sneezes were good luck or bad luck. I hoped they were good luck.

“Okay, Jake,” I said, pulling off my fur-covered suit jacket. “Let’s start over.”

“Why are you doing this?

He asked the question calmly, like it was a discussion point at one of his big board meetings.

“This?”

“Why are you going on a date with this woman?”