“He asked me to marry him,” she snapped, still glaring at Bryan.
That was obviously not the response they’d been expecting. The men looked at each other and then at Grace. “Um…?”
“He asked my sister first.”
Half a dozen heads nodded in sudden understanding. “That was just stupid,” someone said.
Bryan sighed. “Yes, I know. I made a mistake, okay? I was looking for the sort of woman who would have been completely and totally wrong for me. I know that now.”
“Anybody would be a moron not to want to marry Sassy,” an older man with a grizzled beard and a kindly smile offered from the other side of the room. “I’ve asked her myself about a half dozen times, but she always said no.”
“Maybe ’cause you already got a wife, Ernie?” Paul inquired.
The bearded man sighed. “I like to think that’s the only reason she turned me down,” he acknowledged.
“You don’t want to marry me,” Grace told Bryan fiercely, her hazel eyes unnaturally bright. “I’m all wrong for you. I don’t fit in with your fancy friends and your elegant parties. This is where I’m happiest.”
“Then we’ll spend a lot of time here and avoid as many of those fancy parties as we can,” he assured her, loving her more every minute. “Personally I think you fit in quite nicely wherever you are. I, on the other hand, might have some adjustments to make. Stump, do you know where I can get one of those camo T-shirts?”
“I got mine at Wal-Mart,” the big man volunteered.
Paul sighed in disgust. “It was a rhetorical question, Stump. Be quiet and let the man finish begging.”
“I will beg, you know,” Bryan said softly, still holding Grace’s gaze with his own. “I’ve never begged anyone for anything—I’ve never had to, nor wanted to—but I will this time. Nothing else has ever mattered this much to me.”
“I dunno, Grace. I think he’s serious,” Stump said in a stage whisper. “Did he beg your sister, you think?”
“She knows I didn’t,” Bryan said flatly, setting both beer mugs on the ledge. “She knows full well that it never got that far between her sister and me—and that it never would have. Chloe and I knew we were wrong for each other even before we finally put it into words. She was in love with my best friend. And I was in love with Grace.”
The men looked confused again. Grace nearly choked. “You weren’t in love with me!”
“I think I’ve been in love with you for months,” Bryan countered. “But, as both you and my friend Jason pointed out, I was too stupid and arrogant to realize it. And, besides, you said you hated me when we first met, remember?”
“I did hate you—I still do,” she added recklessly.
Stump shook his head and patted her on the shoulder, the friendly gesture nearly knocking her off balance. “Now, Sassy, you know you don’t mean that. He couldn’t have broke your heart if you hated him.”
“He has a point there,” Bryan suggested hopefully. “Obviously a very intelligent and insightful man.”
Stump nodded amenably.
“I love you, Grace,” Bryan repeated, moving so close to her tha
t the others would have had to strain to hear his words above the background noises—and most of them seemed to be trying.
He watched her swallow, watched her eyes flood with tears. “I—”
“Sassy, come sing for us,” the waitress who’d told Bryan she’d never heard of anyone named Grace Pennington called out from the doorway. “The band’s all ready for you.”
Grace looked dismayed. “Oh, no, I can’t—”
From the other room a chorus of voices called out, “Sassy! Sassy!”
She looked helplessly at Bryan. “I—”
He leaned over to kiss her softly, then drew back. “Sing for us, ‘Sassy.’ We all want to hear you.”
She moistened her lips, then turned and fled.