“If he’s playing my best friend, he’ll regret it.”
“Not your monkeys, not your circus,” he says.
Before I can agree, Brina looks at me with woebegone eyes. “At the very least, I owe him a pie to the face.”
Mag smirks. “Can’t disagree. I’d love to see the gossip rags move on from my near assassination by strawberries and cream. Word of mouth travels fast, and so do asshole bystanders with Snapchat and an appetite for capturing famous men at their worst.”
The bell above the door rings as somebody enters.
Speak of the world’s sexiest devil.
I glance over to find Ward walking through the door and grin.
“I wasn’t expecting you here tonight,” I say, bounding over to him.
“I was hoping you had time for a private lesson, but maybe class isn’t over?” He moves to stand beside me.
I throw my arms around him and squeeze until it hurts.
“We’re just finishing up. I always have time for you.”
“Brina,” Mag says under his breath.
She stands, leaves the monster pineapple in its place, and turns to Ward. “It’s good that you always have time for her now. You’ve already broken her heart once. I won’t forgive you a second time.”
Ward grins.
She puts two fingers in front of her eyes and aims them at him in warning.
Mag stands. “Okay, I have to get Carrie home before bad things happen.”
“Carrie?” Brina asks.
“Stephen King. Don’t you read, English major?” Mag growls at her.
She shrugs. “I’m just saying—”
“I know. But we have a juvenile delinquent with a hard-on for college chemistry to deal with at home, so we’re heading out.” He slides an arm around her.
“He started it when he made my best friend cry,” Brina whines.
He kisses her cheek. “I know. But it’s over. Let’s go.” He leads her out the door.
“You think she’ll always hate me?” Ward asks, turning to me slowly.
“Not forever, I’m sure. They were married for about six months before I decided Mag was worth keeping around. When I realized he wouldn’t leave her again, I was chill. Brina and I have always been a team. As soon as she thinks you’re serious, she’ll back off.”
He nods, moving to the table Brina and Mag vacated and sits down. He pulls a lump of clay out of his pocket.
“This came in a kit. Can you help me mold it?”
I lean over the table beside him and pick up the lump, working my fingers through the clay. I’m pleasantly surprised he’s taken an interest in making art. Usually, he’s content to be an observer with a coffee in hand.
“This already has a shape, so if we follow the molding...should be easy enough.” The pre-formed shape becomes clearer in my hand. “Looks like a horse?”
“A Trojan horse,” Ward says. “I bought a figurine and dumped it in clay.”
I laugh. “What? Why?”
“Because there’s a secret compartment for your eyes only,” he says mysteriously.
“No way. What’s in it?”
“You have to find it first.”
Oh, boy.
“Um, okay. It’s not alive and doesn’t bite, right?”
“This isn’t Fear Factor, sweetheart.” He shakes his head. “It’s something you left behind. I thought this would be an interesting way to give it back.”
“Hmm. I thought I got everything?”
Ward stands, those blue-green lagoons for eyes shimmering in the light.
I push away at the clay with my fingers until I find a pouch on the rear of the horse. I put my nail to the edge of the pouch and it opens with an audible pop!
It takes my eyes a second or two to focus.
A diamond twinkles at me, spraying light against the wall. It’s—holy crap.
It’s the ring he gave me at the start of our charade. The pretty diamond ring I threw at him when he said he never loved me and wouldn’t marry me.
He kept it and hid it inside a horse that’s like a stripped down version of the sculpture I made in college, inspired by his grandmother’s brilliance.
Oh, no.
Whoa.
Does this mean...
My lungs forget how to breathe. I take a deep, shaking breath but my knees give out anyway.
Ward catches me before I hit the floor.
“I was supposed to do this on one knee,” he whispers in my ear. “Trouble is, you’re the clumsiest person I know, so I thought it’d be safer this way.”
One knee? So it does mean...
God.
Still holding me up, he leans over, plucks the ring from the horse, and slides it on my trembling finger.
“This is yours, Paige. It’s always been yours since the night we collided and I spent the next few weeks growling at you like a very stupid bear. You won my ring. You won my heart. I could never trust it with anyone else.” He pauses for a breathless second. “Sweetheart, will you marry me?”
I think I just died.
It’s so hot I can’t breathe in here, even with the autumn coolness.
Wrapping my arms around Ward Brandt, I give him the only answer I can. I press my lips to his so deeply I’m dizzy. He opens his mouth and I deepen the kiss.