Runaway Groom (I Do, I Don't 2)

“Question,” I say, swirling my wine and keeping my gaze on hers.

“You’ve already asked, like, a million.”

“Yes, and now I know your birthday and your favorite movie, and how you like your coffee, but now I want to get at the good stuff.”

She tenses slightly, a little bit wary. Good. Maybe she should be.

“What do you want most?” I ask.

She blinks. “Um, that’s a little vague. You mean like in life? Right now? For Christmas?”

I smile. “You strike me as the type of woman who has always had goals, always had a plan. To what end?”

“Ah,” she says, not pretending to misunderstand me. She sets her glass aside. “All right, then.” Ellie takes a deep breath and looks out at the water, illuminated by the moon. She’s silent for so long that I think she’s not going to respond.

At last she does. “Stability. I want stability. A life I can count on, at least as much as life allows itself to be reliable.”

It’s not the answer I’m expecting, and she sees it on my face when she glances my way. “You’re surprised.”

I lift a shoulder. “A little. Entrepreneurs are known more for risk-taking than stability. Why not buckle down with a nine-to-five and a 401(k)?”

“Well,” she says, leaning forward and crossing her hands on the table, “that’s what everyone assumes. Heck, it’s what I assumed. And I tried it. But you know what happens when you rely on someone else for your savings account and your healthcare and the paycheck that feeds you?”

I understand instantly. “They can take it away.”

She nods. “Bingo. Trust me, when I graduated from college, I took all the advice. I took the marketing job with the big company instead of the scrappy start-up. I maxed out my 401(k). I networked my ass off to figure out how to move up the ladder. I was the superstar on my team and everyone knew it.

“But…” Ellie takes a sip of water. “In the end, it doesn’t matter how good you are if it’s someone else’s company. My firm merged with another one. They only needed one marketing group, and the other company was bigger, so…” She spreads her hands. “My whole team got the axe. I walked away with a fat severance and a hell of a life lesson.”

“But working for yourself is not without risks.”

“No, definitely not,” she agrees. “At least I’m calling the shots, though. If I succeed, it’s on me. If I fail, that’s on me too. Well, me and Marjorie. I guess…I don’t know, I guess it’s about the control, you know? To be totally in charge of my own life.”

I see the server approaching with dessert menus, but I catch his eye and shake my head. Not yet.

“Sounds a little intense for someone in her twenties. Isn’t this supposed to be your chance to goof around? You can be responsible later.”

Ellie’s smile is sad. “Spoken like someone who’s probably taken stability for granted.”

She doesn’t say it as an attack, and I don’t take it as such.

“What was your upbringing like?” she asks, glancing at me.

I drum my fingers on the table. “Probably about like you’re expecting. Somewhere between middle-class and upper middle-class. I don’t really know the distinction there, but growing up was…comfortable. I didn’t get everything I wanted for Christmas, but I got a lot of it. Food was always on the table, and so on.”

She nods.

I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.

“You want the stability you didn’t get growing up. The stability your mom didn’t offer you. Or your dad, when he bailed.”

She taps her nose with a sad smile. “Nailed it. It’s a cliché, I know. The girl who never knew where her next meal or her mom’s next job was coming from grows up into a boring, cautious adult. The whole slew of ex-boyfriends bailing on me whenever the next best thing came up didn’t help either.”

Then she grins and spreads her hands wide. “Gage Barrett, meet Ellie Wright’s bagg

age. I don’t travel light.”

I don’t smile back, because I’m starting to get a very stark picture of why she refuses to consider me as a part of her future. I may have a shit-ton of money, but that’s not the kind of stability Ellie’s talking about. She wants someone to count on, someone who will be there.