“No one would guess this strawberry-sweet exterior hides a complete hard-ass.”
“I learned from the master. I’m known for being firm but fair.”
“Mmm. Tell me more.” He loves sitting at my desk to look at everything I surround myself with, and he lowers himself down into my chair like it’s a milkmaid stool. His eyes are lit with a creepy kind of devotion as he looks at the castle of books against the wall, and the Smurf hidden in one of the battlements. He finds my bottle of perfume and smells the lid as he strokes my computer mouse.
“That’s where you’ve been,” he says in a scolding tone to the cardigan slung on the back of my chair. He folds it into a bread-slice square on his knee.
I’ve turned him into such a total freak.
I’m an even bigger freak when I visit his office. I once touched the speed dial button on his phone marked SHORTCAKE just to make my cell phone ring. Then I was jealous of myself. That’s a sensation I feel a lot.
How am I living this life? How did I win so much?
Like he can read my mind, Josh picks up the framed photograph on my desk. It’s us together in the strawberry fields. Our eyes are summer bright, and I am sitting between his legs leaning back against him. Around us is a carpet of green, studded with red.
The picture is a tiny bit crooked because my dad was a little overexcited by the secret he was keeping.
Five minutes after this photo was taken, Josh said, “Hey, it’s an old Smurf in the dirt.”
He knew nothing would make me drop to the ground faster. I scratched frantically through the leaves. Where? Where? What I found in the vines at Sky Diamonds Strawberries was a Tiffany blue box. Then I realized he was kneeling down, too.
Lucy blue. True-love blue.
Even as he squeaked the box open and began to speak, I was dimly aware of cheering from the house. My parents were spying from the office window.
After I brushed the squashed berries from the back of his T-shirt, I learned that Josh had become an expert in diamonds. Carat, cut, color, clarity. He shivered with delight as he described staring at imperfections through a loupe. I could just imagine his laser eyes crumbling stones to ash. The way he tells it, he searched through a pile of worthless pebbles until he found something worthy of my tiny finger. I tell him it’s too big, too much, too perfect. He just laughs and says, I know, then makes me forget whether we’re still talking about the diamond.
I think my cheeks are going pink right now. When he looks me in the eye, he smirks. He’s definitely a mind reader.
“We need a vacation,” he decides, his finger straightening the terra-cotta tile I use as a coaster. I got that tile in Tuscany. “I’m taking you back. Cheese and wine and sleeping in the sun.” His eyes follow the line of my dress down my body. “Red dresses and champagne and carbohydrates.” A pause, and there’s a little vulnerability in his expression now. “I didn’t go crazy and dream it all, did I?”
“I have frequently assured you that I’m real.” I take his hand in mine and use it to pinch my forearm. “I was there for every incredible second. I always will be. Now, quit talking about carbohydrates. You’re turning me on.”
He laughs. “We’d better get out of here.” He grabs my coat and walks out to chat with Helene and Mr. Bexley.
I log off and lock away the stack of slush pile manuscripts I’ve been reading as my own little treat. I lock my door and just watch his reflection bounce around off the slick, glossy surfaces that make up level ten. The only thing better than having one Josh is having a hundred.
I look at the plaque on my office door as
I lock it. It says, Chief Operating Officer, and usually it has me grinning like a dork. But right now, I’m smiling over something else.
The gold ring on Joshua Templeman’s left hand has set off a shower of firework sparkles in this huge black prism. Each time I focus on one particular reflection, it fractures and doubles. It’s a kaleidoscope of his love around me now. There are a hundred gold rings. A thousand. It’s still not enough. I want to spin around while they circle me like fireflies. That’s how he makes me feel, every day of our life.
It’s wonderful. It’s primal. It’s nothing short of a miracle.
My name is Lucy Templeman.