“No you are fucking not,” she interrupted. “You are fucking awesome. You are my best friend in the whole damn world. You give more of a fuck about the real stuff than anyone else in this fuck-head city, and you’re on fucking fire, and I bet that scares the shit out of them. So what you are going to do—” and her voice went firm and sure as granite, brooking no argument—“is get out there and show them that nobody, not nobody, can make you feel like you deserve any less than the best.”
I took a deep breath. She was right. Fuck Portia. Fuck them all.
“Kate…have I ever told you you’re a genius?”
“Don’t tell me, girl,” she said. “Show me.”
So I squared my shoulders, put on my best game face, and marched back out into the battle.
? ? ?
“Ah Lacey, there you are, I’ve been looking for you,” Grant said pleasantly as I came up to his side. “Drink?”
Possibly I drained that glass of liquid courage a little too hastily, because he frowned slightly at me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “Absolutely fine.”
“Are you certain?” he asked. “If this is beginning to be a bit much for you, we could leave early. Everyone would understand.”
“Oh, I bet they would,” I muttered under my breath. Out loud I said: “Look, the sooner the night is over the better, but until then we have a job to do, so let’s just go out there and do it, okay?”
Grant surveyed me closely, his eyes picking at the cracks in my armor. “You’ve been crying.”
“What do you care?” I snapped. It wasn’t actually in the lovey-dovey script, but dammit, this had been a trying night and a girl could only make nice for so long.
Even with a gorgeous man staring right at her, deep into her soul, concern brimming and threatening to overflow his cobalt-blue eyes…
Concern for his company, not me. I had to remember that.
“Come with me,” he said, and started pulling me towards the staircase leading to the exit.
Wait, were we leaving after all? He was just making that decision unilaterally? I—okay, I was fine with that. It had been a hell of a night—and a heaven of a night, at least in the beginning, though in the end that only made everything more confusing.
And then, when we were halfway up the stairs, he gave my arm a yank, pulling me into his embrace, crushing me against his side. He buried his face in my hair for a second, his hot breath stirring my locks and making tingles race across my skin.
“Please believe me,” he whispered. “I have nothing less than compassion for whatever has happened tonight. But the show must go on.”
And then he lifted his head, spun me around, and with a gesture of his hand, cut short all the music and brought the low-level chatter of the entire room to an abrupt halt.
Trust me, he mouthed, catching my look of utter confusion.
That was one hell of thing to ask, but with the eyes of at least two hundred people on us, I didn’t have much of a choice. Everyone was staring at Grant, waiting. Including me.
Damn, I really hoped my make-up was okay right now. Strange, the little things that pop into your mind.
“Lacey,” he said, in a voice that rang out across the room. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was facing me, but his eyes were just over my shoulder, gauging the reaction of his audience. “It’s true that we’ve only known each other for a short time. But in that short time I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t take long to know the truth, and the truth is that I need you. More than air, more than food, more than life itself. You are the beat of my song, you are the fire in my blood, you are the sparkle in my eye. You give me a reason to get out of bed in the morning—and a reason to get back into it at night.”
He actually paused for a laugh, the bastard. My head spun. What the hell was he doing?
“You give me a reason to go through the day trying to be the best man I can be,” he said, and he said it looking at me, and so softly that there was a murmur of discontent from the crowd, deprived of that sentence of his speech. “Because you deserve nothing less than the best.”
His hands were cupped loosely around mine, and his eyes were looking so gently into mine, so hopeful and pleading, and I was clinging to him for dear life, dizzy and about to faint, if he was saying what I thought he was saying…
And then a shutter went down in his eyes, and he was looking over my shoulder again, the mask firmly in place.
No, not the mask—this was his real self. I was a fool to think that his show of concern was anything other than that—a show. I was a fool to think that he was about to—
“Lacey, when I first met you, I knew you were special, but I didn’t realize how special you were, how special you would become to me,” he went on, his voice loud enough again to project to the back of the hall. “I can’t let you go, I can’t let this moment pass without showing you how much I care, how I can’t live without you. Life simply isn’t worth living without you, my life, my love, my dearest, and so I ask you—”
Oh no. Oh no. He wasn’t. He wasn’t about to—
Was he?
“Marry me!”
He pulled out a small black box from his pocket, and popped it open to reveal an engagement ring with a diamond the size of a robin’s egg.
My heart stopped. The crowd went wild.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I stood there like a deer in headlights, the flashbulbs of paparazzi going off around me, the shrieks and whoops of delight rising like a wave that was going to crash down around me and drown me.
“I think I’m going to faint,” I said, but it was drowned out by all the applause.
Grant raised his hand, and somehow, it all went silent again.
“Wait,” he said, “We haven’t actually heard her answer yet.” He turned to me. “Well, Lacey? Will you make me the happiest man alive?”
He actually had the nerve to smile at me. Like we were in this together. Like this proposal was all just a game.
Because of course it was. A man like him would never willingly propose to a girl like me. Not unless there was a hundred million dollars on the line.
I was mortified.
I was furious.
I smiled as sickly sweet as I could, stood on my tiptoes and hissed into Grant’s ear, “Are you completely fucking insane?”