“Veronica Farrell, are you listening? Because this is about you.”
Everybody in the club looked around for this “Veronica Farrell,” including me. I knew she had to be here somewhere. Against all indication of her personality, over the past six months she had proven herself to be a serious nester. She’d show up at the club every evening like clockwork and eat dinner with Nicky, before heading out to whatever event she had to represent Farrell Cosmetics at. Then she’d come right back to the club and go home with Nicky.
I don’t think either of them felt comfortable with Nicky spending the night at James’s house yet. In my higher self-esteem moments, I liked to believe it was because they could still feel the residual energy from James’s and my relationship inside the house. Our short time together had been that powerful. But it was probably just because Tammy was living there, too.
Anyway, I spotted Veronica at a table toward the middle of the room. I couldn’t really see her face, but then Nicky pointed at her and said, “Can we get some light on that woman right there?”
A spotlight turned on her, and I could see from her expression that she was just as confused as the rest of us. “What’s this about?” she asked with that hard maple syrup tone of hers. Her voice was muffled, since unlike Nicky, she didn’t have a mic.
“What do you think it’s about?” Nicky asked like she should already know. “I’m asking you to marry me.”
My mouth dropped open. Five years. I had been with Nicky for five years. I had thought that he didn’t want to get married to anybody, ever. But apparently he just hadn’t wanted to get married to me. Well, damn. I was kind of happy that I was still contending with the pain of losing James, or this whole scene would have hurt me a lot more than it did.
As it was, every waiter stopped serving, and everybody in the room turned to see what Veronica would say to Nicky’s proposal.
She stood up. “You’re asking me, Veronica Farrell of the Farrells, to marry you, Nicky Connell, nobody?” She shook her head like she couldn’t quite fathom what had made Nicky decide to do this.
But he just shrugged and said, “Yeah. I got a ring, too.” He brought out a box and flipped open the lid with his thumb to reveal a simple vintage engagement ring.
Veronica walked up to the edge of the stage. “You know what. You’re really presumptuous, Nicky. Really presumptuous.”
They stared each other down. Him above her onstage, and her below him on the ground. Everything was beyond quiet. Nicky and Veronica weren’t moving. And neither was anybody else in the restaurant. We were all waiting to see who would win the staring contest.
But in the end, Nicky was the first to blink. “Fine. I’ll sign a prenup,” he said.
“My terms?” Veronica pressed.
“Fine,” Nicky agreed, his jaw tight. “But only if the next and only word out of your mouth is ‘yes.’ ”
Veronica’s face lit up with a smile so big and wide, for a second I wondered if she hadn’t been bodysnatched. I had never seen Veronica Farrell truly smile, especially not like that.
“Yes!” she said. And can you believe she actually had the gall to sound all excited—like she hadn’t just made the man agree in public to a prenup before she gave her answer?
But Nicky didn’t care about that. He pulled her up onstage into his thick tree-trunk arms, and they kissed while everybody else applauded.
Chloe took the stage about ten minutes later. “I’m sorry,” she said to the audience. “I’m not going be able to put on a show as good as the one you just got. But I’ll try my best.”