“I personally inspected each of these stones. You won’t find a finer diamond anywhere in the world. One of them could be yours.”
A bark of panicky laughter escaped. “Not unless I wanted to clean out my savings and my retirement fund. Even then I’d be pushing it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I’m asking you—”
“Look, Dex—”
“—to be my wife. All you have to do is pick out the diamond for your ring.”
That feeling of dread in her belly solidified into something hard and ugly. Something that felt a little like anger and a little like envy. But who was it she envied?
Dex had proposed to her. So why did it feel like it wasn’t her he really wanted?
The anger was easier to put her finger on. All her life she’d waited for—dreamed of—this moment. The moment a man she genuinely cared about asked her to marry him. And here he had to go and ruin it by sucking out all the romance, all the warmth. He could have been asking to borrow a pencil for all the emotion he showed.
She stood up. “No, Dex. This is all wrong.”
“Think about it, Lucy. I can give you everything you want.”
“What do you know about what I want?” Her voice rose sharply in accusation.
In contrast, his voice came out smooth as butter. Soft and low, like the purring of a cat. “I know you. I know what you want.”
“I’m sure you think you do.” She cast a scornful glare at the diamonds on the desk between them.
“You want Izzie. You want a family. More important, you want to do the right thing for Izzie.”
Her chest tightened as if he’d punched her in the solar plexus. She had to consciously suck in one breath after another before she could speak.
It was crazy, of course, how for an instant she was tempted.
She couldn’t marry him. Every practical bone in her body knew the real reason she couldn’t say yes. He didn’t even know who she was. The lies she’d told stood between them like some huge, insurmountable obstacle.
And yet it was the impractical, romantic heart inside her that protested the loudest. Somehow, the biggest obstacle between them wasn’t really the lies she’d told, but the fact that he didn’t love her. Not even a little.
All her life, she’d been the practical one. It was a quality she nurtured in herself and admired in others. Yet here he was, being oh so practical. So reasonable. And every cell in her body recoiled at the thought.
“You’re right. I do want a family. Of course I want a family. I want to be a mother to Isabella and to whatever brothers or sisters she has. But what you’re describing isn’t a family. It isn’t a marriage. You’re talking about a convenience.”
“I’m talking about doing what’s right for Izzie.” He rounded the desk to stand before her, crowding her space, making her fight the urge to step back, to retreat. “Think about it. Izzie needs both her parents. How much easier will her life be if they live in the same house?”
“Easier? Because you could tell yourself you’d done the right thing by Isabella, but I’d be the one doing all the work. Yes, it would be easier for you, wouldn’t it?”
“Easier for both of us. You could quit your job if you wanted to. You’d get to be with Izzie all the time. Both of us would.” He raised his hand to her face and brushed her hair back in a sensual, seductive gesture. “And we know we’re compatible.”
For the briefest instant, she felt a burst of hope—that maybe, after all they’d been through, after the emotional turmoil of the past week-and-a-half, after they’d made love, that maybe he was starting to develop some tender feelings for her.
Maybe.
But then she saw the glint of sexual desire lighting his gaze.
Resignation threatened to smother her. He didn’t mean they were emotionally compatible. He meant in bed, of course. And they were.
The sex had been incredible. But a marriage—a real marriage, the kind of marriage she wanted—wasn’t based on sex and lies.
As if he sensed her wavering, he took her hands in his and added, “I know what you want most is Izzie. But surely there are other things you want. I’m a wealthy man, Lucy. I can give you whatever you want. Travel, cars, clothes, jewelry. Name it and it’s yours.”
“Ah.” She stepped back, pulling her hands from his. “So that’s what this is all about. You planned this all out, didn’t you? From the moment Raina showed up on the doorstep. The dress. The trip to the day spa. Arriving via limousine at this glamorous affair. You created this perfect Cinderella evening, all so you could propose.”
What a stupid, stupid man.
He said nothing, but the very corner of his mouth twitched upward, as if he was pleased with himself.
She laughed, for a moment genuinely amused by the absurdity of the situation. But when she spoke, her voice sounded brittle and hollow. “You know the thing men don’t get about that story? Women don’t love Cinderella only because Cinderella gets to dress up in fancy clothes and go to the ball. They love Cinderella because when the prince finds out that she’s just a poor servant girl, he still loves her.”
The beginnings of a frown settled on Dex’s handsome face. As if he didn’t quite get where she was going with the metaphor. So she made it easy for him.
“You want me to believe I can have anything I want. All I have to do is pick out a diamond. Any diamond in this room, right?”
Success glinted in his eyes. “Right.”
“Any diamond—” she reached into her bag and pulled out the box from the jeweler “—except this one.”
When she flipped open the box with her thumb, his gaze hardened. His lips compressed into a thin line, but he said nothing.
Bitterness laced her tone when she spoke. “Because this is the one diamond that means something to you, isn’t it?”
Again, he said nothing and again she pressed on. “I’m not an idiot, Dex. I put two and two together. This is the ring from the logo. And Raina told me its history. It’s the first diamond your father found. The ring your father had made for your mother, long after she’d passed away.”
He didn’t deny it, not that she expected him to.
He didn’t meet her gaze, either, but turned away from her to face the bank of windows overlooking downtown. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his tuxedo pants. His back was a broad, impenetrable barrier.
Despite that, she kept talking, because her point was too important to let drop. Not for her, but for Isabella. And for Dex.
“You’ve worked so hard to push your family away, but this ring means something to you, Dex. That’s why you gave it to Isabella the other night. You did it because you’re starting to open up to her.”
She waited for him to say something. Anything.
But his silence, his stubborn refusal to even turn and face her, hung between them, as insurmountable as her deception had ever been.
True, she couldn’t marry him because of her lies. But it was funny, really, how that had become the least of the problems between them. It seemed a small thing compared to the fact that he didn’t love her. That over and over again, he’d shut her out of his heart. That he was asking her only because she’d make the perfect long-term babysitter.
“Do you know what would happen if I did say yes?” she murmured. “Things would pretty much go back to how they were the first week Isabella and I lived with you. I would take care of her. I would love her heart and soul. And you would stop by to visit once every week or so. Yes, you’d be her father in the biological sense, and certainly in a financial sense, but in no other way.
“That’s why I can’t marry you. Well, actually—” a nervous little chuckle escaped “—there are a lot of reasons I can’t marry you. But the real reason is because you’re asking for all the wrong reasons.
“If you married me, I’d take care of Isabella. Not just her physical needs, but her emotional ones, too. You’d have the perfect excuse to hold her at arm’s length forever. All you’d have to do is pay for everything. You could have a daughter and a family, but you wouldn’t have to care about either. Marrying me would let you push Isabella away, just like you’ve pushed away everyone else in your life.”
She paused, holding her breath, praying he’d deny it.
When he didn’t, she added, “But I can’t let you do that to her. I can’t let you do that to you.”
Thirteen
D ex didn’t turn around to watch Lucy leave. What would have been the point?
She was going. She would take Izzie with her. And he couldn’t say that he blamed her.As soon as she’d started babbling on about Cinderella, he’d known he’d lost. He’d made one fatal mistake. He’d appealed to her practical side.
What he hadn’t realized until too late was that under all that practicality beat the heart of a romantic. Deep down, Lucy was the kind of woman who wanted it all. The whole sappy, romantic package.
Raina—a bit of a closet romantic herself—had told Lucy all about the damn ring at the reception and Lucy had fallen head over heels for the story.
He, on the other hand, had done everything in his power to avoid so much as walking past the damn PR display. He’d read it exactly once, his stomach knotting with disgust. It was nothing more than a bit of revisionist history cooked up by the PR department in conjunction with an overpriced decorator.
What made for a charming press release did not make for an enjoyable childhood. The fact that his father eventually did strike gold—or, rather, diamonds—didn’t make up for the fact that he’d dragged them across three continents, that they’d barely lived in the only home they’d ever known or that he’d squandered the last few years of their mother’s tragically short life obsessively prospecting in Canada’s kimberlite pipes for diamonds.