“Let’s sit down.” And Kate guided her to the sofa and sat on the coffee table facing her.
She held Olivia’s hands, her slender fingers dark and resting in hers. Olivia smiled at her, almost shy, as if gathering her thoughts.
“Do you want to go first?” Kate murmured.
Although Olivia had incredible levels of patience at times, and also a significant lack of it with some people, something clearly defeated her right now.
“You were surprised at those clients I was telling you about? And Maria? How they were happy with their partners after divorce?”
“Yes?”
“Why?” Olivia asked simply.
“Oh.”
Kate stared at her, heart hammering.
She wasn't expecting to be dropped into the thick of it, the question putting her on the spot immediately.
Why was Olivia asking that? She held her hands tighter.
“Do you...worry that I don’t get on with my exes?”
Did Olivia think it was a red flag, when Olivia was cordial if remote from hers.
“No,” Olivia replied, her gaze kind. “But I did wonder why it surprised you?”
Olivia asked gently, but it had plunged Kate into the middle of the subject she wanted to talk about.
Kate paused in thought. “I wasn’t surprised Maria makes it work with her ex. I know I have a terrible record with mine.”
A squeeze back from Olivia. Reassurance and love.
“It was more...” Oh, she was deep into this already. “I wondered how you keep a positive outlook with people who get divorced and married, when you see so many acrimonious cases.”
Olivia lowered her gaze.
“I don’t always. Some seem intent on making the biggest mess of it possible. But, I have to be practical and open-minded to each new case and what my client needs. And...” Olivia looked up. “Sometimes they still surprise me.”
A burst of hope. Olivia meant like Kate. That she saw a reasonable, safe person in Kate. Dark brown eyes, pupils large in the low light, gazed at her, and Kate could have lost herself in them for hours.
“Does it still surprise you?” Olivia asked. “That I’m not completely disenchanted?”
“Yes,” Kate smiled a little. “But I’m glad, because...”
She swallowed.
Deep breaths.
“Because I want to marry you,” Kate said.
“Waaaaaaaaah.”
The noise was loud, the baby monitor crackling into a wail, just as she managed to say the words.
Olivia shot a glance towards the monitor, its lights flashing as frantic as Zoe’s cry. Olivia’s expression turned distraught.
“Sorry, it’s Zoe,” Olivia said. “What did you say?”
