He nodded. “Le Rosey did not serve box-mix au gratin potatoes. The dorm mothers would’ve swooned at the lack of Emmental cheese.”
This was it. This was the opening. He’d met her parents a dozen times and never said anything about her going to meet his family anywhere. “So how did a kid from Pennsylvania end up at a billionaire boarding school, anyway? Are your parents rich?”
Kingston paused, sawing off another bite of steak and then resumed. His studied movements seemed deceptively casual. “My parents and my older brother Stephen died in a car accident when I was ten.”
The urge to grab and comfort him flashed through Nicole’s brain, but his lack of reaction to what he said slowed her down. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Jeez, Kingston. I’m still so sorry.”
Kingston stared at his food, but his knife and fork had stopped moving. “I didn’t have much extended family. My mother had an older brother, a confirmed bachelor in the old-time sense of the word, a lawyer who’d done very well for himself. He wasn’t interested in raising a kid, even a ten-year-old who literally had no one else, but he didn’t let me go into the foster system, either. That definitely would’ve been a worse life.”
Nicole reached over, took his knife out of his hand, and folded her fingers around his.
“I think he sent me to Le Rosey because it was on another continent and they had school-vacation residency packages. I didn’t return to the States until after graduating high school. He died while I was in college and left me a significant amount of money, some of which is still in trust until I turn thirty-five.”
And that was the trust fund remark from their first date at the four seasons in San Diego.
His fingers tightened around hers. “And that’s my whole life. I met the three Last Chance guys at Le Rosey. They’ve been the closest thing I have to family ever since. They come from more money than I do. To put up the money to start Last Chance with them, I liquidated almost everything I had and borrowed against the trust fund for the buy-in.”
No wonder he was flailing so hard to win the bet. “Oh, wow.”
“It’s been a good investment. Last Chance has been the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like me. We were making money hand over fist until one stupid night when we got drunk or were roofied. It was probably drunk, though. We all learned to hold our liquor very well at boarding school, and we might have an inflated sense of what it is humanly possible for a liver to do.”
“And so this one bet—” she said.
“And so this one bet could destroy all of us. I was not kidding about leaving it all behind to be a beach bum in Mexico, except that I know that I would get bored in about six months and want to rebuild. That’s been the whole theme of my life: everything is taken away from you, and then you rebuild. As long as I am alive, I will rebuild.”
Nicole wrapped her other hand around his, too. “If everything falls apart, I’ll be there with you.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’re set for a great life. You have a fantastic family, and no matter what happens with the damn bet, I know you will change the golfing industry, either with Sidewinder or its employee-owned successor.”
She rolled her eyes, but she kept her hands tightly around his. “I don’t want to talk business right now.”
“Remember when you were going to allow your union and your friends to buy Sidewinder as is, and I told you it was a bad bet and you should run?”
“For someone who believes that it’s just business, you kind of screwed yourself on that one,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to do it again. I am a bad bet. Even with Sidewinder’s moonshot paying off, I would lay money?—”
“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t make any more bets.”
“—I would lay money that Gabriel Fish has something truly nefarious up his sleeve. I believe there is a seventy-five percent chance that no matter what kind of numbers we throw down, Gabriel Fish already had a million-fold business opportunity and suckered us all just for the fun of it. I am about to lose every bit of money I have ever earned and go bankrupt.”
Nicole started patting his hand, the despondent direction this conversation was taking made her nervous. “Oh, don’t talk like that. It’ll be fine. We’ll figure out something, and we’ll make it fine. Like you said, you always rebuild.”
Kingston slid off his chair and kneeled beside her, still holding her hand. “And that’s why I am warning you that marrying me is a terrible idea. Financially, it would be the worst decision you could make. You are a beautiful, brilliant woman, my little engineer, and any man would be the luckiest man in the world to have you. If I really wanted to prove my love for you, I would introduce you to my billionaire and royal friends and let one of them marry you, but I’m selfish.”
Shock was slamming into Nicole’s frontal lobe so hard she could barely breathe and far too hard for her to say anything.
“I love you more than I could ever tell you. You are life and hope and love and already more family than I have felt since I was ten years old. Even though it’s a terrible idea and I’m advising you to say no and find someone worthy of yourself, I’m asking you to marry me.”
He pulled a black velvet jewelry box from his pocket and flipped the lid open, revealing a hunk of crystallized carbon bigger than anything Nicole had ever seen. “Oh my God, Kingston!”
“It’s all right to think about it. Every time there was a huge conundrum at Sidewinder, you came up with a solution better than anyone could have ever expected because you took the time to mull it over. Maybe we need to return to California so you can sharpen your swords and think about it.”
Nicole reached into the box, plucked the diamond ring out, and stuck it on her own finger. “Yes!”
