Hey, let’s imagine I said something stupid. What do you think it would be?
And what do you think would be worse thanthat?
Oh, yeah. I didn’t even think, and I asked him, “Yeah, but you’re almostthirty,right?”
His sharp glance nearly lasered me to death and left nothing but burned ashes.“And?”
Oh, but I didn’t stop there. Not me, nope. “Well, you know, you don’t want to have kids too late in life. You want to be able to chase them around and stuff.”
His head tilted like he’d clicked one notch on a flywheel. “I’m not fifty. Orsixty.”
And that,that,was when I realized I’d called himold.
“Never mind!” I choked out. “My head sometimes comes up with weird stuff that my mouth doesn’t filter right. I didn’t mean anything by it. Nothing at all. Let’s pretend I didn’t say it.”
Oh my God, I wanted to crawl under my chair and rock myself.
“Perfectly fine.” Nicolai was staring at a bite of steak on the end of his fork like it might lodge in his arteries. “No offense taken.”
I ate the rest of my supper while he ate his wide, shallow dish of salad, leaving the remaining red meat on the side.
He announced he should shave and get ready for the party, and then asked, his words slightly delayed as if he was hesitating, “Would you like to see the rings?”
“It’s really important to switch them out, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Okay, then. Thanks? I’m sure they’re nice.”
I followed him into the suite’s bedroom, where the shinyblack bag stood on the bed. Nicolai upended it. Two black leather boxes tumbled out like blocks.
He opened one, checked it, and presented the other box to me. “Here’s yours.”
The box felt, in my hand, like the soft leather of the chair with the lamp and reading table where Konstantin had been sitting. The clasp and edging of the box were gold.
When I opened it, the blazing diamond rings inside threw spangles over the room like a glitter bomb.“Wow.”
A clear central diamond the size of my thumbnail was ringed with yet more diamonds, and the bands of the engagement ring and the wedding ring were encased in diamonds that were each a quarter-inch tall all the way around. “Holy cow!Nicolai!”
My words trailed away.
He was standing in front of me, holding another ring box. “Do you not like them?”
“They’re beautiful, but you really didn’t need to buy new rings, let alone anything likethese.It’s silly that I’m sentimental, but just swapping them out and trashing the old rings like they mean nothing seems wrong.”
“We’re not merely exchanging the rings. The only bad decision I made last night was buying pawn shop wedding rings for you.” His eyebrows flinched downward. “You deserve better.”
“They’re just sparkly rocks with metal hammered around them. The price doesn’t matter, not for these amazing, gorgeous, astounding, blindingly beautiful ones and not for these ones that we got from the pawn shop last night.” I wrenched the pawned wedding set from my hand and held it out to him in my palm. “What matters is thattheseare the rings the priest blessed.Theseare the rings we married each other with. These are the ones youput on my finger when you said—” My nose felt like I’d sniffed paint thinner. “You said?—”
Nicolai stepped toward me and lifted my chin with one knuckle, his smile crinkling the corners of his true-blue eyes.“Oh,that’s it.”
“I’m sorry. I guess it’s sentimental. I don’t mean to cause a fuss.”
“I have an idea. Get dressed for John’s party. We’ll make a quick stop on the way.”
Considering that my makeup and hair had already been done by someone else, shimmying into the foundation garments and copper dress should have taken me only a few minutes.
When I thought offoundation garments,like Clementine had said, I thought of my grandmother’s support bra, a mechanical marvel to rival a circus tent’s steel cables and pulleys, made of white elastic straps and thick canvas panels.
