The faint voice in her head repeated the question, but Ryleigh shook it off. She wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly magical moment by wondering if, after fifteen months of dating and twelve months after declaring their love for each other—something they were in fact in Santa Barbara to celebrate—Dustin was going to propose. He would in his own time. Eventually. After much thought and consideration.
“I love you,” he said, looping his arm around her. “Today’s been great.”
“It has been and I love you, too. Celebrating our one-year ‘I love you’ anniversary isn’t conventional, but I like it.”
He stopped walking and faced her. He was about three inches taller than her five-eight, with dusty brown hair and a dimple that peeked out as he smiled at her. Yellow-and-orange lightfrom the setting sun seemed to surround them, making her feel the moment was extra sparkly.
“You mean so much to me,” he told her, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “I like what we have together.”
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. This was it! He was going to do it. He was about to propose. Butterflies soared in her belly and her knees got a little weak. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest.
His dark gaze met hers. “Ryleigh, you really do mean the world to me.”
It. Was. Happening! She told herself to stay calm and present. The light breeze picked up a little, sending cool air across her skin. She shivered slightly as she silently urged him to keep talking.
“You know I feel the same,” she whispered.
He smiled. “I’d feel kind of foolish if you didn’t. It sucks to be in love by yourself. Ryleigh—”
She shivered again. He frowned.
“Are you cold?”
“What? No. I’m fine.”
He ran his hands up and down her arms. “You’re freezing. You should have said something. Come on, let’s head back to the hotel.”
What? WHAT? The hotel? Was he kidding? What about the question he was about to ask? She had her answer ready. She’d had it ready for the past six months. Holy crap, no. This wasn’t happening.
But it was. Dustin drew her close, as if using his body to warm hers, and guided them back to the hotel. When they reached their room, he crossed to the TV and turned it on.
“Five minutes,” he said with an easy grin. “I want to check the score. When we left, the Dodgers were ahead.”
She stood just inside the door, staring as he settled on thesmall sofa and flipped channels to find the baseball game, then she walked over to the bed and sat down.
The moment was gone, she thought, still stunned by how close they’d come. Surely he’d been about to pop the question. Only now she wondered if she was wrong about that. Maybe it hadn’t been on his mind at all. Maybe he never planned on marrying her. Maybe this was all there was.
She flopped back on the bed and closed her eyes. Tears burned, but she held them at bay. No way she wanted to explain them to her emotionally oblivious boyfriend who was never going to propose.
“You warming up?” he called from the sofa. “Feeling better?”
“I’m great,” she whispered, doing her best to keep the sadness out of her voice.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“How was your weekend away with Dustin?” Jax asked as she and her sister settled on the comfy loungers on the widow’s walk.
Ryleigh sank onto the cushioned seat, careful not to spill her glass of wine. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said with a sigh, still smarting from what had or rather whathadn’thappened. It had been three days since the non-proposal and she couldn’t seem to shake the uncomfortable combination of hurt and embarrassment that followed her through her day. Hurt because she was starting to wonder if she and Dustin really did want the same things, and embarrassment because sometime in the past couple of months she’d turned into a needy, whiny female who was desperate for her guy to slap a ring on her finger. Only she knew it wasn’t about the ring, but rather what the ring represented—yet telling herself that didn’t make her feel any better.
Her sister immediately went on alert. “What happened? Did you two have a fight?”
Jax’s voice was laced with concern, her expression intense. Ryleigh knew exactly what she was thinking, because even though they were five years apart in age, most of the time they reacted like identical twins. They laughed the same, thought the same, even had similar voices. They’d inherited their medium brown hair from their mother but the waves that were almost-curls had come from their mystery father. They both had brown-with-a-hint-of-green eyes and, according to Jax’s first boyfriend, “killer smiles.”
But unlike her formerly married sister, Ryleigh was unable to get her long-term boyfriend to commit.
“No fight,” Ryleigh told her. “Not even close. We had a lovely time. The last night the sunset was really pretty.”
“I hear tone,” Jax said, then sighed loudly. “Oh, no. You thought he was going to propose and he didn’t.”
