Her eyes drop to my open palm at the ring that I'm still holding. "It was originally my great-grandma's wedding ring. She left it to my grandma and she left it to me. My grandma told me her parents had a very special love."
"On the day you tell me you want to marry me, I'll slip it on your finger."
She leans forward, her eyes wide and open. "You're saying these things because we had great sex last night."
"I'm saying these things because I'm in love with you," I whisper against the shell of her ear.
"You can't be serious?" She steps back and scans my face. "How can you be in love with me?"
"Ask my heart." I tap my fingers against the center of my chest. "I've never been in love before and my Gramps told me that when it happened, I'd know, so I know."
Tears glisten in the corner of those brilliant blue eyes. "You know I loved you when I was seventeen, right?"
"And every day since," I add with a soft kiss to her mouth.
"I hated you yesterday when I woke up. I can't love you now." She shrugs through a half-grin. "I don't think that's how love works."
"I know it works that way." I open my palm again. "I'm going to give this back to you now, Brynn, because I know you won't let me keep it. One day I'll put it on your finger forever."
I place the ring in her hand, fist mine around it and hold it to my chest.
"You're as confusing now as you were when I was seventeen." She leans into me. "Kiss me, Smith. Just kiss me."
I do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Brynn
I can't bein love with Smith Booth, can I? We had mind-blowing, toe-curling sex and then he told me he loves me.
He looks at me in a way that Joel never did. He makes me feel things that I didn't know were possible. I can't just blurt out those three words to a man I've spent most of my adult life hating-from-afar.
I try and shake off the conversation I just had with Smith at the café and focus on the task at hand.
I'm in a meeting with Sonya Lannen, her assistant and the contractor who I'll be working side-by-side with to complete the show suite at The Beryl.
"I'm just going to say this, Brynn because I feel it's important to get it out there."
I wouldn't be able to read this woman's face if my life depended on it. She's as reserved as they come which isn't surprising. She's a part of Manhattan's elite. Technically, I am too, since I'm a Bishop, but I don't celebrate that the way the Lennans do even though my net worth is likely double theirs.
I was gifted with two trust funds in the first twenty-four years of my life. One that my parents had set up for me when I was a baby, the other comprised completely of my grandmother's estate. She may have started in life on meager means, but she inherited her wealth from my late grandfather.
My mother was her only child and when they argued because my grandma didn't want to move in with my parents, my grandma turned to me for comfort.
She treated me like I was the center of her universe. She believed in me and when she started to slip into the hands of her Alzheimer's my face morphed into my mother's in her mind, and my grandma said all the things she wished she would have when my mom was young.
I was the tie that reconnected the two of them the last year of my grandma's life.
"Are you listening, Brynn?" Sonya brushes her hand over my bare forearm. I dressed up for this meeting, even though it's the middle of August. I'm wearing a black sleeveless dress, my hair is down and straight and my make-up is on point.
"I am," I answer quickly. "I was just thinking about the wood for the master closet. We're having that imported from Borneo. I'll have a sample to show you tomorrow."
It's a great save if I do say so myself.
"Good. I'm anxious to see it." She leans back in her leather chair. We're in a conference room at the main offices of The Lennan Group NYC. "I didn't know what to expect when I found out it was you who landed this job. This is the exact point I wanted to touch on."
I don't follow and my raised brows say as much.
