Page 150 of Wait for Him

I pride myself on remaining professional and composed under pressure.

So the fact that I'm currently choking on a mouthful of water is doing absolutely nothing for that reputation.

In my defense, I was just proposed to.

Literally.

The Los Angeles skyline stretches out beneath the balcony of the hotel suite I'm standing in, traffic crawling along Sunset below us. It's the kind of view corporations pay obscene amounts of money for when they want people to feel important, and judging by the woman standing beside me, Rian Fields is very comfortable with important.

I agreed to meet Rian, CEO of Lane & Fields, expecting a conversation about a potential partnership. We've known each other for a couple of months now. Casual lunches, a few corporate dinners, enough conversation to know we work well together and that she's smart as hell.

Tonight was supposed to be another quiet dinner. A little networking, maybe some talk about distressed acquisitions over an overpriced Cabernet.

That was my first wrong assumption.

We ended up having dinner on the balcony of her absolutely insane hotel suite, which makes my condo look like employee housing. Then somewhere between dessert and my near-drowning, Rian informed me that the smartest business decision either of us could make was getting married.

Hence the choking.

"Sorry. I can't have you dying on me before you put a ring on it."

She waits with a patient smile while I stop coughing long enough to put my glass somewhere I can't inhale it.

"I'm sorry," I manage. "Could you repeat that? I think I hallucinated the last thirty seconds."

She doesn't laugh. "I'd like to marry you."

Right.

Definitely not a hallucination.

"I realize that's not how these conversations typically go," she says, perfectly calm.

"I've attended a lot of investor meetings over the years." I clear my throat. "None of them ended in a proposal."

"Then they lacked imagination."

"Or appropriate boundaries."

That gets the faintest smile out of her.

Rian is a stunning woman. There's really no point pretending otherwise. Porcelain skin, glossy blonde hair swept up neatly with a few loose pieces around her face, expensive clothes that fit exactly the way expensive clothes are supposed to fit. She's the kind of beautiful that probably photographs exceptionally well, which I imagine comes in handy when your last name has been attached to a company for two hundred years.

Her eyes don't match the rest of her.

I've noticed that before.

She smiles, talks business, shakes hands, does everything she's supposed to do, but her eyes always look tired. Not physically tired. Just tired in a way I recognize enough not to ask about. Even now, her fingers are wrapped a little too tightly around the stem of her wineglass.

"Lane & Fields is over two hundred years old," she says. "My father died two years ago. I inherited the company. The board inherited doubts."

I've heard the rumors. One of the oldest real estate dynasties on the West Coast, generations of influence, billions in holdings, and a board quietly wondering whether the founder's daughter can keep the whole thing going.

Which is bullshit.

I've read the numbers. She's outperformed her father's last five years in her first two.

"They don't think I can do it," she continues. "Not because I'm incapable. Because I'm alone."