Not His Bride Anymore novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Knee

Caleb crossed the dining room.

Savannah trailed behind him with her hand on her stomach and her face gone gray.

Forty people at Aldo's had stopped eating.

"Ainsley," Caleb said.

He said it warmly.

"Ainsley, I have to say something, and I need you to hear it before you do anything you can't take back."

"Sit down, Caleb," I said.

"No."

He took a small velvet box out of his coat pocket.

I knew what it was before he opened it.

He went down on one knee on the carpet in front of our table.

Someone at the next table gasped.

A woman put down her fork.

The banker with the red face said, softly, "Oh, boy."

"Seven years," Caleb said, loud, to the room. "I made her wait seven years, and I was a coward. I know that."

The ring in the box was a big round diamond that flashed under the chandelier.

It was a lot more diamond than he could have bought with anything I had ever seen him earn.

"Marry me, Ainsley. Tonight. This week. Whenever you say. Tell this man to go home."

Beside him, Savannah made a small sound.

She was holding the back of a chair, and her knuckles were white.

She had just watched him ask another woman to marry him in front of her, with a baby inside her that he knew about.

Nobody in that room looked at her except me.

I put down my napkin.

I stood up slowly, and my velvet dress whispered against my legs.

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