Four Brothers and a Bride novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Ask Me Again

At 1:38 a.m. the executive floor was dark except for one strip of light under one door.

Bram walked me to the end of the hall and stopped.

"He's in there," he said. "He's always in there."

"Go back down."

"Rosalind."

"Go back down, Bram. This one's mine."

He looked at me for a second in the dark.

Then he touched two fingers to the strap of my green dress, the one I'd sewn, and went.

I opened the door without knocking.

Ewan was at his desk with his sleeves rolled up, one lamp on, a stack of contracts in front of him he wasn't reading.

His watch was on his right wrist.

He looked up.

He saw the dress, and I watched it hit him.

He didn't stand.

"It's late," he said.

"It's one-forty."

I walked across the office until I was standing in front of his desk, in the circle of lamplight.

I didn't ask him anything.

I just said it, the way I'd said it once under plastic flowers.

"Don't be a different man in the morning."

And he answered.

It came out of him low and rough and automatic.

"I'll be the same man every morning you let me."

Then he heard himself.

He closed his eyes.

The silence in that office was so complete I could hear the lamp buzz.

"You," I said.

"Me."

"You married me."

"Yes." He opened his eyes. "I married you."

I'd thought I'd feel something clean when I finally heard it.

I was so angry my hands shook.

"Tell me," I said. "All of it. Now."

He stood up, finally.

He came around the desk and stopped with its corner between us.

"I made the schedule," he said. "I always do."

"And you sat down next to me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Four Brothers and a Bride from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.