Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“It is,” I said before adding softly, “And so are you.”
She met my gaze. All of her bravado fell away. “Thank you, Gavin. I’ll take care of it.”
“It looks good on you,” I admitted. “Now, you can say I proposed in a limo.”
She laughed, and her gaze went back to the ring on her finger. “That will be so romantic to tell the kids one day,” she joked.
“Very romantic. That’s me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Surprisingly so.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I’d just sort of proposed to my fake fiancée. Maybe it was romantic. Maybe it was because it was Whitley.
Either way, we let the subject drop as we neared the airport. We were flying private. Normally, I took the company jet home when I had business, but this was the first time in a while that I’d used it for pleasure.
Whitley was still staring at her ring as we walked out toward the Dorset & King plane. She pulled her phone out and snapped a picture of it on her finger with the plane in the background.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending a picture to the girls.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Is that wise?”
She shot me a calculated Cheshire cat smile. “They’re going to freak.”
“Again, is that wise?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
I read the text over her shoulder. Sunlight bounced off my grandmother’s ring, and the plane was blurry in the background, but it was very clear what was happening.
Don’t freak out but …
I snorted. “Oh, you’re courting trouble. Katherine is going to kill you.”
“English,” Whitley said, putting her phone purposely on airplane mode and following me onto the plane. “She’ll hunt me down and murder me for not telling her what I’m doing.”
“You’ve been friends a long time. I’m sure she’d expect you to tell her you got engaged in person.”
“Oh no, she absolutely would be offended if I got engaged and she wasn’t there to witness it happening.”
I tucked that tidbit away. “But you weren’t there when Court proposed.”
“Nope, but it’s English. That’s kind of her job. She’d feel like she failed in her friend duties.”
We climbed onto my private plane. Whitley’s eyes roamed the interior before settling on the champagne that I’d been sure to have on ice before we got there.
“For the future Mr. and Mrs. King,” the flight attendant said, handing us each a glass of bubbly.
Whitley’s cheeks heated, and she looked over at me accusingly. “You told the staff?”
“We’re about to tell everyone, darling,” I joked, pulling her into me.
Her eyes widened in surprise at how forward I was. But this was what we were going to have to pull off for the next few days. With my family, who knew me better than anyone. It was easier with Whit because none of it really felt like pretending.
Having her pressed against my chest with my hand at the small of her back brought back a riot of memories. And no matter how fake this was, I couldn’t stop the desire that shot through me at her nearness.
“Well, to us then,” she said, lifting her glass.
I clinked mine against hers, and we tipped them back. She stayed in my embrace with her eyes on mine, assessing me for the trick in all of this, but she didn’t know that the trick had already happened. I’d wanted her here. I had gotten her here. Everything else that happened along the way would just be icing on the cake.
8
WHITLEY
Midland, Texas, was a desolate, dusty mess of a place with oil rigs as far as the eye could see. Despite the sight from the airfield being less than ideal, I took a deep breath of relief. Texas. I’d refused to say it was home, but it had a different smell than the rest of the country. Like bluebonnets and longhorns and BBQ and Friday night lights and big oil. It smelled like home.
I hated admitting it. When I went back to Dallas, which was rare to start with, I focused on getting in and getting out. But here in West Texas—where the land was flat as a pancake that stretched across the entire world, the cerulean skies had not a cloud in the sky, and the air was dry and clean—it was hard to remember why I hated it so much. Why I’d stayed away for so long.
“Not much to look at,” Gavin said quickly. “It’s nicer in town.” Then, he paused and reluctantly added, “Sort of.”
“You don’t have to convince me. I’m from Texas, remember?”
“Yeah, but Dallas isn’t Midland.”
“No.”
Dallas was … chock-full of bad memories. Midland was a blank slate.
“But I like it.”
He gave me a disbelieving look. “If you say so.”
We stepped off of the plane directly to an awaiting car service. Once I was safely out of the dry heat, I turned my phone back on. Immediately, the thing lit up like a Christmas tree. Gavin laughed, watching over my shoulder as the messages flooded in a cascade and the missed calls and voicemails racked up.