Chapter Eight
Julian
Well, shit.
I clear my throat. “Remember, we talked about that back in Portland, after I proposed to you in front of the club you used to dance at. I told you that none of the jewelers in Portland had anything close to beautiful enough to go on your finger, so we were going to shop for something once we got here.”
Her eyes are on fire.
“Is she a…” Mike says.
Melody stands up, shooting me a burning look. “Zumba instructor. Well, former.”
Well played.
She glares at me when Mike isn’t looking.
“So, darling, where are you taking me ring shopping? You promised me it was going to be extravagant. What were your words? Oh, yes, ‘breathtaking and jealousy-inducing’ and I distinctly remember you saying that there was no budget at all for this.”
I grit my teeth. She’s going to make me pay.
“There’s a ton of jewelers down near Union Square,” Mike says. “That’s where I’d start. I think they even have a Tiffany’s there, if you want something basic. But, honestly, I’d suggest one of the more artisan jewelers.”
“Thanks for the tip, bro,” I say.
“Yes, thank you,” Melody says. “Jude, I think we should start there. In fact, let’s go now.”
She’s going to get a ton of mileage out of my nickname, and I don’t know if I hate it or love it.
“Sounds great.”
I just know I’ll be dropping five figures on this ring. But, whatever, it’ll be worth it to make sure everything I’ve been working towards happens.
Melody and I head to my garage and I decide, if I’m going to have her dragging me around town until she finds a ring expensive enough I might as well feel good doing it. I grab a set of keys from my key rack and direct her to the car we’ll be taking.
“What is that?” she says, coming to a full stop.
I grin.
“That is a Jaguar E-type convertible, built in 1962. I restored most of it myself as a side project a few years ago, and it’s been my favorite ever since I laid eyes on it. When it first came out in 1961, Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful car ever made. I think he’s still right.”
“He is,” she agrees.
She steps forward slowly and I watch as she runs her hands over the car’s smooth lines, chewing on her lip slightly while she takes the car in, her eyes bight. This car is the pride and joy of my collection. But even with my Jag being here, Melody is the sexiest thing in this room.
“And you fixed it yourself?” she says.
I nod. “All original parts.”
“I don’t know much about cars, and I’m fine with that. If you try and talk to me about your Lamborghini or your Beemer, my eyes will glaze over, I guarantee you. But this one’s different. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I say. And I mean it. Hell, just seeing her appreciate my work has me grinning. “Let’s take a ride.”
She hops inside and I pull us out of the garage and take us out onto the streets. The sun’s out, the wind starts whipping her hair around, and the edges of her lips curl up ever so slightly in a smile, rising higher every time I press that accelerator down and the rumble of the engine reverberates in our bodies. It’s hard keeping my eyes on the road.
Right now, driving this car, with this woman by my side, I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
“Your brother seems like a good guy,” she says, once we’re closer to downtown.
“He is. We’re pretty proud of him,” I say. “And, if I’m being honest, a little envious.”
“Envious? How so?”
“When he was maybe ten, eleven, he was already doing math at the college freshman level. In fact, he was so good at it that even our dad, the all-business Garret Danforth Stone, realized it’d be better for him to go study whatever the hell he wants than to work at Stone Capital. He’s the only one of us that didn’t get sucked in.”
I know it sounds like I’m bitter — she definitely hears some of that in my voice — but I couldn’t be more proud of my brother. And that, more of than anything else, rings through in my voice.
“Mike’s a math genius? The same Mike we met at the aftermath of some sex party?”
“He might be a math geek, but he’s also a Stone.”
I’m proud of my brother for that, too.
“So, Mike’s the college student, your brother Alex was the CEO, what’s your role in Stone Capital?”
I roll my neck and shoulders, trying to loosen them up before diving into more business talk. This shit makes me tense. Still, it’s good to have someone to talk to. Someone that’s on the outside and cares enough to actually listen.
“I could give you my official title — which is just corporate bullshit — but the truth is, my job is to go to the places where we are having problems and clean house or bribe or do whatever the hell we have to do to get things done. Basically, anything the family can do to keep me out of the country, or at least out of the state, and out of the newspapers.”
“Do you like it?”
I shrug. “Parts of it. The money’s great. The traveling, too. And what’s not to like about drinking Chinese or British businessmen under the table? Or taking some Swiss banking regulators climbing?”
She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. It’s an appraising look, like the kind you’d see across the table in the boardroom. “What don’t you like about it?”
“All the rest.”
“Why are you fighting for it if it doesn’t make you happy?”
It’s refreshing as hell not to have someone fawn over me, or to drool over the things I have and talk about how great it must be to have all the money I have and blah blah blah. Of course it’s fucking great to have money and power, why the hell else would people spend their whole lives working for it?
Instead, it’s just the two of us, talking like equals. The way she is — smart, gorgeous, perceptive — is miles ahead of any other woman I’ve ever been with. There isn’t a thing about her right now that isn’t beautiful.
“Because I love my brothers. Seeing Alex get fucked over like he has been — and then seeing other people swoop in to try and take advantage — you can bet I’m going to fight. I’ll go to hell for my brothers, even to the boardroom at Stone Capital.”
We hit a sharp turn and I pull the wheel, cornering around those steep San Francisco angles, and the momentum presses her into me. There’s this perfect second with her body against mine, held there by the force of our turn, that seems to carry on forever. And even though it’s abrupt, and I’d expect her to be tense, she’s relaxed and comfortable.
She leans into me, her eyes flicker and meet mine and I catch this subtle lavender-vanilla scent off her as her hair flutters by my face. She smiles lightly before moving back to her seat. My heart is pounding.
“You’re a good man, Julian,” she says quietly.
I take a quiet second to just appreciate her words. It feels good hearing someone say that for once. I’m so used to hearing the opposite. Hell, it’s been my job to be the kind of person that gets as dirty as it takes to get the job done.
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t go that far,” I say.
We turn another sharp corner and I slam on the breaks to avoid hitting some idiot who’s going ten under the speed limit even though there’s somehow almost no traffic, which is a miracle this close to Union Square and has me thinking that maybe there was some sort of apocalypse or Leftovers type event that I missed.
“What about you? What’s the real reason you’re doing all this? Who in their right mind sells themselves for a few months?” I say.
I don’t know a delicate or polite way to phrase it — probably because neither of those words exists in my vocabulary — and, the look she gets on her face, tells me I’m pretty damn close to stepping in it.
She watches the Victorian rowhouses and high rises roll by, though her eyes have this far-off look in them that tell me she’s hardly seeing anything around us.
“I’ve got a lot of reasons,” she says, her voice withdrawn. “But put yourself in my shoes for a second. How far would you go if you finally had what you want the most and you were on the verge of losing it?”
We pull to a stop by Union Park and she hops out right away. Her demeanor changes, going from distant to present and happy and her eyes light up.
“Anyways, my fiance, it’s time to go ring shopping.”
* * * * *
Twelve shops.
Sixteen different salespeople.
Thirty-seven different rings.
We run a marathon of jewelers until we find a ring that suits her.
And to top it off, it’s at the first shop we visit and I am reasonably certain she’s dragging me around from shop to shop just to mess with me.
But I don’t mind. There’s something about the way she plays up being my overjoyed fiance, going on and on about how grand our wedding is sure to be, that feels really good.
There’s something nice, too, about seeing her doted on by every salesperson we come across. I get the feeling that it’s been a long time since she’s had people other than her friends go out of their way to make her happy. Laughing, joking, with light in her eyes and her smile.
I could get used to this.
Plus, at each shop we go to, once they find out our budget and get an idea of the kind of money I’ve got, they’re more than happy to offer us wine or champagne to drink while we check out rings.
By the time we get back to the first shop, we’re plenty buzzed on both booze and our upcoming never-going-to-happen nuptials.
“Darling,” Melody says, standing over the display case, hand outstretched, with some shimmering-like-a-star diamond adorning her finger, “this is the one.”
It fits her perfectly.
“It looks beautiful on you,” the salesman says. Then he turns to me, “sir, that particular ring does cost around —”
I stop listening and whip out my wallet to hand over a credit card. The price doesn’t matter. “We’ll take it.”
Melody kind of freezes for a second and her smile wavers. She probably heard the price, and, when the salesman leaves to go run the card, she hisses to me, “are you sure? I can find something less expensive.”
“Do you think I’m going to have my fiance wearing anything other than the ring she wants?” I reply. “You deserve the best.”
She looks at the ring for a second, then back to me. “Thank you,” she whispers and she means it.
Then, she’s beaming again.
I know this is all fake, I know it’s temporary and will be over in a month or two and then I’ll probably never see her again, but for now, it feels right to treat her.
“You’re welcome.”
I mean it, too.