Put a Ring On It

by Beth Kendrick

  “I’ll consider them. You don’t have to.” He gave her shoulder one last squeeze, then proceeded to the cash register, where he paid for and bagged the groceries with efficiency that rivaled even Brighton’s.

  “You can’t be fine with all this,” Brighton insisted as she trailed behind him out to the sidewalk. “You know nothing about me.”

  “I know we have fun.” He stopped at an intersection and took her hand. “In bed and out of it.”

  “How can you possibly trust me?” she cried. Her agitation increased in direct proportion to his nonchalance. “Maybe I’m a consummate gold digger who’s out for all I can get.”

  He laughed and led the way across the street.

  “This isn’t funny!” She extricated her hand from his. “What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, the beach house and the apartments in D.C. and New York and your corporate jet . . . are you really willing to risk all that?”

  When they reached the curb on the other side of the street, he stopped, turned toward her, and did the laser-beam-focus routine. He moved closer, until she could feel his cheek brush against hers. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t care. You want the beach house that bad? Take it. It’s yours.”

  She pulled back, frowning. “What do you mean, you don’t care? Of course you do.”

  His eyes darkened. “That’s the secret to success. You have to not care if you lose sometimes.”

  She went silent in the sea-scented breeze. “Well, for someone who doesn’t care about stuff, you sure have a lot of it.”

  His voice remained soft, but for the first time since they’d met, he seemed remote and unyielding. “I realized years ago that no matter how much I have, it’ll never be enough. So now I make investments; I don’t invest.”

  Brighton decided to use one of his own tactics on him—she got flippant. “Is this the part where you finally tell me about your dark and tortured past?”

  She held her breath, aware that she’d just ventured into dangerous territory. She’d pushed too far and now she was going to find out what happened when the charming, casual Jake Sorensen got angry.

  But he didn’t do anything. He stood motionless for a moment, squinting in the sunlight reflected off a store window, and then that cold anger melted into a rakish smile.

  “If I had a dark, tortured past, believe me, I’d exploit it to the fullest.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I work, I make money, I have fun. That’s it.”

  Brighton crossed her arms. “I’m not buying it. You built an empire from the ground up—there has to be more to you than money and good bone structure.”

  “I wish there was.” He looked forlorn. “If I were you, I’d get my gold digger on and snag a beach house or two while the snagging’s good.”

  Before she could try a new interrogation technique, a voice interrupted: “Hey, Sorensen! Get over here!”

  Lila had stepped out of the Naked Finger and was waving both arms to flag them down.

  Brighton glanced at Jake. “You don’t think she’s heard about us already?”

  “Everyone’s heard everything. Guaranteed.” He rolled his neck as if prepping for a boxing match. “Let’s go.”

  Together as husband and wife, they did the walk of shame through the shop’s glass door. The little blue showroom was lined on all sides with glittering gems and precious metals.

  “Well, well, well.” Lila put both hands on her hips like a parent about to ground two curfew-breaking teenagers. “So the rumors are true.”

  “Rumors?” Brighton feigned innocence. “What have you heard?”

  “I told you,” Jake said. He put down the grocery bags and gave Lila a quick hug. “I tried to tell her about the way this town works.”

  Lila looked both delighted and scandalized. “You two actually got married?”

  They nodded.

  “For real?” Lila pressed. “You signed legal documents to this effect?”

  “Do you need me to send you a certified copy of the marriage certificate?” Jake asked.

  “Maybe you’d better.”

  He nodded knowingly. “You and Malcolm had a bet going that I’d never get married, didn’t you? And you just lost.”

  “This whole town’s had a pool going for years. Why couldn’t you have waited two more years? I could have made a killing!” Lila shook her fist. “Is this a sign of the impending apocalypse? Should I start stockpiling bottled water and canned goods?”

  Brighton shook her head. “No need. It’s temporary. We’re having a fourteen-night stand.”

  “Thirty-night stand,” Jake muttered.

  Brighton ignored this. “The paperwork was just to prove a point.”

  “What was the point?” Lila asked. Before Brighton could respond, she glanced at their hands and practically started jumping for joy. “You don’t have rings yet? You’ve come to the right place.”

  Jake’s phone buzzed, and as he started reading an e-mail, he kind of lifted his chin in Brighton’s direction. “She’s the jewelry person. Whatever she wants is great. I’ll pay.”

  “Ah, romance.” Brighton walked over to Lila. “We don’t really need rings.”

  “You got married, didn’t you?” Lila rubbed her palms together. “This is going to be fun. You need something bold and dazzling. Something that proclaims to the world, ‘I married Jake Sorensen and I’m loving every minute of it.’”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Brighton cautioned. “It hasn’t even been two full days.”

  Lila waved away her protests. “I just got in a stunning three-carat brilliant-cut solitaire. Ideal cut, VVS1 clarity, G color—”

  “Three carats?” Brighton almost choked. “No, no, no. That’s way too big for me. And way too expensive.”

  Lila glanced over at Jake. “Hi. Have you met your husband?”

  “Buy it,” Jake yelled from across the room.

  “Read your e-mail and mind your business,” Brighton yelled back. To Lila, she said, “Look at the outfit I’m wearing right now. Do I strike you as a three-carat eye-gouger kind of gal?”

  “You got Jake Sorensen to marry you,” Lila stated flatly. “Rules don’t apply to you.” She pulled out a glittering diamond ring from under the counter.

  “That is gorgeous,” Brighton conceded. “For someone else.”

  “Then how about this?” Lila handed over a small marquise-shaped diamond in a wide yellow gold band. “We can reset the stone in platinum.”

  “It’s a little eighties.”

  “I know, damn it.” Lila snapped her fingers, foiled again. “I have five of these now and no one wants to buy them. Marquises aren’t in fashion right now.”

  “You have five?” Brighton studied the stone. “Could you put them together to make a new piece? Like a cross pendant? Or maybe earrings flanked with trillions?”

  Lila regarded her with renewed interest. “Yes, yes I could. If I had a designer to do it.”

  “Oh, it’ll be easy.” Brighton waved her hand. “Bring out the pieces and I’ll show you.”

  Lila fetched the diamonds, along with a pad and a pen. Brighton glanced at the stones and started sketching a few possible designs.

  “You’re going to freehand?” Lila asked, a note of awe in her voice.

  “Sure. I’m not certified or anything, but I can sketch, do basic design on the computer, make wax molds, do polishing and engraving, that sort of thing.”

  “So you are a jewelry designer.”

  Brighton shook her head. “Not really.”

  Before Lila could argue, the phone next to the cash register rang. While Lila picked up and greeted her caller, Jake joined Brighton by the jewelry case. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Brighton tilted her head and considered the placement of the hypothetical trillions. “Just f
ooling around.”

  Lila’s tone sharpened. “You want me to do what? For when?” The sweet brunette’s expression looked panicked. “Wait, slow down. What happened? You were where? Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay. But . . . Yes, but . . . Well, do you have a photo I could work off of, at least? I see. Listen, I’m with a customer right now. May I call you back in five minutes? Okay.”

  “What?” Jake asked when she hung up.

  “That was some guy who lives in Bethany Beach,” Lila explained. “He just lost his wedding band and he wants to know if I can make an exact replica by Wednesday at noon.”

  “What happens Wednesday at noon?” Brighton asked.

  “He sees his wife,” Jake guessed.

  Lila nodded. “She’s coming back from a business trip. He says he’ll pay whatever I ask, but he doesn’t have any pictures I can work from.”

  “Are you sure?” Brighton nodded at the computer in the corner. “Does he have a Facebook profile? If he does, you should look at the pictures where you can see his ring finger and zoom in.”

  Lila looked impressed. “Let me call him back and have him friend me on Facebook.” She hesitated as her hand hovered over the phone. “I’m going to hell, aren’t I?”

  Jake laughed. “Why would you be going to hell?”

  “Because I shouldn’t be aiding and abetting a cheater.”

  “Who said that you are?” Jake asked. “You don’t know the facts of the case.”

  “Come on. This guy went carousing without his wedding ring and now he’s trying to make sure his wife never finds out. I hate cheaters.” Lila turned to Brighton. “My ex-husband was a cheater.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Jake pointed out. “For all you know, the ring could have fallen off and rolled away. It’s unlikely, but it could have happened. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter.”

  “How can you say that?” Brighton protested. “Don’t you have any morals at all?”

  Jake ignored this and focused only on the issue at hand. “If you want to run a business, you can’t make value judgments on your customers.”

  “But . . .” Lila frowned. “But cheating.”

  Jake shrugged. “Do you want to be the cheating police or do you want to be a successful jeweler?”

  Brighton recoiled a bit. “Who are you?”

  “A guy who runs successful businesses.” He glanced at his phone again. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to run.”

  “You do that.” Lila all but shoved him out the door. “Run along and don’t come back, because I’m keeping her.”

  “You can’t keep her,” Jake said. “She’s mine.”

  “Then you’re going to have to share,” Lila informed Jake. To Brighton, she said, “You’re hired whether you like it or not. Don’t try to escape.”

  “But I’m only here for the next two weeks,” Brighton said.

  “Thirty days,” Jake intoned as he strode out the door.

  “Then you’re hired for two weeks,” Lila decreed. “Starting right now. Want to track down this ring on Facebook and make a wax mold?”

  Brighton relented as an old, familiar surge of excitement hit. “We can probably get it done by noon on Wednesday, but we better get cracking. Does this fool happen to know his ring size?”

  Lila gave her a look. “What do you think?”

  Brighton nodded. “When you call him back, tell him to go to the nearest pawn shop and have them size his finger.”

  “God, you’re good.” Lila picked up the phone but didn’t dial. “Is that why Jake married you?”

  “I have no clue why he married me,” Brighton confessed. “And I only married him to stick it to my ex. Hot rage plus hot guy equals bad decisions.”

  “I know all about making snap decisions because of an ex,” Lila said. “But getting married?”

  “I know.” Brighton hung her head. “I’m too ashamed to tell my family.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” Lila kept studying her as though she were an exotic zoo exhibit. “Talk about drama! Excitement! Adventure!”

  “I was reeeally mad at my ex,” Brighton murmured. “And like I said, I don’t know why Jake did it. There are more pieces to this puzzle, and I’m a little afraid to find out what they are.”

  Lila leaned back against the counter. “So what’s it like, being married to Jake Sorensen?”

  “It’s . . .” Brighton tried to find the right words. “Easy. The opposite of real life.” Being with him was so seductively simple. He didn’t argue or act as the voice of reason. He didn’t expect anything from her.

  Because he didn’t care.

  But no—that wasn’t fair. He’d cared enough to whisk her away to Vegas, to take her to his house and cook for her and give her the most mind-blowing orgasms of her life followed by witty conversation.

  He just didn’t care about her in the way that a husband traditionally cared about his wife. Which was fine, because they weren’t really married in the traditional sense of the word. And they’d been together less than forty-eight hours. She didn’t care about him, either.

  Much.

  chapter 12

  Six hours later, Lila dropped Brighton off in front of Don’t Be Koi.

  “Sorry, that went way later than I expected,” Lila said.

  “Time flies when you’re frantically trying to re-create a wedding ring using grainy Facebook photos.” Brighton’s fingers were cramping from all the drawing and detail work, but she felt elated. She’d forgotten how exhilarating it was to lose herself in a design project. The total concentration conferred a sense of peace—her busy mind quieted while her hands worked.

  “We’re totally going to pull this off.” Lila paused. “Right?”

  “Absolutely.” Brighton unbuckled her seat belt. “That guy is just lucky he wants white gold—platinum takes forever to cool.”

  Lila checked her cell phone as a text came in. “That’s Malcolm, wondering if I’m ever coming home. I better let you go inside. Tell Jake I’m sorry I deprived him of his bride all day.”

  “Ah yes, his legally wedded tax implication.”

  “I’d say you’re more than a tax implication.” Lila smiled knowingly. “There’s something going on between you two.”

  Brighton waved this away. “Look at Jake Sorensen and look at me. Do you really think we’re going to fall madly in love and live happily ever after?”

  Lila shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Name one.”

  “Remind me to tell you the story of how Malcolm and I got together someday.”

  “Is Malcolm like Jake?” Brighton asked.

  “No.” Lila gazed off dreamily into the distance. “He’s nothing at all like Jake.”

  “That’s why you’re living happily ever after.” Brighton opened the door and got out of the car. “What time do you want to get started tomorrow?”

  Lila snapped out of her reverie. “Is seven too early? I’ll bring coffee.”

  “I’ll be there.” Brighton waved good-bye.

  “You’re the best. And listen, you have to finish up the detail work, so I’ll need you well rested. Try to get some sleep tonight.”

  Brighton closed the door and practically skipped past the koi pond, thoughts of Gatorade in her head. “I make no promises.”

  • • •

  “Hello?” Brighton kicked off her shoes in the front hall and padded barefoot up to the master suite. The fading light cast shadows across the stair treads. “Anybody home?”

  No one answered. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of eerie, because this house was clearly maintained by a substantial staff. Every baseboard, window, and countertop was immaculate. The beachfront was perfectly raked. The beds were made, the towels were folded, and the entire place smelled comforting yet expensive, with subtle notes of sandalwood. A
nd of course, someone had to keep the massive refrigerator stocked with bottled water, iced coffee, soda, craft beer, and energy drinks.

  So where was everyone?

  Maybe Jake had gone back to the Whinery to find another boozy watch enthusiast. Maybe he was chatting up another freshly dumped executive worker right now. Maybe . . .

  She heard the soft hiss of running water from the master suite. Someone was in the shower. Her heart rate kicked up as she opened the door.

  Sure enough, the invisible housekeepers had been busy. The bed had been remade with snowy white linens and piles of fluffy pillows. A silver bowl of strawberries rested on a rough-hewn wooden bench next to a silver champagne bucket filled with ice and three bottles of orange Gatorade.

  Brighton tugged her blouse out from the waistband of her skirt and knocked on the bathroom door. “Jake?”

  His voice was muffled through the heavy white door: “Your timing is perfect. Come on in.”

  She opened the door and stepped into the palatial bathroom, which featured a huge white and silver slipper tub, a glass-walled shower almost as large as Brighton’s entire bathroom, and a custom-made blue and white tile map of the Delaware coastline across one entire wall. She couldn’t stop staring at Jake’s bare chest. His torso was as perfectly proportioned as his face. Somewhere, a museum is missing its Michelangelo sculpture. His shoulder was marked with a trio of faint white scars that just added to his rugged masculinity.

  She took off her earrings, placed them carefully on a stack of white washcloths next to the sink, and reached behind her to unzip her skirt. He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She met him on the bathmat and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” His hands settled on her hips.

  She looked at the shower. “You’re done already?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you turned the water off.”

  “No point in wasting water.” He finished unzipping her skirt.

  “I didn’t figure you for an environmentalist.”

  “Someone’s got to think of the radioactive wolves in Siberia,” he murmured against her lips.