The Billion Dollar Wedding: The Honeymoon Collection

by Cynthia Dane

  “Here.” Her elderly tour guide gestured to a door marked Garden Entrance, B. “There is only one way through the garden from here, so I will go and let you enjoy it on your own.”

  Jasmine hardly knew the man and was already sad to say goodbye, but his farewell smile lifted her spirits, and the usher opening the door for her was kindly looking enough that she felt confident walking through and seeing what Ethan ultimately had planned for her.

  She met darkness the moment the door closed behind her. She also met a graceful tranquility that bade her to walk on.

  Chapter 16

  Foliage surrounded her as she took a few tentative steps forward. Tiny golden lights illuminated a walkway lined with colorful flowers that she could barely see in this darkness. Somewhere far away water flowed, a constant source of soothing, rolling sounds as Jasmine followed the curving path between overgrown ferns and tall trees that barely had room in that otherwise large dome. Her heels clicked on the path, echoing against the manmade wall and the man-transplanted flora. These weren’t the best shoes for walking in, but Jasmine pressed on, ignoring any soreness spreading across her feet.

  What in the world is this about? What waited for her at the end, besides Ethan? Dinner? A surprise party? It was too early to celebrate her birthday. It wasn’t their anniversary.

  Something else was afoot, and even though Jasmine knew what it was deep inside, reason and logic told her to forget about it.

  Flowers she could barely see kissed her skin as she brushed against them on her walk. Pebbles littered the walkway, kicking this way and that every time her foot pointed somewhere new. Evermore the pathway wound from one exhibit to the next. As Jasmine progressed, however, she noticed that the overhanging trees gradually gave way to the fake stars twinkling above her.

  That wasn’t all that twinkled when she made it far enough.

  The path ended at a curtain of violet lights. Strings of them hung from the ceiling, swaying this way and that in the air conditioning. Jasmine touched them with her fingertips, watching them glisten against her skin, making her already lavender dress glow more intensely. Her diamond tennis bracelet sparkled so brilliantly that she was momentarily blinded. Yet she knew to part the curtain and see what awaited her.

  It was a clearing in the center of the dome. More strings of lights hung all around her, pouring from the stars above, turning the world into a hazy purple paradise. She saw the source of the watery noise: a waterfall spilling from a fake hill on the other side of the dome, a swiftly coursing stream making its way around her feet. Flower petals were scattered across the floor. The farther Jasmine walked, the more a shadowy figure came into view many yards away.

  Ethan. She knew it like he knew it was her the moment she emerged from the lights, cast in that violet glow.

  Although she wanted to quickly go to him, Jasmine took her time, drinking in the sights, the sounds, and the flowery smells surrounding her. She also smelled the faint scent of food. Italian, of course. What an elaborate dinner for the sake of doing so!

  “You are something else,” Jasmine said, unable to contain her grin as she came within several feet of Ethan.

  He, dressed in a sensible tux, smiled back at her. “And you are the most radiant woman in this universe.” His chin pointed up, toward the stars twinkling on the dome’s ceiling. “I’m a lucky man to have you come all the way out here for me.”

  “How could I pass it up after all the trouble you went through?” Jasmine didn’t touch him, nor did she come any closer. Her hands fumbled in front of her, one foot lifting off the ground while the other took on the brunt of her weight. “After the trouble so many people went through for us? I thought you were too busy for something as extravagant as this.”

  “I’ve been planning this for a while.”

  “You rented the whole planetarium for us, huh?”

  “Jasmine,” Ethan said, voice steady as he changed the subject. “I could never tell you how much I love you.”

  She froze in place, her ears hearing him, but her heart refusing to believe what was happening. Jasmine glanced around. She saw other people in the dome with them. Men in white serving uniforms standing around food being kept warm. Sommeliers carrying an assortment of wines and champagnes.

  And one man in a suit holding a long, black felt box.

  “I love you too,” she said, ignoring the lump in her throat. “Now what is this about?”

  Ethan approached, hand raising to give her a red rose. I feel like I’m on a TV show. “You’re the only woman I want with me for the rest of my life, Jasmine. If I asked you to believe nothing else, it would be that.”

  She bit her lip, hands twisting in front of her. No… it can’t be… this is a joke… Ethan would never joke about something like this, and yet Jasmine thought it. This can’t be happening. Not to me. Something like this would never happen to me.

  Yet when Ethan got down on one knee, his hair and complexion awash in the soft violet light, Jasmine tasted nothing but air in her mouth. She didn’t even taste herself. “Ethan, what are you…” The thorns on the rose stem cut into her skin, and she could do nothing but ignore it.

  “I’m doing something I should’ve done a while ago… but in my folly, I didn’t truly appreciate you. I apologize for that.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

  He took her hands between his own, his soft skin so tender that Jasmine had a hard time believing he was really there. “Yes, I do. I have to apologize for every time I made you angry, or sad, or uncomfortable. I don’t want you to feel that way. I love you, Jasmine. I want you to be happy until the day you die. Until that day, I want you by my side, always.”

  She swallowed, hard. “Okay.”

  “Do you want to be with me until that time?”

  Ethan almost sounded uncertain… as if a man as confident as him… a man who could have any woman he wanted… would be uncertain if whether or not a woman like Jasmine would want to be with him for the rest of her life. “I want to be with you, Ethan.”

  He kissed her fingers, his lips lingering over her knuckles as she curled her hand into a fist. “Then marry me, Jasmine.”

  The world came to a complete stop. The lights stopped twinkling. The stars stopped shining. The water stopped flowing and the flowers stopped swaying in the breeze. Jasmine stared at Ethan’s face, and then beyond it, into a void that screamed at her, “These things don’t happen to boring people like you.”

  Except it had.

  Except they did.

  “Oh my God.” Jasmine could barely hear her own voice as Ethan stood up, hands taking her by the wrists. “Oh my God!” She snatched her wrists from his grip and covered her mouth with her hands, her shock so great that it took all of Ethan’s strength to get her to release her lips again. The man holding the felt box approached her and opened it, revealing five rings to match her tennis bracelet.

  “Choose one. If you’ll say yes.”

  Jasmine gaped at all five diamond rings. One was huge, gaudy, and deliriously beautiful. Another was understated and classy. Yet another was a mix of the two, with one prominent diamond and two tiny ones on either side. None of these were Jasmine’s favorites. She was instantly attracted to the two on the end. They were identical, except one had two tiny rubies on either side of the small diamond in the center while the other was a bare, silver band.

  Jasmine picked the ruby one out of the box. Finally, things began to sparkle again.

  Ethan brushed the hair away from her cheek. “Is that a yes? Will you marry me?”

  Jasmine looked between him and the ring. Two things she never thought she would have in a million years. Lightyears, even. This really isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. How could it be? I’m nobody. Ethan could do so much better.

  Better, like Adrienne. The only other woman Ethan ever proposed to. He said he couldn’t pick out a ring for her, so he let her do it. Except she said no. Did it happen like this? Was Ethan truly trying ag
ain… in the same manner? I don’t know if that would be great or terrible.

  Jasmine looked him in the eye. What did she see in his soul? The man she loved. The man she adored. The man she went through hell and back for. The man who cut his most important business asset out of his life when he found out what that asset was doing to the people he cared most about. The man who never said he loved her until all of that was said and done.

  A broken man. A man desperate to believe in true love again.

  “Yes,” Jasmine whispered. “Yes, Ethan. I’ll marry you.”

  His arms wrapped around her, suffocating her in the firmest embrace. Jasmine felt ten tons of love explode against her, Ethan’s heart thumping wildly in his chest as he squeezed his girlfriend – his fiancée – for all his worth and kissed her throat. Jasmine’s dress wrinkled beneath his touch. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to feel his body against hers, even if other people – strangers – watched in either indifference or a sense of admiration.

  “You’ve just made me the happiest man in the…” He glanced up. “Cosmos.”

  Jasmine brushed something from her eye, but she wasn’t sure what. Surely it wasn’t a tear. Definitely not a tear, for who would cry as her boyfriend took a gorgeous ring and slipped it onto her ring finger? Not my boyfriend anymore. Ethan’s my fiancé now. That sent the lump plummeting down her throat and landing in her stomach, never to be seen again… that night.

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  They didn’t go as wild or as passionate as they may have liked in present company, but it was a good, tender kiss to start off their engagement.

  “The night isn’t over,” Ethan whispered in her ear, the excitement palpable in his voice. “I’ve arranged dinner for us as well.”

  Jasmine pulled away from him, although she remained locked in a loving embrace. “I knew I smelled Italian. You may be full of surprises, but your surprises are full of the same old Ethan.”

  “Last I checked, you loved Italian food too.”

  “Indeed I do.” Jasmine rested her hand on his shoulder, her eye going straight to the small ring on her finger. “Not as much as I love you.”

  Ethan took her by the hand and brought her over to a bistro table set among a bed of tulips. Jasmine sat down, letting Ethan help her scoot in her chair before he sat across from her, a single candle burning between them. Jasmine propped an elbow on the table and gazed at him, wondering how she ever became so lucky. One day I left my ramshackle apartment and returned home with a job offer I couldn’t refuse. Now here she was, gazing into the handsome visage of her billionaire fiancé.

  “Did you think I would say no?” Jasmine asked, after the sommelier came by with the wine and left again. She picked it up, ready for a toast. “Really, now.”

  The happiness flickered on Ethan’s face. “I had been told no before.” He picked up his glass as well. “I’m never sure about anything.”

  Their glasses hovered in the air. “You want to marry me?” It was still like she couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes, I do.” He didn’t give her any condescension. No, “Of course, silly, why wouldn’t I?” That was one thing Jasmine loved about him. He always gave her a straight answer… assuming he gave her an answer at all. “Here’s to us.”

  Jasmine smiled. “To us.”

  Their glasses clinked together. A waiter chose that moment to ask Jasmine whether she would like the calzone or the special four-cheese lasagna. She picked the lasagna, and enjoyed the first sip of her red wine.

  “Now, you have to tell me what finally made you propose to me.” Jasmine put her glass down and rested her chin atop her hand. “Because I know you, and it wasn’t any one thing. You never base your decisions on one thing, even love.”

  He took her free hand on top of the table. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. A certain someone may or may not have been nagging me. The bouquet was not exactly subtle.”

  Jasmine snorted. “She has not shut up once about you asking me to marry you. No wonder she came all the way down from the mountains today. She knew, didn’t she?”

  “You would have thought she planned this whole thing.”

  “Well? Did she?”

  Ethan shook his head. “She suggested the planetarium as a possible place to propose, but that was it. I told her I wanted to create a fairy tale feeling, because you’re my princess.”

  “I’m your Cinderella.”

  “I wasn’t going to say it first.”

  They toasted again. Jasmine wasn’t sure she wanted Monica to meddle in her life this much in the future, but for now, she made winning decisions.

  “There was also the…”

  “Hm?” Jasmine placed her glass on the table. “The what?”

  Ethan broke eye contact, and for a moment, their cherished moment was amiss. “There was also when you thought you were pregnant.” His voice was not meek, but it was quiet. “I did a lot of thinking during that time.”

  Jasmine was in no hurry to recommence the eye contact. Why did he have to bring that up? She had been enjoying her evening so far. She didn’t need her boyfriend – fiancé – reminding her that she once didn’t know her own body and got attached to something that didn’t exist. I don’t want to feel like an idiot the night I’m proposed to.

  “My number one thought,” Ethan continued, ignoring Jasmine’s demeanor, “was that I had to make sure you were taken care of. That our baby would be taken care of. Then I had to take into account my image. It’s not a pretty thought, no, and normally I wouldn’t bring it up because I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but having a child out of wedlock might not be the best for my already precarious image. So I thought the best thing to do was… well, marry you.”

  “I see.”

  “I tell you this so you know I really have been thinking about marriage for a long while. But recently, many things came to a head and I had to make a decision. Did I want to marry you? I wasn’t opposed to the idea, I just wasn’t ready, I suppose.”

  “Ethan… stop…”

  “No, listen.” He squeezed her hand. “I made my decision after Adrienne came back into my life. The other night, when I told you that I haven’t loved anyone nearly as much as you? I was telling you the truth. At first I was thrown for a loop when Adrienne showed up. Can you blame me?” Ethan snorted. “I wasn’t sure how I would act around her, but then things continued as normal. I didn’t feel… anything for her. It was the strangest thing. I spent so much time being hung up over her to the point I couldn’t even imagine having another serious relationship. Then she was here, and I realized I had moved on from that part of my life. Now I am in this one. With you.”

  “That’s… sweet, I suppose.” This is getting weird.

  “It was then I decided for sure that I wanted to propose to you. My flower.”

  Their food arrived. Jasmine let go of his hand so she could stare at a plate of Italian cuisine. The sautéed vegetables made her forget everything Ethan just said. “I don’t know what to say. I honestly never thought the day would come so soon, if ever.”

  “Would you really have been satisfied spending the rest of your life with me without getting married?”

  “Well, after a while I may have started to wonder, but before a couple of months ago, it never crossed my mind. Well, not seriously. We’ve only been together a while. You’re busy. I never felt like I didn’t matter enough. But I guess a lot of wrenches got thrown into our lives recently.” She laughed. “Now we have to plan a wedding.”

  Ethan cut his dinner before taking a single bite. “I was thinking next year, at the earliest. Plenty of time to plan and ease into it. We can make the news public after news with my business dies down. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds fine with me.” Jasmine stared at her ring as she ate. She used her utensils with her left hand just to look at it. “I’m cliché, though. I’ve always wanted a June wedding.”

  “Good thing we’re thinking next year, then. I
f we start booking things now, we might be able to actually get them. June is the biggest time of the year for weddings, you know.”

  I know, thanks. “Yup. Late June. Let’s do it.” She lifted her wineglass one more time. “Let’s get married next June.”

  Ethan tapped his wineglass against hers. “It’s a date.”

  They reached across the small table to kiss. I’m taking this rather well. The whole getting engaged thing, anyway.

  What she didn’t know quite yet was that it was merely shock settling in.

  They made it through dinner without incident. Someone played violin in the distance. Dessert was tiramisu and chocolate drizzled in the shape of a heart. After dinner, they walked off the food with a stroll through the dark gardens, hand in hand, Ethan confessing that he only had one short meeting that day before spending the rest of it preparing for this night.

  “I wanted you to have a proposal to remember for the rest of your life.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  Another kiss passed between them. By the time they segued to the limo waiting outside, Ethan was so handsy that Jasmine blushed to have him rub her from behind while his driver opened the door for them.

  She remained in her haze as he kissed her all the way back to the penthouse. She didn’t even think about the ring on her finger until they were inside, Ethan taking off his jacket and announcing he wanted to prepare something in the bedroom and that Jasmine should wait a bit in the living room.

  Jasmine stood in front of the windows, looking out across the city. The first time I saw this view, Ethan was making love to me. The ring twinkled in her reflection. One night, what didn’t seem so long ago, Jasmine went on a trial date with Ethan before agreeing to be his paid mistress for six months. I knew, when I agreed to go home with him, that it was sex he was after. Her first view of this cityscape was when he bent her over and humped her from behind. I liked it. I was nervous, but I liked it. Now here she was, ever so long after, with an engagement ring on her hands – and a fiancé going through such extremes during an extremely busy time in his life.