The Proposal - Kitty Thomas Page 0,16

travel to when men gave a shit, when they didn't feel so goddamned entitled to fuck by the third date. I realize even as I'm thinking it that I'm being ridiculous. We have this lovely thing called legal and political rights now. I'm pretty sure veterinary assistant wouldn't have been on the menu of career options a few hundred years ago. And I probably would have just been married off to whoever it was decided that I should marry, my desires be damned. Still, I stupidly hold onto this romantic notion that there's this great love out there for me, that there is a man who will love and respect me and give me the world, that I can be deliriously happy, have babies, have the fairy tale.

The Disney princess brainwashing runs deep. Those movies get inside us too young. They take root like the vines that grew and twisted around Sleeping Beauty's castle, and we just keep believing that there's a man out there who will fight that dragon and slash through that thorn wall to get to us.

While I've been giving up on men, Soren has tried to call every day. I let the calls go to voice mail, but I foolishly listen to them after the fact. It's apology after apology. He's said all the right things. He's admitted he was horny and stupid and that he would never hurt me. He swears I'm safe with him, that he cares about me and wants to continue seeing me.

I want to believe everything he says, but I know he's dangerous. He's not the good guy. He's not the romance hero who gives me my happily-ever-after. I know he's not. But he's so fucking beautiful, and my body lights up every time he's near me. He smells like cigar smoke and whiskey, and I want to take a bath in that smell. I want to rest for the remainder of my life in the circle of his strong arms, but I know if I agree to see him again he'll be good for a few weeks and then he'll pull something like what happened on the plane again.

I was trapped like an animal high in the air in that aluminum cage. He knew I had nowhere to go and he had all the power. Before that moment I'd been a little turned on by the edge of power and darkness I sensed in him. It wafted off him and enveloped me in its seductive warmth. It had seemed like just a little thrill. Harmless. He'd been the key figure in my twisted sexual fantasies for the month since I'd met him.

And I'm ashamed to admit it, but after that night on the jet, he's been even more prominent in my erotic mental movies. Every night I've gotten off even harder to thoughts of what could have happened, of what he could have done. And this is why I can't possibly see him again. Those feelings are too confusing. And I don't want to be that weak girl who lets a man like that in.

Still, he's called. He's sent flowers, chocolates. Today I received a handwritten letter in the mail from him asking yet again for another chance. It's engraved stationery on cream-colored cotton paper. I know he won't keep this up. There are a few days at the most before he'll stop this pursuit and I will have lost him forever. If I can just be strong for a few more days I can put this and him behind me.

It was only a month. Nothing serious. Soren is not the one.

“I'd ask if I could buy you an ice cream to cheer you up, but that method obviously isn't working.”

I look up, wiping the tears off my cheeks to find a very handsome man standing in front of me—as good looking as Soren, in fact. He is an angel to Soren's demon. His looks are light to Soren's dark.

He has a golden tan, sun-streaked blond hair, and some of the bluest eyes I've ever seen—besides my own. And a toothpaste commercial smile with a dimple. A freaking dimple.

He's got that casual Saturday in-the-park preppy look about him like he's just out for a stroll in between a round of golf and walking some pretentious special-edition dog breed. Settle down, Livia. He's probably got a girlfriend who walks their pretentious special-edition dog.

I've been sitting on a park bench, reading and re-reading the letter Soren actually put a stamp on and