Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,158
“Get a room.”
“We just said hi!” Elise protested, but she knew what Wendy meant. Jay’s intense look had not dimmed. It promised possession and protection and tenderness, and, amazingly, the doses of those things he delivered seemed to grow with each passing day.
“Let’s see this magical rug,” Gia said, “and you two can get on with it.”
“We’re going for dinner,” Elise said to the girls as they followed Jay into his office. They’d booked tonight as a girls’ night, and they were sticking to it. She would admit to being a little torn, though. Now that she was in close proximity to Jay, it was hard not to want him to throw her over his shoulder and cart her off to have his way with her. But she wouldn’t admit to that publicly. Besides, Mr. Intense Look would wait up for her.
They filed into Jay’s office. The old rug—the ripped one—was still there.
“I thought you returned it.”
“Well, yeah, I didn’t actually.”
Huh? He’d just told her, via text not thirty minutes ago, that he had returned it.
Jay moved over to the rug, which wasn’t in its usual place under the coffee table, anchoring the casual seating area in his office. It had been sort of awkwardly placed next to that area.
“Well, you can’t leave it there. It looks terrible there.”
“I got a new one. It’s underneath it.”
What? That was so strange. “You can’t leave the new one there, either. You can’t put any rug in that spot. It’s squished in and not anchored with anything and looks totally random. Whichever rug you’re using needs to go back under the seating area.”
Gia coughed, and Jane made a point of clapping her on the back.
“Yeah, they’re just out here temporarily to show you,” Jay said, crouching down and snagging a corner of the old rug.
“You are so weird.”
He shot her a grin, knelt, and started rolling the rug back.
“That color doesn’t work in here.” It was a dark red. Not a bad color inherently, just not for this office. “And I’m not sure a straight-up solid is what you want in here. A print would—”
Gia’s coughing fit seemed to take a turn for the worse. A little alarmed, Elise turned and walked over to her, but Gia just shook her head and made an urgent pointing gesture back toward Jay and the stupid rugs.
She turned back. Okay, the rug did have some pattern in it. A white loopy—
She gasped. He wasn’t kneeling in order to roll the rug back. He was on one knee gazing at her with undisguised love. And those loopy things were letters. The rug had words woven into it.
Will you marry me?
Jay had been pretty confident she would say yes. He’d put his odds at maybe 90 percent. They were moving fast, objectively speaking, but from the inside, it felt like they were moving at just the right speed.
But in that moment, with her standing there, postgasp, utterly silent as she stared at the rug, fear started to sink its claws into his gut. Maybe it was too soon. Or the rug thing, which had seemed like a cute inside joke when he thought it up, was actually really dumb and not even remotely worthy of her. He should have hired a freaking skywriter. He should have—
“Yes. Of course.” She looked down at him with watery eyes. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
All his fears flitted away as she pulled him back to standing and threw herself into his arms. He could feel her shaking, so he held her tighter. Buried his face in her hair and marveled that she’d said yes. She was his. He was never going to let go.
He’d meant that last sentiment metaphorically, but when she eventually pulled back against him, he had a hard time lowering his arms and letting her step out of his embrace.
He was glad he had, though, because the look she gave him, so full of love and heat and promise, was not a sight he would have liked to miss.
He cleared his throat. “I didn’t get you a ring. I figured you’d have opinions.”
“Smart man,” Wendy deadpanned.
The interjection reminded him—and her, judging from the way her eyebrows shot up—that they had an audience.
She turned, and her friends rushed her. He stood back and grinned at the group hug that transformed into a group squeal.
When it broke up, Elise kept one arm slung around Gia’s waist. “This is why you’re in town!”