The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(63)

Honor was looking at him. Right. Because he was staring at her.

“Well,” he said now. “I’m getting good at acting. As are you.”

Something shut down in her eyes. “Yes. You are.” She sat on the couch and slipped off her completely unimaginative shoes.

“By the way,” he said. “I got you this today.” He picked up the small velvet box and handed it to her.

It had taken a surprisingly long time to pick out a ring. He’d figured he’d go into the first store he saw, ask for a ring in his price range and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, he’d be done. Instead, he’d looked at every damn ring in the store before settling on this one.

Honor opened the box. “Oh,” she breathed.

“Like it? If not, I’ll return it, and you can pick out something more to your taste.” Tom realized belatedly that he was holding his breath.

“No, no. This is...it’s beautiful.”

“It’s an antique.”

“Yes.” She raised her eyes, and Tom glanced away from the soft, sweet emotion there and looked out the window instead. “Thank you,” she said softly. “It wasn’t necessary.”

“Of course it was. If we’re madly in love and getting married, you should have a ring.” He finished his whiskey and stood up. “Glad you like it. I’ve got to correct papers. And I should call Charlie and listen to him breathe at me.”

“Okay. Thank you again. For...you know. For everything.”

Bollocks. You’d best be careful, mate, his conscience warned him. Wouldn’t want to hurt a nice girl like her. But she wasn’t a girl. She knew what they were about. At least, she should.

With that, he went upstairs, leaving her sitting on the couch, looking at her ring.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“IT’S NOT MY stuff that’s cluttering up the house. It’s his.” Goggy folded her arms and glared.

Grandparenticide. It held more and more appeal these days. Honor sighed. Theoretically, she had better things to do on a Saturday morning than try to declutter her grandparents’ house. She could get another Pap smear, for example. It would be more fun than this. “Goggy, the two of you are this close to being hoarders.”

“Oh, we are not. You kids. I have laundry to fold.”

“I’ll fold it! Goggy, you can’t be going up and down the stairs so much. They’re a death trap.”

“How else will I get my exercise? Jeremy told me I should exercise. So I exercise.” She gave Honor a triumphant look.

“Speaking of that, there’s a gorgeous pool at Rushing Creek.”

“Where people drown,” Goggy said.

“No one has ever drowned there.”

“It’s just a matter of time.” Goggy turned her back and clumped up the narrow, dark, terrifying stairs of the Old House, one hand on the railing, one hand on the wall.

Faith had tried to help the cause last weekend, managing to sneak one of Goggy’s more hideous cardigans out of the house, which, considering that Goggy could give Pharaoh a run for his money in the stubborn department, was pretty good. Prudence had been less successful; she’d pointed out that they really didn’t need four rusty flour sifters, which had led to Goggy calling Williams-Sonoma, ordering two more and still refusing to part with the other four.

Maybe her grandfather would be more agreeable. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, ignoring both females in favor of doing the crossword puzzle. “Okay, Pops, let’s take a look and see what we can get rid of, okay?” She tugged on a kitchen drawer, which was stuffed full of crap. Pointless crap, she thought, groping around inside to clear the logjam. Took care not to catch her ring.

And what a ring it was.

Funny, how she thought she loved the stark simplicity of Dana’s ring, that unadorned diamond flashing for all to see. The ring Tom had chosen was an Art Deco style (original, she thought). A square diamond surrounded by two triangular diamonds, encased in engraved platinum...ornate and unusual and utterly, hypnotically beautiful.

The drawer jerked open with a clatter. “Good God.”

“I need those,” Pops said, not looking up from the paper.

“Pops. Come on. How many corkscrews do you need?”

“I’m a winemaker! I need a lot!”

“There are...what...two dozen corkscrews in here? Come on.” She paused for a second, counting. “You don’t need twenty-seven corkscrews.”

“I know how many there are.” The old man scowled at her.

“And you really need every single one?”

“Yes.”

She squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Pops, wouldn’t it be nice to live in a clean, sunny, organized place where you had more than one outlet per floor? Where you could use all the doors because you didn’t have to nail one shut to cut down on drafts? Where you didn’t have to worry about falling down the stairs and breaking your neck?”

“Your grandmother’s the one who runs up and down those stairs fifty times a day. I never go up there.”

“What if Goggy fell and broke her hip? How’d you feel then? Oh, stop. You’d be devastated.” Surreptitiously, she slipped a corkscrew out of the drawer. If she couldn’t get Pops to agree to purge, she’d just steal all his crap and bring it to Goodwill. Not that there was a booming market for used corkscrews. “Seriously, Pops. You can’t be up on the ladder cleaning out gutters anymore. It’s not safe, and it’s not smart.”