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“Oh? Is there no one else around yet?”

She gave me a look.

“Obviously not, duh. You’ve got eyes. Why don’t you use them?”She checked her phone and grimaced. “How come nobody is answering my texts? I thought this was supposed to be some kind of big, important meeting. So, where the hell is everyone? I would have thought Ramone would at least be here.”

She checked her phone again and grimaced again. I wondered how much longer I could make her twist and squirm before my guilt got the better of me.

“I mean, have you heard from anyone else? Did they all go to the wrong restaurant or what? I’m so confused.”

“I have, in fact, heard from everyone.”

She blinked in confusion.

“You have? Then why the hell didn’t you lead with that?” She heaved a long sigh. “I’ve been sitting here worried sick for over half an hour. I’ve been nibbling on melba toast so much that I think I’m going to turnintoa piece of melba toast.”

She gave me a suspicious look as she ceased her rant.

“Hey, wait a second. You’re smiling. You never smile like that unless you’re up to something. What is this, some kind of prank? Am I being punked? Where’s the camera?”

“You’re not being punked, I assure you.”

“Well, that’s good to know. If you talked to everyone, then tell me why they aren’t here yet.”

“They aren’t here yet because there was never really a meeting. I just needed a false pretense to get you up here.”

Amanda’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“So, this is some kind of practical joke. What’s going to happen? Are snakes going to pop out at me or something?”

“Amanda, I just wanted to tell you something. You’ve helped me to see things in a different light. A lot of things.”

Her eyes widened, and her mouth closed on a retort. I had her now.

“I’ve learned that acting humane is the only way to treat people. I’m no longer going to think of people as just pieces on a chessboard. You’ve shown me the error of my ways. That’s one of the reasons why I know that you’re the one.”

“I’m the one what?”

Her mouth gaped open as I went down to one knee and produced a velvet box.

“Amanda Tate, will you marry me?”

On cue, the skyscrapers in the city went dark. The windows lit up in a pattern that flashed ‘please say yes’ over and over again.

She stared at the spectacle; eyes wide as dinner plates. Then she turned to me and threw her arms around my neck and started crying.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she gasped. “A thousand times, yes. I’ll be your wife. For real this time.”

I crushed her into my embrace, and I never wanted to let her go.

Chapter 23

Amanda

So, that’s the story of how my fake marriage led to a very real love affair, which, in turn, led to a real marriage.

Although I supposed it was more complicated than all of that. It was more of a case of very real desire turned into physical carnality and surprising intimacy, turned into the fakest of sham marriages, turned into real love, turned into eternal matrimony. Or something like that.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Once Evan proposed to me, he and I went through a ton of discussions about what we wanted out of things this time around. Not just what we expected of each other, but what we wanted out of the ceremony, specifically.