“I am so in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for a very long time. If you’ve only just fallen in love with me, you have some major catching up to do.” Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled his face to her tear-stained one and gave him the saltiest kiss he’d ever tasted. Snow pelted them in the face.
He held her tight and wondered how long it would take for them to find somewhere warm so they could get nak*d and do this thing right. He’d probably been in love with her for a very long time, too, but he hadn’t realized it until recently. Oh, well. She was just naturally smarter than he was. And she loved him, anyway.
After kissing him with enough enthusiasm to thoroughly convince him of that, she pulled back and gazed at him, her eyes still glittering with tears. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Dev.”
At the look in her eyes, he forgot the cold ice, the heavy snowfall and the curious stares. He forgot about going somewhere warmer. “It sure is.” Then he went back to kissing her. He might not be a genius, but he knew that this would be a moment they’d tell their grandkids about. And you didn’t rush a moment like that.
DIAMOND MINE
Stephanie Bond
To Brenda, of course.
And many thanks to childhood friend
and jewelry guru Brigitte Blevins Waddell
for her expert story advice.
PROLOGUE
Valentine’s Day, 2002
FAITH SHERMAN checked her watch, then sighed and slid her empty wineglass across to the lady bartender at Mister’s restaurant. “Dixie, what would you say about a man who stood you up on Valentine’s Day?”
The attractive middle-aged blonde refilled Faith’s glass and sent it back. “That he had better be embalmed.”
Faith drank to that. The problem was, every time Officer Carter Grayson was late for a date, she was caught between frustration that he didn’t care enough about her to be on time, and panic that he might have gotten his big self shot. She glanced toward the entrance to the restaurant for the millionth time, hating herself for willing him to appear. If Carter had been rushed to the hospital with his lifeblood pooling on the linoleum, it wasn’t as if her name would be in his wallet as an emergency contact—their relationship was too new for that kind of familiarity. Her heart pinched. Too new, in fact, for this…attachment she’d developed for the unpredictable man who could make her laugh the way no man ever had.
“He’s a thirty-seven-year-old cop, has never been married, and still rents an apartment,” her brother Dev had pointed out over lunch yesterday. “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, sis, but this guy doesn’t sound like commitment material.”
“What bubble?” she’d asked carefully. “I have no bubbles.”
“Oh, really? You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
Dev had pointed to her lettuce wedge and tomato soup. “That hungry look. You are on a diet.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too.”
“I am not on a diet,” Faith had insisted. “I’m just…trying to eat more healthfully.”
“Good,” Dev had said with a wink. “Because you certainly don’t need to lose weight, and especially not for a man, and especially not for this man, considering he disappears for days and he’s late every time you go out.”
“His job isn’t exactly nine to five,” she had argued.
“Does he wear a bulletproof vest?”
“What? I…he says it’s too confining.”
“There you go.”
“Did I miss something?”
Dev had set down his fork and taken a long drink of coffee in preparation for his big-brother act. “Faith, if everyone had your big heart, every day would be Valentine’s Day.”
“The point to your flattery?”
“That you’re…susceptible.”
“Susceptible? You mean I’m a pushover.”
“No.” Then Dev had sighed. “Yes. Sis, I’m sure this Carter is a nice guy, but he’s giving you signals.”
“Signals?”
“The ‘don’t fall for me because I’m a player’ signals.”
“And you know this how?”
He’d grinned. “Because I wrote the manual.”
True enough—Dev was the epitome of a happy bachelor.
“Look, sis, over the years I’ve given you good financial advice. All I’m saying now is don’t get too invested in this guy if you’re moving in opposite directions.” Then he’d clasped her hand. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Now Faith chewed on the last olive from the once full bowl on the bar meant for the martini drinkers—lots of heart-healthy mono-unsaturated fats, she rationalized—and mulled over her brother’s well-intended warning.
Dev was right, at least about the financial advice. He had convinced her and her best friend, Jamie, to invest in a handful of start-up technology companies, and then to sell while the market was booming. In fact, last year on Valentine’s Day, she, Dev and Jamie had been lifting a toast to their profits. It was the only decent Valentine’s Day she’d ever spent because she’d caught the glimmer of something romantic pass between her best friend and her brother. Then over a bottle of good wine, the girls had hatched a plan to someday launch an upscale boutique of lingerie, perfume and jewelry geared toward male customers. Even Dev had agreed the concept had merit. They’d been developing the idea further over the past year and Dev had been wonderfully supportive. His encouragement meant that much more because Faith trusted her brother’s business instincts implicitly.
But were his instincts about men—specifically Carter—equally on target? Although she hadn’t admitted it, Dev had managed to nail her feelings to the wall—she was dangerously close to falling in love with Carter Grayson, and that was without any encouragement on his part whatsoever. What if things went as she’d planned tonight and she wound up in his bed? And what if he turned out to be the powerful lover she fully expected him to be? If she was this miserably infatuated with only a few full-body kisses under her pillow, how wretchedly far gone would she be after a night in his arms?
Faith drank from her glass and noticed she’d managed to delay her decision to leave by a full ten minutes. She glanced at all the couples seated at the tables with their heads together above flickering candle votives, sharing forks of food from their plates. Champagne buckets and open ring boxes sat on a few tables, and smiles and touches prevailed. The whole world seemed to pair off on Valentine’s Day.
She caught sight of herself in the bar mirror, with an empty bar stool on either side. And as usual, the cheese stands alone. She tingled with humiliation that she’d gone to the trouble of pinning up her dark hair. And shopping for a new dress the exact shade of her pale blue eyes. And searching for the perfect Valentine’s card. And sliding a condom into her purse. She eyed the foil packet sardonically as she removed her cell phone to see if she’d somehow missed Carter’s call.
No call. She worried her lip with her teeth as she weighed how “susceptible” she would appear if she called him.
“Don’t do it.”
She looked up into Dixie’s knowing eyes.
“But he could be hurt,” Faith murmured. “Or dead even.” God, was that her voice sounding so pitiful?
The woman gave a disbelieving shrug and turned to serve another customer.
Faith squeezed her eyes shut. Dixie was right, of course. And so was Dev. She was being stupidly stubborn, holding on to the absurd fantasy of a magical Valentine’s Day that would never be. She slipped the phone back into her purse and wondered briefly about the condom’s shelf life.
And to think the day had started out so promising. She always dreaded the busiest jewelry retail day of the year, but this morning she’d been fueled by the anticipation of seeing Carter. He had to feel something for her—a man didn’t ask just anyone to meet him on Valentine’s Day evening, right? With Carter on her mind today, she’d lost count of how many engagement rings she’d sold. Zerrick’s Jewelry had been jammed with men wearing anxious expressions as they peered into the glass cases. How big is that one? How much does it cost? Do you have a financing plan? Do you have a—gulp—return policy?
Over the course of the ten-hour day, she had tried on every engagement ring in stock and held it up to the light, moving her hand this way and that so they could imagine how it would look on their girlfriend’s finger.
“Her hand isn’t quite as big as yours,” they would invariably say.
“Then the stone will look even larger,” was her standard cheerful reply as she curled her fingers under.
She took another sip of wine and studied her left hand. Long and broad, as the rest of her, she acknowledged wryly. And completely devoid of rings. It was a running joke among her friends and family—Faith the gemologist, who was surrounded by cases of engagement rings day in and day out, didn’t have a diamond ring of her own. Sure, she could buy herself any ring she wanted, but the only ring she wanted was the one that her husband-to-be would someday slip onto her finger. Was that romantic notion so far-flung?