Page 5 of Born for Starlight

I set it down and drifted three feet to the left, where a case of cocktail rings sat glittering under warm little spotlights.

One had a citrine the size of a strawberry, ringed with dozens of smaller sapphires. I tapped the glass.

“This one says ‘I married into a Texas oil fortune and I want everyone at the PTA meeting to know it.’“

“Angelica.” I didn’t know his voice had a register that low.

“I’m just saying, if Zoe ever runs for local office, this is the ring that gets her elected.”

Adam finally looked up. He gave me ‘The Look’. My brothers all had some version of it, I’d learned all about that flat, patient stare that said I will wait you out better than words ever could. On Adam it came with one raised eyebrow and absolutely zero patience underneath the patience.

“Behave,” he said.

“I am behaving. I haven’t touched anything.”

“You did, too. Priscilla should never have let you get close to the inventory.”

“I put it back,” I defended myself.

“You’re about to touch something else.”

He was not wrong. I pulled my hand back at my side and gave him my most innocent smile, the one that had gotten me out of exactly nothing since I was six years old, going by my brothers’ track record of falling for it.

Priscilla was a silver-haired woman who had a quiet confidence that told me she’d been doing this longer than I’d been alive. She’d drifted a discreet few feet away to let us look.

Smart woman.

Within two minutes of us entering the store, she’d figured out Adam was the customer and I was the comic relief he’d brought along for moral support.

I reached for the cast reflexively, some old habit of touching a sore spot before I remembered it wasn’t the wrist that hurt anymore, not really. It was more of a phantom ache these days, more memory than injury. I winced anyway, out of habit.

Adam’s whole body turned toward me. “Your wrist?”

“No.”

“You just winced.”

“That wasn’t my wrist. That was the pain of watching my creative genius go completely unappreciated in this establishment.”

He rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised they didn’t get stuck. “Get serious.”

“I am serious. I have vision, Adam. You’re wasting it.”

“I brought you here to shop for Zoe’s engagement ring, not for jewelry for the Met Gala.”

“Then why did you bring me at all?” I crossed my arms, careful of the cast. “You have perfectly good taste. You’ve known Zoe for months. You know what she likes better than I do at this point, and you’ve probably memorized her ring size off some receipt she doesn’t know you kept.”

Something flickered across his face, there and gone, the kind of thing I’d learned to read fast in my family. Nerves.

Ooops. I was an ass. I totally needed to approach this differently.

“You know, being nervous about something like this is a good thing.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It doesn’t feel good.”

“It’s supposed to feel like this. You’re about to ask the woman of your dreams to start on a journey with you that will last for the rest of your lives. If that didn’t scare you a little, I’d be worried about you.” I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Nervous means it matters.”

He huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Maybe I should just have her pick her own ring. Bring her in here, let her point at whatever she wants.”