“Either you’re straightening up or didn’t want to climb the stairs alone,” his smooth voice says from behind me.

The room is closing in on me—his scent is everywhere, his voice is at a distance, his body is so near, but my mind is in freefall. I feel like Alice tumbling through the glass.

“What is this?” I say twisting around. Wondering if it’s for me, but knowing it can’t possibly be. We haven’t even said those three little words to each other yet.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t look at the box, but his eyes convey a sadness that tell its own story. Something cold rushes through my veins as silence fills the room and I start to lose my mind. “Jagger, what is this?”

When he still doesn’t answer, tears blur my eyes. I set the elegant box back down where I found it and without closing the drawer, I stand up and head toward the stairs. Passing him, I leave the room in a daze.

He catches up with me, fast as lightning. He grabs my elbow and turns me around before my foot even hits the hardwood beneath it. “Aerie, let me explain,” he swallows.

I blink at the wistfulness in his eyes and, with my throat having closed up, all I can do is nod. With his hand on my back, my heart beats at an uncontrollable speed, but this time it’s not out of want, it’s out of fear. Fear that the ring is a threat to our relationship. Once we cross the threshold to his room he closes the door. My eyes flicker to the drawer, but it’s no longer open.

He lowers his head to mine. “That box has nothing to do with us.”

“Then tell me why you have an engagement ring in your bottom drawer.”

Pain flashes across his face and he sits down with his hands cradled around his head. When I sit next to him, keeping some distance between us, his eyes snap to mine. “I told you I had a girlfriend when I lived in New York City,” he says.

“Yes, you did. But having a girlfriend is completely different from having a fiancé.”

“She wasn’t my fiancé.”

I knew he had broken up with a girl just before he met River, but he didn’t tell me they were that serious. I feel the red creeping up my neck and spreading across my face as anger courses through me. “But you wanted her to be?”

“Marriage seemed like the next logical step, so I bought the ring. But I never asked her to marry me.”

I close my eyes, trying to suppress that flare of jealousy I know will be ablaze by the time this conversation ends. “Why did the two of you break up if you had plans to ask her to be your wife?”

He clears his throat and tries to take my hand, but I pull it away. “She cheated on me and I broke up with her. I left for Paris shortly after that.”

“So you moved here because of her?”

“Only partly. I moved here for a lot of reasons—life was out of control for me, I felt like I was rushing everywhere, but, yes, she was part of the reason.”

I say nothing as I feel the red spreading up my neck.

“Alice, please don’t be mad over nothing. Because it is nothing.”

Those same tears from earlier prickle my eyes, so I quickly stand up and swipe them away before they can fall.

He bolts up and follows me. Standing near, but not nearly close enough, I can feel his eyes penetrating mine. He tilts my chin to meet his gaze. “Hey, did you hear me? That—” he kicks the drawer “—has nothing to do with us. Nothing.”

I cup his cheeks and look into his eyes. “I know it doesn’t. But why are you holding on to it? Why is it tucked away in your drawer?” And here it is—the flaw I knew he had to have—the imperfection I’ve been waiting to surface.

He twirls his finger around a strand of my hair and something like a magnetic force pulls me to him. “Aerie, I’m not holding onto it for any reason and it’s nothing like you’re thinking. I left New York City in a rush. Then I was staying with my mother before I headed out here. It had become baggage that I had no idea what to do with until now. That’s all it is.”

I’m pretty sure a look of skepticism crosses my face, but I try to crush it. “It must mean something to you—she must mean something to you.”

He steps back and opens the closed drawer, takes the ring out of the box and dashes out of the room. I chase him, trying to keep up. He swings open the door that leads to the lower pool deck and strides across to the railing that overlooks the canyon. The sky is cloudy, but the sun peaks out and casts shadows over his face, masking his expression. He winds his arm like a pitcher and throws the diamond into the dark night yelling, “This is how much she means to me!”

“Stop, are you crazy?” I yell, but by the time I reach him, it’s too late.

“Yes, crazy for you,” he says, pulling me toward him.

And for the second time today I know that I love him. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say in a shaky voice.

“Yes, I did.” He kisses my forehead. “Now can we go make dinner?” He extends his hand and I take it. We head upstairs to the kitchen, opting to eat inside and I make a conscious effort to put the ring out of my mind. But the nagging question of why he was still holding onto it still presses me.

Once we clean up, he rubs his hands together. “Are you ready to watch one of the greatest movies ever made?”

I laugh. “Believe it or not I much prefer romantic comedies to action packed chasers.”

He raises a brow. “Name five romantic comedies that you can’t live without.”

“That’s easy—Along Came Polly, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Because I Said So, Knocked Up, and Jerry Maguire.”

“Well, I’ve seen one: Jerry Maguire.”

“Oh, I can’t wait for you to experience the others.”

He grins at me and pulls me to his chest as he aims the remote toward the TV and hits play. The studio logo fills the screen as we begin our escape into the world of fast cars. Just as the Eclipse tops out and it spins out of control, Jagger bolts up and pauses the movie. I sit up quickly too.

“Did you see that? You know a car never spins out at top speed,” he says.

I blink my eyes and smile. “No, I had no idea.”

“It either reaches a drag limit or hits the engine’s fuel cut off, but never spins out.”

“Why do I think you have an arsenal of mistakes that have been made in films that you could share?”

The front door flies open and Dahlia goes running across the room toward her bedroom.

“Hey, man, everything okay?” Jagger asks River, whose following close behind.

“I think Dahlia ate too many hot dogs at the game,” he calls from the hall.

Jagger looks at me.

I snort and shrug. “She has a tendency to overindulge.”

He hovers over me and softly kisses my lips.

“Do you like going to the games?”

“Me? No. I don’t really like spor—”

He puts his finger to my lips, “Don’t say that. Let me take you to a game and then let’s see what you think. I bet you’ll like it before it’s over.”

My lips curve into a smile. “Okay, sure, why not. But good luck getting me to change my mind.”

He pulls me to my feet. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

Chapter 7

Burn

When I think of Silicon Valley, Apple and Microsoft come to mind, or Google and Facebook. Not cattle, olive trees, and grapevines, which is what I’m staring at now.

The day started with a plan to apartment hunt for Jagger. He has decided he’s staying in California, even if he doesn’t get the movie part, so finding his own place is the next logical step—or that’s what I think. For him, this is a means toward no longer invading River and Dahlia’s space. But I know Dahlia doesn’t care—she’s told me she likes having him there. I’d like to think he’s staying partly because of me, but I can’t help but think that it’s because he’s running away from his ex. There seems to be a distance between us since I found the ring. I’m not exactly sure why, but I can’t shake the thought that I’m a rebound.

Last night was the first time since we started dating that we slept together, but didn’t have sex. This morning when we woke up, we lay in bed and talked for a long while. He talked about his parents and I realized that even though I thought the unconventional way in which he was raised didn’t bother him, I might have been wrong. A resentment toward his mother bled through his words, and he quickly changed the subject to my grandmother. Jagger still hadn’t seen her movies and for some reason he wanted to watch them tonight. As we continued to talk, I let yesterday’s events fade away from my thoughts.

Eventually, we rolled out of bed to start our day. Once I was ready, I went upstairs to check on Dahlia, but all was quiet. I left her a note to call me later and told her I hoped she was feeling better. Jagger and I stopped for breakfast, and while Jagger was circling a few apartments to check out in the paper, an ad for a winery caught my eye.

Noticing, he asked, “Have you ever been?”

I shook my head.

And just like that, the apartment hunt was postponed.

***

“Did you know the term Silicon Valley was coined by a business man in the early nineteen seventies but it wasn’t until the eighties that the term became widely used?”

I purse my lips and shake my head. I love how he is full of random information. “Please tell me how you know all this stuff—were you a child prodigy?”

His mouth twists. “Nah, when I was younger I had a slight stutter and my therapist recommended reading out loud. So my dad bought this giant set of encyclopedias, and every night I’d randomly flip one open and read out loud to him the two pages it fell open to. I just remember what I read.”

“What else do you know about this part of California?”

He shrugs. “I know the computer companies wiped out the area’s natural vegetation when they invaded it, but have slowly replaced it with new orchards. I know the word silicon comes from the fact that silicon is used in the parts needed to manufacture computers. I know valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley. And that’s about all. But I think I picked all that information up from watching the movie about Bill Gates.” He smirks.

Buzzards circle low overhead as we drive through this majestic part of California. Grapevines meander in the breeze, arcs of water shoot from sprinklers onto fields of crops, and old towns with beautiful churches rush by.

“Are you feeling hungry? Should we stop?” He points to a sign that reads, “Olives and Grapes This Way.”

“Only if you don’t make me try any artichoke bread,” I joke, knocking his knee.

His eyes dart to my hand and he grabs it fast as sin. He brings it to his lips and kisses the back of it. “Fortunately for you, I found it to be just as disgusting as you did, so I can promise you we won’t be tasting that again. Now, olive pâté, that’s fair game.”

I wrinkle my nose and he settles my hand on his thigh—I like it there.

“I saw that,” he says with a grin, as he turns the car to the right and slows down.

“I may stick with the wine half of the sign,” I say in a raspy voice.

The deserted winding canyon road seems to go on for miles before he suddenly pulls the car off to the side.

“Everything okay?” I ask, somewhat alarmed.

With the car in park, he leans over the console and presses his hard body against mine. His soft lips kiss along the tender skin of my neck and once they find my lips, our tongues entwine in the most erotic dance. Breathless, he sits back in his seat. “Everything is fine. I just realized I hadn’t kissed you in a while.”

I touch my fingers to my burning lips as the ache that erupted in my body moments ago centralizes in one place. I look around at the vast nothingness that surrounds us and wonder if it’s really possible to have sex in a car. But he’s back on the road before I can suggest the possibility.