SIX
Bart was successful in getting Maisie to date him.
On Monday, he changed his flower supplier to the Buttonhole Bouquet where Maisie worked. He showed up in the middle of the day and personally went over the flower orders he normally put in through his assistant. Maisie was confused and delighted that he came in personally. Surely, he had better things to do. He assured her that he did not and that the time out of the office was just what he needed to keep himself fresh for his late afternoon meetings.
The next week, he took her out to dinner. She wore her dress that cinched so pleasantly at the waist and flared at the hip. She wanted to be admired so he was careful to keep his gaze adoring and not heated as he let his eyes linger on her slimmer parts and then on her rounder parts. It was easier than he expected. He even allowed his hand to linger at her waist a time or two. He did expect to get his hands slapped, but apparently, in the black dress, he was allowed to escort her like the glory of the dress had something to do with him.
It was officially fall and, once at the table, he spoke to her again about taking her to the mountains to ski.
“My whole family goes,” he explained. He told her about Nina and her family. Then he told her about his brother, Morris, his parents, and some of the cousins who would sometimes come. “We have a cabin we share on the side of the mountain.”
“How many rooms?” she asked cagily.
“You’re worried that my family will be snoopy about whether or not we’ll sleep in the same bed?”
“Yes.”
“There are enough rooms that you will be able to sleep on your own without anyone even noticing. I just want to take you skiing. I don’t even know if any of my relatives will be there, but if you’re okay with it, I’d like to ask my sister and her kids to join us. They really brighten up the bunny hill.”
Maisie put her head in her hands. “I’m going to be outclassed by children?”
He chuckled. “We’re all outclassed by the kids. They’re just better at learning because they’re babies, but they’re really nice kids and I think it would make for a memorable weekend.”
“You like kids?” she asked skeptically.
“I like these kids.”
She took a sip of her water. “Well, that’s more than a lot of men can say.”
***
Bart finally got his way and Maisie sat in the breakfast nook of his family’s cabin in the frosty mountains. Her honey-colored hair spilled down her back in graceful curls. It wasn’t breakfast. It was early afternoon, but he had just finished making their lunch and he set it down in front of her.
“I’m still surprised you didn’t want to stop somewhere to eat,” she said, admiring his spread.
“I want to cook for you,” he said simply. “It’s so strange. You keep refusing to come to my house, but you’ll come here with me.”
“You can cook at my house if you want. No one is stopping you from buying groceries and coming over, or just pulling whatever you want out of the fridge and making it work. You can do either of those things at any time.”
“Can I?”
“Of course you can,” she said, with a smile that almost undid him.
Bart couldn’t take his eyes off her.
They had been dating for more than two months. His favorite way to pass the time was to kiss her for as long as she would let him, but she had clear limits and he never dared to ask for anything beyond them. She had already dumped one fiance, surely she would have no problem dumping him if he tried to take things too far without understanding why she had her rules.
In the time they had been dating, he had been grappling with the idea that if he really wanted to be with her, he had to ask her to marry him. Having fallen for her, he had already bought the ring.
It was white gold with a marquis diamond stone in the center. He had chosen it carefully because it had absolutely nothing in common with the ring she had worn for her last fiance. That ring had been rose gold with princess-cut diamonds glittering in a line.
The ring Bart bought for Maisie was such a striking piece that no one would ever miss seeing it on her finger. It absolutely screamed, “My husband loves me the most!”
Of course, he hadn’t given it to her. He didn’t know when he should give it to her. Timing was crucial if he wanted to hurry her, but if he gave it to her at the wrong time, it would ruin everything.
Instead, he placed a fruit plate between their sandwiches and pointed out landmarks in the view. “And there’s the old mill, and behind that is Mount Washington.”
“And that’s my old house!” she suddenly cried with glee.
He turned in the direction she pointed, but he didn’t see what she was looking at.
“I’m from here. I’ve seen Mount Washington before,” she said softly.
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He chuckled at himself and turned back to face her. “The view is better this way anyway.”
“Have you ever been engaged?” she suddenly asked him. “Or married? I’ve never asked you those things before.”
“No,” he replied easily, stretching out his neck to the side, so his Adam’s apple bobbed a little as he spoke. That angle did wonders for his jawline. He hoped she appreciated it.
“Neither?” she persisted.
“Neither,” he answered flatly.
“What about your longest-lasting girlfriend?”
“Well, she was excellent,” he said, drawing his words out.
“Tell me more,” Maisie urged, getting more excited.
He was about to build up a flowery description of Maisie but stopped short. He was about to say that when he first saw her in the limo, she looked so delicate that he felt an immediate urge to take care of her. Like she was a goblet of purest crystal left on the edge of the table. She had to be caught and removed from her precarious position. When he saw her standing in her garden, he never wanted to leave. Even at that moment, when she sat across from him in the breakfast nook, all his thoughts were geared toward finding new ways to make her happy.
They were all things no woman wanted to hear in the context of his last lover.
He exhaled his held breath with a puff. “I’m sorry. I wanted to pull your leg, but uh… I can’t. You are my longest-lasting girlfriend.”
Her eyes widened. “We haven’t been dating that long. Do you mind telling me why you haven’t dated anyone longer? I’ve only been in long-term relationships.”
“Oh. I broke up with them. We weren’t a good match and I broke it off before anyone got hurt. I mean, there was lots of annoyance, but no one got their heart broken.”
“I see.”
“Do I look like the man who could break your heart?” he asked with a cheesy grin.
She scoffed under her breath. “I have had quite a few long-term relationships break my heart. That’s part of the reason I’ve been so bored. So, if I got really involved with you, let you completely into my life, let you butter my toast and you cruelly dump me… I’d get over it. I’m already over the guy I dumped three weeks before I started dating you.”
“Wanna tell me any more about that?”
“Soon. I… um… want to wait a bit,” she admitted hesitantly.
“Why?”
She tilted her head like she was checking off a box with her forehead. “I’m still not finished using you. I have a really large shelving unit coming next week and if you don’t come over with your power drill and help me assemble it, I think that will break my heart. I want a library.”
He laughed out loud. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I want to take you skiing and you want me to assemble some beast of a shelving unit?”
“Guess how many walls it covers?” she asked, thrumming three fingers against her upper arm.
He nearly died on the spot, she was so adorable.
“That sounds fair,” he agreed because he would have agreed to anything she wanted. “You give me three days in the mountains and I give you a personal library that covers three walls? I’m on board.”
She smiled as if she had beaten him at an invisible game he didn’t know he was playing.
At that very moment, Nina and her family came through the door like an avalanche.
Bart had asked his sister to come with her kids. Her husband had to work, but Peyton and Jaime were free, so they came to enjoy the weekend skiing with their uncle and his new girlfriend.
***
None of it was as awkward as Bart feared. Not that he had many fears, but he had plans to show Maisie how wholesome he was. Peyton and Jaime chirped in at the right times saying the right things that made him sound like his relationship with them hadn’t been posturing in order to win her approval.
She favored him with multiple approving glances.
For Bart, Nina was the real wild card. If she decided that Maisie was in some way not good enough for Bart or their family, the teasing would be merciless. Bart had seen it before, and if it reared its ugly head, he had retaliation plans of his own, but everything seemed to be going smoothly.
They went skiing in the afternoon. They skied on the bunny hill until the kids convinced Maisie there were a few larger hills that weren’t that much harder than the bunny hill. They swore to her that skiing on a longer run would help her understand what was so nice about skiing.
“And if you fall and someone is watching out for you… that’s when you know your family really loves you,” Jaime said with a childlike grin.
Maisie hesitated for a second and Bart wasn’t sure, but he thought he noticed her lower lip trembling. Had what Jaime said moved her particularly?
She agreed to try the larger hill and went up the chairlift with Jaime showing her what she needed to do. Bart rode in the chairlift behind them with Nina and Peyton and watched her like a hawk. Was she really okay?
After the skiing, Bart made dinner at the cabin. He seared steak, and Maisie helped him put the meal together. If something like this was another part of married life, a married life Bart could see himself living… Bart felt the ring burning a hole through his pocket. It wasn’t in his pocket, but the burning was as real as if it had been.
After dinner, Nina sidled up beside Bart. “I like her,” she said as she pretended to wash a dish that was already clean so she had an excuse to stand beside him at the sink.
“Your approval is impossible, so that’s unexpected,” Bart said crisply.
“You didn’t think I would approve?”
“Whatever you thought long-term, I didn’t think you’d offer up your approval on the first day,” he hedged.
“No. Really. I like her. She hasn’t been brownnosing the kids or me. She doesn’t laugh at stupid stuff to give us the impression that we’re all having a really good time when we are actually having a decent time. She doesn’t eye you up like you’re her favorite snack, which I always find so distasteful in a woman who is dating my younger brother. In short, she’s fabulous. Don’t let Morris see her before you’ve put a ring on it.”
His eyes widened. “How did you know I was thinking of that? Not about Morris, but the ring?”
“I dated my husband for three weeks before we got engaged. Mom and Dad dated for two weeks. Grandma and Granddad dated for seven days straight and then signed the papers. I figured you were a three-week man and that’s why you ended all your relationships after two weeks. But it’s been quite a bit longer than two weeks.”
“So I’m not bananas for already wanting to marry her?”
“Oh, no. You’re a freak. It’s just that the rest of us are too. It’s a family thing. Everyone in the world thinks we’re crazy, but if she lasted more than three weeks, then… you want to marry her. You’re one of us.”
Bart sighed in resignation.
“How long have you been dating her?” Nina asked, begging for details.
“Three months.”
“Better start warming her up to the idea.”
“How did you warm up Stewart?”
“I didn’t. I told him that if he ever wanted to see me again, he had to show up with an engagement ring or to forget about coming over.”
“How long–”
She interrupted him. “Two hours. That’s how long it took to drive to the jeweler, pick a ring, pay for it, and drive to my house. He may have also had a shower.”
Bart sighed again. “Let’s hope Maisie’s like Stewart and she can tolerate us.”