Gabriel spluttered. “But- but, you’re telling me this now?!"
“Maybe we should go inside,” Zeb whispered.
Andrea shook her head, her eyes fixed on us. “It’s like a car wreck, I can’t look away.”
“Well, what if I’m not ready?” Gabriel countered.
It was my turn to splutter indignantly, “What!”
“Maybe I’d like to sow my wild oats for the next decade or so, stretch out my remaining bachelor days,” he said, his lips twitching into a smirk.
“Those days are dwindling, even as we speak,” I deadpanned.
Aunt Jettie snickered behind me. “That a boy, Gabriel. Give her hell.”
“Whose side are you on?” I shot back.
“So, just to clarify - because our conversations practically need subtitles - I’m free to propose again, at any time?” Gabriel asked.
“Well, yeah, but don’t feel like you have to do the whole down-on-one-knee, candlelight and roses thing.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed, nodding.
“Or the whole ‘scoreboard at a sporting event’ thing. I’ve always thought that’s kind of tacky.”
“When have we ever gone to a sporting event together?” he said, arching an eyebrow.
“I guess, it would be rude to mention my aversion to rings hidden in food products of any kind.”
“Jane, a lesser man would interpret this as you being a control freak.”
I threw my hands into a surrendering gesture “Shutting up now.”
He shot me a speculative look. “So just so I understand, the dangerous inner workings of your brain- we’re not engaged, in any official or unofficial capacity, but I’m free to press my suit at any time.”
“As long as you mean proposing and not pressing an actual suit of clothing, yes.”
“Thank you, I was confused for a moment,” he said.
“What are going to do next, call a damn notary?” Dick yelled. “Kiss the girl!”
Gabriel threw the box of boring breakables in Dick’s general direction and was about to do just that, when I heard my mother’s car pulling into the driveway. I could feel her brain vibrating at the sight of catching us “in the act” of moving Gabriel in.
“Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes,” I told my friends. “No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don’t try to throw that up as a distraction.”
Gabriel’s lips twitched. “I don’t think it’s going to be that bad. It’s one woman against five supernatural creatures... And Zeb.”
“You laugh because you haven’t heard my mother’s thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We’re better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators.”
Before Gabriel- or Dick, mercifully- could respond to that, my mother screeched to a halt and cut her engine.
“Jane Enid Jameson!” my mother cried, stepping out of her sedan as her face turned an unnatural eggplant color. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Forget the engagement,” Gabriel whispered, “We’re going to tell your mother we’ve already eloped. She’ll have nowhere to go from there.”
“We’re going to lie to my mother?”
He cringed as she stomped toward us, her huge Aigner pocketbook flapping against her arm. “I think that would be for the best, yes.”
I nodded, kissing him just before I whispered back, “I’m OK with that.”
Molly Harper, Nice Girls Don’t Sign a Lease Without a Wedding Ring
(Series: Jane Jameson # 3.50)
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