Page 20 of For Flag's Sake
Mirth flickers at the crease of his mouth. “As you wish,” he agrees with a logical and agreeable tilt of his head. His hair fallsover his face to frame a mischievous twinkle just there, at the edge of his pupil.
My nose wrinkles at how endearingly cute he makes his impishness. How dare he be not only logical and agreeable, but attractive, too? Does he have to useeveryweapon in his arsenal right out of the gate?
“Is there anything else about my proposal that you’d like to discuss before accepting it?”
My lips purse, and, mind blank in the face of hisface, I glance behind his deadly weapon to see if our peanut gallery has any qualms I could bring up.
Etta and Mary blink at me, about as helpful as they were the last time I looked to them for a sprinkle of support.
Ugh.
“I guess not,” I grumble, unable to come up with any real issues. Or, I should say, unable to come up with any issues not steeped in a stubbornness that would lead to the complete dissolution of our friendship. I’m upset with him, but I don’t want to lose him, and I’m not so far gone to my emotions that I don’t realize the careful tread I need to find. I don’t want mynos to lead to a permanent loss we can’t come back from. He’s still my Ivy, after all, even if his vines are currently pressing in on me a little too tight. His current constriction doesn’t erase the many years they’ve held me together, though. They just need a little pruning right now, that’s all, not a full-fledged eradication.
To his credit, Iverson Swallow doesn’t gloat at his win. I only know he feels the victory at all because he can’t quite hide the spark of satisfaction in his eyes. From someone else, maybe he could have, but not from me.
A sense of relief hits me, sharp and unexpected. I’d convinced myself after walking into the ball—thewedding—that I didn’t know him, not truly. How could I? How could I believe that I knew him better than anyone in the world when he wasable to deceive me like that? He spentmonthslying to me as he planned what most people would consider to be the happiest day of their lives. He looked me in the eyes while he did it, and I didn’t suspect a thing. He requested I wear white, and I still didn’t think anything was amiss, even though he’d never tried to dictate what I wore before then. Looking back, I can see all the signs of his deceit—his nervous ticks and increasing affections. But at the time I didn’tseeit.
Then we walked into a dream, and it all became so clear.
I’ve been thinking I lost the ability to read him. No, worse, I’ve been thinking I never knew him well enough to be able to read him in the first place. That our lifetime of friendship has been nothing more than a lie, and my knowledge of Iverson nothing but wishful thinking and delusion. In a fit of reality-based drama, I’ve been despairing over memories I’ve been looking at without my rose-tinted glasses.
The spark in his eye, though, tells a different story. Isawit. It wasreal. There and gone so quickly that someone who had studied him less would have missed it. ButIdidn’t. Somewhere between us still lies a familiarity I’d come to expect as due course, and with it, a chance at a future where we settle into a relationship not quite like what we had before, but not so dissimilar that we’ll have lost the strings of love that tie us together. I rest my glasses back on my face, and allow the wonder of a rosy tint to once more color my life.
As relief cuts a knife through my heart, poking at my lungs and making it hard to breathe, Ivy reaches for his laptop. Unaware of the emotions roiling in me, he spins his screen to present a blank spreadsheet.Of Love and War, it’s titled,A Courtship Plan.
I gulp.
“So,” he says, “how would you like to start?”
Chapter Ten
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Maple
“Well.” I clear my throat in an attempt to rid myself of the lingering coolness of relief and the sharp electricity of my nerves. Neither sensation gets the memo, and I’m left with an uncomfortable mix of lightning beneath frigid skin. “Obviously I would like to start where it most makes sense to start.”
“Obviously,” Iverson agrees good-naturedly. His eyes squint to a Maple-is-so-cute narrowness I have previously enjoyed the effects of. Right now, however, I’m finding his affections less endearing than usual forsomereason. Or some many reasons, perhaps. “And that obvious start would be?” he asks.
I search for an answer as my body wages the battle Ivy started with his logic and his agreeableness and his freaking handsome face. I’m on edge, assaulted by the unexpected advances he’s making and the emotions they evoke. He’s spun me like a top, and I keep spinning, and spinning, and spinning, hoping that when I fall it’s somewhere safe.
Movement beyond Iverson’s head catches my attention, and I look to the lobby desk to see Etta miming impatiently at me. Her hand lifts to her mouth, elbow out to the side, and she bites at the space where an invisible fork lies.
Ohhh. Not a bad idea. So not a bad idea that couples everywhere consider it the default choice for a date, and it’s a little embarrassing that I didn’t think of it myself.
I remind myself that Iverson’s cheekbones were at play, and as such I have nothing to be embarrassed about. I can’t beexpected to think straight when he’s whipping them around like that.
“Dinner,” I say finally, warily eyeing the cheekbones in question. Despite the danger they still pose, my shoulders ease, pressure oozing off of them now that the setting for our date has been chosen, and I can lob the responsibility ofwooingback at him. “We should go to dinner.” I nod, a decisive tilt of my head that drapes dark hair over my face. I puff, blowing it away from my eyes. Super shockingly, the blow-it-away-and-hope-for-the-best method doesn’t work, and it falls right back into my line of sight to obstruct my vision. I sigh and tuck it behind my ears.
Ivy’s eyes snag on and trace the sway of a lock I miss. “Dinner?” he asks in a murmur.
“Dinner,” I confirm. “That’s what people do when they date, right? That’s what you’re suggesting?”
Displeased, he abandons his study of my hair. His strong, straight nose crinkles. “No, I’ve suggested a courtship.Verydifferent. Dating is casual. What I want to have with you doesn’t resemble casualty in any way. I don’t want todatemy friend in the hopes that she maybe might possibly decide to love me enough to resume the relationship we had a week ago. I wish to enter into a courtship with my wife as a means to make our new marriage bloom with love, respect, and joy.”
I stare, wide-eyed, at my husband. “Oh.”
His brows draw together. “Was that not clear?”
