Jannes nodded, and Lara breathed out a sigh of relief. ‘So, do we go ring shopping?’ he asked.
Lara slumped back in her chair. ‘What on earth was Mormor thinking?’
‘That she knows what we want better than we do.’
‘You’re going to deal with this, aren’t you?’ she said hopefully. ‘Please? Because we cannot have any more curveballs like this. We need to be in control of this.’
Jannes nodded. ‘I’ll talk to her. I promise. No more curveballs.’
‘Then I guess we’re going ring shopping. But this time we need to put an expiry date on what we’re doing. Because Mormor has just complicated things exponentially. Letting a vague dating thing fizzle out is one thing. That’s not going to work once everyone is expecting us to be making wedding plans. We need an exit strategy that works for the both of us.’
He nodded. ‘You’re right. So we tell people we’re not making any plans until I’m back from the Transat.’
She felt a twist of anxiety in her gut, and spoke without thinking. ‘In case you change your mind about me?’
‘Christ, Lara.’ She could see from the expression on Jannes’s face that she’d hurt him, that she’d said the worst possible thing. But she hadn’t really thought it; asking had been a protective instinct, one that she couldn’t shake. ‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asked. ‘Why would you say something like that?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Just, I wouldn’t be the first girl you changed your mind about while you were racing. I’m... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No. Get it all out. Tell me what you really think of me. Better to hear it all now.’
‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ she tried to lie. ‘It just came out.’
Jannes shook his head. ‘That’s not true. You meant that you can’t trust me. That you think I’m the kind of person the papers paint me as. That you find their version of me more believable than the person you’ve known for the last three years.’
She laid her hand on his arm, which was tense under her fingers.
‘Jannes, I’m sorry. I was trying to be self-deprecating and I screwed up. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
He shook his head, twitched his arm from under her hand. ‘I can’t believe you think I’d do that, even to a fake engagement. Like you weren’t the most important—’
He cut himself off, and she thought that that was probably for the best.
‘It’s just that...it’s not like I’m not easy to leave, is it? It was a terrible joke about the terrible men in my life who have found me all too easy to disappoint.’
Jannes’s hand came up to cup her jaw and she drew in a sharp breath, the feel of his calloused hands on her soft skin sparking a hundred memories of the night before.
‘Lara. No one should treat you like that. I’m sorry that you could even joke about that. You deserve better. So much better. Which is why I won’t let myself hurt you.’
She met his gaze and held it for a moment, before leaning back and breaking the contact.
‘Come on,’ Lara said. ‘We should go buy a ring if we’re going to go through with this.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JANNES WALKED BESIDE Lara down the main street of the town, his hair damp from the sea mist that had rolled in that morning. They drew to a halt outside a jewellery store on the corner of one of the side streets and looked at the diamonds sparkling under the bright spotlights.
He glanced across at Lara. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, looking along the rows of ice-white diamonds. Lara’s forehead was furrowed, a line appearing between her eyebrows.
‘This isn’t really me,’ she said, and Jannes nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.
‘I spotted this place yesterday,’ Lara said, linking her arm through his and leading them further down the road. She pulled him into a vintage store he had somehow never noticed, and they both gravitated to the glass case of jewellery in the corner by the window.
He sneaked a look at Lara, and saw a quiet smile turning up the corner of her lips.
‘This more like it?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Much more like...me,’ she said.