“This?” Dahlia grinned and held out her left hand. The round diamond in the old-fashioned gold setting rode loose on Dahlia’s ring finger. “Dodo proposed, and I said yes.”
Although she wouldn’t have said the ornate gold fit Dahlia’s modern style, Piper gave the ring an approving nod. “I want to hear all about the proposal.”
“We had dinner aboard his sailboat on Lake Travis, and then he pulled out his lucky puck.”
That was a euphemism she’d never heard before. “Okay.” Piper made the word longer and more curious than the two syllables usually got.
Dahlia rolled her eyes at Piper’s teasing. “It’s a hockey thing. He put the ring on top of the lucky puck and here we are. In no small part, thanks to you.” Dahlia pointed at Piper’s bag. “Did you have time to make the brochure?”
Piper smoothed the wrinkles out of the purity pamphlet. “This artwork cost me a hot guy in the elevator. Mikah. So handsome. He saw the word purity and disappeared like I’d used TNT for the ink.”
Dahlia laughed and took it from her. She ran her appreciative green eyes over the page.
“I’m not saying he was my soulmate.” Piper flattened her palm over her heart. “But whew, you should have seen him, number sixty-five.” Piper said his uniform number like the digits were naughty. “But so scared of those two little words—purity pledge.”
Dahlia cupped her mouth and chuckled. “Why would you show him that?”
Oh, she’d shown him a lot more than a piece of paper. Heat flushed her face. Piper recapped the last few minutes of her life, leaving out none of the humiliating details.
Dahlia opened and closed her mouth throughout the re-telling and laughed enough to assure Piper that the event had been as embarrassing as she’d thought.
After several minutes, Dahlia got herself under control. “These things happen.” She waved her hands like she hadn’t just been doubled over giggling. “I hope the security camera caught the whole thing.”
Piper made big, appalled eyes at her. “Oh. My. God.”
Dahlia covered her lips. “I’ll delete your airtime. Don’t worry.”
Piper stayed frozen, her mouth agape.
“Stop, really, the camera would be focused on the elevator not the doorway. Either way, you know I’ve got you.”
True, Dahlia was dependable. Piper’s tension eased away. “And my new crush?”
Dahlia fluttered her hand toward the door. “Purity panicked him. He’s not for you. The building’s packed with hot athletes, pick another.”
Another man like Mikah? Not likely, and men weren’t interchangeable. Piper intended to find out more about Mr. Czerski.
Dahlia waved the pamphlet at her and beamed at her handiwork. “Love it.” She looked around the room as if to make sure no one was listening. Her attention paused the longest on the double doors at the far end of her office. From the plaque above them, they led to Dodo Donovan’s executive suites, which meant Dahlia’s office was a type of antechamber. “The reason for the pamphlet goes back to the Tudor secret. On a related topic, I have a job for you.”
As a person with a bachelor’s degree in history, hearing the word job was a rarity. And secret? Which secret? They’d shared a lifetime of insights. “Hmm?”
“The Anne Boleyn-got-her-man trick. Queen Anne held out. King Henry gave in.” Dahlia held out her diamond and her voice rose. “It’s how I’m here, I kept my knickers on and ended up with a ring.”
Piper winced. She hadn’t meant for her cousin to take her research on Henry the Eighth and his second wife as a treatise on how to get her guy. While diving into her thesis on the Tudors, she might have mentioned those dysfunctional English Royals too much in ordinary conversation. Piper widened her eyes in an are-you-kidding expression to clue her cousin in to the fact that she needed to step back over the insanity chasm.
Dahlia wiggled her fingers, making the gem catch the light. “Dodo needed the challenge. I held out, he gave in.” She leaned closer and her confiding expression grew. “Dodo was a bit of a player in his day.”
“I hadn’t heard that.” She’d heard it within five minutes of being here at the stadium. Dodo and his birds. But it would be unkind to share Mikah’s words with Dodo’s fiancée. “You know Anne Boleyn got her head chopped off. Orders from that same adoring husband. She should not be your model for marital accord.”
“Pfft.” Dahlia pointed to her diamond. “Anne landed the most eligible bachelor in the land. As did I.” She took a pen and scrawled the word “ring” beside the R on the purity pamphlet.
Well…although Dahlia was technically right, she was also so wrong.
“I’m going to pay you a thousand dollars to teach my sorority the Tudor secret.” She penned in more words alongside the letters, turning the word “purity” into an acronym. Purity. Until. Ring. Intensity. Teasing. Yearning. “My sorority sisters will take a purity pledge. I invited your sister and told her she can bring friends too. You can instruct them on using their virginity to get to the altar, right?” Dahlia said the last part more like a statement than a question.
Hmm, look like a fool in front of friends and family for a thousand dollars. No. Yes. No. A thousand dollars. Of course. For that amount of money, she’d teach the theory to every misguided student on campus.
“For a thousand dollars, you could get a mani-pedi every week, take a vacation, start saving up to get your own place.” Dahlia threw out her best temptations.