DREW
I paced backand forth across the carpet in my hotel room in Antigua. I was getting engaged in a few hours.Engaged. To a woman I could barely stand to be around for more than an hour, let alone love.
Kate and I had come to some kind of understanding Friday night, though I wasn't exactly sure where we stood. Were we dating? Or were we just friends who liked each other and were waiting to date? Was that the plan? We certainly weren't friends with benefits…since there would be no kissing until the wholeFinding Your Soulmatemess was over with. But boy, did I wish there was a least some kissing. It had taken all my self-control not to kiss her.
I pushed my fingers through my hair. Why had I agreed to the fake engagement plan anyway? Couldn't I have just told Gwen and Alexis no? Told them I never signed up for this? I had tried, but the process hadn't worked for me. None of those girls had beenthe one. None of them were Kate. Kate still had my heart after all these years. She would always have my heart.
But she also had dreams of her own, and I didn't want to ruin her shot. A huge part of me wanted to just pay for the whole production of one of her movies myself.
But I knew she'd never go for that.
So instead, I was getting engagedforher. Nottoher.
This was so messed up.
I'd always told myself I only wanted to get down on bended knee once, and here I was trying to figure out the perfect proposal for the wrong girl in order to help the right girl.
A knock sounded on my door, breaking me out of my trance.
I had texted Alexis a few minutes before, telling her that she should probably just have one of her writers think up the right words, since they still weren't coming to me. That was probably her coming to the rescue now.
I swung the door open. "Hey, Alexi—"
Not Alexis.
Kate.
"What are you doing here?" I managed to say after a beat. She looked beautiful in the afternoon sunlight, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans that hugged her curves just right.
"Alexis told me you needed help with something."
"She shouldn't have sent you." Why had she sent Kate? Alexis knew how I felt about her.
Pain reflected in Kate's eyes at my words, so I hurried to say, "It's not that. I just, uh, I'm having a hard time coming up with the perfect fake proposal, and I don't know—with the way I feel about you—it's just interesting that Alexis would send you to help me write it."
Kate nodded and walked in. "She did say you needed my writing skills. I should've known it would be for something like this."
I couldn't get a read on what she thought of the situation. Did she care? I expected she wouldn't want to help me with this, but maybe she was fine?
"Okay," I said, heading back to the table and pulling out a chair for Kate. "Let's get this started. I'm supposed to get dressed in an hour, so there isn't much time to get it done."
"What do you have so far?" Her face was all business, but there was something there that told me she might be dreading this just as much as I was.
I gestured at the blank sheet of paper. "So far I’ve got nothing."
Kate took the pen. "Do you mind?"
"No, no, please. Go ahead."
She put pen to paper and looked at me with those bright blue eyes of hers. "Well, if I was watching the show, I would want the proposal to be genuine…" She smirked at me, and I was relieved she could joke around on such a somber day. "But since that's not possible, we'll just have to dream up the most romantic proposal we can."
"Sounds good to me."
"Let's start with Gwen.”
I scowled at her name. Kate seemed to notice.
"Well, it is her name, isn't it?"