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“Are you nervous about today?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Well, yes, but it has to be done. I know there will be a lot of comments said about why I got the job.”
“Who cares?” he said. “Sometimes in life we need a hand. Laken needs one desperately. Family or not, she wouldn’t give someone a charity job. Least of all someone that will have this amount of responsibility.”
Everything at work was getting worse and not better.
The more work Aaron gave her to do, the more Stella got on her case. It never seemed to end and the stress and anxiety she was feeling going in daily was wearing her out.
Last week when she’d been in Braylon’s office having lunch with him, Laken popped her head in and interviewed Lily without her knowing what was happening.
Yesterday Laken called her to come up and gave her a job description and a salary offer. She was stunned, but the job and the salary had been determined by the going rate for the position.
There was no way she was turning it down.
Though she was assistant to the Vice President of Acquisitions, she was going to be Laken’s right-hand woman. She’d be doing actual meaningful work and she was thrilled to get started.
It seemed this year was starting out great for both of them career wise with Braylon being promoted to Vice President of Legal weeks ago. Not that anyone doubted it was going to happen.
Today she was giving her notice. She was going to walk in with a coffee on a day that it wasn’t required, set it down with her letter and say, “My last run for you. Not just coffee either.” Then she was going to walk out with a smile on her face and go about her day as if nothing else had happened.
It would eat Stella up to be dismissed like that.
“You’re right,” she said. “Quinn worried about me moving here, but I told her I had it covered.”
“You do,” he said. “You always did. Even if you had to fib a bit to get people to leave you alone, you still had a plan.”
“Let’s not talk about that cheap fake ring again,” she said, laughing.
“Nope,” he said. “We aren’t going to. I’ve got something better.”
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
He walked away from her and came back with a little red gift bag. They’d said they weren’t exchanging gifts today. She thought it was a silly holiday as it was.
“I lied about no gifts,” he said. “Sort of. This isn’t a gift. More like a question. Open it.”
She was hesitating enough that his voice rose when he said that while he was laughing.
Lily pulled the white and pink tissue paper out, then saw the box in there.
No way it was earrings again, but she couldn’t believe it’d be a ring.
She was wrong.
She flipped the lid and saw almost the same diamond ring as her fake one, but this one had two more stones on each side. It was bright and shiny and anyone looking at it would know it was real.
“Braylon,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“Hey, I had to do it right,” he said, taking it out and getting down on his knee. “People will think this is the original. Two carats in the center and while it was getting fixed we just added two more one-carat stones on each side for fun.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re crazy.”
“Crazy in love with you. I knew it the minute I came to your rescue that you were going to be mine. Why wait? I’m not getting any younger.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not. But you don’t think it’s too soon?”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
