Authors: Claire Adams
My momentary lapse in concentration from
what was going on in front of me with Zayden literally down on one knee in the
middle of a class was broken when I heard him say my name like he had never
said it before.
“Aria,” I heard him say. I had to bring my
attention back to his piercing blue eyes, staring into my own with so much
intensity it felt like he could see right through me.
“Hey, what are you—”
“I love you, Aria Roberts,” he cut me off
to the sound of gasps encapsulating the whole room. I could sense the whispers
of my classmates on my skin, but somehow I couldn’t register any of the words
they were speaking. It was as though a movie was playing a few rooms down the
hall and we were privy to snippets of it traveling through the distance.
I love you, too. Those were the words
meant to come out of my mouth. Or they would have if I had been at all capable
of opening them or producing a sound. It was like words were now captured
somewhere deep in my lungs, imprisoned forever.
“I love you and I never thought I would
say these words to a woman and mean it,” Zayden said, his eyes still firmly on
my own. “When you first came into my life – or into my bank I should say,” he
said with a grin. “I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever laid my eyes on.
But I couldn’t have anticipated the whirlwind that became my life after. I have
seen many beautiful girls. But Aria, Aria, Aria,” he repeated in slow rhythms
matching my heartbeats. “You really did a number on me. It only took a few
conversations with you for me to realize that your beauty was only your least
impressive quality. Your mind, Aria, your brilliance, your confidence, the very
way you walk and talk like the world marches to your drums until it starts
doing exactly that! I have never met anyone like it. Twenty years old and you
have more maturity than my mother does. I don’t think there is anyone quite
like you, Aria. There is one and only one Aria Roberts and I am the luckiest
man in the world just for having your love. Make me luckier than the luckiest
man in the world Aria,” he said and reached into his pocket.
My eyes were probably swollen to twice
their size by now, as I felt my whole face get drenched in my own tears, while
an insufferably painful grin was plastered to my face that I couldn’t get rid
of no matter how hard I tried. Zayden had said all those wonderful things about
me. In my college. In front of my whole class. And my professor. The most
sought-after man was down on his knee, telling me - little, useless Aria
Roberts with a little apartment and a little life – that I made him the
luckiest man in the whole world.
While everyone was watching.
When he pulled the ring out of his pocket,
I gasped loud enough for the whole school to hear when I realized that it was,
in fact an enormous piece of diamond on a ring. I felt heavy just from
imagining the weight of it around my finger. All the time. For the rest of my
life. Another gasp. Too much was happening too fast and it was crazier than my
wildest fantasies. None of my daydreams where Zayden proposed to me came close
to living up to this very moment where the man I loved was about to ask me to
be his forever.
But before I said anything…before this got
real and we were together forever and I would be his and he would be mine,
legally, emotionally physically…I had to make sure.
With all the might I could muster, I
forced myself to produce a sound at last, “Zayden, but the divor—”
He cut me off with a kiss squarely across
my lips, to a spontaneous applause from the whole room. Through the corner of
my eyes I could even see a confused Dr. Weber joining his hands together in
continuous motions.
“Aria,” Zayden said, breaking off in almost
a whisper. “It’s taken care of. The papers arrived. Just answer me now and stop
torturing me. Aria Roberts, will you please marry me?”
I took the deepest breath of my entire
life and said the most wonderful single word to have come out of my mouth: “Yes.”
Chapter
4
Zayden
I went into the bank feeling good. The
curious gazes of all my employees upon my arrival did not bother me at all;
rather it gave me a sense of pride: they were looking at me because they knew.
They knew that I had managed to get the most amazing woman in the world to
agree to marry me. Whether they were jealous or judgmental or just plain
curious, none of their whispers and gasps bothered me in the slightest. In
fact, it was probably their lucky day because I was suddenly in the mood to
issue an office wide bonus. Grinning wildly, I approached Aria’s desk.
“Hi,” she said, beaming.
Instead of responding to her greeting, I
leaned in and kissed her in front of the whole office. Aria broke off first,
perhaps feeling uncomfortable by my show of affection in the workplace. But the
smile on her face continued to be radiant.
“My office, fifteen minutes,” I said. Then
I added loudly, “I love you.”
Aria’s face went completely red as she
mumbled something that sounded like, “I love you too.”
Exactly fifteen minutes later, my fiancée
was sitting across from me in my office, her huge ring flashing the bond that
now tied us together.
“I don’t want to wait, Aria,” I said
simply.
“What do you mean?” She looked confused.
“I already said yes, I don’t know if you remember. I mean, maybe I remember it
incorrectly too. It was all happening so fast it’s hard to hold on to the
memory exactly as it transpired. That doesn’t of course, explain the ring,” she
added cheerfully, surveying her hand. “This is too big, Zayden. I hope you
didn’t pay a fortune it’s not worth it.”
“Don’t you dare ever tell me you’re not
worth something again. You deserve the very best of everything in the world and
I’ll make sure you have all of it. But I can’t wait, Aria, to get married to
you. To make you mine irreversibly forever.”
She grinned. She was obviously in a
playful mood. “I’m not too sure about the irreversible part. People get
divorced all the time—”
“Don’t ever say that again, either,” I
snapped.
“I was,” Aria said, screwing up her mouth.
“You know I was joking.”
“Me too. Just wanted to make sure you knew
it was permanent.”
“Permanent isn’t a long enough time to be
with you,” she said and winked.
I needed to get to the point.
“Three weeks. I want to get married in
three weeks. Does that sound okay?” I asked gently. I didn’t want to make her
feel inundated in case she needed more time. At the same time, I also couldn’t
bear to think of not being married to her any longer.
She opened her mouth wide in shock. “Three
weeks? But…planning…and invites…I don’t even have an idea of what to do about
my wedding dress.”
I reached over and covered her hands with
my own, flashing a reassuring smile. “Aria,” I said lovingly. “It’ll all be
taken care of. I already booked Fiona Davis to be your wedding planner and she
will be contacting you shortly about all your needs. Fiona usually has a
waiting list of about two years. She is the most sought-after wedding planner
in the country.”
She gasped. “Stacey knows all about her.
She will kill me.”
“We will book Fiona for your friends’
wedding too then, but since they don’t plan to have the ceremony for another
year, we can surely worry about that later.”
“Wait,” she said suspiciously. “How do you
know when they plan to get married?”
“Your friend Stacey may or may not have
gone with me to purchase your ring.”
She gasped loudly, looking amused. “You
aren’t telling me she approved of this magnificent gazillion dollar ring are
you?”
“Yes, but it’s no big deal.”
“Whatever you say,” she said, grinning.
“Fiona will be in touch with you shortly.
She has already booked the Plaza for three weeks from tomorrow. They are
usually pre-booked years in advance but between my influence and Fiona’s,
getting that date was a piece of cake.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Aria said holding up
her hand and looking utterly confused. “The Plaza. That’s where all the
celebrities get married. It is also in New York. Did you actually think this
through?”
“Oh, right,” I said with a content smirk.
“I forgot to mention, we are getting married in New York.”
The effect of those words on Aria was
exactly what I had hoped. She gasped so loudly a few people came and poked
their head in to see if everything was okay. Her eyes started drowning in tears
of happiness once we were alone again.
“You said you had never been to New York.”
I shrugged. “Obviously we had to change that. And what better opportunity to do
so than during the most special day of both of our lives?”
“But Zayden,” she spoke in stutters. “All
my family and friends and everyone I know are here and they can’t exactly
afford to take a trip to—”
“I will take care of everything. You have
to learn to stop worrying about money. I want you to have the wedding of your
dreams. Pick out the best wedding gown, the best décor; pick out an invitation
embellished in gold and platinum if you wish. I will pay for absolutely
everything. We will put all your friends and family up in five star hotels.
Everything you need will be taken care of. Don’t worry about how or when; just
decide what you want and it’s yours. You might as well start getting used to it
because this is not just about the wedding either. That’s basically how things
will go from now on for the rest of your life.”
She was crying into her hands now, unable
to process all of this. It made me feel a little weary because I did not like
seeing her in tears, not even those of joy. Her tears were more precious to me
than anything money could ever buy and they were not worth wasting.
I stood up from my chair and went over to
take Aria into my arms. She was so small and fit so perfectly against my chest.
“Aria, I love you so much. More than you
will ever realize. More than the world will ever have accurate measures to
quantify. When I decided I wanted to marry you, I also decided that from that
moment on, nothing in the world mattered as much as your happiness. If you
really think about it, I’m being selfish by giving you the wedding of your
dreams. I can only be happy when you are happy. So in the end, I am doing this
for me. Okay?”
I hugged her tighter, intending to never
let me go.
“I love you so much too, Zay,” she mumbled
into my chest. “I can’t wait to be your wife…”
We sat like that in each other’s embrace
for the longest time, with the whole office watching through my office windows.
When we finally broke apart, I remembered the other thing I had to discuss with
her.
“One more thing,” I said, wiping the last
of her tears from her face. “There is absolutely no reason for you and me to be
apart for another second from now on. I hired some movers. They will be at your
apartment tomorrow to get all your things. You don’t worry about a single
thing. They will pack all your things and carry everything to my place. Is that
okay?”
I felt like it was important to phrase
everything as a question. Aria would not be okay with being told what to do,
which was one of the many reasons I loved her so much.
“Of course,” she said to my utter relief.
“I can’t wait to move in with you either. The thought of being apart from you
is tormenting sometimes. I’ll miss my roommates of course, but I’ll have one
last night with them tonight.”
“They will be happy for you,” I said,
stroking her hair.
“I’m sure you have a good command on
exactly how they will feel, given that they have been sneakily planning things
with you behind my back,” she said with a smirk.
“It’s because they love you. How can they
not? How can anyone not?” I leaned over to plant a kiss on her lips. “You are
so damn loveable.”
“So are you,” she said, kissing me back.
“Thanks so much for arranging everything with the move. And for Fiona, the
Plaza and everything else. I can’t believe I get to marry you in three weeks.”
“You can have the rest of the day off,” I
said, looking at the time. “I have some business to tend to and you have to go
talk to your roommates and plan for your move. You can come in to work whenever
you feel like it for the next three weeks or not at all if you don’t want to.
You won’t be stationed at the teller’s booth—”
“No!” she gasped again. “No, Zayden. I
haven’t earned a promotion. You know how I feel about making my own way to the
top.”
“Well, that complicates matters.
Considering you will soon be part owner of the company. I mean if you prefer to
run half of this office while sitting where the tellers do, that’s up to you,
but I would suggest that it’s not the best business move.”
“I didn’t earn this,” she whispered again.
“Yes you did. I have seen your mind, Aria,
and fallen in love with it. Remember when I asked you if you would work for me
long before I even realized I was in love with you? Even when I had no plans
but to seduce you, I was already blown away by your brilliance and your ideas.
My company needs young ambitious assets just like you and this would be the
fact of the matter regardless of whether or not we were getting married in
three weeks.”