The Proposal (2 page)

The potent mix of wine
and vodka jellies had gone straight to their heads.

With his back to Kiera,
Ethan caught sight of Nadine staring at him from across the room.

Maintaining eye contact,
he danced across the floor to where she stood and stopped just a few inches
away. For a second Nadine was partly paralyzed by his blatantly potent male
sexiness. His bare, shiny chest heaved furiously as he took a few moments to
recover his breath. 

He was half naked and
beautiful and Nadine didn't know whether to rush back into the kitchen or to
stand her ground.

Behind him she could see
that the other girls were watching them both, whooping with delight. Amy and
Kiera were laughing so much that they had slipped to the floor. They wanted to
see what straight-laced Nadine would do.

Ethan glided towards her
as the beat of the music played in the background. With one hand he took the
glass of wine from her, handing it over to one of the girls who had come to
take it. He put out his other hand, with the intention of leading her to the
middle of the floor, but the look of terror on Nadine’s face stopped him
instantly.

Instead of throwing her
over his shoulders as part of his act had demanded, and putting her down on the
floor to do some more foolhardy play with, he took her hand and kissed the back
of it. Then he spun around and walked back to the middle of the floor where he
picked up Kiera instead and danced around with her. 

Nobody else noticed that
there was a slight hiccup in the dance routine.

Nobody but Nadine.

Her heart had been
beating madly with the anticipation of what was coming. Yet she had been partly
relieved when Ethan stepped back and changed tactic.

Taking in a huge breath
of air, Nadine stepped back into the kitchen and squirted a vodka jelly down
her throat. Then she had another one before heading back to her laptop to carry
on with the report.

She didn't want to think
about what was going on in the other room. Though for a minute, she had
wondered what it would be like to rub some of that baby oil across that man's
taut chest.

She looked at the numbers
in front of her on the screen.

Where did they come from?
These didn't look right. She opened up her email to make sure she had picked up
the right years figures. Sandra was sure to pick up a glaring error such as
this. The last thing Nadine wanted to do was to give her a reason to find fault
with her. Though Sandra Donnelly always managed to find fault in anything that
Nadine had done, no matter how small it was.

Typing away furiously at
her laptop, Nadine hardly noticed Ethan slide into the kitchen. He stood in
front of her but she was so engrossed in the figures and pie charts she was
trying to decipher that she barely noticed. Besides, she was wondering whether
this type of report fell into her remit as Executive Creative Director for
Zimmerman Group, a medium sized advertising company based in San Francisco.

She had the niggling
feeling that this was yet another one of Sandra’s tasks that Sandra had
delegated to Nadine.

Ethan coughed politely as
Nadine looked up, a little annoyed to be interrupted when she had finally
gotten her head down into the figures.

"What is it?"
she asked absent mindedly, before she realised it was Ethan. She softened a
little when she recognized him and took off her spectacles. "Sorry, I
didn't recognize you with your clothes on," she smirked. 

"Employment
hazard," he replied, looking down at the table to see what could be more
interesting to a beautiful woman than a room full of male performers.
"Say, how come you're in here working, instead of in there, with the other
girls?"  He didn't know whether to sit down or remain standing. So he
stayed as he was and his bright blue eyes gazed at her piercingly.

"Work.” She replied
shortly. Then she suddenly remembered her manners and shut down her laptop
screen. “I’m sorry. Here please, help yourself. We've got plenty of food. Are
they nearly done?”

“Ten more minutes.”

She moved to show him a
table full of canapés and drinks that she had laid out just behind her.

Ethan took a paper plate
and helped himself to the plates of tiny Thai spring rolls, fish cakes and crab
cakes.

"Drink?" asked
Nadine, trying not to let her eyes wander down to his chest.  He was out
of the air force uniform and had put on a pair of jeans and a plain black
shirt. He looked handsome, ruggedly so, and was the kind of man she would have
easily noticed in crowd of people.

"Just a glass of
water please," his blue eyes followed her as she walked over to the
refrigerator.

"You don't
drink?" she asked, slightly surprised.

He put the cold glass of
water to his lips. “Not when I'm working.” There it was again, a half curious,
half searching smile.

"What is it?"
she asked, returning his gaze. "You’ve got a question, I can see it, and
you're too afraid to ask."

He whistled. “You read me
like a book, lady,” he said slowly biting into a Thai fish cake before licking
his fingers which were covered in sticky sauce. Nadine said nothing but
continued watching him with interest. He was a welcome break from her report.
She had no intention of going back into the lounge and seeing any more half
naked men. In fact, she quite liked talking to the one in front of her.

She crossed her arms, “Go
on. Ask me.”

"I was wondering
what makes a beautiful woman like you, sit in on a Saturday night working on
your laptop, when you have a room full of half-naked men next door?"

She poured herself
another glass of wine. "Rather curious aren't you?" Though she was
glad that he had interrupted her, this polite, gorgeous man with a well
maintained body. Here he was, in her kitchen, helping himself to another round
of savories from the table, while she put some more food into the oven.

"I'm busy. I’ve got
a lot on at work. I’ve just been promoted and my boss seems to love piling work
onto me.” She shuffled uneasily, wondering why she had told him so much about
herself.

"Just been promoted,
huh? Congratulations. I can see that about you. You're a smart, obviously
intelligent woman. No doubt very hard-working as well. If I was your boss, I'd
give you a load of work to do too."  Their eyes met briefly and
Nadine found herself enjoying the attention and the mild flirtation.

“So anyway, to answer
your question. It's my sister's hen-night. This is the last in a long line of
events. I'm--I--strippers- are not my thing." She said, for want of a
better word.

"No?" he asked,
cocking his face. "What is
your thing
?"

This was a bold question
and he stared straight at her.  She felt the colour rising to her cheeks,
knowing this was getting into personal territory.

"Work, career.
That's my thing," she said, a little too bluntly.

The warm aroma of
lemongrass filled the kitchen and Nadine wandered off to take out the hot,
steaming food from the oven. Ethan could sense she didn't want to talk too much
about her private life and kept quiet.

"More hot
food?" she asked demurely, holding up a plate of hot spring rolls.

"No, thank you. I'm
done. Canapés were great, thank you."  He drank his water thirstily.

Curious about him and his
choice of career, Nadine turned the conversation to him. "What makes you
do - what you do?" she said, setting out some warm crab cakes onto the
serving platter.

"This isn't the main
thing I do. I have stuff on the side I dabble in. But, sometimes, in these hard
times, a little extra cash doesn’t hurt." 

She thought about that
for a moment. Her mind was abuzz with so many questions but the music from the
other room had subsided.

Amy stumbled in. 
"They’ve finished. Everyone's hungry. Is the food ready?" Her words
slurred together a little. Nadine nodded as the girls and Ethan’s fellow
performers all traipsed into the kitchen diner and helped themselves eagerly to
the wonderful feast that she had put on.

The wedding of Kiera
Stefano and Edward Montford took place the following Saturday at the exclusive
Four Seasons hotel in Santa Barbara.  It was a delightful, beautifully
created wedding event that would be memorable to all who attended. Such
attention to detail with the wedding flowers, the wedding favors, the menu and
the service had all been painstakingly and laboriously put together by Kiera
mainly, with Edward willingly agreeing to let her have anything she wanted.

On the wedding day
itself, Kiera looked the image of perfect matrimonial radiance, dressed in her
pale cream Vera Wang chiffon and silk wedding dress. Her dress accentuated her
young age and slim figure and yet gave her the grandeur and air of importance
that was so befitting to a bride on her special day.

For Nadine, this was a
painful day strewn with all sorts of nightmares and headaches. She could not
wait to be on the flight back to San Francisco tomorrow. She loved her sister dearly
and was genuinely happy for her. She wanted the day to run smoothly, which it
did. However, for Nadine, the older sister by nine years, many references and
comparisons were made by all the family members, some of whom she had not seen
for years. It wasn’t only the family members who were inquisitive; many of
their parents’ friends often asked when Nadine would settle down and raise
children.

"So when are you
getting married, dear?"

"When's it going to
be your turn?"

"We're so looking
forward to the day when you get married."

"How nice to have at
least one of them married."  The comments continued, uttered in many
different words and phrases and with many nuances, some questions, some
statements. But the main question, the main statement behind each was the same:
You're thirty five years old and showing no signs of settling down yet.
When, when?

Even Nadine's parents
were tired of hearing the same old thing. Her mother looked at her with pity.
"I can tell you want to be back in your house the minute Kiera leaves for
her honeymoon."

"Sorry mom, I didn't
realize it was that obvious," a rather tired looking Nadine rested her
head on her mom's shoulder. The marquee was dressed up in cream silk and satin,
with pale gold swags all along the top and glimmering crystal chandeliers that
sparkled in mid-air.  Fifty round tables were beautifully dressed in crisp
white linen tablecloths. In the middle, as centerpieces, were a bunch of Calla
lilies surrounding a thick cherry red thick candle which let off a warm glow of
light.  The marquee looked like a beautifully light up
Christmas shop, all cozy and inviting and even in the mid-June heat of Santa Barbara, it was a beautiful night.

"I've never seen you
work so hard before. Sometimes I wish you didn't get that promotion." Her
mother tried to inject a touch of kindness in her voice knowing that anything
detracting from Nadine's achievements would come across to her as a direct
comparison of her life and Kiera's.

"Thanks mom. I
thought you might be proud of me."  The crickets chirped noisily in
the background, now that the music had come to a halt.

Nadine’s father came up
behind her, "We're always proud of you honey," he said, placing a
comforting hand on her shoulder. "But don't get married just yet Nadine.
It’s going to take me about five years to pay this off."  And he
chortled, with that wickedly mischievous look he often had in his eye when he
and Nadine teamed up against her mother.

"Shush,
Jonathon.  Don't be silly now. It was a lovely, beautiful, dream wedding.
The kind every girl dreams off."

"Not me,"
replied Nadine quickly and caught her father's eye. He had to fight hard to
keep his laughter in. It often amused him his daughter continued to be so
resolute about staying single and independent.

It was turning after
midnight and the crowd had dwindled to a few core family members and friends.

"Has Kiera left
already?" asked Nadine getting up and looking around. She eyed her aunts
in the corner, ready to come over and ask her a gazillion more questions. 
Then she spotted Kiera in the corner. She was going around saying her
goodbyes. 

"I think she's
turning in for the night, I'll go see her before the brigade arrives," she
winked at her father and kissed him goodnight. He could see his wife’s sisters
making a move to their table and ushered Nadine away. 

"I saw that!” said
Nadine's mum.  "Goodnight dear, see you in the morning for
breakfast?" and she kissed her older daughter on the cheek.

Narrowly escaping her
three aunts who she knew were going to sit at her parents' table for another
hour or so, Nadine smiled as she darted past  them and went up to Kiera
and Edward. 

"It's been an
amazing day, my little sis. Are you both heading off now?" she asked
Edward, turning towards him and seeing that even this late at  night he
still looked so impeccably turned out. His blonde hair was still swept back
cleanly on both sides. He held Kiera's hand tightly in his and nodded his head
in reply.