In all that time, she rarely talked about her family but, of course, after he proposed, she’d said it was time he meet her father.
She didn’t seem excited about this, she seemed worried and Prentice put it down to normal, everyday nerves. Her mother died when she was young and she had no siblings. He assumed she and her father had formed a necessary bond because of this but any father would be cautious about the man to whom he was giving his daughter.
However now he understood her nerves were caused by something entirely different.
“Yes, baby,” Prentice took a step toward her, “this was definitely a mistake.”
Something flashed in her eyes, something he couldn’t read, before they froze again.
Then she lifted her hand and put her fingers to his ring.
It wasn’t much, he couldn’t afford much. He’d taken three years after school working on his father’s fishing boats and saving so he could afford university. Finally, he went, reading to be an architect. His mother told him, since he was a kid, he never drew anything but houses and buildings and when he wasn’t drawing, he was building with anything he could get his hands on. He built massive structures in the garden, in trees, in the lounge. It drove his mother daft since half the time he was nicking whatever he could, even to the point of dismantling furniture (and their shed), so he’d have building materials.
He went back to the boats in the summers because he needed the money.
The ring he’d given Elle wasn’t what he wanted to give her, neither was it what she deserved, it was what he could afford. He’d vowed to himself (although he hadn’t told her) that he’d eventually replace it with something that suited her, something bigger, shinier and worth the moon.
He’d been shocked when she’d loved the ring, tears filling her eyes as she examined it after they’d finished their horizontal celebration on the floor.
Her hand close to her face, her eyes glittering with tears, she’d whispered, “It’s absolutely perfect, Pren. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Now she was sliding it off her finger.
Prentice felt his gut twist as the alarm returned, sharp and vicious.
“Elle.”
“This was a mistake. I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still strong, controlled. “I got caught up in the whole…” she hesitated and, with his ring between her thumb and forefinger, she twirled her hand between them in a dismissive way, “Scotland thing.”
The gut twist tore upwards, slicing through his innards.
Who was this girl?
“The whole ‘Scotland thing’?” Prentice repeated, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes, American girls have a thing for boys with accents,” she replied calmly as if her words weren’t a verbal knife thrust to his heart.
“You have got to be fucking joking,” Prentice hissed.
And if she was, it wasn’t fucking funny.
“Mind your language around my daughter,” Austin warned but Prentice didn’t even look at him.
His eyes stayed locked on Elle.
“We need to talk,” he demanded. “Alone.”
“I see no reason to draw this out, Prentice. As I explained, I made a mistake.”
He took a step closer. She took a step back.
He stopped.
She’d never retreated from him.
Never.
Even when they were arguing, which happened often. Elle could be annoyingly if adorably stubborn.
“Don’t you see?” Elle asked. “This was a lark. Annie and me –”
Prentice’s body jerked. “Don’t you fucking tell me Annie and Dougal –”
Her best friend Annie had hooked up with his best friend Dougal the same night he and Elle met. They’d been just as inseparable and had fallen just as deeply in love.
Quickly, she shook her head in a frantic way that was far more Elle than anything he’d encountered that morning and he watched panic flash through her eyes before she hid it.
“No, no… Annie and Dougal are something else,” she said swiftly and firmly.
“But you and I are a lark?” Prentice asked, his voice ugly and dangerous in a way it had never sounded before and it surprised even him.
“Well… yes,” she replied then continued. “I took it too far. Got caught up in it. I’m so sorry, Prentice.”
She rarely called him Prentice and he didn’t like it, especially not now.
She called him Pren. She was the only one in his life that did so and he liked it when she did.
And furthermore, she didn’t look sorry.
She didn’t look anything.
She didn’t look even a little bit like the girl who tore into town with her crazy antics, her abandoned laughter, her outgoing, fun-loving American cheerfulness, stealing his, and everyone’s, hearts.
She looked like a girl he wouldn’t glance at twice.
And she acted like a girl he’d detest.
He couldn’t believe he’d been so deceived.
“We need to talk,” he repeated.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied.
He got close and she stood her ground. He tipped his chin down and stared in her eyes.
They were cold.
“Something’s happened.”
“Yes, my father arrived and gave me a wakeup call,” she threw her hands out to her sides. “This isn’t my life. I wouldn’t be happy here. Honestly, Prentice, the idea is ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Prentice felt like shaking her.
He also felt like picking her up and carrying her away from Fergus McFadden’s posh house and Elle’s despicable father and doing everything in his power to bring back his Elle.
He didn’t do either.
“I don’t know what he said to you –” Prentice started.
She interrupted, “He gave me a few home truths.”
“And they were?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Prentice lost control of his temper and shouted, “It fucking well does!”
Austin materialized at their side. “Calm down, son.”
Prentice turned only his head to Austin. “Don’t call me son.”
“Prentice, really, don’t make a scene,” Elle put in sounding, if he could believe his ears, bored.
Prentice turned back to Elle. “We weren’t a lark.”
“Prentice –”
It was his turn to interrupt and his voice held an edge of steel coated with a sheen of deep emotion which, as much as he hated showing the weakness, he couldn’t quite control. “At least for me it wasn’t a lark.”
He wasn’t sure but he could have sworn Elle flinched.
He decided he was wrong when she calmly held his ring up between them.
Prentice didn’t take it.
Instead, he said, “When you’re away from him and you realize this is madness, you find me, you call me, you write me, I don’t give a fuck what you do.” He leaned into her and took her head in both hands feeling her body go solid when he moved an inch away from her face. His voice dipped low when he continued, “I’ll be pissed off, baby, and I’ll make you work for it. But I love you enough to get over it and take you back. I promise you that.”
“Prentice –” she said softly but he cut her off in the way he always stopped her from chattering.
He touched his mouth to hers.
Without a choice, as usual, Elle went quiet.
Prentice pulled away and looked into her eyes.
“I’ve had a good life; you know that,” he whispered, “Even so, you’re the best thing that’s been in it.”
He watched, up close, as she slowly closed her eyes, emotion washing over her face making her radiant.
That was his Elle.
Whatever this was, he’d made it through.
Thank Christ.
He kissed her forehead, let her go and, without a backward glance at her, or her father, Prentice walked away.