“Coming,” I call, wondering if it could be a UPS delivery for the shop. Madame Henri had warned me that by taking occupancy of the apartment on the top floor of the brownstone, I’d be responsible for signing for all after-hours deliveries.
But does UPS even deliver on New Year’s Day? It can’t possibly. Even Brown must give its workers the day off.
At the bottom of the stairs, I struggle with all of the various locks, until finally I can pull the door open—though I’ve kept the security chain on, just in case the person outside is a serial killer and/or religious fanatic.
Through the three-inch crack between the door and frame, I see the last person in the world I ever expected.
Luke.
“Lizzie,” he says. He looks tired. Also annoyed. “Finally. I’ve been knocking for hours practically. Look. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”
Panicked, I slam the door shut.
Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s Luke. He’s back from France. He’s back from France, and he came to see me. Why did he come to see me? Didn’t he get my brief but cordial note in which I gave him my new address so he’d know where to forward my mail, but instructed him not to contact me there?
“Lizzie.” He’s pounding on the door again. “Come on. Don’t do this. I flew all night to get here to say this to you. Don’t shut me out.”
Oh God. Luke’s at my door. Luke’s at my door…
… and his best friend is asleep in my bed upstairs!
“Lizzie? Are you going to open the door? Are you still there?”
Oh God. What am I going to do? I can’t let him in. I can’t let him see Chaz. Not that Chaz and I did anything wrong. But who would even believe that? Not Luke. Oh, God. What do I do?
“I’m… I’m still here,” I open the door to say. I’ve thrown back the chain, but I don’t move to let Luke step inside—even though it’s freezing, standing there on the stoop in my evening gown, with the bitter cold seeping in around. “But you can’t come in.”
Luke looks at me with those sad dark eyes. “Lizzie,” he says, apparently not even registering the fact that I’ve obviously slept in my clothes. And not just any clothes, either, but my Jacques Fath evening gown that I’ve been saving for years for an event fancy enough to wear it to. Not that he would know that. Because I never told him.
“I’ve been a total ass,” Luke goes on, his gaze never straying from mine. “I’ll admit, when you brought up… well, the marriage thing last week, you really threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting it. I really did think we were just hanging out, you know. Having fun. But you made me think. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, as a matter of fact, though I tried. I really tried.”
I stand there blinking at him, shivering. This is what he flew all the way back to America—apparently spending his New Year’s Eve on a plane—to say? That I ruined his holiday, even though he tried not to think about me?
“I even talked to my mother about it,” he says, the winter sunlight bringing out the bluish highlights in his ink-dark hair. “She’s not having an affair, by the way. That guy she met the day after Thanksgiving? That’s her plastic surgeon. He does her Botox. But that’s beside the point.”
I swallow. “Oh,” I say. And realize, belatedly, that that’s why Bibi’s eyes hadn’t crinkled when she’d smiled at me while issuing her invitation to join them in France for the holidays: she’d just had Botox injected into them.
Still, this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t, in fact, change the part about how Luke chose to spend the holidays with his parents instead of going with me to the Midwest to meet mine.
I remind myself of this because I’m trying very hard to keep my heart steeled against him. Because, of course, the hurt is still fresh. Like I’d said to Chaz, we’re both still grieving.
But seeing Luke, looking so tired and vulnerable, on my doorstep isn’t helping.
“Mom is the one who told me what an idiot I was being,” Luke goes on. “I mean, even though she was kind of pissed about the whole thing where you thought she was having an affair. She was trying to keep the Botox from my dad.”
I’m finally able to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth long enough to say, “Dishonesty in a relationship is never a good thing.” As I know, only too well.
“Right,” Luke says. “That’s why I realize how lucky I am, Lizzie, to have you.” He reaches out and takes my hand in his icy cold, leather-gloved fingers. “Because even if maybe you do have a reputation for talking too much, there is one thing about you: you do always tell the truth.”
Nice. Also, true. Well, mostly.
“Did you come all this way to insult me?” I ask, trying to sound haughty—though of course the truth is that I just feel like crying. “Or is there a purpose to all of this? Because I’m standing here freezing—”
“Oh!” he cries, dropping my hand, and hastily whipping off his coat, which he then drapes gently around my shoulders. “I’m sorry. This would be a lot easier if we could just go in—”
“No,”I say firmly, grateful for the coat. Although now my stocking feet are like ice.
“Fine,” Luke says with a little smile. “If that’s the way you want it. I’ll just say what I came here to say and then let you go.”
Yes. Because of course that’s the kind of thing princes do. Fly thousands of miles just to say good-bye.
Because whatever else they might be, princes are unfailingly polite.
Good-bye, Luke.
“Lizzie,” Luke says. “I’ve never met a girl like you before. You always seem to know what you want and exactly how to go after it. You aren’t afraid to do or say anything. You take risks. I can’t tell you how much I admire that.”
Wow, this is a very nice good-bye speech.
“You came into my life like a… well, a tsunami or something. A good one, I mean. Totally unexpected, and totally irresistible. I honestly don’t know where I’d be now if it weren’t for you.”
Back in Houston with your ex, I want to say.
Only I don’t. Because I’m sort of curious to hear what he’s going to say next. Although mostly I just want to run back upstairs to bed.
Except I can’t, I remember belatedly. Because there’s a snoring man in my bed.
“I’m not the kind of person who’s good at going after what I want,” he goes on. “I guess I’m more cautious. I have to weigh all the possibilities, calculate each and every risk involved—”
Yes. I know.
Good-bye, Luke. Good-bye forever. You’ll never know how much I loved—
“That’s why it took me so long to realize that what I really want to say to you—” He’s fumbling in the front pocket of his charcoal wool trousers now. And I can’t help thinking, Why is he doing this… what’s he doing? Is he just trying to torture me? Does he have no idea how hard I’m trying not to throw myself at him? Why can’t he just go away? “What I think I’ve always wanted to say to you, since the day I met you, on that crazy train, is—”
— get out of my life, and never contact me again.
Only that’s not what he says. That isn’t what he says at all.
Instead, for some reason, he’s sunk down onto one knee, in front of the closed bridal shop, and the lady across the street walking her dog, and the guy in the minivan looking for a parking space, and the entire population of East Seventy-eighth Street.
And though I can’t believe what I’m seeing, and I’m positive my tired, hungover eyes are playing tricks on me, he’s pulled from his pocket a black velvet box, which he opens to reveal a diamond solitaire that glistens in the morning light.
No. No, that’s really what he’s doing. And there are words coming out of his mouth. And those words are:
“Lizzie Nichols, will you marry me?”