She laughed, and we laid in silence for a few minutes and listened to the music.
“Is that a Van Morrison cover band?” she wondered.
“Not bad,” I commented, and then I tapped her bare thigh. “Come on. Let’s go to the party.”
I got up and threw on a t-shirt, beach shorts, and flip flops.
Vicki nixed the itty bitty black bikini for the itty bitty red bikini, which made her look even more exotic. Then she pulled up her hair into a beach bun with a flowered pin we’d bought at a kitschy island shop. But in Vicki’s hair …
God, I was crazy in love.
“Come on,” she teased as she walked out the door. “Let’s go slowpoke.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered and shook my head. “Just give me a second. Let me grab my wallet, I’ll catch up with you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Wallet, huh?”
“Someone’s gotta pay for the frozen drinks,” I snickered.
“Top drawer, bureau,” she said before she left the hut.
As soon as she was gone, I did grab my wallet in the top drawer of the bureau. But I also fished around in the bottom of my suitcase for the hidden compartment. I unzipped it and then pulled out a small black satchel with a drawstring.
When I opened it, I pulled out a black velvet ring box. My great grandmother on my mother’s side had been an honest to God British debutante. She’d gone to the coming out ball and been “presented” to society in front of the Queen. She was the real deal, married an Earl, and been titled as a Lady.
My grandmother was supposed to follow the same path, but got caught up in the cultural revolution of the sixties. This eventually led her to the New York City of John Lennon, Imagine, Studio 69, Andy Warhol, and Jack Keraouc. She married an artist, and they had my mother, who followed the same path, which led her to Sedona and my father.
But, somewhere along the way, Lady Sara, as she was called, mended fences with her wayward now American progeny. I never got the whole story, but I was sure it had a lot to do with the financial realities of following the hippie lifestyle.
By the time I met her, on her occasional visit to the States, she’d lost whatever animosity there might have ever been and was the doting British grandmother. But that woman was … loaded. In her will, she left all of us money for college, and the generous fund even paid my way all through law school. She also left her engagement ring to me or Phoenix, whichever one of us married first.
When I was in L.A., I lived more of the whole David Duchovny Californication mixed with Entourage lifestyle than I would ever admit to my girlfriend or our paralegal. During those years, my family had a running joke that my middle school brother would be the one to marry first and get the ring.
Now, I opened the black velvet box and pulled out the ring. It was a square cut two carat diamond on a white gold band. The insurance policy had it valued at around twenty-four thousand pounds, which more or less worked out to about thirty thousand dollars. I shut the box and put it safely in my pocket.
I knew tonight would be the night.
I couldn’t stand waiting anymore, and since Vicki was clearly on to me, I only had so much time before it turned into a teary mess of disappointment.
I just needed to find the right moment.
I’d spent the last week searching online for proposal ideas. Everything I found was so cliche and contrite, or required way more set up than I knew I could pull off with Vicki on to me. Already, I needed to have my phone browser set on private mode, just in case she snooped through my search history.
I decided the whole five star dinner was too uninspired, and I certainly wasn’t going to bake my grandmother’s ring into a baguette and take it on a picnic lunch. So, I wanted to make it simple, and make it us. I just needed to find the perfect “us” moment sometime tonight.
I left the hut and found Vicki about three yards ahead.
“That was quite a long time to grab a wallet,” she smirked, “especially since I told you where it was.”
“Why all the questions?” I replied with narrowed eyes. “I feel like I’m on trial or something.”
“Maybe you are.” She winked.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she replied with a shrug.
“What’s with you, Vic?” I looked at her quizzically. “Are you on something?”
The smile from her face slowly faded, and she looked away.
“When’s the meeting with Earnie?” she asked, and I could hear her talking around tears in her throat.
Shit. I overplayed my hand.
“Let’s not talk about all that right now,” I said softly.
We reached the party, and then I concluded the Van Morrison cover band did more than just Van Morrison hits. They’d moved on to Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight.
There were about fifty couples gathered on the beach, slow dancing, surrounded by tiki lamps and the beach just in the distance.
I took Vicki’s hand, and she smiled slightly. Then I spun her around, and she laughed.
“You remember when you accused me of shameless plagiarism when I quoted this one at you?” I asked.
She laughed. “Such romance, as we’d been discussing a dead body found in a suitcase at the time.”
“I thought it struck a certain note,” I chuckled.
She laughed, and we slow danced to the bluesy guitar with the South Pacific waves murmuring behind us. I held her close as we listened to the
