Prologue
January: Two and a Half Months Ago
Listen to your intuition, everyone always says.
Well, as I recall, coming home from my fourth date with Anton, my intuition had begun clacking around like the informational flap board at an old-fashioned train station.
It had been preparing to announce something.
I remember the romantic tension fluttering around in my stomach as Anton and I silently held hands across the middle seat on the car ride home.
Little letters on that intuition board had started falling into place then, even as I tried to hold them back—to keep them spinning and prevent them from spelling out a conclusion so early on in our courtship.
I THINK—
Noo, no! Don’t say it, you’ll jinx it!
I THINK I MIGHT—
Now don’t get ahead of yourself, Charlotte!
I THINK I MIGHT MARRY—
Nooo! You barely know him!
I THINK I MIGHT MARRY THIS MAN.
Damnit.
My favorite form of cardio, you ask? Jumping.
Jumping to conclusions. I’d only met Anton in early December, and it was just January—way too soon to know anything, right?
All I knew is that things were going well, and ever since meeting Anton, I’d only thought about Devlin maybe…
once a day, instead of every moment of every day.
He’s exactly what I need, I thought. He’s a man.
A real man. Not a man-child artist who hides behind a mask and disappears at the drop of a hat.
Anton picks me up for dates, takes me to nice dinners, tells me I look pretty, and he owns art galleries.
I mean, come on! That’s perfect for me! Technically, the galleries are family property…
but he’s a part of the family! This was exactly the no-nonsense, mature and sensible kind of match I needed at my ripe age of almost-twenty-seven.
The fear that I was about to become Jane Austen’s Charlotte Lucas (we already shared a name, for god’s sake!), and would need to throw myself upon a dreadful Mr. Collins-type, has thankfully been assuaged.
I’ve found a worthy man before the Austen age deadline.
Will Charlotte really marry Anton? How does Devlin reenter the fray? Find out in Shape Me!