Chapter 12
Daisy
“Marry me, Daisy.”
I really thought I was hallucinating until Max went down on one knee and proposed again with a blueberry-covered fork.
Why was he doing this? Why was it making my chest ache?
“Max, what are you doing? Please get up.” My thick tongue fumbled over the words.
I needed him up. Standing. Talking. Handing me the fork. Telling me everything was going to be okay, that he has some magic solution to stop Todd’s parents from taking my baby.
A magic solution that wasn’t marriage.
“I’m asking you to—”
“Don’t.” I choked out. “Don’t say it again.”
“Marry me.”
I shivered. Marry him. Marry my ex-fiancé’s best friend. It was crazy. “You’re not making sense.”
“If we get married, you won’t have to worry about health insurance,” he said, his voice like fine gravel, filling in all the cracks in my protest.
Marry Max for his insurance. I wanted to laugh. The idea should’ve been so ridiculous. Why was I even considering this? Why was I letting him string up this web, my mind settling in like a fly in a trap? A strangled sound wrenched from my lips, and I turned away.
It wasn’t ridiculous, was it? I wasn’t in a good spot. There was no denying it. If it were just me, if it were only my life affected, it would be different. But it wasn’t.
Little sprout chose then to flutter her kicks into my stomach as though weighing in on the offer.
Say yes. Kick kick. Say yes. Kick kick.
No. There had to be another way.
“Max, I can’t. I’ll figure out something…something else,” I said, scrambling to pull together more reasons why it was a bad idea. “I don’t need you to—”
“If we get married, you’ll be safe from Todd’s parents.”
I inhaled swiftly.
“They won’t be able to pressure or force you to move or see their doctors or do anything—”
“They could still get lawyers involved.”
“And I can afford just as good ones.”
“Can you? From running a flower business?” I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but the McCormicks were private-jet wealthy, and the way Todd spoke about Max’s absence made it seem like MaineStems needed the extra push, and that was why Max was working so hard.
“Daisy, all the work I’ve been doing…it was for huge contracts. A huge hotel contract in Boston. I have money. Maybe not quite generational wealth, but…enough to fight back,” he said, and I tipped my head, my gaze zeroing in on his face. Was Max blushing?
“How wealthy are you?” I asked, not because I cared about his money, but because suddenly I was learning about pieces of Max that I didn’t know.
His gaze dropped, and he turned sheepish for a second. “Millions, Daze.”
Millions. Max Hamilton was a millionaire who’d spent the last two weeks riding around in a delivery van with me.
A millionaire who was asking me to marry him.
The money didn’t matter. It had never mattered to me. Not that Todd had it, and certainly not how rich Max was. What mattered was that I didn’t know. We’d been so close when Todd was working with him, and now…Now, I didn’t have any idea that MaineStems had become so successful.
“Daisy?” Max said, but it wasn’t until his finger brushed my shoulder that I broke from my trance.
“Sorry, I just…I had no idea. Todd said—” I broke off, feeling stupid. By now, I should know there wasn’t any reason to trust anything Todd had told me. “I just had no idea.”
And then his fingers were under my chin. “Do you trust me less now?”
“No, of course not.”
His gaze darkened. “Then marry me.”
Marry him.
Marry Max.
Get health insurance.
Get the McCormicks off my back.
Protect my baby.
Marry Max.
“God, Max,” I whispered, catching his big body ripple with the words. Was I really considering this? Marrying him for insurance? For safety. For stability.
Was it any less ridiculous than marrying Todd because I was pregnant with his baby? Any less ridiculous that I tried to convince myself it was for something more?
My stomach twisted and twisted, but Max’s soft and steady stare kept any knot from forming.
This gorgeous, kind man was on one knee for me.
To ask me to marry him. For purely practical reasons, I reminded myself, though that look in his eyes…
it was the one he’d tried to hide and the one I’d tried to ignore for the last four years.
“You know, Todd never got down on one knee,” I murmured, detouring to that less-than-fairy tale moment because it felt safer than this one.
That was just the icing on the disastrous cake.
He’d panicked when I told him about the baby, went out for a few hours, came back apologetic but reeking of alcohol, and then just…
decided. It wasn’t a proposal. It was a declaration.
Not of love or happiness or anything I would’ve hoped, but a declaration of duty.
I could practically hear his parents screaming at him inside his head.
“A baby outside of marriage, Todd? What were you thinking? How could you be so careless?”
“Because he’s always been careless, Mary. He was careless when he started with her, careless with his whole damn life, after everything we’ve done…”
I’d heard the way they spoke to him. The comments they’d make, even when I was standing right there. It was tragic the way they treated him. A justification for how he acted, but not an excuse.
“Daisy…”
I blinked, Max’s tortured face swimming back into focus.
He was still down on one knee, for me and my baby.
The perfect gentleman who deserved better than this—than his happy ever after becoming nothing more than an answer to a friend’s cry for help. Because that was all I was. A friend. A friend who was pregnant with another man’s baby.
“Max, I can’t ask you to do this.” I shook my head.
“You’re not asking, Daze. I’m asking you.”
“And what about you?” I blurted out and took the fork. It wasn’t an agreement. It was the safest time to take it without him thinking I was saying yes.
“What about me?” Max answered and slowly rose. Somehow, his standing only made things worse.
What about him? What about the man who towered over me, all heat and presence and perfection? What about the man who stepped in without asking? The man who gave without thinking? The man who thought—who was always thoughtful before acting?
The man who asked to marry me with a look in his eyes that felt like anything, everything, but charity? A look that felt like he wanted me.
No.
Wanting to help me. There was a difference. A very big difference.
“I mean you. Your life. Your…love life.” There were a hundred reasons my voice cracked at the end. A hundred I could and would list off before I’d ever admit to the kernel of expected jealousy that sprouted in my chest.
A shadow passed over his expression like a summer cloud. There and then gone. “I don’t have a love life, Daze.”
“Okay, maybe not now,” I acceded, burying the unwelcome kernel of happiness I felt knowing he wasn’t seeing anyone, and instead focusing on my guilt. “But…but you will. You’ll want to…”
“This doesn’t have to be forever.” That perfect curve of his jaw flexed.
Was anything? I caught myself before I spoke, my hand pressing a little tighter to my stomach. You are, little sprout. I will love you forever.
But this solution with Max came with an expiration date. It had to. Of course, it had to. Why would I think he meant our marriage to be forever?
“Just, you know, until the baby is here and—”
“Five months,” I plucked the date out of the fugue in my mind and then swallowed. “Then I’ll be back from maternity leave and be able to get insurance as an employee.” Or figure out another plan.
“Five months,” Max repeated, his agreement bringing goosebumps to my arms.
A warning that I was starting down this path. Five months. How different things would be then. I would have a baby. Be a mom. Be married to Max.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked quietly. This was already more than he should ever have to do, and more I wanted to accept. “You aren’t responsible for Todd or for—”
“Because I want to,” he said so fiercely, the words sent a shock wave of sincerity through the air, stopping me from speaking and clipping the thought right where it rooted in my brain. “I want to do this, Daze.”
Max’s fingers slid around mine, the fork still miraculously gripped in my palm as my heart turned and turned like a child spinning in circles.
“I want to marry you.”
“I guess we’re going to have to get married.”
Two proposals. Both because of the baby. But they couldn’t have been more different. Felt more different. Todd’s proposal was a postcard of what could be. A picture to look at and hope for. Max’s was a heady promise of everything I’d ever wanted.
“Daisy.” His voice broke through the fugue. And then his golden eyes. And his warm, strong fingers. “Marry me.”
I pressed my hand to my mouth, just barely able to hold back my heart from climbing out of my throat.
When I looked at Max, there was no reluctance, no regret, no hesitation in his offer, when that was all Todd made me feel.
With Max, it wasn’t logic or responsibility that hardened his jaw or clouded his stare.
It was something hotter. Heavier. Something that made my chest tighten and my core clench.
Something I shouldn’t have felt for him before, and something I definitely couldn’t afford to feel for him now.
“For five months.” My throat bobbed, the words floating like a buoy of defense at the top of my throat. “Only five months.” Setting the fork down, I extended my hand.
Max looked at it and then back up to me, the heat in his eyes turning to smoke.
“Five months,” he acknowledged and slowly wrapped his big hand around mine, swallowing it whole.
Countless times, he’d touched or held my hand over the last two weeks.
Helping me in and out of the truck. Showing me how to unpackage the flowers and arrange them.
So many times I’d felt the electric slide of his skin on mine, but never like this.
Never like this was the first spark that created the universe.