The Summer Proposal by Vi Keeland by Vi Keeland

“I still have work to do.”

I’d been back in the office for four days but had barely dug out of the backlog of emails to answer, reports to review, and calls to return.

“It will all be here tomorrow. I want to hear about your time with Max.”

“I told you all about my time with Max on Monday morning. Remember, you were in my office waiting for me at six thirty in the morning with coffee you’d spiked with RumChata?”

“Yes, but you told me what you wanted to talk about. Now I want to hear what you don’t want to talk about. And don’t even tell me there’s nothing else on your mind. Because you’re three for three on the Georgia scale of something’s bugging you. Your hair is up in a bun by nine AM. You only do that when you have a problem you can’t solve. You’re checking the time on your phone like you’re waiting for someone to flip the switch on the electric chair, and you have that upward inflection when speaking.”

“What upward inflection?”

“At the end of every sentence you raise your voice like you’re asking a question, when you’re not.”

“There’s no way that I do that?” I covered my mouth. “Oh my God, I just did it.”

Maggie laughed. “You only do those things when you have a problem you can’t solve.”

“Maybe I have a work problem that’s bothering me.”

Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “Okay. What is it?”

“I, uh…” Drawing a complete blank, I shook my head, pulled open my desk drawer, and yanked out my purse. “Fine. But we can’t overdo it. I’ll have to get in extra early tomorrow to make up for all the things I should be doing now.”

Maggie grinned. “Of course.”



• • •



“I wasn’t supposed to grow feelings for Max. He was only supposed to be my distraction.” Hiccup.

Maggie smirked. “I knew you were lying when I asked you on Monday if you were falling for him. You oversold the ‘Nah, we’re just having a good time.’ If you had debated my question for thirty-six hours and then answered, I might’ve believed it.”

“But I love Gabriel. I’d decided to marry him.”

“You can love someone but not be in love with them. I love you, but I don’t want to wake up to you every morning.”

“That’s different.”

She shrugged. “Not really. You want to know what I think?”

I pouted. “No.”

“That’s a shame. Because you’re going to hear it anyway. I think you spend so much time analyzing every decision that you’ve forgotten to listen to your heart. Things in your life have changed—and those changes were started by Gabriel. Let’s not forget that.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “I’m so confused. And Max is moving at the end of the summer.”

“So? He’s a professional athlete. He’s probably on the road for most of the hockey season anyway. He has to live near his team to practice and go to work, but why couldn’t he be bicoastal and spend the offseason here, if things worked out? You have a shop in Long Beach, California. You could work out of that, if you wanted, at least for some of the season. You’re self-employed, Georgia. Hell, you could move the entire damn operation to wherever he is.”

“You’re making my head spin.”

Maggie smiled. “I’m not saying you need to do any of those things. I just mean that him leaving doesn’t have to mean the end.”

“But that’s what we agreed to.”

“And Aaron agreed to love me forever and not covet thy neighbor.” She shrugged. “Shit changes.”

“I don’t even know if Max would want more.”

“He hasn’t given you any indication that he might be interested in something longer than a summer fling?”

“Well…on the last morning of our mini vacation, he asked me if I thought things between me and Gabriel would’ve worked out long distance, if he hadn’t broken things off before he left. For some reason, I thought he might be asking because he was moving to California. But that could just have been wishful thinking.”

“Hmmm…” Maggie sipped her wine. “I bet he was. With men, our first instinct is usually right. I know that’s hard for someone like you to believe, because you analyze problems from fifty different angles, but usually our intuition sees things right in front of us pretty clearly.”

“Even if I was right, and somehow we were able to work it out and try the long distance thing. What about Gabriel?”

“What about him?”

“He’s going to come home in six months. What if he comes home and says he wants to be together, that his time away made him realize what he really wants in life?”

“What about what you really want in life? Let me ask you something. Tomorrow morning, you wake up and find out you won the lottery. You grab your cell phone and you call…who? Who are you calling? I mean, after me, of course.”

“I don’t play the lotto.”

Maggie shook her head. “Work with me here. Pretend you played the lotto. Close your eyes for a minute.”

I took a deep breath before shutting them.

“Okay… You climb out of bed. You flick on the news while you’re getting ready, and you hear the anchorman say there was only one winning ticket for the billion-dollar lottery—the largest in history. And it was purchased at the same store you purchased yours. Then he reads the numbers: five, fourteen, one, thirty-one, three, twenty-five. You run and get your ticket to double check, but you know those are the numbers you played because it’s my birthday, your birthday, and your mom’s birthday. Your hand is shaking while you confirm you’re the winner. You grab your cell phone and you call…”