Her heartbeat stuttered. Her gaze flew back to his.
"Adelaide, these two weeks have shown me how perfect we are together." He opened the box to reveal a stunningly rare blue garnet set in...of all things...a tiny spoon ring design that replicated the spoon bracelet he'd given her all those years ago when he'd had to forge a gift for her with his own hands.
"Dempsey?" Her fingers trembled as she reached to touch it, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing. What she was hearing.
"It's not meant to replace your engagement ring. But I wanted to give you something special."
"I don't understand." She shook her head, overwhelmed by the generosity of the gift.
"We're best friends. We're even better lovers. And we're stronger together." He tugged the ring from the velvet backing for her and slid the box into his pocket. "This ring is my way of asking you to make our engagement a real one. Will you marry me?"
Her emotions tumbled over each other: hope, joy, love and- Wait. Had he even mentioned that part? Of course he must have. She just hadn't heard it in the same way she'd missed the pilot's preliftoff speech because she'd been marveling at how perfect a date this was. She hadn't been paying attention.
Her hands hovered beside the ring.
"Did you...?" She felt embarrassed. Flustered. She should leap into his arms and say yes. Any other woman would. But Adelaide had waited most of her life to hear those words and she didn't want to miss any of it. "I'm sorry. I was so mesmerized by the ring and the setting and-" She gestured to the balloon above them and the scenery below. "It's all so overwhelming. But are you saying you want to get married? For real?" Happy tears pooled in her eyes already. "I love you so much."
And then she did fling herself into his arms, tears spilling onto the beautiful silk collar of his tuxedo. But she was just so happy.
Only...he still hadn't said he loved her. Her declaration of love hung suspended like a balloon between them. In fact, Dempsey patted her back awkwardly now, as if that was his reply.
She hadn't missed the words in his proposal, she realized with a heart sinking like lead. He simply hadn't said them. She knew, even before she edged back and saw the expression on his face. Not bewildered, exactly. More...unsure.
It wasn't an expression she'd seen on his face in many years. Her Reynaud fiancé was used to getting what he wanted, and while he might want Adelaide for a bride, it wasn't for the same reason that she would have liked to be his wife.
"Adelaide. Think about the future we can have together. All the things we can achieve." He must have seen her expression shifting from joy to whatever it was she was feeling now.
Deflation.
"Marriage isn't about being a team or working well together." She wrapped a hand around one of the ropes tying the basket to the balloon, needing something to steady her without the solid strength of Dempsey Reynaud beside her.
"There are far more reasons than that."
"There's only one reason that I would marry. Just one." She stared out at the world coming closer to them now. Dempsey must have signaled Jim to take them back down.
Their date was over.
"The ring is one of a kind, Adelaide. Like you." His words reminded her of all she was giving up. All she would be turning her back on if she refused him now.
But she'd waited too long for love to accept half measures now. She owed herself better.
"We both deserve to be loved," she told him softly, not able to meet his gaze and feel the raw connection that was still mostly one-sided. "You're my friend, Dempsey. And I want that for you as much as I want it for me."
When the balloon touched down, it jarred her. Sent her tumbling into his arms before the basket righted itself.
She didn't linger there, though.
Her fairy tale had come to an end.
Twelve
Three days later, back home at the Hurricanes' training facility, Dempsey envied the guys on the practice field. After the knife in the gut that had been Adelaide's rejection, he would trade his job for the chance to pull on shoulder pads and hit the living hell out of a practice dummy. Or to pound out the frustration through his feet with wind sprints-one set after another.
Instead, he roamed the steaming-hot practice field and nitpicked performances while sweat beaded on his forehead. He blew his whistle a lot and made everyone else work their asses off. Fair or not, teams were built through sweat, and he'd played on enough teams himself to know you balanced the good times-the wins-with the challenges. And if the challenges didn't come on the field on Sunday, a good coach handed them up in practice.
"Again!" he barked at the receivers running long patterns in the heat. Normally, Dempsey focused on the full team as they practiced plays. But today he had taken over the receiver coach's job.
In a minute, he'd move on to the running backs, since he'd already been through all the defensive positions.
Adelaide had not publicly broken their engagement yet, but she had moved out of his house. Which shouldn't have surprised him after the epic fail of his proposal. He'd planned for the moment all week. Spent every spare second that he wasn't with his team figuring out how to make the night special. Yet it had fallen short of the mark for her.
Of course, they hadn't gotten to half of it. He'd ordered an outdoor dinner set up in the mountains with a perfect view of the sunset. He'd had a classical guitarist in place, for crying out loud, so they could dance under the stars.
And she hadn't even taken her ring.
Of all the things that had gone wrong that night, that bothered him the most, given how much thought he'd put into the design. Sure, he was to blame for not understanding that he could have scrapped the balloon, the limo and the guitarist to simply say, "I love you." Except, in all his planning, that had never occurred to him. He'd known what he felt for Addy was big. But was it love? He'd shut down that emotional part of himself long ago, probably on one of the nights his mother had locked him out of the house, claiming some irrational fault on his part, but mostly because she was high.
Love wasn't part of his vernacular.
That had worked out fine for him in the Reynaud house full of men. Caring was demonstrated through externals. A one-two punch for a greeting like what he and Jean-Pierre still exchanged. Covering up for Henri when his younger brother had broken a priceless antique. His first well-executed corporate raid had won the admiration of Gervais and Leon alike.
Dempsey understood that world. It was his world, and he'd handed it to Adelaide on a silver platter, but it hadn't been enough.
And now he'd lost her in every way possible. As his friend. His lover. His future wife.
Stalking away from the receivers, he was about to put the running backs to work when his brother Henri jogged over to match his steps.
"Got a second, Coach?" Henri used the deferential speech of a player, a sign of respect Dempsey had never had to ask for, but which had always been freely given even though Henri thought nothing of busting his chops off the field.
"I probably have one." He kept walking.
Henri kept pace.
"Privately?" he urged in a tone that bordered on less deferential. "Practice was supposed to end an hour ago."
Surprised, Dempsey checked his watch.
"Shit. Fine." He blew his whistle loud enough for the whole field to hear. "Thanks for the hard work today. Same time tomorrow."
A chorus of relieved groans echoed across the field. Dempsey changed course toward the offices. Henri still kept pace.
"You're killing the guys," Henri observed, his helmet tucked under one arm, his practice jersey drenched with sweat. "Any particular reason?"
They were back to being brothers now that practice was done and no one would overhear.
"We have a tough game on Sunday and our first two wins have not been as decisive as I would have liked." He halted his steps and folded his arms, waiting for Henri to spit out whatever was on his mind. "You have a problem with that?"
"I'm all about team building." Henri planted a cleat on the first row of bleachers. "But you've run them long every day this week. Morale is low. The guys are confused in the locker room. I know that's not what you're going for."
"Since when do you snitch on locker-room talk about me?" Dempsey shooed away one of the field personnel who came by to pick up a water cooler. He didn't need an audience for this talk.
"Only since you started acting like a coach with a chip on his shoulder instead of the supremely capable leader you've been the whole rest of my tenure with this team."