"Oh, hey, buddy." Val quickly stepped around the counter, holding a small ring pillow in his hand. He placed it on the ground where Harold's knee was aiming, then hooked one hand under his armpit. "Let me help you there, old man."
"This one's always watching out for me," Harold kidded, but with Val's assistance he successfully got down on one knee. He had one hand on his cane, keeping his balance, and the other hand extended toward Amara with the diamond ring. "Ruth Lillian Marie Alexandra McRoberts, ever since I first laid eyes on you at the Minute Clinic when we were both in line to get our flu shots, I said to myself…that's the girl for me. I'm going to grow old with her. And while I may have already been seventy-five when we met, you make me feel like I'm twenty-nine again. Ruthie baby, do me the biggest favor of my life and marry me."
"Wow, Harold." Amara was a bit taken aback by the entire thing, but there was clearly only one answer. "Absolutely I'll marry you."
"Really?" The old man's face lit up and he slipped the ring on her finger. Val helped him get back up to his feet and she looked down at the new ring adorning her finger. It really was beautiful, and she had no doubt that whoever Ruth was, she'd love it to.
It was weird to see it there on her ring finger and not feel completely horrified. While her parents had always shown her an amazing example of what marriage could look like, her own dating experiences had certainly soured her to the idea of any sort of long-term commitment and inevitable heartbreak. What her parents had was a beautiful fluke, but it was just that—a fluke. After all the bad dates she'd been on and times she'd put her whole heart on the line only to have it crushed, she wasn't sure that was ever something in the cards for her.
But the longing in her heart when she saw this ring on her finger made her wonder if she hadn't been lying to herself. Did she want commitment? Did she want marriage and romance and all the little trinkets and tokens that came along with it? Everything about her personality would have said no, and yet…it felt so warm against her skin.
Val slipped it off her finger just as quickly and popped it back in the box, then handed the ring box to Harold. "Sounds like this one is the winner," he told him. "I can't wait to hear how the real proposal goes."
Amara looked down at her bare finger, then back up at Val, who seemed completely clueless to the fact that he'd just ripped an engagement ring off her hand and given it away. Not that he had any clue what she'd been thinking—hell, she didn't even know what she was thinking. She quickly cleared her throat and dropped her hand. "Yeah, good luck, Harold. I can't imagine she'd say no to a proposal like that one."
Harold nodded and tucked the ring box into his coat pocket. "Thanks again, Valentino. You're a good man giving me the old five-finger discount like that."
Val laughed and shook his head. "Five-finger discount is for shoplifters. I'm giving this to you, you're not stealing it."
"That's not the story I'm going to tell Ruthie," Harold said with a wink. "She likes bad boys, you know."
"Good lord, Harold," Val replied, shaking his head but laughing none the same. "You crack me up. Get out of here and go propose."
Harold tipped his cap to them before heading for the exit. "Thanks to you, too, young lady."
Amara gave him a wave and watched him leave. When she turned back to look at Val, he was rearranging some rings inside the display case in front of him. "Did you just give him that ring for free?"
Not that she didn't think he would, but the man had just lost half his inventory in a break-in. Now was hardly the time to be giving away more inventory.
He didn't look up at her, but rather kept going with his task at hand. "Yeah. Harold's a good guy. He bought all his jewelry for his first wife from my parents over the years. She died about five years back, and he met Ruthie last year. It's good to see him smiling again." He finished and finally looked up at her, before locking the display case. "What did you want to see me about?"
She blinked, trying to remember. "Uh…"
"Or did you just want to see me?" His signature devilish grin slid across his face and reminded her of how irritated she actually was with him.
Amara pulled his note out of her pocket. "You wish. What the hell was this?"
He took the card from her and read it. "Oh, they misspelled my name. It's R-o-s-s-i. No y."
She snatched it back from him and huffed. "I'm not talking about the spelling, Val. I'm talking about the comment of us spending the night together. Do you know what the delivery man probably thought when he read this?"
Val laughed. "That we spent the night together? Spoiler alert…we did. But, hey, while you're here, I just heard from Officer Powell, and the police want to meet with us on Saturday morning for an update on the case."
"They found something?" She lifted her brows, wondering why she hadn't gotten a call.
He shrugged. "They wouldn't say over the phone, just said it was routine. I'm guessing they're going to tell us they tried and are giving up. They just assume insurance will cover the damages, and we'll all move on."
"Will insurance cover everything?" she asked, the earlier heat of her indignation wearing off at the subject change. How the heck did he do that so easily? "Like all the lost inventory and all of the lost sales?"
"Doubtful," he replied. "But we'll figure it out. Did you get a security system yet?"
"I sent in a few requests for quotes this morning," she admitted. "I'll follow up tomorrow during business hours. I slept most of today. How are you not tired?"
"If that's an invitation to go to bed with you, Mara…well, I'll consider it." He gave her an exaggerated wink.
She groaned. "You are so beyond aggravating. I have plans tonight that I'm already late for."
With that, she turned on her heel and headed out of the store. Glancing down at the time on her phone, she realized that she was definitely going to be late to meeting Nell at the diner, so she sent her a quick text to update her on her arrival time. Nell responded back with several knife emojis and a mind-blown emoji, which was her way of saying she was getting hangry.
She wasn't even sure why she'd stopped at the mall to confront Val when that hadn't even happened. Or had it? It was like everything in her brain turned to mush when he was around, and she hated the feeling. Except, she didn't really hate it at all, and that was what she really hated.
Chapter Six
Valentino
"Well, that was a complete waste of time," Val announced to no one in particular as the police officers assigned to his case had finished filing out of the conference room they had been meeting in.
He'd come all the way down to the station on a Saturday morning—Valentine's Day, his busiest day, no less—for an update on the robbery only to hear exactly what he'd expected. They had nothing. No leads. No footage. No witnesses. No trace at local pawn shops of someone trying to fence the materials. In fact, they told him that their best guess was that whoever had stolen it had already pawned it off to a fence out of Detroit and it was in half a dozen cities by now.