Yesterday's Embers (Clayburn Novels Book 3) by Raney Deborah

Author:Raney, Deborah [Raney, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Raney Day Press
Published: 2016-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

“Ooh, what about this one?” Mickey bent over the jewelry case and tapped a pink fingernail on the glass. She’d confessed that she paid thirty dollars for a manicure just for the occasion.

Doug shrugged. “It’s nice.”

She looked up at him over one shoulder. “But you don’t like it?”

“It’s whatever you want, Mick. You’re the one who’s going to be wearing it.”

“For the rest of my life.”

Why did those words unsettle him?

Because the rest of Kaye’s life was so short.

He put a possessive hand on the small of Mickey’s back, reminding himself who he was with. Mickey looked beautiful today, her hair long and shiny around her shoulders. He was proud to have her on his arm. If she’d had any idea how beautiful she was, she would surely have thought herself out of his league. Instead she was as down-to-earth as they came. He liked that about her. She was the best of all worlds. And he was blessed to be here shopping for a ring to place on her finger.

“Have you found anything you’d like to try on?” The sales associate who’d first waited on them was back after helping another customer.

Mickey dismissed her sweetly. “Not yet, thanks.”

The young woman spoke to Doug over Mickey’s head. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

“Thanks, we will.”

When she went to greet another customer, Mickey elbowed Doug. “They’re all so expensive,” she whispered.

He’d been thinking the same thing, but told her what he thought she’d want to hear. “You’re worth it. You pick out what you like. Within reason…”

“I don’t think anything in this case is within reason, Doug.”

“Well, you’ve got to have a ring. We need rings.” He never had put his wedding band—the one Kaye had placed on his finger thirteen years ago—back on since that day he’d taken it off at the bowling alley. He’d tucked it away in his dresser drawer with some other keepsakes. But his finger still bore an indention from the ring. He rubbed at the band of white skin encircling his tanned, leathery hands. He wasn’t sure if he should tell Mickey that the money for their rings would probably come from what was left of Kaye’s and Rachel’s life insurance, after the funeral costs, of course.

He brushed off the morbid thoughts. “You need a wedding ring,” he said again.

Mickey held out her left hand. “It doesn’t have to be a diamond though, Doug. What if I lost it out in the garden?”

“You’d wear it to garden in?” He wondered where she thought she was going to garden. But they hadn’t had the where-will-we-live conversation yet.

“Probably not, but what if I forgot? What if it slipped off in a bag of manure and got buried with a barberry bush or something?”

He laughed. “You sound like you’ve already got it all planned out.”

“No, but if we spent two thousand dollars on a ring”—she nodded toward the jewelry case where that was one of the lower price tags—“I’d be scared to ever wear it.”

“Well…what then?”

“We could just get wedding bands.

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