Beautiful Stranger by Zoey Dean Read Free Book Online

quickly.
    “Stop!
Por favor!
”
    Eduardo’s voice was so plaintive that she did stop. A moment later, he was by her side, leading her to a side doorway of the Barnes & Noble superstore, which was shielded from the crowd. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I thought this would be fun.”
    “My ass it’s fun,” she hissed. “This is humiliating, that’s what it is.”
    “Be patient. It will be memorable, I believe.”
    “I’ll need a hypnotist to erase it from my memory!” Sam was getting pissed, as much at herself as at Eduardo. Why was she just sticking around and letting this whole disaster unfold on his terms? Why wasn’t she being what she’d told Anna to be so many times: an active heroine, taking control of her life?
    “I hope you won’t have to.” Eduardo lifted his right hand and held it with his fist balled, palm up. Then he opened his fist. In it was a small navy blue jewelry box. “For you.”
    A kiss-off gift. This was the lowest of the low. Her father, back when he’d been known for hitting on the hottest starlets of all his movies—back before he’d married Poppy (and long before he’d wisely kicked her out of the house for cheating on him)—had been famous for kiss-off gifts. There was a jewelry store in the Beverly Center that specialized in them. They were expensive baubles so that the dumper could feel better about punting the dumpee. It was actually something of a Hollywood tradition.
    Eduardo had just dropped another notch in her estimation. At least she wasn’t crying. She was too pissed for tears.
    “Keep it,” she shot back. Up went one of her hands, in case he wanted to press the box on her.
    “Goddammit, Sam. Why do you have to be so obstinate? No. Don’t answer that question. Just open it.”
    For the first time all afternoon, Eduardo grinned. For the first time since the wrap party for her father’s movie, Sam felt the tiniest bit of hope for the future. Then, before she could open the box, Eduardo went down on one knee.
    One knee. Hmmm. While it certainly was possible that Peruvian dump-your-girlfriend rituals differed from American dump-your-girlfriend rituals, Sam kind of doubted it involved the one-knee thing. The one-knee-thing meant …
    But no. It couldn’t possibly mean that. Unless …
    Hesitantly, she took the velvet box with two shaking hands and opened it. Inside was a ring with a single immaculately cut diamond. It wasn’t the largest Sam had ever seen. Her father had given Poppy a stone the size of Rhode Island. But this stone was startling in its whiteness.
Star
tling was the right word for it. It looked like a miniature gleaming evening star.
    “My beautiful Samantha. There is no graceful way to ask this question. My fear that you will reject me knows no bounds. It took all my courage to find the nerve to ask, and now I fear I cannot. Yet I shall ask anyway, because of how much I love you. Will you be my beautiful Samantha forever?”
    “Umm, Eduardo?”
    “Yes?”
    “Can you boil that down to one simple sentence?”
    Eduardo smiled and took Sam’s hand in both of his. She realized that her hands were still trembling. “Will you marry me?”
    Suddenly people all around them, some of the same people who’d been listening to the musicians, were applauding and cheering. Sam looked around and realized they’d drawn a crowd. An elderly Asian couple was snapping photos. A bald girl on Rollerblades was taking video.
    Without waiting for her answer, Eduardo leaped out of the doorway back to where the band and the crowd could see him. “I asked!” he shouted. “Now help her answer.
Sí, sí, sí, sí! Sí, sí, sí, sí!
”
    The band struck up a new song, and the crowd took up the chant. Six, a dozen, fifty, a hundred people, all shouting, “
Sí!
”
    “So what do you say?” Sam felt Eduardo’s arms wrap around her. “
Sí?
”
    In a town where storytelling turned on reversals—where the expectations of the viewer were flipped by the