Tribute

hell you’d want me.”
    “I must be crazy.” He lifted her hand, kissed it. In the spirit of the moment, Spock kissed her ankle. “Every few days, I’m going to just say, ‘Well?’ When I do, you can give me your current position on my proposal.”
    “The key word is ‘well’?”
    “That’s right. Otherwise, I won’t bring it up. You just carry the ring around, and you think about it. Deal?”
    “All right,” she said after a moment. “All right.”
    He picked up his glass, tapped it to hers. “Why don’t we call out for Chinese?”
    At their feet Spock did a happy dance.
    SHE DIDN’T KNOW how he did it, she honestly didn’t know. The man had proposed to her. He’d presented her with a ring so utterly perfect for her, so completely right, because he’d thought of her . Of who and what she was when he’d chosen it. Her reaction, her reluctance— be honest, Cilla, she added, while screwing the copper knobs on her cabinets—her stuttering horror at his proposal had to have hurt him.
    And yet, after he’d said his piece, after he’d made his deal, he’d ordered butterfly shrimp and kung pao chicken. He’d eaten as if his stomach hadn’t been in knots—as hers had been—then had suggested unwinding with the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (short season, summer replacement).
    And sometime during episode three, just as she’d begun to relax enough to think about something other than the ring in her pocket, he’d taken her under with slow, shimmering kisses, with lazy, lingering caresses. By the time she’d come out of the sexual haze, the ring was all she could think about.
    Nearly twelve hours later, and she still couldn’t get the damn thing off her mind.
    She didn’t believe in marriage. Simple as that. Even living together was fraught with pitfalls. For God’s sake, she’d barely gotten used to him telling her he loved her, to believing it. She hadn’t finished her house, or opened her business. She’d gotten as far as she had while being harassed for months.
    Didn’t she have enough on her mind? Didn’t she have enough to do without having an engagement ring weighing down her pocket, and the worry of not knowing when Ford might say, “Well?” preying on her mind?
    “Hello?”
    “Cilla?”
    At the voices, Cilla simply banged her head repeatedly on the cabinet door. Perfect, she thought, just perfect. Patty and Ford’s mother. Icing on her crumbling cake.
    “Here you are,” Patty said. “Hard at work.”
    Cilla watched as two pairs of eyes zoomed straight in on the third finger of her left hand. And watched two pairs of eyes cloud with disappointment. Great, now she was responsible for bringing sorrow into the lives of two middle-aged women.
    “We were hoping you’d have a few minutes to talk about the menu for the party,” Patty began. “We thought we could do at least some of the shopping for you, store the supplies since you don’t have a place for them yet.”
    You were hoping for more than that, Cilla thought. “Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, he asked me. Yes, the ring is absolutely beautiful. No, I’m not wearing it. I can’t.”
    “It doesn’t fit?” Penny asked.
    “I don’t know. I can’t think about it. I can’t not think about it. It was damn sneaky of him,” she added with some heat. “I appreciate— No, I don’t just appreciate the two of you coming here like this, but I’m trying to understand why you would. I’ve got enough on my mind already, enough on my head, and he adds this. I don’t even know if he listened to what I said, if he’s getting the reasons why . . .” She trailed off.
    He doesn’t listen , Angie had said of their father, not when he’s decided to do something. He pretends to listen, then does what he was going to do anyway.
    “Oh, God. God, isn’t that perfect? He’s Dad. He’s Dad with a layer of nerd. Solid, steady, chipping away so patiently, you don’t even know you’ve had your shields hacked down until you’re defenseless. It’s the type.”
    “You’re not in love with a type, you’re in love with a man,” Penny corrected. “Or you’re not.”
    Ford’s mother, Cilla reminded herself. Be careful there. “I love him enough to give him time to consider all the reasons this won’t work. I don’t want to hurt him.”
    “Of course you’ll hurt him. He’ll hurt you. It’s all part of being connected to someone. I wouldn’t want a man I couldn’t hurt. I sure as hell