My hands cover my mouth.
I can't believe it.
I just can't believe it.
But since this is Kazeyuki who always talks in ways that his words are like a verbal Sudoku, and I've spent two years learning how to solve him—
I know exactly what this means, and all I can do is choke out the most important word ever.
“Y-Yes.”
How so very like Kazeyuki to once again take advantage of a situation to ask his question in a roundabout way.
"Yes, I'll marry you!"
And then I throw myself in his arms, the happiest girl in the world, because I'll find out how Kazeyuki Collington fell in love with me on our wedding—
The door suddenly opens, Emily about to step inside when she sees me in her boss's arms, and I turn to her tearily, saying, "Dr. Collington asked me to marry him, and I said yes."
Chapter Five
EMILY SHOULD HAVE BEENa party planner.
Kazeyuki knew this now with the kind of certainty he normally reserved for surgical diagnoses.
The girl would have been far better off organizing galas and weddings than working in his clinic answering calls and scheduling appointments. She was a natural, and the proof was everywhere he looked, because in a mere half hour, Emily had obtained permission from Konstantin to use the conference hall on the seventh floor, rallied maintenance to deck it out with last year's Valentine's Day props, commandeered an impressive lineup of quick-to-cook trays from the hospital kitchen that now filled the buffet table with the kind of smell that made even the post-op patients on the floor below send envious messages to the group chat, sourced a collection of vintage wine donated by various department heads who apparently kept such things in their offices for exactly this sort of occasion, and gathered everyone who was off duty into a room that was now pulsing with music and laughter and the particular energy of people who had been waiting for this to happen for a very long time.
All of it celebrating an engagement Kazeyuki had never asked for, to a girl he had never had feelings for.
This was fu—
He stopped himself in time, not liking the way the whole situation had him slipping up.
Insane.
That was all this was.
Insane.
And yet...
The panic and dread that this whirlwind affair should have dredged up had yet to make its appearance. He couldn't even say he was numb with shock. If anything, he was...
"Finally, it happens."
The voice came from behind him, and Kazeyuki knew right away, without turning, that this was the person he needed to talk to.
Anastase Mironescu.
As always, where his colleague went, desire-filled gazes followed. Antastase’s features had a remarkable resemblance to gentlemen most often immortalized in Renaissance paintings. But what really made Kazeyuki’s friend stand out in person—and in his profession, too—was the darkness of his gaze. It wasn’t the type that swallowed one whole, but instead it hypnotized, the darkness luring out the truth if not from one's lips then from their own eyes, the windows to their own souls unlocking of their own accord.
“Congratulations, Kazeyuki.”
The words were spoken lightly, but the way Anastase gazed at him was not.
If Kazeyuki was the prince in a lab coat, Anastase was the villain in one. He was one of the country's foremost experts in bothpsychiatry and psychology, his success rooted in his occasionally unorthodox way of dismantling lies. The only reason he still hadn’t his license revoked was because of the protection that came from being a part of one of Romania’s wealthiest families, not to mention the most secretive.
And it was also because of that Kazeyuki had asked his friend to serve as his personal safety check at work.