The Proposal Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Wedding Date

  “What a charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel. I couldn’t put The Wedding Date down. I love a good romance and this delivered from the first page to the last . . . One of the best books I’ve read in a while.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay

  “[An] effervescent, witty, and sexy novel, which serves as a reminder that romantic fiction doesn’t need to be a guilty pleasure—it can just be a straight-up pleasure . . . sometimes it’s liberating to read a book not just for a happy ending, but for the joy it contains on every single page.”

  —Nylon

  “Invokes a nostalgia that’s often reserved for Terry McMillan novels . . . a roller coaster of a romance.”

  —Bitch Media

  “The Wedding Date brims with personality. It’s funny, deeply honest, and above all, truly swoony—the kind of all-consuming romance where you hold your breath with delight as two wonderful people start to find each other, like the best possible version of real life. We can’t wait to read more from Jasmine Guillory.”

  —Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, bestselling

  authors of The Royal We

  “[An] incredibly delicious meet-cute . . . Guillory keeps this contemporary romance fresh with well-drawn multicultural characters navigating the perils of long-distance relationships.”

  —Booklist

  “Will charm rom-com fans.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  TITLES BY JASMINE GUILLORY

  The Wedding Date

  The Proposal

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Jasmine Guillory

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK and BERKLEY are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Guillory, Jasmine, author.

  Title: The proposal / Jasmine Guillory.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018022593| ISBN 9780399587689 (paperback) | ISBN 9780399587696 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.U48553 P76 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022593

  First Edition: October 2018

  Cover art and design by Vikki Chu

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To my dad, Paul Guillory.

  You have always believed in me.

  Thanks for raising me to believe in myself.

  Contents

  Praise for Jasmine Guillory

  Titles by Jasmine Guillory

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Throughout this publishing process, I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude for so many people and their kindness, generosity, and willingness to help. I’ve gotten advice, assistance, and support from countless people, without whom this book wouldn’t exist.

  I couldn’t have dreamed of finding as wonderful a publishing home as Berkley. Cindy Hwang, thank you for being a fantastic editor and champion. Kristine Swartz, Megha Jain, Jessica Brock, Fareeda Bullert, Jin Yu, Erin Galloway—thank you for everything you’ve done for me and my books. I’m grateful for you every day. Marianne Grace, Emma Reh, Vikki Chu, and Rita Frangie, thank you for making sure my books look amazing, inside and out. Lauren Monaco, Andrew Dudley, and the entire Berkley Sales team, you’re all superstars. I’m thrilled to work with all of you.

  Everyone should be so lucky as to have an agent as good as Holly Root. Thank you so much to you and everyone at Root Literary.

  So many writers have shared their time and knowledge with me. Amy Spalding and Akilah Brown, your guidance has been invaluable to me. Thank you for responding to all of the texts and IMs and emails, for talking me down and for pumping me up. I will forever be grateful for Roxane Gay, Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan, Ruby Lang, Sara Zarr, Melissa Baumgart, Tayari Jones, Robin Benway, Caitlin Cruz, Nicole Cliffe, Daniel Ortberg, Laura Turner, Jami Attenberg, Stephanie Lucianovic, Samantha Powell, Nicole Chung, Rainbow Rowell, and Alexis Coe. All of you have helped me in countless ways.

  Rachel Fershleiser and Margaret H. Willison, your enthusiasm for books in general, and my books in particular, is the absolute best. Thank you for being you.

  My friends are the most wonderful people in the world. Janet Goode, I love you so much. Melissa Sladden and Jina Kim, thank goodness we found each other. Simi Patnaik and Nicole Clouse, I have no idea what I would do without you both. So many others have loved and supported me in so many ways: Jill, Katie, and Sally Vizas, Lisa McIntire, Sarah Mackey, Julian Davis Mortenson, Nathan Cortez, Kyle Wong, Ryan Gallagher, Sarah Tiedeman, Toby Rugger, Leslie Gross, Kate Leos, Lyette Mercier, Joy Alferness, Nanita Cranford, and Laurie Baker.

  I owe so many thanks to Wellesley College and the entire Wellesley community, but especially to Colleen Richards Powell, Korrie Xavier, and Marthine Satris.

  I would be nothing without my family. My parents, Paul and Donna Guillory, filled our home with books and taught me by example the joy of reading. My sister, Sasha Guillory, who I read to and who read to me. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who love me to pieces. Thank you for everything.

  Natalie Stewart Cortez, I hate that you aren’t here to read this book, but I try every day to live up to your memory. You found joy and laughter in life, even during the hard times, you fought for what you believed in, and most of all, you loved and loved and loved. May we all have people to love us as much as the world loved you.

  Chapter One

  . . . . . . .

  Nik Paterson looked around at the perfect Los Angeles day: clear blue sky, bright green baseb
all field, warm sun shining down on the thousands of people with her at Dodger Stadium. There was only one thought on her mind: when can I get out of here?

  Fisher was next to her, his blond man bun golden in the sun, laughing as he drank warm beer to celebrate his birthday. He and his buddies were talking about lifting, or their latest auditions, or their upcoming car purchases—all of the things his friends always talked about, all of the things Nik couldn’t care less about. If she’d known this birthday outing was going to include a bunch of Fisher’s friends, she would have at least gotten one of her girlfriends to come along so she would have someone to talk to.

  Although to be fair, it was possible Fisher had told her his friends were coming and she hadn’t been paying attention. She tended not to pay that much attention when Fisher talked, but then, she hadn’t been dating him for the past five months for his conversational skills.

  Nik looked back up at the scoreboard and sighed. It was still only the fifth inning; she probably had at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half, more of this.

  She didn’t have anything against baseball, exactly. It was just that she’d rather be spending this beautiful spring day at home with her laptop and a glass of bourbon on the rocks than outside at a baseball stadium with a warm beer. But when the hot dude you were sleeping with wanted to go to a Dodgers game for his birthday, you sucked it up and went along with him and his bros.

  She sighed again and reached for her phone. Maybe she could get some work done as she sat there.

  Just as she was starting to make some actual progress on a draft of an article, Fisher nudged her hard.

  “Nik! Put your phone down, you can’t miss this!” He threw his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. She pressed save and tucked her phone back in her pocket. His favorite baseball player must be coming up to bat or something.

  She looked down at the field, but nothing was going on there. She followed Fisher’s pointed finger and looked up at the scoreboard, just in time to see on the screen:

  NICOLE: I LOVE YOU. WILL YOU MARRY ME? FISHER.

  She turned to Fisher, her mouth wide open.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  To her horror, he dropped down onto one knee, on top of the peanut shells that carpeted the concrete, dangerously close to the puddle of spilled beer.

  Oh God. He had a ring box in his hand.

  “Nikole.” He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and opened the ring box. She averted her eyes. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world?”

  Was she asleep? This definitely felt like a nightmare.

  They’d only been dating for five months! That he loved her was news to her—he’d certainly never said that before—but a proposal? He didn’t even know how to spell her name!

  She tried to put on a smile, but she’d never had the best poker face—except, strangely, when she was actually playing poker. Not even his best friends would call Fisher perceptive, but even he could tell something was off with his happy moment.

  “Nik, did you hear me? You’re just standing there. You haven’t even put the ring on!”

  “I don’t . . .” She cleared her throat and tried to talk in a low voice, so the whole damn stadium couldn’t tell what was going on. “It’s just that we’ve never discussed this. We aren’t really in a place to . . . I didn’t . . . I just wish you’d brought this up before . . . before now.”

  “Are you saying no?”

  He was still on one knee, good God.

  “I’m saying this isn’t really the place to have this conversation.”

  He just stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Are you saying no?” he repeated.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I’m trying not to say that out loud so everyone can hear me.”

  She was still hoping this was some sort of a joke. That any minute, he would reveal this was for a commercial or a reality show or something, and they would all laugh and go back to not paying attention to the game.

  “Come on, Nik,” Fisher said. Why wouldn’t he stand up? “We’re great together! Live a little! Give us a shot!”

  Live a little??? Was he approaching marriage like he would a spontaneous trip to Palm Springs for the weekend?

  “Fisher. Don’t do this.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.” He snapped the ring box closed, stood up, and tossed his head. The head toss didn’t work as well when his hair was in the bun. “Rejecting me in public! On my birthday! What kind of a person are you?”

  He stormed off and ran up the stadium stairs. So she guessed this wasn’t a joke then.

  She looked at his bros, and his bros looked at her. They shook their heads like they were disappointed in her, turned, and filed out of the row after him.

  Which left Nik alone to face the forty-five thousand pairs of eyes on her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Carlos nudged his sister Angela as the blond dude and his bros stalked up the stairs and out of the stadium.

  “Now I know what to tell your boyfriend not to do.”

  Angela rolled her eyes.

  “Nice try, but I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Damn. She consistently refused to let him meet guys she was dating, so he was reduced to trying to trick her into admitting she had a boyfriend. Either he never managed to catch her off guard enough to admit it, or she’d never had a boyfriend since he started trying this. He was betting on the former.

  Granted, he never told Angie anything about the women he went out with, either, but that was different. He hadn’t dated anyone seriously in years, and none of the women he had minor interludes with these days mattered enough to meet his sister.

  “You have one good point,” Angela said. “Anyone dating me should definitely not do that.” Angela’s hand gestures got bigger as she talked. “She said they hadn’t discussed it. Who proposes to someone if they haven’t discussed it? Especially in public?”

  He looked back down at the woman—Nicole—now alone in her row. She’d sat back down and was typing something on her phone. The sun picked out the golden highlights in her dark curly hair. She was doing a very good job of pretending the whole stadium wasn’t talking about her.

  “I feel so bad for her.” He couldn’t believe she hadn’t jumped up to flee the building. The game had started back up again, but no one was watching. Everyone was looking at her. Including Carlos.

  “So do I,” Angela said.

  Nicole twirled one of her curls around her finger and pretended to watch the game. Carlos realized he was staring at her and forced himself to look away.

  He turned to Angela and shook his head.

  “I get trying to make a big romantic gesture and all, and wanting a surprise, but . . .”

  “Deciding to spend your life together shouldn’t be a surprise,” Angela said. “It should be something the two of you talk about first!”

  “Oh, hey, speaking of,” he said. “Did I tell you Drew proposed to his girlfriend a few days ago?”

  She laughed.

  “Really? That’s fantastic. I never would have thought a year ago that your friend Drew would be engaged.” She looked up at the JumboTron, and then at Carlos. “She did say yes, right?”

  He laughed.

  “She did. But then, they’d talked about it first.”

  Carlos looked back at the woman two rows down, who had not said yes. She was aggressively not looking at anyone around her. Her hair moved in the breeze that blew through the stadium, and her dark brown skin glowed in the sun. He’d only seen her face briefly up on the JumboTron, until he’d realized that this real-life drama was going on just ten feet below him, but he’d seen a striking face, with big dark eyes and bright red lips. He wondered how long she was going to stay at her seat. She probably hadn’t wanted to leave ri
ght away for fear of running into the man-bun guy, which made sense. But if he knew anything about the way things happened in L.A., if she sat here too long, she was in danger of . . .

  Yep, there it was. The camera crew.

  He poked his sister. She looked down and saw the problem immediately.

  “Oh my God, what a nightmare,” she said.

  “We’ve got to save her,” he said.

  “How do you propose to do that? Pun not intended.”

  “Follow my lead.” He stood up and made his way out of their row, Angie right behind him.

  He walked down the wide stadium stairs, his eyes on the field. When he got two rows down, he paused and glanced to the side. I hope this works, he thought, before he went in.

  “Nicole? Nicole, it is you!” he said, loud enough that not only she and the entire camera crew heard but also the other rows around them all turned to look. “Angela, look, it’s Nicole! We haven’t seen you for . . . my God, how many years has it been?”

  Angela took up his prompt as Carlos pushed the camera crew aside to get to Nicole.

  “At least five years, Carlos, it’s got to be? Nicole, how are you?” His sister threw her arms around the grinning woman, and whispered something in her ear before the embrace ended.

  “It’s so great to see you after all this time!” Angela said. She looked around with a huge smile on her face, and appeared to notice the camera crew for the first time. “Oh my goodness, are we interrupting something? I am so sorry, guys!” She smiled at the three men who had surrounded Nicole up until about thirty seconds before, with that wide-eyed look that had never failed to make men fall at her feet. “We haven’t seen each other for so long, imagine running into you here.”

  “Oh wow, how do you know each—”

  Carlos stepped in front of the guy with the camera. If the dude got aggressive, well, Carlos was pretty sure he had at least four inches and thirty pounds on him.

  “We were just heading to get more beer and Dodger Dogs, want to come with?”