Monarch Beach Read Online Free

whole body quivered.
    Sometimes I thought he was just filling his days off. I would leave for New York, and he would kiss me good-bye at the airport and find a new girl to hang out with in Pacific Heights. The week before Labor Day he proved me wrong. It was a Tuesday evening. I had worked all day at the boutique and was in the kitchen nibbling popcorn. My mother was at her book club and Rosemary was upstairs, turning down the beds. I heard a knock at the back door. I went outside and turned the corner toward the front of the house. Andre was sitting on a bench holding three bunches of roses. Beside him were a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
    “Pick a bouquet,” he said as I approached.
    “Why?”
    “One of them holds a prize. A prize for me, but I want you to pick.” He smiled. His green eyes were like emeralds in the evening light. He wore a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and navy slacks.
    “Okay.” I stood uncertainly in front of the roses.
    “Pick this one,” Andre said.
    I took the bunch of roses he offered. “Why this one?”
    “Look inside.”
    I undid the tissue paper and found a small red box sitting at the base of the rose stems.
    “Open it,” Andre said quietly.
    I opened the box. Inside was a white gold ring with a small, square diamond.
    “You are my prize, Amanda. Will you marry me?” Andre took my hand, which was shaking, and put the ring on my finger.
    “Why do you want to marry me?”
    “You only get to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Not why,” Andre told me.
    “Before I answer yes or no,” I replied, trying to sound like an adult, “I have to know why. I don’t have a brilliant career. I’m not sexy.”
    Andre put his finger on my lips and kept it there till I stopped talking.
    “In California I have met a dozen women. They all have breasts out to here”—Andre stuck his hands out in front of him—“and blond hair down to here”—he touched my back—“but they have nothing up here.” He put a finger on my forehead. “You have hair like the Mona Lisa, eyes like a tiger, and up here”—he touched my forehead again—“you are an angel.”
    I studied the small diamond on my finger. I looked at Andre, kneeling in front of me like a medieval knight. I wanted to believe he thought I was beautiful, but when I looked in the mirror I saw brown curly hair that frizzed up in the summer. My eyes were green but they were placed too close together, and though I was tall I had a neck like a giraffe.
    “But we’re so young. We hardly know each other,” I said, trying another avenue. My whole body wanted to say yes, but somewhere inside me I knew a sophisticated Frenchman wanted more than a twenty-two-year-old virgin.
    “Getting to know each other will be an adventure. You make me feel happy, Amanda. You give me something to look forward to when I am working.”
    I sighed. He almost had me convinced. I had to bring up the one subject we had ignored: my money. “You know, I’m not really rich. All my money is in trust and I only get an allowance. I don’t see any real money till I’m thirty.”
    Andre did not take his eyes off my face. He stayed kneeling and he held on to my hand. He chose his words carefully.
    “Amanda, I know you were raised like a princess, and I will not be able to support you like that yet. But one day I will have my own restaurant. I promise I will never ask to borrow money from you, and we will never live on your income.”
    We were both silent. I smelled the scent of three dozen roses. My parents had married after six weeks and they lasted twenty-three years.
    “Yes,” I said, nodding.
    Andre stood up and kissed me. He crushed the roses against my chest and he held my hand so tightly my new ring left an indentation on my finger.
    *   *   *
    We were married at Thanksgiving in my father’s library. It was too soon after my father’s death to hold a big wedding, and I didn’t want to wait. Since the day Andre proposed, I was a bundle of