Proposal in Room 309 Read Online Free PDF

anymore.’
    Ben didn’t say anything so Joely just carried on. ‘There’s the argument that marriage would make us ’official’. We could skywrite it or pay for a billboard and that would be just as much of a public declaration. ‘
    Ben ran his fingers up and down the stem of his flute and just kept quiet.
    ‘Say something, dammit.’
    ‘Yeah, there are a couple of good reasons why marriage has changed but it’s still a choice that we can make. We could say that, despite the fact that we don’t need to do this, we still want to. We can choose to make this commitment, to take a chance on each other.’
    Under the table Joely’s hands rubbed her thighs. ‘We don’t need to make it legal, Ben…why can’t you understand that? Love is an action, not a piece of paper. It’s commitment and trust and belief and a desire to make it work. It doesn’t need anything else.’
    ‘So, if it’s all those things why should having a piece of paper matter? Why can’t we have all that and still be married?’
    Oh damn, she didn’t have an answer to that. ‘I…I…I we just can’t!’’
    ‘That’s a weak argument, Jo and you know it. You’re letting your childhood issues around getting married cloud your perceptions… I am not your father and you are not your mother and we make our own choices and live with the consequences thereof.’
    She knew that, especially since every choice she made was to be the exact opposite of her flaky parents. And like her parents she and Ben could make some really poor decisions in the name of love. If they stayed as they were, which was pretty damn perfect as far as she was concerned, nothing could go wrong…
    ‘Why fix it if it’s not broken?’ Joely quietly asked him.
    The scariest thing about loving someone, being in love, about commitment, was the uncertainty. She knew, as a doctor, and better than most, there were no guarantees in life, but in this she did want something. Just a little guarantee that her heart wouldn’t get smashed. Her heart had taken enough of a battering every time her parents split up, each time she had to say goodbye to another step parent or sibling.
    ‘Why not shoot for more? Bigger? Better?’ Ben countered.
    She stopped fiddling with her linen serviette and made herself look up at Ben, his grey eyes shuttered. ‘If I say “no, I don’t want to get married” is that a deal breaker? Will it change something fundamental between us?’
    A muscle in Ben’s jaw ticked. ‘You know me better than that, Joely. And I could ask you the same thing - if I say I want to get married, is that a deal breaker?’
    Joely closed her eyes. Was it? She prepared to risk losing Ben if she said that it was. Her heart, and every fibre of her being, rebelled but her head insisted that they were just delaying the inevitable. Love didn’t last forever…
    ‘So tell me, Joely,’ Ben asked, forearms on the table between them, ‘who don’t you trust? Me or yourself?’
    Now there was a question for the ages and one she didn’t have an answer for. Joely took an anxious sip of her champagne and lifted miserable eyes to Ben’s. ‘I don’t want to discuss this anymore.’
    ‘Ok…when can we discuss it?’
    Never? Never sounded like an excellent time. ‘I don’t know…I don’t want to think about it.’
    ‘Well, I am thinking about it. I want to get married, Joely…not today, not tomorrow but sometime in the near future. I want you to be my wife and I need you to start wrapping your head around it.’
    Joely felt a rush of anger and welcomed it. It was so much easier to deal with than feeling at sea and scared. ‘So, how I feel doesn’t factor into it?’
    Ben raked his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘Of course it does, dammit, but your feelings are based on fear, based on your parents’ many crappy marriages.’
    ‘You weren’t raised within a Disney family set up either, Ben!’
    ‘I know that and that’s why I know that we can do