I want to become your wife because I have come to trust the man who sees worth in people before he sees worth in a balance sheet.

If you cannot feel the same, please let us find another way to save those jobs.

At the bottom she added: If there is no answer, I will understand that you would rather we keep the arrangement practical.

I will never press you.

The page shook in my hands.

I had spent three years interpreting her courtesy as emotional distance.

She had spent three years treating my silence as a decision I had already made.