I smile, trying to make light of the complications she’s outlined—complications I’ll have to be wise about. “Have a scarf.”
I hand her the silky snake of fabric, and she tosses it around her neck. She pouts saucily and juts out a hip in a pose.
“Lovely.”
“In any case, my little lemon gumdrop, since you’re going to do this anyway, all I will say is this—keep your eyes wide open. Be aware of all the potholes. There are booby traps literally everywhere. If you want to come out of this with your steel heart—cough, cough—intact, you need to have your guard up in a whole new way.”
“Guard up. I’m on it.”
“Oh, and take some lemon gumdrops. You’ll need fortification.” She winks and hands me the bag of candy. Her expression turns serious as she sets it in my palm. “And I’ll be here when the expiration date passes. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“There is no expiration date on our friendship.”
“It’s non-perishable,” I say with a smile, then I thank her and leave. As I wander up the block to my home, I pop in a gumdrop. It’s tart at first, as promised, but then it’s all soft and sweet.
As if it’ll melt into you.
Surely I’m no lemon gumdrop with Christian. I’ll be a fiery cinnamon stick. Even though, as I open the gate to my home, delighting in the blaze of yellow tulips, I wonder if he likes candy that’s a little bit tart at first but then sweetens as you savor it.
18CHRISTIAN
I walk along the river at the end of the next day, the afternoon sun casting sparks of light along the water, my phone in front of me as I Facetime Oliver. “I can’t believe I lost the bet,” he says from his office on Park Avenue.
“Did we have a bet?”
“Yes,” Oliver says indignantly, dragging a hand through his Harry Styles hair. “How could you forget?”
“What was it?” I bite into the egg crepe that I picked up at my favorite crepe dealer, wracking my brain to figure out what we wagered on.
“It was ages ago. But I bet a pint you’d be single until the end of time.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “Sounds like some stupid shit we said at the pub last time you were here, cuz.”
“That sounds like everything we say at the pub.”
“True.”
“Still, I’m kicking myself for losing the bet,” he says, spinning in his chair. “It’s making me laugh—the idea of you being married.”
“I was married before. You’re aware of that?”
“I know, but you’re not now.”
“So is half the population of the once-married people. Half of marriages end.”
“I’m aware, but the amusement level on this is still quite high,” he says with a smirk, as a twilight boat tour cruises by, kicking up a spray of water.
“So, me getting married makes you laugh. Thanks.”
He waves a hand. “No. It’s the bonkers idea that this will somehow be all business for you.”
“Business and pleasure,” I add, taking another bite.
“Need I remind you of the time you told me about how you got involved with the client who wanted to enlist you as her boy toy and claimed she was knocked up, practically chasing you back to London? At which point you called me, all worked up, and swore off entanglements of that sort?”
“She was not pregnant,” I add, since it’s important to point that out.
“She definitely was not, but back then you said not to mix business with pleasure.”
“Elise isn’t a client. This isn’t exactly mixing the two. It’s uniting the two for mutual goals,” I say, explaining as clearly as I can how the deal with Elise is vastly different.
“That’s hilarious, cuz. How you say that as if you believe it.”
I stop in my tracks and fix him with a serious stare through the screen. “I do believe it.”
“Fine, fine. Keep telling yourself that. Just do me one favor?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t crush her heart.”
“I don’t plan on it, but I didn’t realize you cared so deeply about a woman you’ve never even met.”
He clasps a hand to his chest. “I care deeply about all women. They are lovely and wonderful and we don’t deserve them.”
"Obviously.”
