I can’t make myself say the words. “He’s my . . .”
“Fiancé,” Graham murmurs as he eases next to me. He must have been listening.
Butterflies dance wildly in my stomach when he wraps an arm around my waist. A nervous laugh comes from me. “Oh wow, just like that, you told them, honey bunny. I see, well, um, okay, guys, this is Graham, and he just proposed to me. Isn’t that awesome?”
Crickets. The silence, the shock, is palpable.
“I think it’s wonderful!” Babs says.
I lean into him, gazing up with what I hope is a rapturous expression. Londyn, on the other side of me, looks at him with intensity. “Graham, this is Jane and Andrew, and the little one is Londyn, Jane’s daughter. Remember me telling you about them? My sister is a model, and Andrew goes to NYU.” Catch up. This is the Darling Family 101.
“Hi, it’s good to meet you. Emmy talks about you guys all the time,” Graham lies smoothly as Babs shows a shell-shocked Jane the ring—that she’s still wearing.
Andrew drops his pastry midbite on the floor and walks over to us as if in a daze. He blinks as he rakes his gaze over my fiancé. Then back to me. Then back to Graham.
There’s a comical look on his face. “Graham Harlan? What the fuck? You want to marry my sister?”
“I’m right here, and language,” I hiss.
“Fu, fu, fu,” Londyn squeals as she jumps up and down in my arms.
“See what you did,” I tell Andrew. “She knows when it’s a bad word.”
Andrew lets out a laugh, half amazement, half awe. “But . . .” He glances at me. “You’re marrying the best tight end in the country. He’s All-Pro. His team won the Super Bowl.”
“She’s lucky she found me. My little thief,” Graham says with a glint in his eyes.
I boop him on the nose. “Of your heart, honey bunny.”
Babs sighs, smiling. “Oh look, they’re so cute.”
Jane takes Londyn from me and makes a scoffing sound. “I didn’t know you were dating anyone.” The subtext is clear: You just broke up with Kian! What the fuck?
The microwave dings, saving me from a reply. Babs has already pulled out the high chair we keep in the kitchen, and Jane moves to get Londyn settled.
“Um, well, you see . . .” My voice is breathless. Sure, I acted my ass off at the Golden Iguana, but this is my family I’m lying to.
“We met in Vegas,” Graham finishes.
Andrew frowns. “But you went to Vegas because of Kian. You were going to a wedding.”
I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Right, of course, then everything happened, and thankfully Graham, er, saw me upset outside the Bellagio. We’d met previously, at some event Kian took me to, and he offered to give me a ride in his Lamborghini.”
“You said you took a taxi to Arizona,” Jane says.
“Hmm, well, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about Graham because . . .” I trail off, and he finishes.
“Because it felt so new, almost too good to be true.”
Jane searches my face, as if looking for a lie. “So you went from one football player to another?”
“I like the way they look?”
Babs grins and gives me a high five. “Same, girl, same!”
Graham picks up the story. “She wanted to get out of town. I’d just gotten my car and wanted a road trip, so . . .”
“We drove to Arizona and stayed at a place called the Golden Iguana. The place was full of scorpions, wasn’t it, honey bunny?” I smile.
He shrugs. “You were so terrified. Poor thing.”
“Well. I killed one.”
He nods sagely, laughter in his eyes. “You’re very brave, darling.”
“Thank you, honey bunny. So are you,” I say adoringly.
“And?” Jane asks, looking at us. “What else?”
Graham smirks, then: “Well, Emmy was crazy about me from the get-go. Apparently, she’d had a huge crush on me for years. I could hardly drive for her wanting to kiss me. We got to the motel, and she sent me out to buy cherry—”
I elbow him as I force a chuckle. “What? Stop that. No need to go into detail. Basically, we went swimming, we checked out the bar, and there was a little gas station where we loaded up on champagne. Not exactly the Four Seasons.”
“This sounds like a Hallmark movie,” Babs says with her hand over her heart.
Jane snorts. “Why do you like those awful things?”
Babs sniffs. “Maybe they’re predictable, but I like happy endings.”