Chapter 19 – Graham
Chapter Nineteen
GRAHAM
“R eady for dessert?” I ask. Luna insisted we get a whole cake when I ordered delivery.
“You should always have a dessert on hand,” she’d told me. I had some ideas about how we’d eat the cake later. Before Luna can answer, though, the doorbell rings. Luna’s eyes widen, and her body tenses in a definite flight mode. I lay a hand over hers. “My body will have to have a hole in it before I allow anyone to take you from here.”
She gives me a brief nod, but I’m not sure if she buys it. Tonight, I’m planting a baby in her belly. If she has that tie to me, maybe she’ll feel more secure. Alternatively, I could just tie her to my bed until she realizes that I’m not letting her go.
At the door, though, I have second thoughts.
“Darling, are you not going to let us in?” My mom stands at the doorstep, a fur wrapped around her arms. Her two sisters, the aunties, flank her.
My first instinct is to say ‘no’ and shut the door, but since I want to live to see another day, I step aside and welcome the family in.
“Good to see you, Mom.” I lean forward and accept the cheek kisses. Aunt Maeve reaches up from her five-foot-nothing height and pinches my cheek like she has ever since I was a child. Aunt Jackie slaps my ass. “Nice and firm. You can’t be slacking off at the gym until you’re married. Single men have to keep up their appearances.”
My traitorous mother nods. “I worry all the time about what is keeping him from being married.”
“Worry no more,” I announce, deciding to rip off the bandage. “I’m engaged, and my fiancée is in the kitchen eating dinner.”
Mom doesn’t even have the good grace to look surprised. “So I’ve heard, darling.” She hands me the fur. “Take care of this while I go meet my future daughter-in-law.”
I drape the fur over one shoulder and take the lead. “And force you to meet without an introduction? I wasn’t raised in a barn.” No way am I going to let Luna face the lioness and her pack on her own.
“I do have social media accounts,” Mom says as we make our way to the kitchen.
“We all do,” Aunt Jackie chirps.
“I’m on the Twitter all the time,” adds Aunt Maeve.
“It’s not the Twitter anymore. It’s the X.” Aunt Jackie is the middle sister. Correcting her baby sister comes as naturally as breathing.
“It is to me.” Aunt Maeve speaks with all the confidence of the youngest who, despite being corrected, never cares and goes on to do her own thing.
“Girls, let’s not be squabbling in front of Graham’s new friend.”
“Fiancée,” I correct immediately. I know she’s testing me. “Luna,” I call out loudly. “My mom and her sisters came to visit. Pull that cake out of the refrigerator, will you?”
“You have cake on hand?” Mom is surprised.
“Luna says we always need to have a treat on hand in case there are surprise visitors.” When we arrive at the kitchen, Luna has the cake on the counter, and she found plates.
“I can’t have any.” Aunt Jackie pats her stomach. “I’m watching my weight.”
Aunt Maeve slides right onto a barstool. “Not me. Plate me a big piece, sweetheart.”
I toss Mom’s fur onto a chair and start the kettle for tea. It’s nighttime, so the sisters will want chamomile and mint tea after the dessert.
“Small for me,” Mom says. She tilts her head. “You two have been making a lot of noise. We came to make sure everything is okay.”
Luna’s hand shakes a little as she slides the spatula under the wedge of cake. I place my hand around her waist to steady her. “Luna saved me from the hounds you sicced on me.”
Mom frowns. “Those were necessary. If you had read all the negative things I read, you would have ordered a half dozen. I was showing restraint with just four.”
“I forgive you because if I hadn’t been trying to escape them, I wouldn’t have met Luna.” I kiss the top of Luna’s head. She blushes and hands the now full plates to my aunt and mother.
Aunt Jackie looks at her sisters and says, “I’ve changed my mind. Give me a little one.”
Luna plates a piece she’d already prepared for Aunt Jackie and slides it over.
“You’re a nice girl,” Aunt Jackie responds before forking the dessert into her mouth.
“You have any family, Luna?” Mom asks.
“No, ma’am. None.”
“That’s how she fell into Montclair’s claws,” Aunt Maeve says. “Isn’t that right?”
Luna nods in surprise. “Yes, actually, that’s right. He seemed close to his family. That wasn’t something familiar to me. I liked it.”
“But you moved on to Graham pretty quickly,” Mom points out.
“It was me that was moving quickly, Mom,” I interject. “I knew if I didn’t nail down Luna right away, someone else would sweep her up. You don’t leave diamonds lying on the street.”
“And are you a diamond?” Mom directs the question to Luna.
I want to answer, but Luna slides her heel onto my toes and presses down. Hard. “I don’t think so, but your son believes it. I’m hoping that I start believing it, too, because me thinking less of myself is why I was okay being with Michael. We didn’t love each other, but our pairing was convenient. I felt safe, and Michael was doing what his family wanted. He thought he could put me in the corner of his big house and then could go off and do whatever he wanted.”
“He thought wrong.” Aunt Maeve smirks. “I wish I’d been there when you lit all those things on fire. Looked like fun. A real social media moment.”
“It felt cathartic,” Luna admits. “But the lawsuit that came after chased those silly feelings away.”
“What lawsuit?” Mom asks. Her tone is sharp. Her eyes are narrowed. I smile. Mom’s always rooted for the underdogs.
I move away to make the tea. “Montclair has sued Luna for millions saying that all the goods were real and he has receipts.”
“I don’t like that,” Mom says.
“Me neither.” Aunt Maeve shakes her head.
“Guess we’re going to have to do something with that Montclair boy.” Aunt Jackie crosses her arms.
I wink at Luna. We couldn’t have planned this better if we’d tried.