"You call your grandma by her first name?"
He glanced sideways at me. "What else would I call her?"
"I dunno.Grandma?Nan? Didn't she, like, take care of you from a pretty young age?" I vaguely remember Nora mentioning that she and my own grandma had that in common, even though Cole had been shipped off to some boarding school by the time I came to live with mine.
A cold moment of silence. Then he pulled a heavy black fountain pen from his inside suit pocket and said, "Norawould appreciate it if you signed here, and here, then one more time on the last page."
Okay...
As I signed on the first line, I wondered if I'd ever get used to hearing him call his grandmother by her first name. I knew Glo Johnson wouldn't have put up with that, even for a second. But I had the feeling Cole probably got away with a lot of behavior most people's grandkids couldn't.
Which was why I scrunched my forehead when I saw one of the items in theConductSection of the NDA. "Nora doesn't know that I know about her being sick?"
"You're aware of how proud she can be," Cole answered, his voice way steadier than mine. "I'm certain she would prefer for us not to go into too many details about how she magically got her dying wish. She'd like to believe we've gotten engaged because we actually fell in love, like she and my grandfather did."
Okay, that made sense. I signed on the line above my printed name. Then, I read through the rest of the straightforward contract and signed on the last line, no more questions asked—well, not until another one popped into my mind. "You couldn't have just mailed this NDA to me?"
No answer.
And I turned around to see that Cole wasn't listening because he was on his phone, speaking low to someone.
"What time do you think you can have the moving truck meet us here?"
"Wait, why is a moving truck coming here?" I demanded.
Cole kept talking, like I hadn't said anything. "A couple of hours. Fine. We'll take it. What's that?"
Cole frowned at whatever the person on the other side of the phone was saying. "I don't know. I'll ask her."
He lowered the phone to inquire, "Do you want the movers to pack you up? Or do you want to do it yourself?"
I screwed up my face. "When did I agree to move at all?"
Cole put the phone back up to his ear. "She's not sure. Just tell whoever you get to be ready for an either-or situation. I'll touch base later. Yes, that's all. Goodbye."
Then he ended the call, like it was all decided.
But it wasn't!
"I'm not moving to…" I started to inform him, only to realize I had no idea where he was planning to relocate me. "Wherever you're trying to make me move to."
Cole's face hardened. "Then you'd be in violation of this clause."
He came back to the half wall and flipped the contract to the second page of theConductsection.
"Read it," he commanded.
I did so with a frown. It was written in so much legalese, it was hard for me to know if I was translating it right. Something about me agreeing not to do or say anything that would cast him in a bad light?
"How is living in my own apartment casting you in a bad light?"
He pinned me with an aggravated look. "No man of my standing would ever let his fiancée live in a dump like this."
His fiancée. Why did the idea of belonging to Cole Benton send a warm shiver up my back?
Still, I argued, "It's not that bad!" while trying to keep my eyes from straying to all the water stains on the walls.
"It's adump," he repeated. "And judging from the deal I saw going down in the stairwell on my way up here, probably not at all safe."
