“You’re incorrigible.” His mother rolled her eyes. “I’ll just hide it for a few days, and if he’s still experiencing tenderness in that, um, area, I’ll bring it out and pretend I bought it for him myself.”
“Steal Charlotte’s credit and lie to him to keep him from getting mad at me? That’s positively diabolical.” He grinned. “I like it.”
“I wouldn’t have to steal her credit and lie to anyone if you could keep your mouth shut.” She gave him a playful swat on the back of the head as she left. “Hurry,” she called before the door could swing shut. “Charlotte’s waiting.”
He smoothed the hair she’d mussed and studied his reflection in the glass door, searching for some telltale sign of his disease—something that marked him as defective. But he still looked perfectly healthy. Most of the time, he felt perfectly healthy, too.
He wondered how long that would last...
Charlotte was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of water when he walked in, and his mother was trying to press every treat they had in the house on her. He heard her politely refuse a lemon square and a soda before Karen offered her a cookie. “I’m fine, really,” she murmured. “But thank you.”
The moment Charlotte saw him, she smiled in what he thought was relief. “Want to go grab a coffee?” she asked a little too brightly.
“I’ve got plenty of good coffee here, and it won’t cost you a cent,” his mother volunteered, but he grabbed Charlotte by the hand and led her straight to the door, saving her from the most persistent food-pusher on earth.
“I think we’ll go out,” he told his mother. “We’ll see you in a bit.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Davis!” Charlotte added.
“Have fun!” she called but looked slightly crestfallen that he’d stolen the object of her attention.
“What’s going on?” he asked once they got outside. “Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.” She lifted her own keys to show him since he was digging his out of his pocket. “I’ll drive. My car’s behind yours.”
“I see that now.” He got into the passenger side of her expensive Range Rover—a vestige from her marriage to someone who made an obscene amount of money. He assumed the vehicle was paid off and she wouldn’t be strapped with monstrous car payments—if she got to keep it—but now was not the time to ask. She was upset. He could see that even if his mother hadn’t realized it. “I assume you’ve heard from Cliff. Is that what’s wrong? Has he seen the pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, boy! I bet he wasn’t happy.”
She backed out of the drive. “He wasn’t. He asked me to lie low and not embarrass him again.”
Julian turned down the music that’d come on with the engine. “How are you embarrassing him?”
“By being seen with another man in public, I suppose.” She waited for a break in traffic before pulling into the street.
“Likehe’slying low and not embarrassing you with that ugly model?”
“Ugly!”She gaped at him until she realized he’d been joking. “Yes, exactly,” she said, calming down.
Hoping she’d held her own and hadn’t let Cliff get the best of any argument, Julian scowled. “And did you promise to do that?”
“No. I told him I hated his new tattoo and left.”
She sounded so proud of herself he couldn’t help but smile. “Wow. You did that? Said you hated his tattoo? Brutal! That must’ve torn him up.”
She shot him a dirty look. This time, she knew immediately that he was baiting her. “He’s sensitive, Jules. It reallydidbother him.”
“Do you honestly hate his tattoo?”
“Of course,” she replied with a grimace to show just how much. “He hadPredatorfrom the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie—which is how many years old now?—tattooed on his shoulder in the weirdest colors.” She tapped her right deltoid. “It looks positively ridiculous.”
He could tell she thought he’d agree with her, which was why he had to tease her instead. “That movie might be old, but it’s still cool.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Maybe so, but why would anyone have something so tacky tattooed on their body? Can you imagine seeing that in the mirror when you’re seventy-five?”
“You’re right. It’s tacky. I don’t like it, either,” he said as ifhe was just sucking up, and laughed when she swatted him like his mother had earlier.
