“Nothing doesn’t make you rub your sweaty palms on your wool trousers and blush like a virgin at seeing her first penis. Spill.”
Her pretty mouth opens and closes several times. “Laurent asked me if I would consider moving in with him.”
“In with him…in his house here?” I can’t help the way my voice goes up on the last word. A juvenile panic razzes the edge of my chest. I know the answer already. Nat wouldn’t hesitate to move into his apartment here. She’s lived with several men through the years. All in Manhattan's Upper East Side.
“In his family’s vineyard in the South of France.”
That’s what I figured. A little worse really. It’s more than a long plane ride. It’s a plane and a train and a car ride away from me.
My throat closes up. It’s all for the best. I don’t need to say any of the things I’m thinking. She doesn’t need to deal with my hang-ups any more than she already does.
Don’t leave me.
What would I do without you?
How could you even consider it?
Nat scoots closer until her thigh touches mine. She wraps an arm around me and pulls me to her. “I told him I wouldn’t consider leaving you.”
I lay my head on her shoulder and shove my face against her neck. Guilty relief washes through me. After several minutes like that, I can finally speak.
“You should be able to.” My words are thin and reedy, not unlike Mr. Judge’s. “I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman with a flourishing business. I shouldn’t need you to stay here for me.”
“My love.” She kisses my forehead and rests her cheek on it. “Who said you’re the one who needs me? Clearly, I need you. Codependency.” She shrugs.
I laugh to keep from crying.
“What?” She eases back and looks down at me.
“We’re not codependent. Codependent relationships are earmarked by their one-sided, emotionally destructive, and abusive tendencies.” I finally sit up.
“Oh. Then what are we?”
“I might call you my emotional crutch.” I give a pitiful smirk.
“Then I’ll call you mine.” She winks and bops my nose like she did when I was a little girl with pigtails and buck teeth and not a care in the world.
She pulls the calendar up on my phone and helps me straighten my schedule for the next month. The dreaded holiday month. Well, the first of two. Before we know it, we’re at the residence house, and I’m knocking on Daniel’s office door.
“Come in.” His voice is deep and commanding.
“Oh.” Nat drags out the word with a wicked smile.
“Married,” I remind her as I push inside.
The moment his gaze lands on me, his hands go up. It’s a sign of surrender, but he’s not surrendering. He’s asking me to. “I’ve told you a hundred times in the past week?—”
“Twenty, if that many.” I plop myself into the chair opposite his desk, and Nat does the same next to me, only much more gracefully.
“It feels like a thousand,” he says, eyeing my hot aunt.
“How about a million?” I offer a friendly glare, making him sweat that I might be crazy enough to ask that many times. After all, I’m good with crazy.
Reluctantly, he pulls his gaze from Nat and glares right back at me. “I can’t tell you.”
I tilt my head. “But you know?”
“I don’t know who,” he amends. “All I know is what they put into the database, which is Matt’s name as the honoree and your name as the donor.” He stalls a little at the end.