“I’m sorry,” I say, my attempt at laughter turning into a cough. “There’s something in my throat.” I reach for my champagne, relieved to see Harlow returning over the rim of my glass.
Just a few more seconds and I’ll be safe. For now.
I set the glass down and smile at Harlow, hoping she’ll see the Code Red emergency in my gaze and hurry.
Thankfully, when our eyes connect, her brows pinch together and she speeds her progress through the maze of tables and circling waiters, arriving back at her seat just as I say, “I’m honestly not sure what her favorite color is, but I love her in red. It brings out the gold flecks in her eyes.”
Harlow settles into her chair. “My favorite color is brown,” she says, laughing as she squeezes my thigh beneath the table. “Boring, but true.”
“It’s not boring. You look great in brown, too.”
Gram is once again all sweet smiles. “A beauty is a beauty in any color.”
Harlow laughs. “Thanks, Gram. But you may be seeing me through the eyes of love because I look like a corpse with jaundice when I wear yellow. Made that whole mustard trend a few seasons back very unpleasant.”
For the rest of the dinner, the conversation continues easily, but I can feel Gram’s eyes on me when she thinks I’m not paying attention. And her glee upon learning we’re going on the sleigh ride expedition with everyone tomorrow afternoon, borders on vicious.
“Perfect,” she says, clapping her hands. “Derrick, you can ride with me. It’ll give us time to get to know each other better.”
Time for her to grill me on all things Harlow and find me lacking is more like it, but you don’t tell an elderly woman in a wheelchair and potentially her last few months of life “no, I’d rather ride with anyone else, thank you.”
I grin and say, “That sounds great.”
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t sound great. It sounds like I’m still on the sharp old woman’s radar as a potential love imposter who’s not good enough for her granddaughter. Which means there’s only one way to pull this farce back from the edge of disaster.
As soon as Harlow and I step into the elevator alone an hour later, leaving the rest of her family to linger over dessert, I say, “Study session. An all-nighter, if needed. I have to learn everything about you by tomorrow afternoon or Gram is going to have my ass for lunch.”
“Yep,” Harlow says with a sigh. “We should stop by the coffee shop in the lobby and get caffeine. We’re going to need it.”
Chapter Twelve
Harlow
Dropping my hastily made flash cards on the coffee table, I lean back on the couch cushions and close my eyes, rubbing at the tops of my lids. “Okay. Quiz me again. I’m ready.”
Knowing Gram, as soon as she’s satisfied that Derrick is properly invested, she’ll turn her eagle eye my way. So, I’m cramming, too. Surprisingly, I already knew a lot of Derrick’s favorite things, but there were some surprises.
“Favorite color,” Derrick says.
“Black like your soul,” I answer, earning a grunt from my study buddy. I open my eyes to see him shaking his head at me over his third cup of coffee. “Kidding,” I say, with a grin. “It’s blue. Sky blue, to be specific. Though you also like sea green and want to go to Thailand so you can see your two favorite colors swirl together in the warm and welcoming ocean right before you’re eaten by a shark.”
“Exactly. Except for the shark part,” he says. “Favorite food.”
“Steak. The bloodier the better. And kale, though I can’t believe you’re being honest about that. I eat tons of kale, but I’m not excited about it. Who gets excited about kale?”
“Who gets excited about the color brown?” he counters. “It’s the color of dirt and excrement.”
“And tree trunks and happy winter birds playing in the snow and chocolate. And dirt is where food comes from, dude. We would literally die without it. Brown is the color of magic.”
His lips twitch up in that punch-drunk smile I’ve seen more than once since the clock struck one a.m. We have to head to bed soon or we’ll be too exhausted to function tomorrow, but I confess I’m kind of enjoying our cram session. Derrick is way more interesting than most of my undergrad classes on bookkeeping and tax codes.
And he seems to be genuinely enjoying learning my favorite things, too. He already aced his “All about Harlow” quiz in one try.
“Most embarrassing memory,” he says.
“You accidentally sent an ‘it’s over’ text to your entire contact list and spent months getting shit from giant hockey players about being too chicken to break the woman’s heart in person.”
“Except that her heart wasn’t broken,” he says, taking another sip of his coffee. “Unbeknownst to me, she was sleeping with our mutual massage therapist the entire time we were together. He spilled his guts about it when I went to get my shoulder worked on a few weeks after the breakup. I appreciated his honesty, but he waited until I was stripped, and on the table, to come clean, which was…not ideal.”