“That is cool,” he said with a nod. “So, is she a genius like you?”
“I’m not a genius,” I said quickly. “And who knows? Maybe.”
“She’ll be in no time if you keep tutoring her.”
“I plan to.” I looked out the window and saw the frost building up in the corners.
“So…you see yourself as a stepdad?”
I turned back to him. “I told Lizzie I’m just interested in being her friend. So, I don’t think that’s where her head is at.”
“Well, I think Emerson probably feels differently, right?”
She wanted me to have a relationship with Lizzie because she said they came as a set. I had to love them both or lose them both. “I guess, but that label feels weird to me. I can just be her mother’s boyfriend. I mean, she’ll be thirteen soon, and do thirteen-year-olds really need stepfathers?”
“I just mean Emerson is probably eager to settle down and get married and all that. Why else would she want you to get along with her daughter?”
“Well, her daughter is the most important thing in her life. I think that’s the bigger issue.”
He nodded. “Well, do you see it going that far?”
“What going how far?” I asked.
“You know, wedding bells and all that.” He drank from his beer.
“Of course I do.”
Ryan stilled as he stared at me, as if he’d never expected me to say that in a million years. “Dude, like four months ago you were stuck on Fleur—”
“I’m not going to marry her tomorrow. But yeah, someday.”
“She’s gotta be hooked on you pretty bad. Sexy billionaire guy who’s good with her daughter? You’re like a dream come true for her.”
And she told me that every day.
“Does that bother you?”
“What?”
“That’s she’s obsessed with you. I’ve seen you two together, and you can just tell by looking at her…she’d meet you at the chapel tomorrow if you asked.”
“Why would that bother me?”
“Just seems intense, is all.”
I shook my head. “I like that she’s like that.”
“Fleur and every other woman were like that, and it drove you up the wall.”
“Yeah, but it’s different with Emerson. I like that she wears her heart on her sleeve, that she doesn’t play games, that she shows me how much she loves me every single day and doesn’t take me for granted. We’ll be making love and she’ll tell me she loves me, we’ll be doing nothing at all and she’ll say that she wants to be with me forever, just stuff like that. I can see why other guys would be annoyed with it, but I like knowing how she feels. It doesn’t bother me. Besides, I already knew she felt that way before she even said it because she shows it.”
“That’s pretty romantic.”
I drank my beer.
“I’m happy for you. I’m glad you found her.”
“Yeah, that makes two of us,” I said with a light chuckle, finding the last ten years of my life to be a complete waste. My walls were so damn high, and I never let anyone in—not even my own family. Now, I somehow felt even safer…even though all my walls were gone.
“So, we’re all getting fitted for our wedding clothes on Saturday. Can you make it?”
How many more times would I have to see that fucking cunt before the wedding? “Of course. What are we wearing?”
“I think suits are too stuffy. Just some gray slacks, a collared shirt, and a vest.”
“Do you know what you’re doing for the wedding yet?”
“Her uncle has a house out in the Hamptons. It’s not super swanky like the Hamptons, but it’s got a pretty good amount of space in the back so we can do a ceremony there. I mean, it’s free, and free is good because I spent all my goddamn money on that ring.”
“She loves it, Ryan. The wedding will come and go, but that diamond will be on her hand forever.”
“True.”
“When is this happening?”
“We were thinking in the middle of December.”
“A winter wedding.”
“Yeah.”
“Why not wait until the spring or summer?”
He shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of money to do anything big, so it doesn’t make sense to wait just to do what we’re already doing. And she just wants to be married because we’ve been together so long. It’s not like we’re going on a honeymoon anyway.”
I kept my secret because bringing it up casually wasn’t the way I wanted to share my gift to him and Camille. “You knocked her up, didn’t you?”
He chuckled. “Nah. Not yet anyway.”
“Does she want to have kids soon?”
“Yeah. Says she’s getting old.”
“Yeah, we are getting old. But you guys will be great parents.”
“Yeah, and those kids will be supermodels if they look like us.” He drank from his beer.
“Maybe if they look like her…”
He narrowed his eyes at my taunt but didn’t argue. “Yeah, who am I kidding?”“Mom said we’re going to have Thanksgiving with your family?” Lizzie stopped working on her problem and looked at me instead.