The Truth

Daniel smirks, pleased with himself. “Damn right.”

* * *

Frankie’s smells amazing, and my body craves the food after all my stress-induced lack of eating over the past week. So I’m not that embarrassed to be wiping my lips to keep myself from drooling as I sit with Elle and Daniel for lunch.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” I ask. “My being here.”

Elle, who’s got a fry in her hand, waves it off. “Yes, it’s fine. I want to try one of those black bean burgers, anyway.”

Daniel looks surprised. “What happened to my little carnivore?”

Elle laughs. “Let’s just say the last gut buster was quite literally a gut buster.” She grabs her belly like she’s having phantom cramps at the mere memory. “And honestly? A week of American food has me feeling a little bloated. Why is everything so sweet?”

I gasp, pretending to be offended. “Daniel, I do believe we’ve got a traitor in our midst!”

“Most definitely.”

Elle laughs at our dramatics. “Okay, okay. But you try fish ‘n’ chips or real British food for a few months. You’ll see what I mean. I can’t wait to get home and have a proper tea.” She sighs wistfully. "So, what’s the big ‘we need to have lunch today’ deal?”

“Well . . . uhm . . .”

Daniel takes my hand. “What she’s trying to say is . . . I proposed.”

“Yeah, that,” I echo.

I expect a lot of responses, but what I don’t expect is Elle pounding the sides of her fists on the top of our table. “Hell yes!” she yells. More like herself, she says, “Congrats!”

“The wedding is going to be fast,” I warn her. “Like real fast.”

“How fast?” Elle asks, going back to her fries. For someone talking about heavy American food, she’s scarfing up those fries like she’s a Roomba.

“Next weekend,” Daniel says, and Elle’s eyes widen. “We want you and Colton and Neve to be there, and we don’t want to wait. So . . . think Neve will agree to be the flower girl or ring bearer?”

“And I already have my research from helping Harper, and we can pull everything together, no problem,” I add, knowing that Elle’s shock is directed at me and not necessarily her father.

“Are you sure?”

“This is what we want,” I assure Elle, and Daniel nods. “We want you there . . . mind being my matron of honor?”

“No offense, Dad, but you’ve had a wedding before. Tiff hasn’t.” To me, she asks, “Don’t you want the whole shebang?”

I shake my head. “Actually, no. We do that, and Daniel has loads of business colleagues he’d need to invite just to keep from pissing someone off. It would turn into a social and business event full of judgments and gossiping. We want to just stand there with the people we care about and who care about us and speak our hearts.”

Elle coos in happy understanding. “That is so sweet. Like sickeningly so, especially for you, girl.” She gives me a teasing look, knowing that flowery words aren’t my norm. “But I get it. Okay, I’m in. What do you need me to do?”

“Well, first . . . we need you to promise not to freak out.”

“About what?” Elle asks suspiciously, giving Daniel and me both wary looks. “Now you’re starting to scare me.”

“There’s more,” Daniel says, putting an arm around my shoulders, and I lean into him. Elle looks from Daniel to me, waiting for the big reveal.

And then slowly, I press my hand to my stomach.

It takes her three chews to realize what we mean. “Oh, my God! Are you fucking serious?” she shouts. And then she throws a handful of fries at me. “You slut! You locked him down just like you said you would.”

Daniel freezes in shock, his whole body going rigid in the space of a breath. But this isn’t this morning, so I place a staying hand on his thigh, telling Elle, “You got that right, bitch. Set you up with Colton to get you out of the country and then made my move.”

There’s the tiniest moment of anticipation in the air, and then Elle and I both burst out laughing at the same time. We laugh so hard that tears pour from our eyes. “Oh, my God, you should’ve seen your face, Dad!” Elle teases. “You looked like you were going to have a coronary!”

“We used to joke around about ways to snag you and Colton,” I explain to Daniel, who still looks confused and ready to battle some imaginary foe. “This isn’t what either of us planned, but it seems to have worked out.”

“For both of us,” Elle agrees.

Daniel still looks pretty shaken up. “Okay, I can understand that. But can we not do that in front of me ever again? I almost really did have a heart attack, thinking I was going to have defend my daughter and my fiancée . . . from each other.”