Page 50 of Personal Escort

She grins. “No, we haven’t made it to a restaurant yet.”

“Don’t be too much of a pest,” he says, and her mouth drops open, her eyes bright as she twists to look at me.

“Really not a concern,” I deadpan. “I came up here to see her. To surprise her, actually. We, ah…” For all my bravado about it being no-big-deal to tell Ben I fell in love with his sister, it really is a big deal. I want to get this right. “You might want to sit down for this.”

“I’m good.” His voice is tight now. Shit.

“Ben,” Cara says softly. “Toby and I got married today. We eloped.”

“Because I’ve fallen in love with her,” I add quickly.

“You fell in love with my sister.” A hard, disbelieving statement.

I press on, because I sure as shit did. “We’ve known each other for years, Ben. And over the last month, we started talking a lot more. Then this push by your grandmother for her to get married brought my feelings to the forefront.”

“Just like that.”

“Ah, hell no. It was big and complicated and serious. But also unavoidable. I love her, man. So I bought her a ring and came up to Toronto to surprise her with it.”

“Best surprise ever.” Cara sighs as she smiles. “Oh, Ben, say you understand.”

“Well, I’m happy if you’re happy, I guess. Elana’s going to have your heads for eloping,” he says gruffly. “Did you at least take pictures?”

“I hired a photographer.” Cara’s eyes go wide after admitting that, but Ben doesn’t ask about the timeline on that part of it.

“Have you told her yet?”

“She’s my next call. I phoned Nana first, then we called you.”

He grunts. “Toby?”

“Yeah, man.”

“You better really love her.”

“I really do.”

“Good.” He laughs. “Jesus Christ. I knew something was going on when we went for sushi.”

I look at Cara, and we both start laughing. “We didn’t,” she admits. “It really took us both by surprise.”

“I feel kind of bad for that Alex guy you were seeing,” he grumbles, and that just makes us laugh harder.

I slide my fingers into Cara’s silky soft hair and gaze at her pretty, open face. “He’ll survive.”

She nods. “That was a temporary thing anyway. I think I just needed to, uh, go through that to understand that Toby was who I really wanted.”

“That’s dangerously sappy, so I’ll let you go before this gets weird,” her brother says. “Call Elana ASAP.”

“I will.”

“Hey, Ben,” I say. “Maybe don’t tell Jake or Marcus just yet. Or anyone else. Just family until we’ve gotten together on the Fourth of July, okay?”

“Sure.”

When Cara ends the call, she gives me a curious look. “Why don’t you want to tell your other friends? I’m not complaining, of course. This is all overwhelming.”

“For exactly that reason. When Jake started dating Jana, we were all over him. He’d love to pay back that scrutiny. We could use a week of it just being the two of us.”

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