Back on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #4)(84)

“Oh, Alix.” Grandma Turner breathed her name softly, reverently. “I remember you telling me about the shawl. I don’t believe I’ve ever received anything more precious. All the effort that went into this…I will treasure it for the rest of my life.”

Alix gently, almost ceremoniously, arranged the shawl around the old woman’s shoulders, and they hugged.

After they’d finished their tea, Jordan mowed the lawn over Sarah’s objections and clipped the hedge, while Alix tackled the flower beds, weeding and cultivating the soil. When they were done, she planned to spread beauty bark over the freshly tilled beds.

“This garden used to be the pride of the neighborhood,” Grandma Turner said as she stood beside Alix. “I do what I can now, but it isn’t enough.”

“We never had flowers at our house when I was growing up.” Alix kept her voice matter-of-fact. She remembered that the house had gone without more than flowers. Several times it lacked a window and once, the front door. Her mother had thrown a beer bottle at her father, who’d ducked; the bottle had broken the living-room window. Another time, when Alix was around six, her father had kicked in the front door.

Alix had always envied people who had yards with flowers. Her own yard was an embarrassment, not that Alix spent much time worrying about grass and stuff like that. It was a much higher priority to stay out of range of both her parents when they drank. That was the reason she’d found a safe haven in her bedroom closet, where she’d created her fantasy family.

“I want you and Jordan to stay for dinner,” Grandma Turner said.

“I don’t think Jordan has any plans. Let me ask.”

Jordan, done with clipping the hedge, drank a second glass of iced tea and then joined Alix in weeding the flower beds. She told him about Sarah’s invitation.

“Knowing my grandmother, she’s already inside fixing a meal,” he said, moving close enough to kiss Alix’s sweaty neck.

“Jordan!”

“Would you like to stay?” he asked.

She nodded.

It’d been so long since they’d spent time together like this. Alix hadn’t fully understood how much strain the wedding had placed on their relationship. Once they’d made the decision to take control of it, the stress was gone.

Dinner was a simple affair of soup and sandwiches, which they ate on the patio facing the lake. Grandma Turner fell asleep soon after Alix had carried the dishes inside. Jordan saw his grandmother into the bedroom and then helped Alix clean up the kitchen.

“Not every girl enjoys spending time with a guy’s grandmother,” he said as he took a dish towel from the rack.

“You know what I was thinking?” Alix murmured, washing by hand the few dishes they’d used.

“That you’re crazy in love with me,” Jordan responded quickly. “In fact, you can’t wait to drag me into your bed and have your way with me.”

Alix grinned. “Well, other than that.”

“Tell me.” He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle.

“I was just thinking how peaceful it is, being here with you.”

“Mmm.” He dropped a kiss on the curve of her neck. “Well, this place isn’t going to be so peaceful on June second.”

Alix leaned against him. “Tell me the truth—has it been a problem for you at church?” She guessed that Susan’s concerns about what this might do to Jordan’s career were valid. Changing the wedding to a small, private affair so close to the date was likely to cause speculation.

“Some,” Jordan admitted.

“Like what?”

He hesitated. “Pastor Downey, my dad and I had a heart-to-heart.”

Alix wasn’t sure what that entailed nor was she sure it was her business to ask. She waited for Jordan to volunteer the information.

After a brief silence he sighed and released her, then rested against the kitchen counter. “Dad asked me if I’d gotten you pregnant.”

“What?” she exploded, and watched as a grin spread slowly across Jordan’s face. “Did he really ask you that?”

“Yup.” Jordan nodded. “And I enjoyed telling him I looked forward to doing exactly that.”

They’d talked about starting a family but not for several years. “Your mother put him up to it, didn’t she?”

Jordan shrugged. “I assume so.”

Alix knew she faced some damage control with Susan Turner. As soon as the wedding was over, she’d begin to repair their relationship.

“Actually, it’s a good thing Pastor Downey, Dad and I talked,” Jordan went on to tell her. “We don’t do that enough. Male bonding.” He pounded his chest in a Tarzan imitation. “Me like bonding.”

She rolled her eyes, loving him all the more for making a joke of it.

“We all felt better afterward,” Jordan said in his normal voice, “and I have you to thank for that.”

Alix hoped it was true.

“What about Jacqueline and Reese?” Jordan asked her.

Alix assured him they were fine. The funny part was, neither Jacqueline nor Reese seemed especially upset about the wedding plans being overturned. If anything, Reese found his wife’s wedding fixation rather comical.

As Alix had suspected, it all went back to Paul and Tammie Lee’s wedding. To Jacqueline’s horror, not only hadn’t she been included, she hadn’t even been invited. She’d felt cheated, and as a result, she’d turned Alix and Jordan’s wedding into a substitute—and then some.