Pulling her close, I kiss her temple. “We’ll eat dinner and run, okay?”
“Okay.”
As we head down the stairs, hand in hand, I add, “And you’d better lose the doe-eyes if you don’t want everyone to know what we just did.”
She swats at me. “Doe-eyes, my ass.”
But her brother, Matt, takes one look at us as we re-enter the room and chuckles. “Did you find Amelia?” he asks, his tone all mock innocence as if he knows exactly what we’ve spent the last twenty minutes doing.
“Did I hear my name?”
A small, older lady walks in and heads directly for Ellie. “Mi amor,” she says warmly as Ellie bends to kiss her cheek. “And you must be the young man I’ve heard so much about,” she tells me in Spanish, gesturing for me to lower my own cheek. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
She addresses me in Spanish, so I answer in kind. “Same here. Ellie has nothing but wonderful things to say about you.”
“Oh ho, the plot thickens,” Matt drawls, and it takes me a second to figure out that he’s not referring to what I said, but that I said it in Spanish.
I watch Amelia give him a sardonic look, but he responds with a mischievous wink. “What do you know about this guy, Amelia? Is he good enough for my little sister?”
“I know you’d do well not to interfere in your sister’s love life,” she says dryly, though her affection for Matt is obvious.
“Love life seems to be exactly the right word,” Evan says, waving his high ball glass around. “It goes well with all the little red hearts that are floating magically in the air around Ellie’s head.”
Ellie scoffs but no one notices because Matt’s next statement draws everyone’s attention. “You know what? I’m calling it, right here, right now,” he says loudly. “Married in one year,” he appears to think it over, “and three months.”
“Oh my god,” Ellie sputters derisively.
“I’ll take that action,” her eldest brother Chris says, talking right over her. “I’m calling two years from now.”
“What the hell, you guys?” Ellie protests from beside me, while Amelia laughs, clearly enjoying herself.
Smirking knowingly, Evan says, “I’m going with less than a year.”
“Be reasonable,” her dad quips. “I’ll go with eighteen months.”
Sophie claps excitedly. “I’m going with –”
“No. Uh uh,” Matt stops her. “The chances of you having insider information is too great.”
“What?!” Sophie and Ellie say in unison.
“Your brother’s right,” her dad of all people says. “You’re out.” And then he turns to me. “But it appears that you’re in. Welcome to the family, son.”
“Don’t listen to them,” Ellie tells me, shaking her head like her entire family have lost their marbles. “Since, we’ve only been together for a few months,” she intones sarcastically, “you don’t have to marry me.”
If this unexpected teasing hadn’t lit such a fire in my girl’s demeanor, I’d probably be freaking out. But since the whole scenario reeks of the same kind of playful harassment that my family dishes out, there’s a grin on my face. “Uh, I’ll keep that in mind.” Apparently, that was the right thing to say, because in response, I get a glowing smile from my girl and a few slaps on the back and a shoulder shove from her brothers.
“All right, give him some space,” Ellie instructs.
“What’s going on?”
We all turn and there’s Ellie’s mom, tall and elegant, her beauty masked by the same cool reserve I recognize from the charity gala.
Ellie’s father is still chuckling as he goes to his wife. “Nothing at all. Just some joshing between us boys.” He places a hand to the small of her back, drawing her further into the room.
“Hello, Ellie,” her mom says, while Sophie nods encouragingly in my peripheral vision. All I know is that she’s not using Piper, so it’s a win. Something Ellie also notices because there’s not a trace of irony when she responds.
“Hi, Mom. Thanks for doing this for me.”
She reaches out to rub her daughter’s arm awkwardly. “Of course.”
“You remember Scott, right?”
I swear, the whole room stills for a moment. “I do.”
“Thanks for having me, Mrs. Summers,” I say politely.
She nods, and then turns to Amelia. “Do you know what’s holding dinner up?”
“Amelia’s not working tonight,” Ellie says frostily, making her mother press her lips together until they almost disappear.
“I suppose I’ll go find out what’s going on then.”
As she turns to leave, the woman in the maid’s uniform appears in the doorway, “Dinner is ready, ma’am.”
Ellie’s mom lets out a very unladylike noise that rings with disgust and is overlapped by a snicker from one of Ellie’s brothers. “Very well, thank you.” She draws in a deep breath as if to fortify herself. “Shall we?”
We file out in pairs and behind us, I hear her two oldest brothers laughing. “You paid the caterer to call her ma’am, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
Over her shoulder, Ellie whispers with a bit of glee, “You guys are so bad.”
“What?” I whisper. “I don’t get it.”
“Mom doesn’t like being reminded of her age,” she says like she can’t quite believe how juvenile her brothers are, but neither can she resist enjoying the results.
Dinner is surprisingly fine; the food is good, if a little bland for me, and there are no insults or heated debates like I’m expecting. Amelia tells stories about Ellie’s constant search for trouble when she was little while her mother’s lips remain mostly sealed. Ellie’s dad and her older brothers talk about some kind of patent case they’re working on, which has Matt meeting my eyes as if to say welcome to my mind-numbing world. And Sophie supervises the entire table; she asks all the right questions to keep the multiple conversations going and she quashes any topic that hints at discord. There’s a bit of a tiff between Sophie and her mother, though, when we toast with sparkling apple juice instead of champagne. I can only shake my head at that. What mother wouldn’t support her daughter’s desire to stay sober?
All in all, it turns out to be a pleasant experience . . . until the real show starts after dinner when the doorbell rings and some guy is admitted to the living room. “Sorry for my tardiness, everyone.”
Ellie’s mom floats forward with her arms extended. “Peter! So nice you could join us.”
From beside me, Ellie grits out, “Oh. My. God.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, but Ellie doesn’t hear me, or she chooses not to, because she takes a few steps and it’s her mother that she addresses.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Sophie comes up beside me. “Who’s that?” she asks, sounding panicked.
“No idea,” I tell her.
“Ellie,” her mother says imperiously. “There’s no need to be rude. Peter is here to say hello and congratulate you on your milestone.”