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Janessa let go of Charli and went over to where Will stood. “Doesn’t Charli look beautiful?”
Will looked down at his wife. “Am I allowed to agree with that?”
With a laugh, Janessa said, “I wasn’t asking you, but yes, you can agree. And so can Blake.”
The smile on Blake’s face grew. “Yes, she does look beautiful.”
Charli wanted to shake her head at him. This dinner was supposed to get her siblings off their backs. Blake agreeing that she looked beautiful did not support that goal, especially when Janessa was there to witness his words.
“We’d better go,” Charli said. “We can’t be out too late.”
Charli had dropped Layla off at Jay and Misha’s earlier, and Blake had taken Amelia there as well, so the three kids were getting to hang out.
Part of her agreement to go out for dinner was that the girls not know what was going on. The last thing she needed was for Layla to get wind of things and think that she might be getting a step-dad. Thankfully, everyone had agreed.
Her siblings weren’t unreasonable. Just extremely stubborn and crazy.
“See you guys later,” Janessa called out as they left the living room. “Have fun!”
Fun wasn’t exactly what Charli had assumed the evening would be. Awkward was more in line with her expectation. She would rather have gone to a movie so they wouldn’t have to talk, but Janessa had insisted they go for dinner.
They were both quiet as they walked out of the house and down the sidewalk to where Blake’s truck was parked at the curb. He opened the front passenger door and waited for her to settle in the seat.
Glancing around, she took in the clean interior of his Truck. He’d always prided himself on taking care of his vehicle. Back in the day, Blake had driven a fully loaded truck, and it looked like he still had it.
There was a mixture of scents in the cab, all of them centering on Blake. There was a light scent of oil and rubber, but stronger was the scent of cedar and sandalwood, which she assumed was his cologne. It was kind of like getting a hug from him.
Her reaction to that was mixed, which was pretty much a reflection of her feelings about everything in this situation she’d found herself in.
Blake climbed behind the wheel and turned on the engine. The dashboard lit up, and the radio began to play softly, filling the interior with jazz. That was a bit of a surprise as previously, he’d been more of a country or soft-rock listener.
Was he trying to set the scene for romance?
“How was your week?” Blake asked as he pulled away from the curb of the quiet street she lived on.
“Well, the kids had a good week, which meant I had a good week. How about you?”
“It’s been busy at the garage. Lots of people coming in to get their vehicles prepared for winter. That’s a new one for me, to be honest.”
“Are you ready to deal with winter here?”
“Yep. Amelia’s excited about it. She’s never seen snow in person.”
“Where did you live before you came here?” Charli asked the question without thinking. She’d had no plans to delve into the time since he’d last been in Serenity, but the question was definitely heading in that direction.
“Texas.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s going to be a bit of an adjustment. Have you got winter wear for Amelia?”
“Not yet, though Aunt Julia mentioned something about it earlier this week.”
“Don’t leave it until the last minute. The selection can get picked over, plus the cold can come up on us really quickly.”
“Okay. I’ll chat with Julia again about helping us out.”
Charli bit her tongue to keep from offering to help. If the girls were closer in size, she would have been able to offer Amelia some of Layla’s hand-me-downs. However, because she didn’t have any friends or family with kids the right size to pass clothes down to, she tended to donate most of Layla’s outgrown clothes to the local shelter.
Even if she did have more kids in the future, there would be too big of an age gap to make keeping the clothes a practical thing. At most, she had the previous year’s stuff, but Amelia was at least two sizes behind Layla.
