At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [9]
And they would be happy. Wouldn’t they?
She wondered whether Jeremy ever questioned how fast this all seemed to be happening. Probably, she decided. It was impossible not to. But he seemed so much more relaxed about it than she did, and she wondered why. Maybe it was because he’d been married once before, or maybe it was because he’d been the pursuer during his week in Boone Creek. But whatever the reason, he’d always seemed more certain about their relationship than she was, which was odd, since he was the one who called himself a skeptic.
She glanced at him, noting the dark hair and dimple, liking what she saw. Remembering that she’d found him attractive the first time she’d ever seen him. What had Doris said about him after meeting him the first time? He’s not what you think he is.
Well, she thought, she was going to find out, wasn’t she?
They were the last to arrive at the house. Lexie was still nervous as she approached the door and stopped on the front steps
“They’re going to love you,” he reassured her. “Trust me.”
“Stay close, okay?”
“Where else would I be?”
It wasn’t nearly as bad as Lexie had feared it would be. In fact, she seemed to be more than holding her own, so despite his earlier promise to stay close, Jeremy found himself standing on the back porch instead, bouncing from one foot to the other with arms crossed in an attempt to ward off the chill in the air, watching his father hover over the barbecue. The man loved to barbecue; the weather outside never entered his thinking. As a child, Jeremy had actually seen him shovel snow off the barbecue and disappear into a blizzard, only to reappear inside half an hour later with a platter of steaks and a layer of ice where his eyebrows were supposed to be.
Though Jeremy would rather have been inside, his mother had told him to keep his father company, which was her way of telling him to make sure his father was doing okay. He’d had a heart attack a couple of years ago, and though he swore he never got cold, she worried about him. She would have done it herself, but with thirty-five people wedged into a small brownstone, the place was a madhouse. She had four pots going on the stove, his brothers took up every seat in the living room, and the nephews and nieces were continually being shooed from the living room back to the basement. Glancing through the window, he made sure his fiancée was still doing fine.
Fiancée. There was something odd about that word, he decided. Not that it was odd to think of having one, but rather how it sounded coming from the lips of various sisters-in-law, since they must have said the word at least a hundred times already. Immediately upon entering, before Lexie had even removed her jacket, Sophia and Anna had come rushing toward them, peppering practically every statement with the word.
“It’s about time we get to finally meet your fiancée!”
“So what have you and your fiancée been doing?”
“Don’t you think you should get your fiancée something to drink?”’
His brothers, on the other hand, hung back and avoided the word completely.
“So you and Lexie, huh?”
“Has Lexie enjoyed her trip so far?”
“Fill me in on how you and Lexie met.”
It must be a woman thing, Jeremy decided, since he, like his brothers, had yet to use the word. He wondered whether he could do a column about it, before deciding his editor would probably pass, claiming that it wasn’t quite serious enough for Scientific American. This from a guy who loved articles about UFOs and Bigfoot. Even though he’d agreed to allow Jeremy to continue writing his columns for the magazine from Boone Creek, Jeremy wouldn’t miss him.
Jeremy rubbed his arms as his father flipped one of the steaks. His