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“Wow. It’s a surprise to see you all standing here, ready to greet us,” Rhea said. There was no missing the sarcasm in her tone. Perhaps they’d all been staring out the window, looking at us before we entered. Squeezing my hand, Rhea looked up at me and decided to make introductions right there. “Wyatt, you remember my mom and grandma, Danielle and Edith, right?”
I nodded. “I do. It’s wonderful to see the both of you again.”
Both women smiled back at me.
“And this is my dad, Leon, and my grandfather, Henry. Dad, Grandpa, this is Wyatt,” she declared, finishing introductions.
I extended a hand to Rhea’s father first. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
He quietly assessed me for a moment—something I’d been expecting to happen—before he took my hand and shook it. “Likewise.”
I went on to do the same with her grandfather, then we were ushered inside. Rhea’s grandfather walked over to my opposite side and said, “I’ll take the ice cream for you and put it in the freezer.”
“Of course. Here you go. Thank you.”
The moment I handed it off, Rhea’s mom declared, “I just took the lasagna out of the oven, so dinner’s ready to go. We can all head into the dining room.”
As Rhea and I followed the rest of the group in that direction, I glanced down at her to make sure she was doing okay. For now, she still seemed to be at ease.
Once we entered the dining room, Rhea’s grandmother ordered, “Wyatt, you can sit there, directly across from me. Rhea’s seat is right beside you.”
I offered a smile in return. “That sounds perfect to me.”
After pulling Rhea’s chair out for her and making sure she was seated first, I sat down beside her.
For the first few minutes, everything was relatively easy-going. Everyone was preoccupied with passing around the salad bowl, plates of garlic bread, and serving themselves some lasagna. Once I’d tasted the lasagna, I couldn’t stay silent.
“This is excellent, Mrs. Marks,” I declared. “Don’t tell my mom, but I think this is the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted.”
Rhea’s mom sat up a little taller and smiled at me. “Thank you, Wyatt. And please, call me Danielle. I probably only have a slight edge over your mom on this because everything is homemade, right down to the lasagna noodles. The ricotta and mozzarella are made fresh here on the farm, and we grew the tomatoes for the sauce.”
“Grandma usually makes the pasta noodles,” Rhea added.
“And I did them for this meal, too,” Edith proudly announced.
“It’s my favorite meal,” Henry shared.
“I can see why. It really is delicious,” I remarked, lifting another bite to my mouth.
It wasn’t more than a minute later when Rhea’s dad said, “So, Wyatt, I’ve got to tell you that we’re glad you finally came to meet us. We were wondering when it was going to happen.”
Nodding, I explained, “I understand, and I’m sorry it didn’t happen sooner. I was merely waiting for Rhea to make that call, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about your daughter, it’s that nobody is going to convince her to do anything she doesn’t want to do no matter how hard they try.”
“You’ve got that right,” Danielle mumbled.
Something changed in Leon’s expression, but there was no indication of what he was reacting to or thinking. Instead, he pressed on. “We really started to worry.”
“About what?” I asked.
He lifted his glass and took a sip of his drink before setting it down and sitting back slightly in his seat. “Well, we realized you were coming around a lot, which was a good thing, but the fact that we’d not met you made us think you were like her ex-boyfriend.”
Rhea gasped, and before I had the chance to respond, she declared, “Wyatt isn’t anything like him. In fact, he kicked Tristan out when he randomly showed up at my house a few weeks ago.”
Disbelief and concern marred the expressions of every member of Rhea’s family.
“Why would that guy show up at your house?” Henry grumbled.
“He was calling her, too,” Edith revealed.
