‘You need a date, something to head towards. If we don’t set a date then we’ll put it behind everything else we’ve got going on.’
‘Ruby is fussing that I’ll make her wear a horrible colour.’ That was another thing. If they ever did enter into a discussion, Ruby did her best to be as unamenable as possible.
‘She’s ten, she’s starting to assert herself, that’s all.’
‘I get the feeling Prue has been causing trouble.’
‘In what way?’
‘Ruby and I got along famously for a long time but, lately, she seems against the wedding. That’s why I’ve been stalling,’ she admitted sheepishly.
‘Are you sure you’re not reading too much into it?’
She reminded him about the tummy-ache incident and sharing their bed, then about the mysterious toe stubbing, where there was no blood, no bruise, and she was running around the house shortly afterwards as though nothing had happened at all. ‘She also seems to criticise me in whatever way she can.’
‘Ruby? No way, she adores you.’
‘Dylan, I love you, but you need to open your eyes.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll talk to her.’
‘Or perhaps we should wait for it to settle down.’
‘What else has she said?’ He saw right through her obvious hesitation. ‘You may as well tell me or I’ll be blinkered forever more.’
‘Yesterday she made a remark about my hair needing a wash. The day before she moaned about the banana cranberry muffins I made for them to take to school.’
‘She loves those.’
‘Not anymore. Apparently she hates cranberries – she picked every last one of them out while I was standing there.’
He reached out and touched his fingers to her cheek. ‘She’ll come around.’
‘I hope so.’
‘And in the meantime, try not to worry. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is.’
Should she mention seeing a little smirk from Ruby when Dylan and Cleo had bickered about her taking on the extra workload of a market stall? And it wouldn’t be the first time that look of triumph had passed over Ruby’s face either. It had reminded Cleo of Prue when she’d come to the Little Knitting Box in the West Village, her newly appointed job giving her the task of gleefully announcing that the extension to the lease for the rental premises hadn’t been granted as Cleo had believed and that she would have to vacate sooner than expected.
Cleo decided she’d said enough for now and instead told Dylan about his son, who still loved his cuddles from Cleo. ‘Jacob can’t wait to put on a little suit and be the page boy and ring bearer.’
‘He tried a suit jacket of mine the other day and it was like looking at one of the seven dwarfs – sleeves hanging down to the floor, the rest of the jacket to his ankles.’ Dylan’s smile was back, the crease of worry gone from his forehead for now. ‘And don’t think Tabitha and Emily won’t want to be involved.’
‘Tabitha is only interested in wearing fairy dresses, although that could work, but Emily has a very limited eight-word vocabulary so far and she won’t even realise what’s going on.’
‘She will at the rate we’re going – she’ll be an adult.’
‘Very funny.’ What she didn’t want to do was have a wedding where one of Dylan’s children was miserable in all of the photos but more than that, she didn’t want to be the object of Ruby’s resentment.
‘We’ll have to include Emily,’ Dylan went on, not fully realising how complicated this already was. ‘Otherwise in years to come, when she looks back at the photos, we’ll be facing the consequences.’
Cleo’s original arrival in New York was as a twenty-nine-year-old divorcee starting over following a disastrous marriage and, back then, she’d never once thought she’d have all this: a man she was as in love with as the day they began going steady; a blended family with four kids she adored despite any angst they brought her; and a business she loved with a passion that bordered on the unhealthy when she tried to branch out with things like Christmas markets in Manhattan as if she didn’t already have far too much to do. But perhaps she’d simply got avoidance tactics down to a tee.
‘What do you think to a winter wedding?’ She floated the idea to Dylan while handing change to a customer who had, after much debate, gone with the navy long cashmere sweater instead of the fawn. Perhaps if they made firmer plans then Ruby would have some time to get used to the idea and she’d work through her grievances, whatever they might be.
‘I think even by your standards you’d be pushing it to fit it in,’ Dylan replied.
‘Not this year, even I’m not that insane. I was thinking next year.’
