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Jenny shook his hand. “Do you now?” She shot a look at Iris.
Iris just sighed, then met Hud’s gaze and smiled.
And suddenly, for this small blink of time, come what may, all seemed right with the world.
Eight
Iris hadn’t realized how tired, how tightly wound she’d been, until she woke up on the foldout in her parents’ den—her room being occupied by Pippa and Imani—to the smell of pancakes and bacon frying, having slept…well, it was possible she hadn’t slept so soundly in years.
Maybe it was the exhausting seventeen-hour trip across the ocean, the four-hour layover in New York City, the arrival in Minneapolis at midnight. Hud had rented a car to drive them to their home, just outside the small town of Chester, Minnesota.
The last thing she’d expected was her mother to greet her at the door. Her chest tightened a bit at how her mother had aged, looking a little run-down, the wound on her head alarming. Just a fall. When was a fall at her agejust a fall?
Wan light bled through the shutters of the room, and Iris got up, pulling on a sweatshirt over her jammie pants, then went to the window. Her body ached all the way to her bones, her ribs so sore she could hardly breathe.
But outside, a layer of white grace covered the grass, the fields, capping the rows and rows of idle vines in white. The first snowfall, and with it came a magic that meant family and celebration.
Maybe returning home wasn’t running. Wasn’t hiding.
Maybe, for right now, it was exactly the answer she needed. So maybe she shouldn’t have been so hard on Hudson when he’d suggested it.
What about our jobs? Our careers?
You alive is more important than both those things.It was the power of his gaze in hers more than his words that had made her get on the plane from Berlin.
She opened the blinds, and the gray light washed over the computers set up on her father’s desk. Four monitors, showing shots of the outside of the house from all angles. She’d slept with her pillow over her head most of the night.
A massive picture of the family winery hung over his desk, an aerial shot of the barn, the house, right after the last addition of the upper-floor master and her mother’s office-slash-guest room on the main floor, where her grandparents had stayed when they’d visited, and where Hud had slept last night.
He’d acted a little weird when he’d said goodnight, not kissing her, not even meeting her eyes. But maybe he was tired too.
She tiptoed out to the main-floor bathroom, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and tied back her hair. Good enough for breakfast.
Except Mom had made it into something of a celebration, setting the long table, bringing in extra chairs, adding some dried chrysanthemums to the center.
Creed sat at the island, his leg on a chair, scrolling through his phone.
“Hey, bud,” she said. He held up his fist and she bumped it. He seemed about a decade older than she remembered, filled out, wider shoulders, agrownman. And handsome, too, with that dark curly hair, chocolate dark eyes. No wonder a princess had followed him home.
She must be the girl laying plates on the table.
“Hi,” she said to her. Pretty, darker skin, dark hair pulled back, she looked about twenty and wore a sweatshirt, leggings.
“Hi. I’m Imani.”
Yep, the infamous princess that Creed had rescued. “Glad to meet you.” She picked up the silverware and followed her around the table, adding forks to folded napkins.
Worship music played from the speaker in the kitchen, CeCe Winans’s “Believe for It.” Her mom sang along in the kitchen as she stood at the stove, a flat spatula in her hand. “There is power in your name…” She wore a pair of leggings, a sweatshirt, her hair braided, and looked about a thousand times brighter than last night.
“Morning, Mom,” Iris said.
“Sweetie. Did you sleep okay?” She handed Iris one of the fresh blueberries she was dropping onto the sizzling pancakes.
Iris took it, popped it in her mouth. “Like the dead. I could go back to bed for another hour or ten.”
“Don’t,” Fraser said. He stood at the sink, washing dishes by hand, still the bearing of a hero despite his longer hair, his smattering of beard. He looked up at her as she came over to the counter, searching for glasses. “You gotta let your body adjust to the new time. Stay awake, no matter what it takes.”
“Spoken from experience.” She stopped near him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He returned with a spray of water with his hand.
