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Blake was sitting forward, gripping the arms of the chair to stand, when he caught a glimpse of movement at the back door. Winston was escorting his grandmother’s guest outside. The hair and the clothes were quite different from this morning, but even from this distance, he knew who it was.
“You know, you could’ve told me you were having Ivy over. I would’ve put off this discussion until later.” He leaned across the table, narrowing his eyes at her and speaking in a lower voice. “Did you plan this?”
His grandmother smiled and folded her hands in her lap. It seemed like a sweet smile, but it was unnerving to Blake. His grandmother was no docile, cookie-baking granny. She was a strategist. He just wasn’t entirely sure what she was planning. She didn’t tip her hand very often. Even when his grandfather was alive it had been she who ran the show. She was more a Chamberlain than her husband ever was.
“I didn’t invite you over,” she said. “You barged in and didn’t bother to ask who I was expecting. How could I have planned it?”
Blake wasn’t sure, but he knew she had. He stood up from his chair, but he had no way of escaping unless he jumped the wooden railing of the gazebo and took off at a sprint across the lawn. He wouldn’t give Ivy the satisfaction of spooking him that badly. That meant standing his ground.
Just then, Winston arrived at the steps of the gazebo. “Mrs. Chamberlain, Miss Hudson has arrived for tea.” He held out his arm, gesturing for Ivy to go ahead.
She looked beautiful, and so different from the other times he’d run into her. At the cabin, she’d been quite literally a blank slate: no makeup, no clothes, no hairstyling. At the bar, she’d been done up for a rowdy night on the town with dark eyeliner and sexy but severely styled hair. Today at the fund-raiser meeting, it was a more casual in-between look with a sleek ponytail and a pink gloss that made her lips look shiny and kissable. That had been nice, but right now, she was just about perfect.
Blake felt like Goldilocks as he looked Ivy over. This look was soft and romantic. The pale cream lace of her top accented the peachy tones of her skin. The dark waves of her hair were pulled into a braided bun at the back of her neck. Soft tendrils fell around her face, highlighting the delicate blush and golden glow of her eye makeup.
She thanked Winston, taking a few steps up before reaching the top and realizing Blake was standing there behind the wooden post. In that moment, the smile that lit up her face faded. In the pit of his stom
ach, Blake ached for it to return, but how could he witness it when he was the one who chased it away?
“You look . . .” his voice trailed off as he got lost in the depths of her emerald-green eyes. He cleared his throat and started over. “You look lovely today, Ivy.”
“Thank you,” she said, her body language a little stiff. Ivy seemed almost more uncomfortable when he was nice to her than when they were fighting.
She didn’t say anything else to him. Instead she turned to his grandmother and offered her hand. “Thank you for inviting me over, Mrs. Chamberlain. It’s an honor to share tea with you today.”
His grandmother smiled at her, showcasing the smile Blake knew was saved for the public. “Of course I had you over, dear. I drew up the invitation as soon as I knew you had returned to Rosewood. Please have a seat.” She gestured over to the seat Blake had recently occupied.
Blake, of course, was in her way. The gazebo was not very large. She took a step and then had to stop. Her dark green eyes focused on him expectantly until he stepped aside and let her take the seat.
Adelia picked up the silver teapot and immediately poured two cups. “Cream or lemon, dear?”
Blake watched the ladies go through the ritual of building the perfect cup of tea, unsure of what to do.
It must have been obvious to his grandmother that he was at a loss, too. She placed a toast point with smoked salmon and cre`me fraîche on her plate and looked up at him with amusement lighting her pale blue eyes. “Blake, dear, are you staying for tea or have you said what you needed to say?”
He had a strange, inexplicable urge to stay, and not because he had more to say to his grandmother. He wanted to be close to Ivy for a while in a setting where they couldn’t fuss and he could admire her beauty from the safety of his own wicker chair. Even after all these years, she had this hold on him, like she was a planet and he was a satellite stuck in her gravitational pull. He wanted to . . . hold Ivy’s hand.
He had to fight his instincts and walk away from her. Blake joining his grandmother for one of her famous teas was as preposterous as her joining him at Woody’s for chicken wings and football.
“I’m going. Enjoy your tea, ladies,” he said before leaping down the stairs two at a time and cutting across the lawn to his truck.
Chapter 7
Ivy watched Blake make a quick getaway. She wasn’t sure what was going on between him and his grandmother, but she was relieved to see him go. The butterflies in her stomach were already fluttering around at being invited to tea. His presence was certain to agitate them further. She didn’t need him here flooding her mind with inappropriate thoughts and spiteful insults while she was trying to focus on not making a fool of herself in front of his grandmother. As it was, she felt a flush rising up her neck that made her want to fan herself.
“That boy.” Miss Adelia sighed, watching him leave. “I love him, but he’s stubborn like his father was.”
“I can’t speak as to Mr. Chamberlain,” Ivy replied, “but I can unequivocally say that Blake is one of the stubbornest people I’ve ever met.”
Adelia chuckled and used a pair of silver tongs to place a fruit tart on her plate. “I can’t complain, really. It’s my doing. I’m certain the stalwart gene came from my side of the family. Of course, without it, I never would have made it from my parents’ veritable shanty of a house to a mansion like this.”
The Chamberlain matriarch watched Ivy’s eyes widen in surprise over the rim of her teacup. “You didn’t know that, did you?” She laughed softly. “I did not come from a fine southern family. We were poor. We still had an outhouse in the fifties, if you can imagine it.”
She couldn’t imagine it. Miss Adelia was so firmly ingrained in the Chamberlain family, it was hard to think of her as ever being anything else, much less poor. Money certainly looked good on her. “How did you and Mr. Chamberlain meet?” Ivy was almost afraid to ask the question, but more afraid to sit there with her mouth agape.
“We met in school, like you and Blake did. I always thought he was sweet on me, but Charles was shy and wasn’t the kind to go against his father’s demands. You see, I wasn’t the right kind of girl for Charles. His father wanted him to court one of the Whittaker girls, but I could tell he only had eyes for me.”
“What happened?”
