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Everyone drank their lemonades and chattered amongst themselves. Jessica felt welcomed warmly by Matt’s mother, just as she had been by his sister. Both Annalyse and Annabeth were exceptionally pretty, like the kind of doll-like beauty with petite-shaped bodies and adorable faces. They had that sort of excited chatterbox vibe and were always jumpy and talking breathlessly about one thing or another. Jessica felt glad that they were such nice people and had accepted her like one of their own already. It was easy to fall in conversation with them, and they always had something to talk about and keep the conversation going without Jessica feeling out or awkward. Joseph seemed like a nice person too. Though she was very curious to know more about him from Matt, Joseph was easy with the smiles and had a good sense of humor but never appeared to be overly exceeding. He maintained a sense of propriety and generally made her feel comfortable around him.
When they had had their drinks, Annalyse got up and said, “Okay, children, off you go. I can keep on chattering all day if I didn’t have things to do right now. I will go and see you after the lunch preparations. Matthew! You show your bride around the place. Make her well acquainted with this place, as she is going to be coming here a lot from now on.” She grinned at Jessica, who grinned back and left the room.
“Come with me,” said Matt and led her out the back door.
Can this even be called a back door? It’s like another grand entrance from the back.
The back door led out to the yard behind the house, which was just as beautiful as the front. The porch was line with potted plants and blooming flowers, followed by wooden stairs. The view from here was also amazing. From a distance, she could see something like an orchard, with grape vines hanging in abundance. Matt took the lead and walked over to the orchard, followed close behind by Jessica.
“My mom likes you,” Matt said suddenly.
“Oh, your mom is such a nice person. I’ll be honest. I was a bit nervous before meeting her. I thought that she would not like me,” Jessica confessed.
“But why?” Matt asked, confused.
Jessica hesitated, then she fidgeted with the hem of the dress and looked up at him slowly. “I don’t know, but…I thought that since our wedding was very unconventional, your parents might not approve of me.”
“Even when I’m the one who practically blackmailed you to marry me?” he said with a cocky lift of his eyebrows.
Wait a minute. He’s enjoying this.
“Oh, so now you admit that you blackmailed me?” Jessica challenged him, lips twitching to break into a smile that she held back. They were almost to the orchard now. Jessica could see ripe grapes hanging from the branches. It looked like a scene out of a Greek fantasy land of the gods.
“Of course. Now that I’ve already made you mine, I can tell you my ulterior motives and sinister ways of getting what I want.” He stood his ground.
“You tyrant.”
“Oh, you have no idea.” His voice was low, close to a growl. He was very close to her now. They had reached the orchard and were standing inside one of the many aisles between plantations. Jessica realized that they had moved away from the sight of anyone in the house. This part of the orchard, in the middle of rows of grapes, they were basically hidden. She felt her heart begin to hammer inside her chest. Something in Matt’s voice made her blood run warmer, and the lack of enough distance between his face and hers wasn’t helping her breathe any better either. She should be feeling suffocated, scared. Just this morning, she had made bold and uninterested statements toward him, but right now, she was confused. The rational part of her brain told her they should keep walking, but another part of her brain told her to stay there for a moment longer, just as they were—bodies close, almost touching but not. They looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity, and then Matt broke away. Jessica let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. It took a few solid seconds to get her breathing to return to normal.
Matt cleared his throat and spoke first, “This orchard was built by my grandfather, who traveled around the world a lot. He spent many years living in Italy. When he came back home, he used to always say that he missed the orchard close to his place in Italy, so the next time he went to visit there, he brought back some seeds and started his own orchard right in our backyard.”
“It’s beautiful in here. Seeing it made me think of the Greek gods and their wine obsession.” Jessica laughed, and Matt joined her. “Oh, by the way, I wanted to ask you about Joseph.”
“Hmm… you noticed, huh?”
“It was hard not to. You looked like you didn’t like the man.”
“To be honest, I don’t. He’s my stepdad. My father died when Annabeth and I were pretty young. I’ve been managing the family business as soon as I was able. Mom was devastated, then this guy comes along, and you look at him, and you just know that he’s here for the money, you know? For the longest time, I couldn’t stand him at all. I wanted him out of my mom’s life and out of this place, but eventually, I learned to swallow my thoughts because I noticed he does make my mom happy, and I guess that matters more than his motives or my opinions regarding him,” Matt finished.
“I understand what you are saying, but I also appreciate you for coming to that decision. I saw the two of them together, and they did look happy together. It doesn’t matter that he came here for the wrong reason. What matters is that he stayed for the right ones,” Jessica said in a quiet voice. Matt nodded.
“You know what, let me show you around more. I have so many memories of this place. I grew up in this house, you know, before I moved to Monte Carlo for business. Annabeth and I used to play hide and seek in this orchard all the time. She had wanted a maze, but then my grandfather told her that we have a maze right here at home. Since then, she called this her own personal maze. We would chase each other through these rows and even get lost sometimes,” Matt said, a look of utter adoration on his face.
Jessica found that he looked young and boyish while talking about his childhood days.
Matt continued, “We used to have a nanny who told us ghost stories growing up. Both Annabeth and I loved her stories, and we claimed we weren’t scared at all. This one time, we made her take us to the orchard during Halloween, but it was a dark night, and we pretty much scared ourselves over nothing.”
“It sounds to me that you had a really nice childhood growing up,” Jessica commented.
“Yeah, I did. I sometimes think back on the days when I didn’t have a care in the world and miss my old self a lot.” Matt drifted away, staring ahead into something Jessica didn’t know. She saw that he was getting lost in thought and probably missing his childhood right then, so she tried to change the subject to cheer him up, and they took a turn and got back to the house, talking about many things randomly. Conversation with Matt was also easy when he wasn’t trying to piss her off or tease her, and Jessica found out that he was a very friendly person. Maybe not as hyper as his mother and sister, but he was a cool, calm-natured person. They took a tour of the whole estate, and everything about it mesmerized Jessica. She spotted so many places where she would have loved to sit down with some coffee and a book, maybe listen to some music, or just simply doze off. Even if it was situated in a city, this place had the distinct vibe of the countryside inside its walls.
“It’s almost time for lunch. Mom likes to have lunch with everyone at the table. Let’s get you inside so you can freshen up a bit,” said Matt and took her inside again. They kept on walking beyond the place they sat on earlier and up the stairs.
The second floor showed rows of rooms on both sides. Matt took a right turn, and they came into a huge room. It was furnished neatly and had that look of just enough that told the viewer that it belonged to a guy. The walls were a light shade of cool green that soothed her tired eyes. A big four-poster bed laid against one of the walls. The other end contained a cozy-looking fireplace, beside which was a bookshelf. Jessica was delighted at the sight of that. Matt noticed her staring at the bookshelf on the wall and smiled. He didn’t say a word but walked over to that wall and started going through some books.
“I used to be a very organized book collector. This section contains textbooks about business and hotel management, which is what I majored in, so I have here all my textbooks from college,” he said, pointing to the leftmost corner on the upper shelf.
“This section contains history and art,” he said, pointing just below.
