Page 70 of Love Redesigned
“But it’s forty degrees now. And windy. I promise it isn’t as magical as you think this time of year.”
He tossed my measuring tape back at my head. “You’re a terrible buzzkill, you know that, right?”
I grinned. “What if we compromise and go get seafood for dinner?”
“Ohhh, I’m intrigued. All of us?”
I shrugged. “Sure. But you’re buying. I’m totally broke.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “I miss the days when Alex was making enough money to buy us all dinner, all the time. How much does your brother pay him anyway?”
“I doubt it’s half as much as he made at LeFranc, but he doesn’t seem to care.”
“Yeah, I’ve picked up on that. He seems happy here,” Chase said. “Different, but happy. It’s like Alex 2.0.”
I couldn’t tell Chase how much I agreed with him; if I did, I was pretty sure he’d pick up on the hope in my voice—the hope I’d just tried really hard to convince Chase didn’t even exist.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alex
I’d never really loved Thanksgiving. Since I lived with my Dad full time, I’d always spent holidays with Mom and Alicio. Thanksgiving at the LeFranc house had always looked like it belonged in a magazine. Everything looked perfect, right down to the coordinating outfits Mom made us wear to dinner. The meals had been extravagant, prepared by a kitchen full of personal chefs I always felt sorry for because wouldn’t they rather have been cooking a Thanksgiving meal for their own families?
Once a photographer fromELITEFashion had come to dinner and taken a photograph of Alicio at the head of the table, a cashmere scarf loosely draped around his neck, the glistening, perfectly browned turkey displayed on the table before him. In the photo that made the magazine, he held my mother’s hand. Though he stared at the camera, smiling broadly, she stared at him, warmth and affection in her gaze. In the foreground, two boys in matching sweaters sat on either side of the happy couple. I had taken my sweater off before dinner, claiming the wool made my neck itch. That was the reason my mother gave later, after the magazine had gone to press with the third son cropped out of the shot. My lack of a sweater.
Dani and I had spent one Thanksgiving together in New York, the only time I actually remembered liking the holiday. It had been the six of us. Chase and Darius, Paige and Reese, me and Dani. Reese and Dani had done most of the cooking; Darius baked all the pies. I’d felt mostly useless—I didn’t know the first thing about basting a turkey—but there was something magical about watching from the sidelines, seeing the meal come together from the efforts of the people I’d grown to care most about in the world.
That Thanksgiving felt like a lifetime ago.
The scene in Isaac’s kitchen wasn’t all that different, though Reese had been replaced with Isaac as sous chef. When Dani had asked for an assistant, he’d been quick to volunteer before anyone else even had the opportunity. The gesture had clearly surprised Dani, but I could have predicted Isaac’s willingness. He had been intentional in his effort to be closer to his sister lately. Things weren’t perfect between them, but they were both trying, which went a long way toward creating a happy holiday atmosphere as they prepared the meal.
Darius, of course, had agreed for a second time to take care of dessert. Which left me and Chase and the rest of the guys watching football in the living room.
“Hey, can we get a hand in here?” Dani called from the kitchen.
Chase moved to stand up, but I reached out my arm and stopped him. “I’ll go.”
He raised an eyebrow, the expression in his eyes telling me he knew exactly why I was eager to be in the kitchen. I shrugged my shoulders, but I couldn’t exactly contradict him. I’d found a hundred different reasons already to pass through the kitchen, all of them completely unnecessary except for the fact that they brought me closer to Dani. I wasn’t ready to admit what it meant that I still felt so drawn to her, or worse, what it meant that I was finally giving in. But I wasn’t idiot enough to try and deny it either.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen, and Dani smiled. Had her eyes lit up when she’d seen it was me? She and Isaac stood holding the large roasting pan full of turkey between them. “We didn’t exactly plan ahead,” Dani said. “Can you clear a space on the counter?”
I shifted Darius’s pies to the edge of the island and moved a package of celery and a bag of carrots back into the fridge. “Where’s Darius?”
“He had to go buy more butter for the mashed potatoes,” Isaac said. “Apparently, we underestimated just how many pies he intended to make.”
“I should have warned you,” Chase said from the doorway. “Even when it’s just the two of us and his Mom, he makes at least two pies per person. The man feels strongly about his dessert.”
“Two pies per person,” Isaac said. “I think this is a tradition we should try and implement when Mom and Dad come home.”
“If they ever come home,” Dani said with a laugh. “I did not anticipate them loving Europe this much.”
“They’ll come home eventually,” Isaac said. “I mean, sooner or later one of us will get married or have a kid. They’re bound to come back for something like that.”
At once, Dani’s gaze flew to mine. The conversation we’d once had about children popped into my head. We’d been walking in Central Park after attending a fashion gala at the Met a couple of months before we’d broken up. We’d just passed the zoo, where some sort of children’s charity event had been taking place. “Do you want kids?” Dani had asked bluntly, looping her arm through mine.
“I do,” I’d said, hardly taking time to think about my answer. “I’d like them to come with blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes.” I’d stopped walking then, and turned her to face me, slipping my arms around the small of her back. “Just like their mother.”
She’d closed her eyes and I’d wondered for a moment if I’d spoken too plainly, too boldly. “What about you?” I whispered. “Do you want kids?”
