Page 45 of Laws of Love
Knox joined her a moment later, placing the picnic basket to the right of the table. Aiva watched him take out the different containers and a bottle of wine.
Once food was on their plates and wine poured, she looked around them again, taking in the surroundings.
“How did you come across this place?” she asked after taking a drink of her wine. She half expected him to tell her that he owned it. It wouldn’t have surprised her.
“A friend owns it, and I thought it would be a nice place for a second date.”
“Well, you were correct,” Aiva responded before taking a bite of the grilled chicken salad in front of her.
They talked while they ate, and as the sun set, Knox left the tent, and she watched him walk behind one of the cherry trees. There was a soft humming, and the tree trunks closest to them illuminated by the string lights wound around them. She hadn’t even noticed there were lights on them before, so taken with the picnic set up instead.
“I see you thought of everything,” she teased when he returned to the tent.
“I did. I have to make sure this date makes your list of best dates.”
“It already has,” Aiva replied, and from the moment they’d stepped into the orchard, it had.
Knox sat beside Aiva as they ate dessert. He’d moved the table out, and they’d moved all the pillows to one side. The sun had set, and night blanketed the sky between the cherry trees. The glow of the lights subtly bathed them. The temperature was pleasant, and he wasn’t sure he could have chosen a better evening for a picnic if he’d tried.
When they finished their slices of key lime pie, he placed the containers outside the tent with everything else and turned to her, propping his elbow on one of the large pillows while she turned on her side to face him, tucking her feet under her.
“Don’t get offended, but I had no idea you were as good of a player as you seemed to have been.”
Knox chuckled. “Is that so? And here I thought you just assumed I was another client.”
“Let’s be real. I knew you’d played at one point when you walked into my office, but I didn’t know youplayed. One of my little sisters is a big sports fan and almost lost her mind when she discovered I’d gone out with you. If she thought she could have, she probably would have made me call you right then for an autograph.” Aiva shook her head as she laughed.
“What’s her name?”
“Marreigh.”
“Well, I’ll have to make sure she gets that autograph, especially if she’s telling you how great I am. That works in my favor,” he responded with a smirk.
“She would sing your praises, I’m sure, if she got one.”
Knox chuckled. “So, I saw the picture, but how many siblings do you have in total?”
“There are twelve of us.”
“I recall you saying you had a big family on Edison’s side. Is that your dad?”
Knox watched as she contemplated his question before slowly shaking her head. “In the sense that I share his DNA, yes, but nothing aside from that.”
Her father was a sore spot for her, so he asked about her siblings instead. “How many women? How many men?”
“There are seven girls and five boys.”
“What kind of age differences do you have?”
“As they decrease, they aren’t that far in age, but from oldest to youngest, there’s a sizeable gap. So, thirty-five, thirty-three, twenty-eight, twenty-six, a set of twins who are twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty, seventeen, fourteen, eleven, and nine.”
Knox was an only child but would have loved growing up with siblings. Not that his parents hadn’t tried; it just seemed it hadn’t been in the cards for them.
“What about you? Any siblings?”
“I am an only child,” Knox responded.
“How was that growing up?”
