Jonah stands next to his Yukon, now parked in our driveway, with all four doors open as wide as his arms. He’s wearing dark jeans with a white undershirt and lighter denim shirt over that. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he’s pulled half of his hair back. He’s delicious. His enormous smile and the way his eyes light up when we step off our front porch has me soaring.
“Ladies, your chariot awaits.”
The girls bound for him, each giving him a hug and gushing about their excitement for the festival today. He hands each of them a four-leaf clover that he’s pressed between two strips of clear tape, and I can’t stop my laughter when they lose their marbles over it.
He’s already installed their booster seats, but I double-check that they’re installed correctly. He simply grins at me when I’m satisfied and leads me to the passenger seat. His large hand cradles mine before he assists me high up into his SUV, and I catch a whiff of his decidedly sexy sage and citrus cologne.
“You look beautiful,” he whispers, so close he knows only I can hear it.
“Thank you.” It’s then I realize my thin denim dress is the same shade as his shirt... and I like that we match. I like it a lot. “You’re very handsome yourself,” I whisper back. To my great pleasure, the apples of his cheeks burst into a shade of pink, and he bites his bottom lip.
I straighten out my dress once he closes my door. It’s shorter than any skirt I’ve worn as an adult, but Amber insisted I wear the dress. The hemline ends just below mid-thigh, and it’s modest by most people’s standards. I’ve paired it with tall suede boots and there’s something about the combination that has me feeling myself. I like the way I look, and when Jonah hops in the driver’s seat, I catch his gaze going straight to my exposed knees. The corners of his mouth only curl more devilishly when his eyes crawl up my body.
Oh yeah,I think smugly.This boy likes the way I look, too.
My oldest cuts through the tension. “Can we please go?”
The drive takes an hour, but it passes quickly with all the questions Jonah has for the girls. He asks about their favorite subjects and their favorite songs. I play passenger DJ with his phone, and he happily listens to all their suggestions.
When we arrive, he leads us past the long festival line, heading straight to the front.
“We’re cutting,” Delta says worriedly.
“No we’re not. We’re VIPs.” He hands the tickets to the staff member who scans them and sends us through with wristbands.
The grounds are filled with music,1 and people milling between vendor tents, food trucks, and a beer garden. On the far end of the festival grounds is the stage, set low into an amphitheater. All at once a memory hits me upside the head and I stop.
“I’ve been here.”
Jonah flicks his eyes from me to the stage and back. “For a concert?”
“I’ve performed here with my parents. I remember this stage.”
“When you used to be a singer with Grandma and Grandpa?” Delta asks.
I nod. My girls knew a little bit about their famous grandparents before their father passed away. Amber helped me open up more to them in the years that have followed, but this last week I’ve been spilling my guts to them. I finally felt ready to teach them the significance of bluegrass in our family. Online, I showed them pictures and videos of our performances. What shook them the most out of everything wasn’t that they had famous grandparents or that we toured across the country—it was that their mom couldreallysing. Not just a little tune hummed into their copper heads before bedtime.
“Yeah,” I reply. “When I was a singer.”
Jonah hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the stage. “Want me to go backstage and see if they need a world-famous bombshell to headline?”
I giggle, “Don’t you dare. I think I would die if I went up there right now.”
He scoffs. “I was talking about me.”
“You’re famous?” Delta asks.
“Oh yeah!” He hoists Lo up in his arms as we make our way down an aisle. “Have you ever heard of a band called Agony Nectar? It’s... pretty much the coolest band ever. But do you know what we don’t have? A pretty mandolin player.”
I roll my eyes and Lo points at me.
He feigns surprise. “Really? Y’think she’d do it?”
Loretta’s smile is crooked and she’s missing a tooth, but this moment, with her little arms wrapped around his neck as he carries her through a throng of people, she’s never been more happy.
And neither have I.
“Here we are,” Jonah says, stepping into an intimate, sectioned-off area with outdoor lounge seating and a coffee table.
