She showed in the doorway, balancing a baking pan in onehand, holding her handbag at her shoulder with her other, and her mother,Grandmoms Beverly, who was up from Phoenix, was at her side.
“Well, look at you.You got donuts.And here, I woke upearly and whipped up a batch of my cinnamon rolls.”
Whipped up a batch.
It took three hours to make her cinnamon rolls.
She held them forward and Liam and Jacqueline ran into eachother in nabbing them.
But Scrapper, being the scrapper he was, held on.
“I love my life,” I said.
Darius grabbed my hand, and I started to smile at him, buthe lifted it in a weird way as he shoved his other hand in his jeans pocket.
He then slid a cushion-cut diamond, surrounded by morediamonds, with even more diamonds embedded in the band, on my ring finger.
And the main diamond was way bigger than Jacqueline’s (shewas sweet, and I liked her, but, as Toni would put it…huh).
Miss Dorothea gasped.
So did Miss Regina, Grandmoms Beverly and Jacqueline.
“Well, all right,” Mister Sam crowed.
“And I love my soon-to-be wife,” Darius whispered, staringinto my eyes.
Oh well.
Fuck it.
I wasn’t holding these back.
I threw myself in his arm and burst into tears.
Two hours later, after a bunch of other calls, and abunch of other family showed, I called Tod.
“Heya, girlie,” he answered.“What’sshakin’?”
“All systems go,” I replied.
I giggled when I had to take the phone from my ear becausehe hollered so loud.
I walked in the back door, put my coat on the hook,looped my purse and the strap of my attaché on top, then went through thelaundry room to the kitchen.
I’d already smelled the fact that someone had lit myevergreen candles.
It smelled like Christmas.
And my kitchen was dripping in it (that was something fromthe old place we definitely used, my Christmas decorations).
My man was at a cutting board, cutting vegetables.My sonwas at a tray of yeast rolls, brushing melted butter on the top.Scrapper waswhere Scrapper was not allowed to be, batting the lid of a water bottle aroundthe island about two feet away from the rolls.
“Son, your cat,” I said.
“He’s so tiny, I can’t see him when he’s on the floor, and Idon’t wanna step on him,” Liam replied.
I looked to Darius.
