“The house is always clean, Mom. It looks great. And I thought you were going to order food in so you didn’t have to cook on your own anniversary.”
“I wanted homemade food for Jane. Did it smell good when you came downstairs?”
“Yes, but it always smells good.” He could tell by the look on her face that he’d given the wrong answer. “Though it smells extra good right now. You didn’t need to—”
His mom sucked in a breath. “Oh dear God,” she said. “She broke up with you, didn’t she. She’s not coming.”
“What?” He shook his head. “No, I just mean that she wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble for her.”
“Well, of course I’m going to some trouble. I want her to love us.”
“She will, Mom.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You sure she didn’t dump you?”
The doorbell rang and everyone jumped. Jasper lost his ever-loving mind, barking at a piercing pitch, warning the entire planet that there was a possible intruder.
Levi got out in front of the whole pack and faced them, hands up. “Sit,” he said. “All of you.”
Everyone but Jasper sat.
“Okay, now try to look normal.”
“Honestly, Levi,” his mom said, “we know how to behave.”
“Do you?”
“It’s his girlfriend,” Tess said, putting an odd emphasis on the word girlfriend that made Levi grimace on the inside. “He’s got the right to want everything to go perfectly. Isn’t that right, Levi?”
He pointed at her, then the rest of them. “All of you, zip it.” He gently touched his finger to Peyton’s nose. “Except you. Never you.”
She beamed her toothless grin at him.
To everyone else he said, “Not a single one of you is going to say another word. Not until I explain to her what you guys did. Because there’s no way I’m letting her walk in here without first telling her about the con you all pulled.”
Tess gave him a long look. “Do you really want to tell stories about con artists?”
Levi glared at her, but she’d been his big sister all his life and wasn’t cowed in the least. In fact, she smirked.
Shaking his head, he opened the door to Jane and her grandpa. Jasper squeezed between Levi and the door and immediately put his nose to Lloyd’s crotch.
“Whoa,” Lloyd said. “The frank and beans haven’t been nosed like that in a long while.”
“Sorry.” Levi pulled the dog away. “Jasper, sit.”
Jasper sat, panting happily, smiling from ear to ear.
“Jasper, huh?” Lloyd patted him on the head. “What a big boy you are. Nice name too.”
“He also goes by ‘dammit,’ ‘don’t you dare,’ ‘no!’ and ‘stop!’” Levi looked at Jane, trying to figure out how to do this. Like a Band-Aid, Jane would say.
Her smile was a little short of its usual wattage. In fact, it was her polite smile, the one she used with people she hadn’t let into her life. The one Levi hadn’t seen in a while, and he stepped over the threshold, pulling the door shut behind him. “You okay?”
“Nervous.” She sat on the top porch step like her legs were wobbly.
“Me too,” Lloyd said at a decibel that suggested he might have forgotten to turn on his hearing aids. “But not for the same reason as Jane. I’m nervous because I had bologna and cheese for lunch, and bologna gives me the toots.”