Читать книгу Forbidden Love - Christine Flynn, Christine Flynn, Mary J. Forbes - Страница 11

“I’m in the laundry room, Amy. Come on in.”

“I can’t.” Hearing her sister’s muffled voice, Amy tugged on the latch and squinted up through Paige’s back screen door. “You’ve got the child lock on.”

“I can get it!” came a little voice over the scrape of a chair being dragged across a shining white pine floor. Grinning through the silver haze of wire mesh at her aunt, the dainty little three-year-old with crystal blue eyes and a headful of blond curls gave a final shove and climbed up on the custom-upholstered seat. “Are you gonna take us to Gramma Bea’s house to play in the boat, Aunt Amy?”

“Not today, sweetheart,” she murmured, watching her youngest niece push up the high latch with a wooden spoon. “I have work to do. And it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“Can we come tomorrow?”

“I’ll talk to your mom about it. Be careful, Sarah. I don’t want you to fall.”

“Sarah Marie, what are you doing?”

The latch opened an instant before the little girl whipped around, all angelic innocence and golden curls. “Aunt Amy can’t get in.”

“So much for child locks,” Paige muttered, catching her youngest daughter beneath the arms of her pink coveralls and lifting her to the floor. “Go find your sister. Lunch is ready.

“Amy,” the striking blonde continued, sounding relieved as she pulled the chair out of the way and pushed open the door, “I’m so glad you’re here. I was planning to use my jade runners and an arrangement of iris and stones on the table for the dinner party we’re having next week, but Darren just called and said the Johnstons are in town and that he invited them to come. Now I have to use something else.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I used the last time they came to dinner,” she replied, looking seriously troubled at the thought of repeating the same table setting. “I have a sage runner I haven’t used before and I saw some wonderful amethyst lotus bowls in town that would be perfect filled with hydrangeas. I can be in and out of the store in no time if you’ll stay with the girls. I know I have days to get them, but I’ll need three and I’m afraid they might not have them if I wait.”