Читать книгу The Wedding Bargain - Lee McKenzie, Lee Mckenzie - Страница 11

After Ben’s birthday dinner, Michael stood on the terrace outside the French doors, listening to the stillness and enjoying a few moments of solitude while waiting for Poppy to do her business and come back inside for the night. Ginny and Paul had gone home and Lexi was putting away the last load from the dishwasher. Like all of Sophia Morgan’s dinner parties, this one had been a triumphant success. Now the birthday boy was upstairs getting ready for bed, with his mother’s help, of course. It was something Ben should be doing by himself, but Sophia had been babying him for twenty-one years and she wasn’t about to stop. When the time came to hire a caregiver for Ben, this would make finding someone suitable that much harder.

Michael whistled softly when the little white dog disappeared beneath some shrubs. She reappeared and raced across the lawn, a flash of white hurtling in his direction. “Time to come in, you little rascal.”

Inside the house, she tore through the family room toward the kitchen, leaping and jumping around Lexi’s legs.

“Get down!” She finished stacking clean dinner plates on the counter and closed the dishwasher. “This dog has no manners at all.” But much as she tried to feign indifference toward Poppy, Michael had caught her sneaking tidbits of food off her plate and feeding them to the little dog that sat eagerly under her chair. He also knew she’d leave her bedroom door ajar when she went to bed, with the hope that Poppy might find her way in there.

Carefully hidden beneath Lexi’s tough, no-nonsense exterior was a soft heart and a generous spirit that few people ever got to see. She had always been the studious one in the family, bookish, really, with an artistic flair. While Ginny tended to be a little flamboyant at times, Lexi had a quieter, more casual elegance about her. Ginny was all laughter and warm hugs and put family first. Lexi was more reserved and 100 percent committed to her career. At thirty-one she was already one of San Francisco’s up-and-coming architects. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the family, Poppy included. She just didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve.