Downgrade My Ride? I'll Upgrade My Groom! novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Dinner at Gran's

I walked to the back of the ballroom with two hundred people watching me do it.

My father lowered his glass when he saw me coming.

"Dad."

"Not here, Olivia."

"You're giving your house to the woman who wore Mom's dress."

"I'm hosting a wedding for a man I do business with." He set the glass down very precisely. "And for a young woman who has never once embarrassed me in public."

"Give it time," I said.

He looked past me at Clay, then back.

"You've made your choice," he said. "Live with the neighbors."

Then he walked out of the ballroom, and Niles started the dessert service.

Clay's grandmother had dinner every Monday at seven, and nobody was allowed to be late.

Her house sat right next to my father's on the lake in Lake Forest.

I'd grown up running across the lawn between them.

Tonight I could see the Atwood house through her dining room windows, every light on, a white tent already going up on the lawn.

"They're measuring for the dance floor," his grandmother said, following my eyes. "Since four o'clock. I sent over a note asking them to keep the hammering down. Your father sent back a note saying it was his lawn."

"It is his lawn," I said.

"It's a very ugly tent."

She was eighty-one, five feet tall, in pearls and a green cardigan, and she ran the biggest fund in Chicago from a chair by that window.

She had known me since I was seven and stole tomatoes out of her garden.

She served the roast chicken herself.

She always did.

"Clay," she said. "Go and get the good mustard. The French one. It's in the pantry."

"It's on the table, Gran."

"That's the everyday mustard. Go."

He looked at her.

He looked at me.

He went.

His grandmother waited until his footsteps went down the back hall.

Then she put her fork down and folded her hands.

"Did you marry my grandson as a weapon?"

I'd known she was going to ask.

I'd known since the phone call on Saturday night.

I still felt it land in my chest.

"Yes," I said.

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