Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Immy woke the next day as Xander was moving around the room getting dressed. He smiled at her when he saw she was awake and came over to give her a brief kiss.
‘Good morning, beautiful.’
‘Hi.’ She kissed him back, stroking his face. ‘Thank you for my massage last night, my body feels wonderful.’
He stroked his hands across her shoulders and breasts. ‘Yup, feels pretty wonderful to me too.’
He pulled away to finish getting ready and she watched him for a moment, wondering if she should address the elephant in the room or if it was just best to continue pretending she hadn’t accidentally proposed to him the night before.
She cleared her throat. ‘You, erm… certainly have magic hands. I don’t think a massage has ever felt so good before. I’m… umm… sure I made some weird noises of appreciation.’
‘Snoring mostly.’
‘Ah yes, sorry I fell asleep.’
‘It’s OK, I wanted to help you relax and I clearly did that.’
‘You did.’
She searched around for how to address the topic but she couldn’t find the words. He seemed to be OK with it, maybe she didn’t need to address it at all. It was a silly nothing comment, it didn’t mean anything. Everything was going to be fine.
‘So we should probably go and see the registrar this afternoon,’ Xander said, as he pulled his t-shirt over his head.
‘Set a date. I think we have to register our intention to marry a minimum of four weeks before so we can’t get married straightaway but four weeks should be enough to get everything ready.
We’ll need to go to the jeweller, get some rings, and get a dress, some flowers, plus we’ll need to find somewhere that will cater for our reception.
Are you wanting a big thing or a small ceremony?
I know I have a huge family, but we don’t have to invite all of them.
My brothers will all be best men unfortunately, I can’t get rid of them, but it doesn’t need to be a bigger thing than that if you don’t want it to be. ’
He glanced over at her and she couldn’t disguise the look of shock on her face.
She couldn’t get married to him. Could she?
Oh, her stupid romantic heart wanted that so much.
But it was way too soon. Alex would probably kill her.
She had to claw back some kind of restraint.
She had to find a way to stop this without hurting his feelings.
Immy suddenly realised he was grinning at her. He was messing with her.
He came over and kissed her again. ‘You don’t need to worry I’m going to be setting a date for our wedding any time soon. I know what that was last night, you don’t need to be embarrassed.’
She sighed in relief. ‘Oh thank god. You had me really worried there for a moment. Although I must admit, there was a second or two I was already imagining my dress.’
His face softened. ‘Yeah? What did it look like?’
‘You’ll have to wait and see. Eventually.’
He kissed her again. ‘I can’t wait to see it.’
There was a knock on the door. ‘Daddy, can I come in?’
Xander quickly threw Immy a t-shirt and she pulled it on and then grabbed the duvet to cover the rest of her nudity. She nodded at Xander and he opened the door and swept his daughter into his arms.
‘Good morning, sweetheart.’
Etta giggled. ‘I came for a cuddle but you’re already dressed.’
‘We can still cuddle,’ Xander said, moving over to the bed with his daughter in his arms. He sat down next to Immy and placed Etta in between them. Immy kissed her on the head, slinging an arm round her to hug her. Etta leaned her head against her shoulder.
‘Hello, beautiful,’ Immy said.
‘Hello,’ Etta said.
Xander took Etta’s hand. ‘Now today we are going to be painting Immy’s shop but if you don’t want to do that, Max has said he’d take you and Zara to the beach. It’s up to you.’
Etta was clearly torn. ‘I like painting but I also like the beach.’
‘Well, once we’ve got the walls painted I was going to paint some sweets onto the wall,’ Immy said.
‘So you could help me with that. You could sit in the back room with Zara and help design the pictures of your favourite sweets and then help me paint them on the walls if you want. Then maybe this afternoon, you could go to the beach with Max.’
‘Yes! I want to do that.’
‘Great, well we need to get some breakfast first.’
‘Shall we have pancakes for breakfast?’ Xander said, sweeping Etta’s hair into a ponytail.
‘Yes! I love pancakes.’
Xander looked at Immy.
‘I do too. I normally have lemon and sugar on mine, what do you have on yours?’ Immy asked Etta.
‘Chocolate chips and raspberries.’
‘Oh nice.’
‘I actually managed to get a pistachio nut butter yesterday,’ Xander said.
Immy smiled with love for him, it was such a small thing but so very thoughtful. ‘That does sound amazing, thank you. I’ll definitely have to try that.’
Xander lifted Etta and carried her out the room, heading for the kitchen so she could help him make pancakes.
Immy shook her head. This man was going to ruin her.
By lunchtime, all the walls of the shop had been painted a lovely lilac colour.
The newly cleaned and primed ceiling had been painted white and the skirting boards were well underway.
Immy had given up trying to stop Xander from closing his shop to help her – no matter how hard she insisted he stay in his own shop to make the most of the Easter trade, he turned up anyway.
Logan, Max, Archer, Quinn and Alex were also there to lend a hand.
Etta and Zara had sat in the community room for a few hours, taking the designing of the sweets very seriously.
When they’d come out brandishing all their artwork, Quinn, who was a very talented artist, had very carefully started outlining them on the walls, with a little bit of artistic licence to improve some of the designs here and there.
Immy didn’t think the girls would notice.
The girls and Immy were now busily painting their beloved sweets on the walls.
It didn’t matter if Etta and Zara wasn’t as neat as Immy was with her painting, it added to the childlike charm of the shop.
Plus they were having a whale of a time.
Immy was really pleased with the progress of the shop but she was still worried about the electrics.
There had been no word from Belinda about the electrician and, as it was Wednesday, she’d emailed her this morning to give her a gentle nudge.
She was particularly conscious that the Easter weekend was fast approaching and with Good Friday and Easter Monday as bank holidays, no tradesmen would be working on those days.
If the electrician didn’t come today or tomorrow then they wouldn’t come out until at least Tuesday.
And if the electrics needed any work doing, then the chances of getting that done before Easter Sunday were pretty much zero, no matter how formidable Belinda was.
Immy had been going to ask Belinda to get someone to do the flooring tomorrow but Logan had said he could probably do that, with a little help.
He and Xander were going to buy the wooden planks this afternoon for the hardwood floor.
She stepped back to admire the paintings of the sweets.
‘Do you like it?’ Etta said, paint smeared across her face, clothes, arms and even her legs. Luckily Xander had dressed her in some old clothes today because Immy didn’t fancy his chances of getting them clean.
‘I love it, it looks wonderful. You’ve done a great job. My customers will love it too. Zara, I love your fizzy cola bottle.’
Her niece beamed with pride. ‘Do you like it? The sugary bits were quite hard to do.’
‘You’ve absolutely nailed it. And Etta, I love this fried egg, the yolk looks really shiny.’
‘Quinn said to add a bit of white to it to give it a shiny look.’
‘It looks great.’
Immy looked around the room. It looked so much brighter and cheerful than it had a few hours before. She just had to hope that the two coats of primer and sealer would be enough to block the smoke stains from coming through the new paint and ruining the girls’ beautiful paintings.
‘Shall I go and get some lunch for everyone?’ Immy asked.
There were murmurs of appreciation around the room and she took a quick sandwich order from everyone.
‘Can I come?’ Etta said.
‘Of course. Xander, Etta’s coming with me.’
‘OK,’ Xander said, as he painted around a tricky corner.
‘Zara, did you want to come?’ Immy asked,
‘No, I want to finish this painting.’
‘OK, no worries.’
Immy took Etta’s hand and they walked out and down Cherry Lane.
The whole of the town was getting ready for the Easter weekend.
The Knit ’n’ Natter group had yarn-bombed everywhere, post boxes, lampposts, telegraph poles.
Trees, telephone boxes, ATMs had been covered with knitted Easter eggs, chicks, bunnies and spring flowers.
It looked wonderful. At the end of Cherry Lane, outside the sandwich shop they were heading to, was a twenty-foot driftwood tree, made and donated by one of the cool home accessory shops in the town.
It stood there throughout the year as a seasonal tree, decorated with hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day, spiders and bats for Halloween; currently it was bestowed with hundreds of Easter decorations.
They went to the sandwich shop and gave their order, but as there were quite a few sandwiches to make, the assistant asked Immy to come back in ten or fifteen minutes so they’d have time to make them. Immy and Etta wandered back outside.
‘Can we go and look at the tree?’ Etta said, happily swinging Immy’s hand.
‘Yes, I love looking at people’s art.’
‘Do you do any art?’
‘I love painting and clay work, I love watching something come to life where before there was only a blank canvas or a lump of clay. I’m not very good at it though, I couldn’t sell anything like your cousin Quinn.
’ Immy screwed up her face as she tried to work out what Quinn was to Etta – cousin once removed maybe? Surely they didn’t call him that.