“Come on, sweets,” he says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and leading me over to greet his mom.
She meets us over halfway and throws her arms around my shoulders, crushing me in a bear hug. For someone so thin, she sure is strong. She’s got a dark green wool sweater on and the fabric tickles my nose as she continues to squeeze me to her.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Grove,” I say with a small laugh as Eli practically wrestles her off me.
“Come in, come in! It’s freezing out here.”
Mrs. Grove wraps her arm through mine and drags me up the front steps and inside.
“Have you been here before?” she asks me and I look to Eli.
Will it be weird if I say no?
“No, Mom. This is the first time.”
“We’ve been busy over at the bakery. Eli has been helping me get the place up and running,” I tell her and she looks at her son lovingly.
“He’s a good boy. Now come meet Frank. I’m Susan, by the way. You can call me that… or Mom,” she says with a wink.
“Mom!” Eli says exasperatedly from behind us.
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” she says as she pats my arm and leads me into the living room that’s off the main hallway where a tall man is piling some more wood by the fireplace.
“Hartley, this is my husband, Frank. Frank, this is Eli’s girlfriend, Hartley.”
“Nice to meet you, Hartley,” Frank says, the low timbre of his voice reminding me of the men on the audiobooks that Grams and I used to listen to.
“Nice to meet you too,” I say, shaking his outstretched hand.
His parents are both tall, but Eli still has a few inches on both of them. He gets his dark coloring from them too. They all have dark brown hair, although his parents’ hair has a bit more gray in it than brown.
Eli wraps his arm around my shoulders and I glance up at him. He smiles down at me and for just a moment, I can almost believe that this is real.
“We were just about to get started making dinner. Did you want to give me a hand?” Susan asks and I nod.
“Let Eli give you a tour first. I’ll go get everything ready,” she says before she disappears into the next room.
“Come on,” Eli says, taking my hand in his and leading me back out into the hallway and then up the stairs to the second floor.
The floors are all the same dark hardwood, the walls painted a really pale gray. He shows me the bedrooms, letting me poke my head into each before we move onto the bathrooms.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask him as he leads me back downstairs and all the way down the hallway.
“About three years. I bought it right before my parents moved to Florida and I took over the shop,” he says as he leads me into another room.
I glance around the small den at the back of the house. The furniture all looks comfortable, the leather chair in the corner by the back window looking like the perfect place to curl up on a winter day with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate.
Eli leads me across the hall and into the kitchen and I swear I almost moan when I see it. It’s a chef’s dream kitchen and I eye him suspiciously.
“Can you cook?” I ask him.
“A bit,” he says with a shrug and I can’t tell if he’s being modest or not.
“Oh, don’t listen to him. He can heat up a frozen pizza or meal and that’s it,” his mom says with a laugh and I can’t help but gasp.
“You can’t cook, but you have this perfect kitchen?” I ask, outraged.
“It just came with the house,” Eli says, holding up his hands in front of him as he backs for the door.