Page 27 of Sunday Morning
Mom headed back out to the garage.
“You look pretty,” Isaac said. “That dress makes the blue in your eyes pop. You have great eyes. Does Matty tell you that? They’re really stunning.”
I hated my body for blushing because Isaac wasn’t serious. He said it in a mocking tone like he saidMatty.
My pleated blue peasant dress that covered my knees and shoulders and had a thin vinyl belt wasn’t sexy, and neither were my knee-high brown boots, but Isaac didn’t say I looked sexy. He said I looked pretty.
Suddenly, I hated the word pretty.
Pretty meant sweet.
Sweet meant innocent.
Innocent meant a virgin.
Don’t get me started on him calling my eyes stunning. No, “Matty” never said my eyes were stunning.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I mumbled, running up the stairs before the heat made my head pop like the valve on my mom’s pressure cooker.
How was I going to be alone with him in my car?
CHAPTER SEVEN
DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES, “SARA SMILE”
“Sarah,you and Isaac go on ahead while we finish putting the food away,” Mom said after the last person left our house.
I hiked my purse over my shoulder and fidgeted with my keys while Isaac stood by the door, eating his fourth piece of cake.
Yes, I’d been counting. I spent the entire afternoon keeping one eye on Satan.
“Okay,” I said nervously.
Isaac finished the cake and tossed the plate into the trash before leading the way to my blue Plymouth Champ, where he opened my driver’s side door.
“What are you doing?” I asked, freezing because it felt like a trap.
“Being a gentleman.”
“You’re not a gentleman,” I said while tossing my purse behind the seat and stepping into the car.
“Sunday Morning, I’m a lot of things you know nothing about.” He shut my door.
I fumbled my keys, looking for the right one.
“You know, my dad secretly hates that your family lives here,” Isaac said as I shoved the key into the ignition.
“What?” I squinted at him while starting the car.
“He wants to demolish your house and use the land for crops. He said he’d make more money than your family’s paying him for rent—he’s mentioned your dad misses rent payments too often. And your house is the oldest house in Devil’s Head. Its green paint is peeling, and there are potholes the size of your dinky car scattered along your circle drive. But my mom thinks evicting lifelong family friends (and her future daughter-in-law) is a bad idea. She also thinks my dad would go to Hell for kicking a man of God out of his house.”
I popped the clutch and killed it.
“First time driving a stick?”
“No,” I grumbled, peeling out of the gravel drive on my second attempt while avoiding the car-sized potholes.
The Corys owned our house and land, and apparently, they owned me—their future daughter-in-law. I was all too aware that those missed rent payments were overlooked because Wesley and Violet thought I was going to marry their son. But I didn’t know they discussed it around Isaac.