Grams handed a dish to Alex as they sat down. “Here you go.”
“Allergies?” Jackson asked, looking at the contents—potatoes with mushrooms and cheese instead of beef.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Alex replied.
“Vegetarian?” Jackson choked and Kayla kicked him under the table as a warning.
Alex stuck up his chin. “Yeah. Got a problem with that?”
Kayla nearly choked herself—on a laugh. She suspected her son had enjoyed telling his cowboy birth father that he didn’t eat meat. The possibility pleased her; a little defiance could help Alex deal with the situation.
“No, it’s fine...great,” Jackson said hastily.
Morgan gave the pan of roast beef hash a speculative look and Kayla got the feeling she was considering a sudden conversion to vegetarianism to bait her father. Finally she spooned a large serving of the traditional hash onto her plate.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she told Alex.
DeeDee nodded. “He’s a sap. No meat on his pizza. That’s just wrong. I live for pepperoni.”
“I like veggie pizza just fine,” Alex argued.
“Me, too,” Morgan said, “but it’s better with pepperoni.”
“Or bacon.” DeeDee smacked her lips.
“What about Hawaiian?” Morgan asked. “Plain pineapple isn’t the same.”
Suddenly Kayla’s gaze met Jackson’s and she realized he’d gone from being disconcerted to amused at the girls’ attempts to convert Alex. They both chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Alex asked suspiciously.
“Nothing much,” Kayla said. “Let’s enjoy our hash. It’s beef for us, and mushroom cheesy for you.”
“The vegetarian version also sounds delicious,” Jackson said. “You’re a fine cook, Mrs. Garrison.”
“Please, call me Elizabeth.”
“And I’m Hank,” Kayla’s grandfather urged. “Morgan, that goes for you, too. None of that Mr. and Mrs. nonsense. We’re all family now.”
Kayla blinked back tears. Growing up, her mother had claimed her parents would be humiliated by their daughter’s teen pregnancy. “I couldn’t go home,” she’d often declared. “They would have slammed the door in my face.” But once Kayla had met the Garrisons, she’d realized it was Carolyn’s embarrassment about her drinking and succession of men that had kept her away, not concern over her parents.
After dinner Jackson stopped Elizabeth when she began gathering plates and silverware. “You’ve done enough. Who’ll take a turn washing up with me?”
Before Kayla could nudge Alex, her daughter spoke up. “I will.”
Jackson smiled at her. “Thanks, DeeDee.”
The rest of them played a card game while the dishes were washed and dried. Kayla had to admit, grudgingly, to herself that at least Jackson’s attitudes weren’t so dated that he expected only women to be on dish detail. Of course, he might have been doing it just for show.
“How about a hike?” Jackson suggested as he hung up the dish towel. “I saw a trail leading off from the campground when we pulled in.”
“Sounds good,” Hank said and Elizabeth nodded.
They started off together, but the three kids quickly ranged ahead.
Grams tucked her arm into her husband’s. “Go on and catch up with them. We’re fine.”
Kayla and Jackson quickened their pace and she called out, reminding Alex and DeeDee to remain in sight.
The light was glorious. The golden radiance of the sun on the horizon cast an alpine glow over the landscape, and Kayla caught her breath at the sight of a large stag standing tall and alert in a meadow.
“Magnificent, isn’t he?” Jackson murmured. “Worth putting up with me to be here?”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s got to be worth it being here with your grandparents. I saw how emotional you got at dinner when Elizabeth talked about us being a family.”
“Oh,” Kayla said, abruptly feeling self-conscious; she didn’t enjoy having her feelings on public display. “What makes you think I was emotional?”
“Hey, turnabout is fair play. You see my jaw muscles tense when I get uptight. I notice your eyes. Did it mean that much to have Elizabeth call us a family?”
“It just reminded me how silly it was to stay away from them all these years.”
“Why did you?”
“A lot of reasons, most of them meaningless in retrospect. I thought they’d be embarrassed that both their daughter and granddaughter had a baby in their teens. My mom made it sound... Well, it doesn’t matter. I should have realized they weren’t like that.” Kayla didn’t add that Alex’s resemblance to Jackson would have made returning to Schuyler a challenge, or that her pride had been involved, at least in the beginning. When he’d accused her of sleeping around, she’d sworn she would never return.