THE GENERAL MOOD at Wainwright House was a cross between bedlam and despair. The children were still not on intimate terms with discipline, my sister’s mood swung wildly between overly dramatic and depressed, and my mother had taken to calling me on my cell phone rather than talking to me directly. I was sitting at a long worktable in Miss Montserat’s symphony headquarters office waiting for her return when my mother launched her latest bombshell.
“I just want you to know,” she said without any sort of expected niceties to ease into conversation, “that I’m upset and haven’t gotten out of bed all day.”
At first blush, this news didn’t worry me. My mother was frequently upset and took to her bed. She pulled the sheets over her head for a week when Matt Lauer cut his hair.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
She didn’t sound sick and the day before she had looked perfectly fine after coming home from a late lunch date. She didn’t tell us where she had gone, but she returned happier than she had been since I arrived in Willow Creek.
“Of course I’m sick. Why else would I be in bed?”
“Ah… maybe because you’re afraid Gwyneth Paltrow will get pregnant again and name this one Pear?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Fine. Sorry. What’s wrong?”
Miss Montserat returned with her own black notebook. Every year she compiled one that included all plans for the upcoming ball. She raised a brow when she saw me on the phone. I gave her what I hoped was a winning smile and turned away.
My mother sniffed. “Rumor has it that Vincent is going to the country club for dinner.”
“And?”
“And it’s my membership. My world. My friends.”
“Then who’s he going with?”
“That Jack Blair is taking him.”
My spine tingled like a knee jerking when hit with a rubber hammer. Unintended, but it happens unless you are dead or dying of some strange neurological disorder.
“It’s obviously a PR move,” I surmised.
“My thoughts exactly. So I must counter.”
“How?”
“By going to the club for dinner as well. I’ll expect you and the rest of the family to be ready by seven.”
She hung up before I could say “no, thanks.”
At seven on the nose my mother descended the stairs ready for dinner at the country club. I had barely made it through the front door, and no one else was in sight.
“What is going on here?” she demanded.
The gold buttons on her St. John’s suit winked all their perfectly proper Southern lady power. In contrast, I had on a pair of old Converse sneakers, white T-shirt, khakis, and notepads bundled against my chest.
“Good Lord, Carlisle, you can’t go to the club looking like that. And where is your sister?”
Savannah strode in from the kitchen. “What is it, Mother?”
“Heaven have mercy,” she said, her tone exasperated. “I thought I could at least count on you to be ready… and not look like some sort of third world refugee.”
In my sister’s defense she didn’t look that bad, just not particularly familiar with a brush and comb.
Like animals sensing blood, the rest of the family entered and weren’t intuitive enough to realize the blood was about to be their own. My mother took one look at them and closed her eyes. No one else was dressed much better.
She clapped her hands. “Chop-chop, everyone. Our reservations are in thirty minutes. Get dressed.”
There was plenty of grumbling, but even Janice’s kids seemed to realize that you didn’t argue with Ridgely.
In record time the family was ready and bundling out the door. We took multiple cars.
“Where’s Ben?” I asked.
Savannah’s expression made a strange swing between anger and despair. “I called him at work and he said he didn’t know if he could make it.”
“I’m sure he’s just busy.”
“He’s always busy.”
I searched my brain for a suitable response. “Well.” I was stumped, so I resorted to a standard. “Savannah, don’t worry. Ben loves you.”
Of course as a divorce attorney I figured it was probably highly likely that my brother-in-law was out doing who knows what with who knows who. But I’m also a sister and know that sister-talk is extremely different from lawyer talk. And sister-talk proved to be just the thing when we arrived at the WCCC and found Ben waiting for us at the entry.
Savannah fell into his arms and he kissed her in such a tender way that he either deserved an Academy Award for acting in love or he really was.
The Willow Creek Country Club was north of Willow Square, built a hundred years ago, and was harder to get into than the Junior League, mainly because the initiation fee alone was more than the average person made in an entire year.
The entrance to the property was announced by limestone pillars and tall wrought-iron gates, the grounds surrounded by a high green hedge. The main clubhouse sat back from the main gate like an antebellum mansion underneath a sprawl of willow and live oak trees. The tennis courts and golf course were to the west, the swimming pool to the east.
The club was busy on Friday nights. But no matter how busy, Hector the maître d’ always saved my mother’s table.
She acted like the queen entering the high-ceilinged dining room, tall French doors lining the far wall, floor-to-ceiling draperies pulled back with swags to let in the moonlit night. She waved discreetly to some, stopping to chat briefly with others, a light touch of fingers to someone’s sleeve.
I scanned the room and didn’t see Vincent or Jack. Good, I told myself.
The Friday night country club crowd was generally an older lot. The younger group came on Saturdays. We didn’t get nearly as many whispers behind hands as we had at Brightlee given that most people over a certain age no longer cared about who was doing what to whom, with whom, or the like. Life, they had finally learned, is too short for that.
Drinks were ordered and served, menus distributed, small talk made, smiles a must. Finally, dinner arrived, though no sooner did we take our first bites than Ben pushed up from the table, and set his napkin on his chair. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Given that good breeding prohibited leaving the table while people were eating, my mother was looking unhappier by the second. Savannah didn’t look much better, her delicate fingers holding a shrimp fork, the shrimp dangling uneaten. But suddenly, her eyes went wide. She sat frozen for a second, then dropped the fork to her plate with a clatter, took her glass of wine and threw it back like a soldier just returned from war. Slamming the stemware back on the table, she leaped up. “Excuse me,” she shot over her shoulder as she hurried away.
Janice and I exchanged a panicked glance.
No way, she mouthed to me.
Surely not, I mouthed back.
Even I knew the Willow Creek Country Club wouldn’t fall under the heading of Kinky to anyone. But then again, my sister had never been just anyone.
Hoping to head off an even bigger potential disaster, I hurried after my sister. I hurtled through the tables, then down the long dimly lit hallway toward the restrooms, stopping short outside the big oak door marked GENTLEMEN. Unfortunately, there was no sign of my sister or her husband.
Scowling, I glanced up and down the hall, then inched open the door. “Savannah,” I hissed.
The door lurched open and I would have fallen inside if I hadn’t landed in someone’s arms.
“Carlisle, this is a surprise. Are you lost? The ladies’ room is next door.”
I pushed away and came face-to-face with Jack Blair. “I am not lost.” Said as if he were the demented one.
“When I told you boundaries were ill-advised, I didn’t realize you’d take me so literally.”
“Ever the comedian.”
“I try.”
I backed up. He followed and my stomach gave a lurch as the door swung shut behind him.
“How are you?” he asked, when my back hit the opposite wall.
“I told you, no fraternizing.” Admittedly, I was sort of breathless, but really, my heart was going a hundred miles an hour and my skin tingled with a mix of panic and completely inappropriate excitement.
“We fraternized at Hunter’s dinner party. Oh, but you needed something then. So the rule is no fraternizing unless I can help you?”
“You make it sound so wrong.”
A smile threatened, but he held it back, then just more of him looking at me as if still trying to figure something out.
I tried to duck past him, but he put his arm out, bracing it against the wall, blocking me. I stared at the tan skin, the corded muscles. Forget the fact that a man should never wear any sort of short-sleeved anything on a Friday night at the club; my heart beat (wildly) and my whole body itched to give in and throw myself at him as he always made me want to do.
No, no, no, I told myself firmly.
But when I dragged my gaze up from his arm to his shoulders, then finally to that ruggedly chiseled face, he hadn’t looked away. In the dim light he was more the Jack I had always known, completely dangerous, sure, but caring. And yes, he was beautiful. I mean, really. What was I supposed to do?
“Damn,” I muttered, then did the very thing I swore I wouldn’t do after I saw him at the Foley Building. I launched myself at him in the dimly lit hallway of the Willow Creek Country Club. Yes, me, the totally together, in-control person. Yes, me, the engaged-to-the-perfect-man person. Yes, me, the woman who had sworn off Jack Blair three years ago like Britney Spears swearing off hair shears.
The kiss was instant, intense, as if we had simply picked up where we left off. His breath came fast, his hands caressing places that shouldn’t have been caressed—at least by him. There was plenty of panting and all sorts of noises a girl like me just didn’t make.
He framed my face with his hands, those strong, capable hands, tilting my head back. “This isn’t a good idea,” he said.
“Like I don’t know that?”
I curled my arms around his shoulders, and he groaned, seeming to give in, lifting me up. As much as I hate to admit it, when he wrapped my legs around his waist I let him. Not that you want to know this, but I had on a skirt.
He buried his face in my neck, his hands cupping my, well, lower parts. And no telling where the craziness would have led if the men’s room door hadn’t opened again.
I disentangled as quickly as I could, leaping away to find my sister standing in the doorway.
“Carlisle? Jack?”
“Savannah! I was just looking for you.”
She didn’t appear convinced. “What were you two doing?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
She smiled wickedly. “Nothing?”
“I had an eyelash in my eye.”
“Good Lord, Carlisle,” my sister said, “surely you can come up with something better than that. You know, like, I’ve become a clinging vine and I was practicing on the enemy’s hot lawyer?”
Jack’s brow furrowed. I gasped. Savannah giggled. Then all of us froze when the rear door from the back parking lot pushed open.
A woman entered the building pulling a silk scarf from around her neck, her handbag swinging on her forearm, and after a second I realized it was the same woman I had seen with Jack outside of Starbucks.
She stopped in all her long-legged, willowy dark-haired beauty and looked Savannah and me up and down. Not seeming to find anything threatening (Savannah was incensed), she turned to Jack, smiled a smile that said as plain as day that she could be very, very bad, then hooked her arm through his.
“Sorry I took so long, darling.”
Darling?
“I hope I’m not too late for dinner.”
Jack had a date? And I had just thrown myself at him? (Had I been inclined toward exclamation marks I would have used them here.)
I grabbed my sister’s arm and dragged her away. “Thanks for the help, Jack,” I tossed over my shoulder.
When I got to the end of the hall I couldn’t help myself. I looked back. Big mistake given the fact that Jack was watching me—and the woman was watching me too.
Just between you and me, neither of them looked happy (good)… more to the point, he looked as if he as wondering what kind of crazy, stupid-ass thing he had just done, with me, aka Satan’s spawn (not so good).
“So really, what was that?” Savannah asked, thankfully breaking into my unfortunate thoughts.
“As I said, nothing.” Nothing, that is, if you call knees trembling and my head swimming nothing. I felt a pressure at the back of my eyes, like unshed tears. Though what exactly I wanted to cry about I couldn’t say.
My sister, completely oblivious to the turmoil in my head, just smiled. “I bet that’s her.”
“Her? Who?”
“His fiancée. Racine Bertolli.”
“What?”
She smiled that wicked smile of hers. “Jack’s taken, sister mine. Engaged. About to be married. No longer single. Which in Willow Creek, Texas, means hands off.”
She left me standing at the entrance to the dining room with my mouth on the parquet floor. Jack, engaged?
Had I been fifty, I would have sworn I’d had my first hot flash. Given I was a good two decades away from running dry in the hormone department, I can only explain the prickling heat that rushed through me as an unpleasant variety of shock. How could he not tell me he was engaged? How could he be engaged?
I snapped my mouth shut given my own pesky little issue that I was engaged, too, and had failed to mention said engagement. But still…
I headed (marched) back to the table, following Savannah. As has been established, no question she was beautiful. But as she walked along, saying hello to this person, waving at that person, her bee-stung lips smiling in a very guilty way, her cheeks flushed and her blond hair no longer so perfectly styled, even I could tell men would think she was gorgeous.
My mother looked confused, then, I swear, a little jealous. At first I didn’t believe it. But then I conceded that my mother always had to be the most beautiful woman in the room. She had never subscribed to the idea that a parent’s goal was to help their children do better than they had in life.
But confusion and jealousy took a turn for the worse on my mother’s perfect face when Ben reappeared shortly after his wife. The very proper man was flushed, too, and I swear, a piece of his shirttail hung exposed from beneath his blue blazer, his blue-and-gold striped tie hanging askew against the white broadcloth.
Ridgely’s spine went stiff, her eyes narrowed. After a furtive glance around the room, she pulled up a ragged smile.
“Ben, dear, I suggest you make yourself presentable before you grace us with your presence.”
He noticed his untucked shirt and blushed. Ben. Blushing. More than that, Savannah laughed.
I shook my head, though why I couldn’t say since, like my mother, when it came to men, my sister had always been willing to do crazy things to get what she wanted. Though who was I to cast stones? I had just fraternized (or whatever) with the enemy (the engaged enemy) without bothering to mention I had taken my mother’s case. I wasn’t sure which would be considered worse: the legs around his waist or the missing detail about my new position as my mother’s counsel of choice. Or, for that matter, that I had engaged in said activities with one man while I was promised to another.
My cell phone buzzed. When I saw the readout showed Phillip’s number I cringed, then let it go to voice mail.