The Taming of a Wild Child (12 page)

Later, though, as Lorelei sprawled on top of him with a groan, her heartbeat thundering against his chest, Donovan wondered if it might have been something after all.

“L
ORELEI, COULD YOU BRING
the rolls through?”

“Sure.” She added a winking smiley face to Donovan’s text and hit Send, then put the phone back in her purse and grabbed the bread basket. She took her seat in the same place she’d sat at for every meal at home for the last twenty-five years as Mom and Dad took their places. One day she was going to sit in Vivi’s chair, just to see what the view was like from there. Maybe she’d even rearrange the furniture.

Oh, she really was a rebel
. She could almost hear Donovan laughing now. She wiggled her toes inside her shoes. She’d run by the salon this morning and had them painted bright green. Then she’d had a small skull painted onto each big toe. She’d only be able to keep the design for a little while; she was planning on wearing her silver sandals to her dad’s party, and green toes with skulls would
not
go over well. She’d been tempted to send Donovan a picture, but she’d rather see the look on Donovan’s face when he saw them.

Which would probably not be tonight
. They both had family things and lives, and they couldn’t be—
shouldn’t
be—in each other’s pockets all the time. She tamped down the disappointment brought on by simple horniness. She would survive.

“It looks delicious, Mom.” A tiny sniff set her stomach growling. Plump, perfect shrimp … the aroma of garlic and lemon wafting out of a sea of butter … Suspicion set in. Mom’s scampi was her favorite, but it had fallen victim to the dietary restrictions of Dad’s cardiologist. Butter—much less oceans of melted
real
butter—hadn’t been in their diets for over a year now. “Is there something I should know?”

Her mother looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t eat butter anymore, so I can’t help but wonder what I’m being buttered up for. You’re not getting a divorce, are you?”

Dad laughed. “Of course not.”

“I was just in the mood, and you being here was a perfect excuse for cheating just a little,” Mom added.

“Good. I was worried there for a minute.” Satisfied, she stabbed a shrimp.
Fantastic
.

“Although there
is
something we’d like to ask you. Well, something your father would like to ask you.”

Dad put down his fork. Lorelei braced herself. Favorite food coupled with a serious “we’d like to ask you” didn’t bode well. She braced herself before realizing that if it were really bad they’d wait until Vivi was home and tell them both at the same time. That knowledge relaxed her a small bit. “Okay. Ask away.”

“My secretary wants to finalize the agenda for my retirement party—all the little details.”

Dad was talking, but Mom was grinning.
Surreal
.

“I’ve talked Jim Nelson out of a full-fledged roast, but there will be speeches.”

“Of course there will be. You’ve run that place for almost forty years. The speeches will probably be pleas for you not to go.”

“In the interests of time,” Mom interjected, “we’ve decided
to put a limit on the number of toasts made. Your dad has narrowed the list of possibles.”

“I know you’ll have to let Mr. Nelson speak, but keep the microphone away from Mr. Delacroix. He rambles.”

Dad nodded. “We know, Lorelei. But I’ve also decided I’d like a personal touch. I wanted to ask you if you’d be willing.”

“To do what?”

They both laughed, adding to her confusion. Mom finally reached across the table to pat her hand.

“To make a toast for your father, darling.”

She waited for the punchline. Her parents just looked at her expectantly. “Me?
Seriously?
”

“You sound surprised, dear.”

Because I am completely floored by this
. She gave herself a strong mental shake. “I’d be honored.” At her father’s smile, a warm, happy glow spread through her chest. “I promise not to roast you. Or ramble. Or get all weepy.”

“Vivi said you could be counted on not to weep into the microphone.”

“You asked—I mean, you’ve talked to Vivi?” The warm, happy glow cooled and shrank into a rather painful knot. She hadn’t been Dad’s first choice. She tried not to let that bother her. Much.

“She called this morning to say hi. I think she’s getting a little antsy to come home. I asked her if she thought you’d like to do it, and if it would hurt her feelings if we asked you instead of her. I was afraid that you wouldn’t want to do it after being ‘on’ so much recently.”

The happy glow came racing back.
This
meant more to her than anything else. Not because she’d been asked and Vivi hadn’t—it wasn’t sibling rivalry—but because her parents hadn’t automatically defaulted to Vivi. She’d just proved her own thesis: it was difficult, but not impossible
to change people’s minds.
Lorelei—one. Donovan—zip
. Oh, she couldn’t wait to rub that in.

“And this is why I get shrimp scampi for dinner?” The second bite tasted even better than the first.

“It’s not all about you, darling. Scampi is your dad’s favorite, too.”

After that dinner proceeded with the usual small talk, but mentally Lorelei was only half there. She was practically wiggling in her seat. The only thing that kept her still was years of
not
wiggling in her seat at dinner. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and asked to be excused.

In the kitchen, she gave in to her need to do a small happy dance. She only had a minute or two before Mom would wonder why she hadn’t returned, but she dug through her purse anyway. She sent a quick text to Donovan:
Can you meet me tonight around ten? Your place? I’ve got big news!

She didn’t have time to wait for his response, but either he could or he couldn’t. She dropped her phone into her purse and went back to the table. Mom and Dad were now discussing the guest list for the party.

Her mother smiled at her a little too broadly and Lorelei braced herself. “I was thinking that you should invite Jack Morgan.”

Damn.
Play dumb
. “Is he not on the list already?”

“I meant
you
should invite him. As your escort.”

Dumb was not going to work. She switched to vague. “Oh … um … I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“This is …” She scrambled for a good reason. “This is a family thing for us and a business thing for everyone else. I’d rather keep the focus on Dad.”

“Most people there will have a plus-one. It would probably be less noticeable if you did, too,” Mom countered.

“But this is a special night. I won’t be able to enjoy myself if there’s all that first-date pressure and jitters.”

“I would think the jitters would be easier to overcome if the date itself was not the central aspect of the evening. It would take the pressure
off
.”

Oh, she hated it when her mom got all reasonable like that. She felt as if she was caught in a glue trap: good and stuck but with just enough wiggle room to get stuck even worse. Dumb and vague were not going to work; she might as well face facts.

She put her fork down and leveled a look at her mother across the table. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

Completely unrepentant, Mom shook her head. “Probably not.”

“I appreciate the honesty.
But
,” she stressed as her mom started to nod, “I really don’t need you setting me up on a date—much less when I know for a fact that you brain-stormed this idea with Mrs. Morgan. Neither Jack nor I need a fix-up. Not with other people, and certainly not with each other.”

“You said you were just waiting for Vivi to get back to town.”

“I said
we
—and by
we
I meant me and Jack, not you and Mrs. Morgan—would
talk
about it after Vivi got home. It wasn’t a done deal.”

“I just thought this would fit the bill nicely.”

Lorelei looked to her father for help, but he gave her a
you ’re on your own here
shrug and focused his attention closely on his plate.

“Mom, I know that you and Mrs. Mansfield are just tickled pink that Connor and Vivi ended up together after all and made you related by marriage. The whole town knows you would have betrothed them in the cradle if that had been possible. I also know that you and Mrs. Morgan
are good friends, too, and you’re probably thinking it would be very nice if it happened twice.”

Mom didn’t deny that. “It’s not impossible. You and Jack might be perfect for each other.”

“Maybe. But I prefer to make my own dates. Unless you think there’s something wrong with me …?” she challenged.

“Of course not, honey. It’s just that the pickings are starting to get rather slim.”

“
Slim?
Mom, there are over a million people in the greater metro area. At least half of them have to be male. Chances are pretty good
one
of them will suit my needs.”

“You know you haven’t always been as choosy as you might have been with the men you’ve dated.”

A headache began forming behind her eyes. “Oh, Lord. We’re going to go
there?
Really?”

“We don’t
have
to.”

“Thank goodness.” She speared another shrimp.

“But …”

She should have known that Mom wouldn’t just drop the topic like that.

“Have you met anyone
else
you like recently?”

The shrimp got stuck in her throat. She had to grab her water glass and wash it down.
“What?”

“You’ve hit every cocktail party, fund-raiser and luncheon over the past couple of weeks. I think you’ve met every eligible male. Maybe one of them was more to your liking.”

“I was kind of busy at those events. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly right for that kind of socializing.” That wasn’t entirely true—some people
could
do that kind of socializing at an only semi-social event. But it hadn’t crossed her mind. She’d been very focused and very careful. Lord, you’d think her mom would have been
pleased
to find out she could be über-responsible and above reproach. Of course it probably helped that she’d hooked up with Donovan right before. A memory of Julie Hebert using the guest list as a dating service flashed in her mind.
Ugh
. The thought that it could have been
her
acting like that …

“That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have met someone.”

She could put a stop to this very easily. It was very tempting. But the knowledge of the storm that would land on her head kept her mouth firmly closed on that topic.
Gee, thinking before you speak really is a good idea
.

She leveled a look across the table. “I tried to keep it all very professional. It seems kind of inappropriate to prowl for men while at an event in a professional capacity.” Her use of the word
inappropriate
was intentional. Mom had strong stands on what was appropriate and what wasn’t. She laid it on a little thicker, going for Mom’s most vulnerable spots. “It never occurred to me that I should be interviewing men for dates while I was there representing Connor and the studio. Standing in for Vivi. Representing the LaBlanc family …”

Mom’s lips tightened. “You’ve made your point, Lorelei.”

“Thank you.”

“But just think about it for a day or so. That’s all I ask.”

She didn’t have to ask what “it” was. “And if I decide in a day or so that I don’t want to take Jack to the party as my date?”

“Think about it first. Keep an open mind.”

She didn’t have to think about it. She couldn’t be less interested in Jack if he grew an extra head and started rooting for the Falcons over her beloved Saints. She was happy right now with Donovan: there was no pressure,
no games, no worrying about the future. It was just easy. And fun. She was enjoying herself, enjoying having a friend, and she wanted to continue enjoying it for as long as she could. A little knot formed in her stomach at the idea that it couldn’t last indefinitely and she’d have to go back to “appropriate” men her mother approved of who already had their own membership at the Club. But that was at some point in the future, and she’d worry about that once she got there.

It was all she could do to keep her face neutral as her mom finally changed the subject. Mom wanted her to keep an open mind? The openness of her mind wasn’t the issue.

A family business usually meant that family dinners turned into board meetings at some point before dessert. Why, Donovan didn’t quite know—it wasn’t as if his father and brothers didn’t see each other every day at the office, where conversations of this sort would be more appropriate. And more productive. There was a reason why small children were not normally welcome at business meals; they tended to lose interest in the conversation and devolve to surreptitiously flinging peas and kicking each other under the table.

Donovan fully admitted he was probably not helping the situation any as he thumb-wrestled with his nephew and simultaneously oversaw the construction of a mashed-potato mountain by his niece at their end of the table. He didn’t have much to add to the discussion anyway, and eventually his mom would put a stop to it and insist on a different topic of conversation. So he amused himself with his nieces and nephews for the time being.

As each of his siblings had produced at least two offspring—sometimes three—every family meal bordered on chaos. It was not a place for the faint of heart or
those overly concerned with proper etiquette; it was just home and family—something Donovan looked forward to mainly because it came in small doses.

His phone vibrated in his pocket as a text came in, and he pulled it out for a quick peek:
If you’re going to quote me, I expect a royalty
.

Lorelei must have read today’s column, where he’d addressed how hard it was to squelch rumors once they started and how damaging those rumors could be to the reputations of not only the public figures in question, but also the integrity of their legislation and legacy.

Lorelei
had
inspired the central idea: that it was difficult but not impossible to reshape people’s thinking. All you had to do was prove them wrong, but that was the hard part.