Call Me Irresistible

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Her hands shook as she tried to scrub the words away, and queer little sounds escaped from her throat.

GO AWAY

Leaving lipstick messages on mirrors was the biggest cliché in the world, something that only a person with no imagination would do. She needed to get a grip. But knowing an intruder had sneaked into her house when she was gone and touched her things made her nauseated. She didn’t stop shaking until she’d erased the awful words and searched the church for other signs of invasion. She found nothing.

As her panic faded, she tried to imagine who had done this, but there were so many potential candidates she couldn’t sort through them all. The front door had been locked. The back door was locked now, but she hadn’t checked it before she’d left. For all she knew, the intruder had gotten in that way, then locked it afterward. She pulled her damp polo back on, went outside, and walked around the church but found nothing unusual.

She finally took her shower, darting nervous glances at the open door as she washed. She hated being frightened. Hated it even more when Ted loomed without warning in the open doorway, and she screamed.

“Jesus!” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I knocked.”

“How was I supposed to hear?” She jerked off the faucet.

“When did you get so skittish?”

“You took me by surprise, that’s all.” She couldn’t tell him. She knew that right away. His status as a certified superhero meant he’d refuse to let her live here alone any longer. She couldn’t afford to live anywhere else, and she wasn’t letting him pay rent on another place. Besides, she loved her church. Maybe not at this precise moment, but she would again, as soon as she got over being creeped out.

He pulled a towel from the new Viceroy towel rack, Edinburgh line, that she’d recently installed. But instead of giving it to her, he draped it over his shoulder.

She held out her hand, even though she had a pretty good idea what was coming. “Give me that.”

“Come and get it.”

She wasn’t in the mood. Except, of course she was because this was Ted standing in front of her, steady and sexy and smarter than any man she’d known. What better way to shake off her remaining jumpiness than to lose herself in lovemaking that demanded so little of her?

She stepped out of the shower and pressed her wet body against him. “Give it your best shot, lover boy.”

He grinned and did exactly as she asked. Better than she’d asked. Each time he took more care and postponed his satisfaction longer. After it was over, she wrapped a sarong around herself with one of the silk pieces she’d worn to his rehearsal dinner, then retrieved beers for both of them from the twelve-pack he’d stashed in her refrigerator. He’d already pulled on his shorts, and he took a folded piece of paper from the pocket.

“I got this in the mail today.” He sat on the couch, one arm draped along the back, and crossed his ankles on an abandoned wooden wine crate she’d turned into a coffee table.

She took the paper from him and glanced down at the letterhead. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. He didn’t usually share the more mundane aspects of his mayoral job, and she sat on the arm of a wicker chair with faded tropical print cushions to read. Within seconds, she’d shot up only to discover her knees were too rubbery to hold her weight. She sank back into the cushions and reread the pertinent paragraph.

Texas Law requires that any person who tests positive for a sexually transmitted disease including, but not limited to, chlamydia, gonorhea, HPV, and AIDS, must provide a list of recent sexual partners. This is to notify you that Meg Koranda has listed you as one of these partners. You are urged to visit your physician immediately. You are also urged to cease all sexual contact with the above named infected person.

Meg gazed up at him, feeling sick. “Infected person?”

“Gonorrhea is misspelled,” he pointed out. “And the letterhead is bogus.”

She crumpled the paper in her fist. “Why didn’t you show me this as soon as you got here?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t put out.”

“Ted . . .”

He eyed her casually. “Do you have any idea who might be behind this?”

She thought of the message on her bathroom mirror. “Any one of the millions of women who lust after you.”

He ignored that. “The letter was mailed from Austin, but that doesn’t mean much.”

Now was the moment to tell him his mother had tried to get her fired, but Meg couldn’t imagine Francesca Beaudine doing anything as vile as sending this letter. Besides, Francesca would almost certainly have checked for spelling errors. And she doubted Sunny would have made the mistake in the first place, unless she’d done it deliberately to throw them off track. As for Kayla, Zoey, and the other women holding on to fantasies about Ted . . . Meg could hardly throw around accusations based on dirty looks. She threw the paper on the floor. “Why didn’t Lucy have to put up with this crap?”

“We spent a lot of time in Washington. And, frankly, Lucy didn’t rile people like you do.”

Meg came up off the chair. “Nobody knows about us except your mother and whoever she might have told.”

“Dad and Lady Emma, who would probably have told Kenny.”

“Who, I’m sure, told Torie. And if big-mouth Torie knows—”

“If Torie knew, she’d have been on the phone to me right away.”

“That leaves our mysterious visitor from three nights ago,” she said. Ted’s wandering eyes indicated her sarong was slipping, and she tightened it. “The idea that someone might have been watching us through the window . . .”

“Exactly.” He set his beer bottle on the wine crate. “I’m starting to think those bumper stickers on your car might not have been the work of kids.”

“Somebody tried to break off my windshield wipers.”

He frowned, and she once again debated mentioning the scrawl on her mirror, but she didn’t want to be locked out of her home, and that’s exactly what would happen. “How many people have keys to the church?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I’m wondering if I should be nervous.”

“I changed the locks when I took over the place,” he said. “You have the key I kept outside. I have one. Lucy might still have one, and there’s a spare at the house.”

Which meant the intruder had probably come in through the unlocked back door. Leaving it unlocked was a mistake Meg would make sure she didn’t repeat.

It was time to ask the big question, and she poked the crumpled ball of paper with her bare toes. “That letterhead looked authentic. And lots of government workers aren’t great spellers.” She licked her lips. “It could have been true.” She finally met his eyes. “So why didn’t you ask me about it right away?”

Incredibly, her question seemed to annoy him. “What do you mean? If there was a problem, you’d have told me a long time ago.”

She felt as if he’d ripped the floorboards right out from under her. All that trust . . . in her integrity. Right then she knew the worst had happened. Her stomach fell to her knees. She’d fallen in love with him.

She wanted to rip her hair out. Of course she’d fallen in love with him. What woman hadn’t? Falling in love with Ted was a female rite of passage in Wynette, and she’d just joined the sisterhood.

She was starting to hyperventilate, so she did what she always did when she felt cornered. “You have to go now.”

His gaze wandered down the thin silk sarong. “If I do that, this won’t be anything more than a booty call.”

“Right. Exactly the way I want it. Your glorious body, with as little conversation as possible.”

“I’m starting to feel like the chick in this relationship.”

“Consider it a growth experience.”

He smiled, rose from the couch, pulled her into his arms, and began kissing her senseless. Just as she started to fall into another Beaudine-induced sexual coma, he enacted his legendary self-control and pulled away. “Sorry, babe. If you want more of what I’ve got, you have to go out with me. Get dressed.”

She pulled herself back to reality. “Two words I never again want to hear coming out of your mouth. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

“I want to go out to dinner,” he said evenly. “The two of us. Like normal people. At a real restaurant.”

“A really bad idea.”

“Spence and Sunny have an international trade show coming up that’ll keep them out of the country for a while, and while they’re away, I’m going to catch up on my sadly neglected business.” He tucked a curl behind her ear. “I’ll be gone almost two weeks. Before I take off, I want a night out, and I’m sick of sneaking around.”

“Tough,” she retorted. “Stop being so selfish. Think about your precious town, then picture the expression on Sunny’s face if she found out the two of us—”

His cool faded. “The town and Sunny are my business, not yours.”

“With that kind of self-centered attitude, Mr. Mayor, you’ll never get reelected.”

“I didn’t want to be elected the first time!”

She finally agreed to a Tex-Mex restaurant in Fredericksburg, but once they got there, she maneuvered him into a chair that faced the wall so she could keep a lookout. That aggravated him so much he ordered for both of them without consulting her.

“You never get mad,” she said when their server left the table. “Except at me.”

“That’s not true,” he said tightly. “Torie can get me going.”

“Torie doesn’t count. You were obviously her mother in a previous life.”

He retaliated by hogging the chip basket.

“I’d never have taken you for a sulker,” she said after a long, heavy silence. “Yet look at you.”

He shoved a chip into the hottest bowl of salsa. “I hate sneaking around, and I’m not doing it any longer. This affair is coming out of the closet.”

His mulish determination scared her. “Hold it right there. Spence is used to getting what he wants for Sunny and for himself. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t have encouraged me to stay all palsy-walsy with him.”

He snapped a chip in half. “That’s going to stop, too. Right now.”

“No, it’s not. I’ll handle Spence. You deal with Sunny. As for the two of us . . . I told you from the beginning how it was going to be.”

“And I’m telling you . . .” He jabbed the broken chip in the general direction of her face. “I’ve never sneaked around in my life, and I’m not doing it now.”

She couldn’t believe he was saying this. “You can’t jeopardize something so important for a few meaningless rolls in the hay. This is a temporary fling, Ted. Temporary. Any day now, I’ll pull up stakes and head back to L.A. I’m surprised I haven’t done it already.”

If she’d hoped he’d insist their relationship wasn’t meaningless, she’d set herself up for disappointment. He leaned across the table. “It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s temporary. It has to do with the kind of person I am.”

“What about the kind of person I am? Somebody who’s completely comfortable with sneaking around.”

“You heard me.”

She regarded him with dismay. This was the unwelcome consequence of having a lover with honor. Or at least what he saw as honor. What she saw was a looming choice between disaster and heartbreak.

Between trying not to think about falling in love with Ted and thinking too much about a possible reappearance by her mysterious home invader, Meg didn’t sleep well. She used her wakeful nights to make jewelry. The pieces were becoming more complicated, as her small group of customers showed a distinct preference for jewelry that used genuine relics instead of copies. She researched Internet dealers who specialized in the kind of ancient artifacts she wanted to use and plowed an alarming chunk of her nest egg into an order with a Boston-area anthropology professor who had a reputation for honesty and who provided a detailed provenance for everything she sold.

As Meg unpacked some Middle Eastern coins, Roman cabochons, and three small, precious mosaic face beads from around the second century, she found herself wondering if making jewelry was her business or a distraction from figuring out what she should really be doing with her life?

A week after Ted left town, Torie called and ordered Meg to show up for work an hour early the next morning. When Meg asked why, Torie acted as if Meg had just failed an IQ test. “Because Dex will be home then to watch the girls. Jeez.”

As soon as Meg got to the club the next morning, Torie dragged her to the practice range. “You can’t live in Wynette without picking up a golf club. It’s a city ordinance.” She handed over her five-iron. “Take a swing.”

“I won’t be here much longer, so there’s no point.” Meg ignored the pang that tweaked at her heart. “Besides, I’m not rich enough to be a golfer.”

“Just swing the damn thing.”

Meg did and missed the ball. She tried again and missed again, but after a few more swings, she somehow sent the ball in a perfect arc to the middle of the practice range. She let out a whoop.

“A lucky shot,” Torie said, “but that’s exactly how golf sucks you in.” She took the club back, gave Meg a few pointers, then told her to keep working.

For the next half hour, Meg followed Torie’s instructions, and since she’d inherited her parents’ natural athleticism, she began connecting with the ball.

“You could be good if you practiced,” Torie said. “Employees play free on Mondays. Take advantage of your day off. I have a spare set of clubs in the bag room you can borrow.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t really want to.”

“Oh, you want to, all right.”

That was true. Watching so many other people play had piqued her interest. “Why are you doing this?” she asked as she carried Torie’s bag back to the clubhouse.

“Because you’re the only woman other than me who’s ever told Ted the truth about his dancing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do. I also might have noticed that Ted went strangely quiet when I brought up your name in our phone conversation this week. I don’t know if you two have a future—providing he doesn’t have to marry Sunny—but I’m not taking any chances.”

Whatever that meant. Still, Meg found herself adding Torie O’Connor to the list of all she’d miss when she finally left Wynette. She slipped the bag of clubs off her shoulder. “Regardless of Sunny, how could Ted and I have a future? He’s the Lamb of God, and I’m the town bad girl.”

“I know,” Torie said brightly.

That evening, as Meg hosed off the day’s dust from the drink cart, the catering manager approached and told her one of the members wanted to hire her to serve at a ladies’ luncheon at her home the next day. The few townspeople who could afford it routinely hired staff to help at private parties, but no one had ever requested her, and she needed all the money she could get to make up for the materials she’d just bought. “Sure,” she said.

“Pick up a white server’s shirt in the catering office before you leave. Wear a black skirt with it.”

The closest thing Meg had was her black-and-white Miu Miu mini from the resale shop. It would have to do.

The catering manager handed over a piece of paper with the directions. “Chef Duncan is cooking, and you’ll be working with Haley Kittle. She’ll show you the ropes. Be there at ten. And this is a big deal, so do a good job.”

After she got back from the swimming hole that evening, Meg finally looked at the information the catering manager had given her. There was something familiar about the directions. Her gaze flew to the bottom of the page where the name of the person she’d be working for was typed out.

Francesca Beaudine

She crumpled the paper in her fist. What kind of game was Francesca playing? Did she really think Meg would take the job? Except Meg had already done exactly that.

She yanked on her happy printing company T-shirt and stomped around the kitchen for a while, cursing Francesca, cursing herself for not reading the information earlier when she could still have refused. But would she have? Probably not. Her stupid pride wouldn’t let her.

The temptation to pick up her phone and call Ted was nearly unbearable. She made herself a sandwich instead and carried it out to the cemetery only to discover she’d lost her appetite. It was no coincidence this was happening while he was gone. Francesca had executed a stealth attack designed to put Meg in her place. It probably made little difference to her whether Meg accepted or not. She wanted to make a point. Meg was an outsider, a down-on-her-luck drifter forced to work for a meager hourly wage. An outsider who’d only be allowed in Francesca’s house as one of the help.

Meg pitched the sandwich into the weeds. Screw that.

She reached the Beaudine compound a little before ten the next morning. She’d chosen her sparkly pink platforms to wear with the white catering blouse and Miu Miu mini. They wouldn’t be the most comfortable shoes to work in, but the best defense against Francesca was a strong offense, and they’d send the message that she had no intention of being invisible. Meg would hold her head high, smile until her cheeks ached, and do her job well enough to put a crimp in Francesca’s satisfaction.

Haley pulled up in her red Ford Focus. She barely spoke as they walked into the house together, and she looked so pale Meg grew concerned. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve got . . . really bad cramps.”

“Can you get someone to work for you?”

“I tried, but nobody’s around.”

The Beaudine kitchen was both luxurious and homey with sunny saffron walls, a terra-cotta floor, and handcrafted cobalt blue tile work. An enormous wrought-iron chandelier bearing colorful glass cups hung in the center of the room, and open shelves displayed copper pots and hand-thrown pottery.

Chef Duncan was unpacking the food he’d prepped for the event. A short man in his early forties, he had a big nose and a graying shrub of wiry auburn hair protruding from beneath his toque. He frowned as Haley disappeared into the bathroom, then barked at Meg to get to work.

While she set up the glassware and began organizing the serving dishes, he detailed the menu: bite-size puffed pastry hors d’oeuvres filled with melted Brie and orange marmalade, minted fresh pea soup served in demitasse cups that still needed to be washed, a fennel-laced salad, warm pretzel rolls, and the main course, asparagus frittata and smoked salmon, which they’d plate in the kitchen. The pièce de résistance was dessert, individually potted chocolate soufflés the chef had been working all summer to perfect and which must, must, must be served as soon as they came out of the oven and placed gently, gently, gently in front of each guest.

Meg nodded at the instructions, then carried the chunky green water goblets into the dining room. Palm and lemon trees grew in Old World urns placed in the corners, and water trickled from a stone fountain set in a tiled wall. The room held two temporary tables in addition to a long wooden permanent table with a distressed surface. Instead of formal linens, Francesca had chosen hand-woven place mats. Each table had a copper tray centerpiece holding assorted clay herb pots of oregano, marjoram, sage, and thyme, along with earthenware pitchers brimming with golden yellow blooms. Through the expansive dining room windows, she could see part of the courtyard and a shady pergola where a book lay abandoned on a wooden bench. It was hard not to like a woman who’d created such a beautiful setting to entertain her friends, but Meg intended to give it her best effort.

Haley still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom when Meg returned to the kitchen. She’d just begun washing the pottery demitasse cups when the tap-tap-tap of heels on the tile floor announced the approach of their hostess. “Thank you for helping me out today, Chef Duncan,” Francesca said. “I hope you’re finding everything you need.”

Meg rinsed a cup, turned from the sink, and gave Francesca her brightest smile. “Hello, Mrs. Beaudine.”

Unlike her son, Francesca had a lousy poker face, and the play of emotions that crossed her face was fairly easy to decode. First came surprise. (She hadn’t expected Meg to accept the job.) Then came puzzlement. (Exactly why had Meg shown up?) Discomfort appeared next. (What would her guests think?) Then doubt. (Perhaps she should have thought this through more carefully.) Followed by distress. (This had been a terrible idea.) All of it ending in . . . resolution.

“Meg, may I speak with you in the dining room?”

“Of course.”

She followed the tapping heels out of the kitchen. Francesca was so petite Meg could almost have tucked her under her chin, although she couldn’t imagine doing anything like that. Francesca was stylishly dressed as always—an emerald top and a cool white cotton skirt she’d cinched with a peacock blue belt. She stopped by the stone fountain and twisted her wedding ring. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. My own, of course. I won’t need you after all. Naturally, I’ll pay you for your time. I’m sure money is tight or you wouldn’t have felt the need to . . . show up today.”

“Not as tight as it used to be,” Meg said cheerfully. “My jewelry business is doing a lot better than I dreamed.”

“Yes, I’d heard.” Francesca was clearly flustered and just as clearly determined to settle this. “I suppose I didn’t think you’d accept the job.”

“Sometimes I even surprise myself.”

“This is my fault, of course. I tend to be impulsive. It’s caused me more trouble than you can imagine.”

Meg knew all about being impulsive.

Francesca straightened to her full, unimpressive height and spoke with stiff dignity. “Let me get my checkbook.”

Incredibly tempting, but Meg couldn’t do it. “You have twenty guests coming, and Haley’s not feeling well. I can’t leave Chef in the lurch.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.” She fingered a diamond bracelet. “It’s too awkward. I don’t want to make my guests uncomfortable. Or you, of course.”

“If your guests are who I think they’re going to be, they’ll love this. As for me . . . I’ve been in Wynette for two and a half months, so it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable.”

“Really, Meg . . . It’s one thing for you to work at the club, but this is something else entirely. I know that—”

“Excuse me. I need to finish washing the cups.” Meg’s sparkly pink platforms made their own satisfying tap-tap-tap as she headed back to the kitchen.

Haley had emerged from the bathroom, but as she stood at the counter, she didn’t look any better, and Chef was getting harried. Meg snatched the bottle of peach nectar from her hands and, following Chef’s instructions, poured a little down the inside of each flute. She added champagne, slipped in a sliver of fresh fruit, and turned the tray over to Haley, hoping for the best. As Haley carried it away, Meg took the platter of toasty pastry puffs Chef had pulled from the oven, picked up a stack of cocktail napkins, and followed.

Haley had staked out a place by the front door so she didn’t have to walk around. The guests arrived promptly. They wore brightly colored linens and cottons, their outfits dressier than what their California counterparts would have donned for such an affair, but in Texas, underdressing was a mortal sin even in the younger set.

Meg recognized some of the women golfers from the club. Torie was talking to the only person in the room dressed entirely in black, a woman Meg had never seen. Torie’s champagne flute stalled halfway to her lips as she saw Meg approaching with the serving tray. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Meg dipped a fake curtsy. “My name is Meg, and I’m your server today.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” Torie waved her hand. “I’m not sure why not. All I know is, it doesn’t seem right.”

“Mrs. Beaudine needed some help, and I had a free day.”

Torie frowned, then turned to the thin woman at her side, who had a fierce black bob and glasses with red plastic frames. Ignoring the breach of protocol, she introduced them. “Lisa, this is Meg. Lisa is Francesca’s agent. And Meg is—”

“I highly recommend the puff pastries.” Meg couldn’t be certain Torie wasn’t about to identify her as the daughter of the great Fleur Savagar Koranda, the superstar of talent agents, but she knew Torie well enough by now not to take that chance. “Make sure you save room for dessert. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what it is, but you’re not going to be disappointed.”

“Meg?” Emma appeared, her small brow knit, a pair of earrings Meg had fashioned from colorful nineteenth-century carnelian beads bobbing at her ears. “Oh, dear . . .”

“Lady Emma.” Meg held out the tray.

“Just Emma. Oh, never mind. I don’t know why I even bother.”

“I don’t either,” Torie said. “Lisa, I’m sure Francesca has told you all about our local member of the British royal family, but I don’t think the two of you have met. This is my sister-in-law, Lady Emma Wells-Finch Traveler.”

Emma sighed and extended her hand. Meg slipped away and, under Francesca’s watchful, worried eyes, headed over to serve the local mafia.

Birdie, Kayla, Zoey, and Shelby Traveler clustered together by the windows. As Meg drew nearer, she heard Birdie say, “Haley was with that Kyle Bascom again last night. I swear to God, if she gets pregnant . . .”

Meg remembered Haley’s pale face and prayed that hadn’t already happened. Kayla saw Meg and poked Zoey so hard she splashed champagne on her hand. All the women inspected Meg’s skirt. Shelby shot Kayla an inquisitive look. Meg held out the stack of napkins to Birdie.

Zoey fingered a necklace that looked as though it had been made of shellacked Froot Loops. “I’m surprised you still have to work parties, Meg. Kayla said your jewelry’s selling great.”

Kayla fluffed her hair. “Not that great. I marked the monkey necklace down twice, and I still couldn’t move it.”

“I told you I’d redo it.” Meg had to agree the monkey necklace wasn’t her best piece, but nearly everything else she’d given Kayla had sold quickly.

Birdie tugged on a spike of her woodpecker red hair and regarded Meg loftily. “If I was going to hire catering help, I’d specify who I wanted. Francesca’s too casual about this kind of thing.”

Zoey glanced around. “I hope Sunny’s not back yet. Imagine if Francesca invited her with Meg here. None of us need that kind of stress. At least I don’t, not with school starting in a few weeks and me down to one kindergarten teacher.”

Shelby Traveler turned to Kayla. “I love monkeys,” she said. “I’ll buy that necklace.”

Torie slipped into the circle. “Since when do you love monkeys? Right before Petey turned ten, I heard you tell him they were filthy little beasts.”

“Only because he’d just about talked Kenny into buying him one for his birthday.”

Torie nodded. “Kenny’d do it, too. He loves Petey as much as he loves his own kids.”

Kayla shook her hair. “That French girlfriend of Ted’s, the model, I always thought she sort of looked like a monkey. Something about her teeth.”

The Crazy Women of Wynette were off and running. Meg slipped away.

When she got to the kitchen, Haley had disappeared, and she found Chef fuming as he stepped over broken champagne flutes. “She’s worthless today! I sent her home. Leave the fucking glass alone and start plating the salads.”

Meg did her best to follow his rapid-fire orders. She raced around the kitchen, avoiding the broken glass and cursing her pink platforms, but when she returned to the living room with a fresh tray of drinks, she deliberately slowed her steps, as though she had all the time in the world. Maybe she didn’t have any experience as a server, but nobody needed to see that.

Back in the kitchen, she unearthed three small pitchers for salad dressing as Chef dashed to the oven to check on the frittatas. “I want these served hot.”

The next hour flew by as Meg tried to do the work of two people while Chef worried over the chocolate dessert soufflés. Torie and Emma both seemed determined to engage her in conversation every time she appeared in the dining room, as if Meg were another guest. Meg appreciated their good intentions but wished they’d let her concentrate on her job. Kayla forgot her animosity long enough to tell Meg she wanted another pre-Columbian stone necklace and earrings for a friend who owned a shop in Austin. Even Francesca’s agent wanted to talk, not about Meg’s parents—apparently no one had tipped her off—but about the frittata and whether she detected a touch of curry.

“You have an amazing palate,” Meg said. “Chef used the barest hint. I can’t believe you caught it.”

Francesca must have realized Meg had no idea whether the frittata contained curry or not because she quickly diverted Lisa’s attention.

As Meg served, she picked up snippets of conversation. The guests wanted to know when Ted was getting back and what he intended to do about various local problems ranging from someone’s noisy rooster to the Skipjacks’ return trip to Wynette. As Meg poured Birdie a fresh glass of iced tea, Torie chided Zoey about her Froot Loops necklace. “Just once, couldn’t you wear normal jewelry?”

“Do you think I enjoy walking around with half a grocery store hanging off me?” Zoey whispered, snatching a roll from the basket and ripping it in half. “But Hunter Gray’s mother is sitting at the next table, and I need her to organize this year’s book fair.”

Torie looked up at Meg. “If I was Zoey, I’d establish stronger boundaries between my work and my personal life.”

“That’s what you say now,” Zoey retorted, “but remember how excited you got when I wore those macaroni earrings Sophie made for me?”

“That was different. My daughter’s artistic.”

“Sure she is.” Zoey smirked. “And you set up the school phone tree for me that very same day.”

Meg somehow managed to clear the dishes without dumping leftovers in anyone’s lap. The female golfers asked if she had any Arizona iced tea. In the kitchen, Chef’s face was slicked with sweat as he pulled the perfectly puffed individual chocolate soufflés from the oven. “Hurry! Get these on the table before they collapse. Gently! Remember what I told you.”

Meg heaved the heavy tray into the dining room. Serving the soufflés was a two-person job, but she braced the edge against her hip and reached for the first pot.

“Ted!” Torie exclaimed. “Look who’s here, everybody!”

Meg’s heart leaped into her throat, her head jerked up, and she wobbled on her pink platforms as she saw Ted framed in the doorway. In the space of seconds, the soufflés began to shift . . . And all she could think about was the baby carriage.

Her dad had pointed out the phenomenon when she was a kid. If you were watching a movie and you saw a baby carriage, you knew a speeding car was heading its way. The same went for a florist’s cart, a wedding cake, or a plate-glass window being maneuvered across a street.

Sit back in your seat, kiddo, and hold on because a car chase is coming your way.

It was just like that with the chocolate soufflés.

She barely had the tray supported. She was losing her balance. The soufflés had started to slide. A car chase was heading her way.

But life wasn’t a movie, and she’d eat the broken glass off the kitchen floor before she’d let those white pots fall. Even as she teetered on her shoes, she shifted her weight, repositioned her hip, and focused every ounce of her willpower on regaining her balance.

The pots resettled. Francesca rose from her chair. “Teddy, darling, you’re just in time for dessert. Come and join us.”

Meg lifted her chin. The man she loved was staring at her. Those tiger eyes that grew so smoky when they made love were now clear and fiercely perceptive. His gaze shifted to the tray she was carrying. Back to her. Meg looked down. The soufflés began to deflate. One by one. Pfft . . . Pfft . . . Pfft . . .