Dear God, he’d exhumed Diddie.
“Is there anything else you need?” she cooed, her eyes daring him to take this any further. “I’ll be more than happy to get it for you.”
She was dismissing him like one of her ex-husbands, and the Irish stubbornness he’d inherited from his father rose up to bite him. “You can get rid of that bloody apron and join us for dinner.”
The out-of-town guests who overheard looked puzzled, but the Seawillows understood, and hisses of displeasure came from their beaks. By tomorrow, his betrayal would be all over Parrish. Hell, sooner than that. Their fingers were itching to whip out their cell phones so they could be the first to pass the word that Colin Byrne had crossed over to the dark side.
Sugar Beth had the gall to pat his arm. “You got your medications mixed up again, didn’t you, bless your heart. We’ll call your shrink tomorrow and straighten it out.” She reached for Aaron Leary’s empty wineglass. “Let me take that, Mr. Mayor, so you have both hands free for the buffet.” And off she went, little drops of Colin’s blood trickling from her sparkly fangs.
Neil came up next to him. “The ongoing drama of life in a small Southern town. You should write a book.”
“Smashing idea.”
Neil gazed toward the dining room. “She’s just like you described her. Why didn’t you tell me she’d come back?”
“It’s been complicated.”
“Maybe we could get a trilogy out of the Parrish books after all.”
Colin had no trouble interpreting his hopeful expression. Last Whistle-stop had been the most successful book in Neil’s editorial career, and Reflections would do even better. Neal wanted a third book about Parrish instead of a lengthy generational novel about Irish and English families.
Neil balked as Colin began to steer him toward the buffet table in the dining room. “Not yet. The Seawillows just went in. They’re very scary women.”
“Imagine what they were like when Sugar Beth led them.”
“I don’t have to,” Neil said. “I’ve read Reflections.”
But no one else had, and once again, Colin found himself wondering how the citizens of Parrish were going to react to the second book about their town when so many of its featured players were still around. He gazed toward the dining room.
The Seawillows chose to eat at the smaller tables in the sunroom. After all his guests were served, Colin disguised his lack of appetite by making the rounds of the other tables. Eventually, he returned to the sunroom and propped himself at the counter with a plate of food he had no interest in eating, futilely hoping that his higher vantage point would, in some mysterious way, allow him to control what was happening.
“I forgot to pick up a napkin,” Heidi cooed. “Get me one, Sugar Beth.”
“I want another of those delicious rolls. Make sure it’s warm.”
“Take this dirty plate. I’m done with it.”
As soon as she’d returned from one errand, the Seawillows sent her off on another. And she let them do it. She didn’t rush, but she didn’t tell them to bugger off, either.
“Get me a damp towel. I’ve got something sticky on my hands.”
“See if you can find the pepper mill. I’m sure there’s one somewhere.”
Even Amy couldn’t resist finding her own way to join in, and he heard her whisper, “Jesus can wash away anybody’s sins, Sugar Beth, even yours. Throw yourself on his mercy.”
Colin pushed aside his plate, intending to put a stop to the nonsense, but Sugar Beth detected the movement and shot him a look that challenged not only his manhood but also his very right to exist on the planet. With a sense of resignation, he sank back down and braced himself.
“I do not think,” said Lord Bromford, having considered the matter gravely, “that one should sacrifice one’s principles to gratify a female’s whim.”
GEORGETTE HEYER, The Grand Sophy
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Winnie offered Ryan a taste of her kiwi tart right before she made her move. As Sugar Beth began to pick up the empty plates, Winnie raised her voice, ever so slightly. “Oh, dear, I accidentally kicked my fork under the table. Let me move out of the way, Sugar Beth, so you can get it for me.” She rose from the table and took one small step to the side.
Colin understood at once. Winnie had chosen something small, unimportant, something almost insignificant that symbolized everything. To retrieve the fork, Sugar Beth would have to drop to her knees at Winnie’s feet.
He had no idea whether Sugar Beth would do it, didn’t wait to see. Instead, he shot off his stool only to realize that Winnie’s husband had beaten him to it.
“Let me,” Ryan said quickly.
The edges of Winnie’s mouth collapsed, and for the first time that evening, she seemed more vulnerable than Sugar Beth. Sugar Beth met Ryan’s eyes for a fraction of a second before she took a small step back. Slowly, he dropped to one knee at his wife’s feet, reached under the table, and withdrew the fork that Winnie had undoubtedly kicked there.
Colin gazed from one woman to the other. He’d always been fascinated by literary archetypes, but if someone had asked him, right at that moment, which of these women was plucky Cinderella and which the wicked stepsister, he’d have been hard-pressed to come up with an answer.
The evening ground on. He might be miserable, but his guests seemed to be enjoying themselves, and it was past eleven before they finally began to trickle away.
Winnie’s hands weren’t quite steady as she slipped into her skimpy black lace teddy. It was one of several she owned in various colors. Ryan came into the bedroom without his sport coat. He’d undoubtedly tossed it over a chair downstairs. It would still be there when they got back from church tomorrow. He didn’t expect her to pick up after him. He just failed to notice how many of his things he left lying around.
“Look at this.” He held out a rumpled wall poster showing a bare-chested hunk sporting a pair of nipple rings while a woman’s hand reached through his legs to cup his crotch. “She had this hanging on the back of her door when I went in to check on her.”
“She knows how much we hate her posters. That’s why she keeps putting them up.”
“If she’s this rebellious now, what’s going to happen when she’s sixteen?”
Winnie didn’t voice her deepest fear, that genetics would somehow play out, and Gigi would end up like Sugar Beth: self-centered, spiteful, and sexually active at too young an age.
Ryan tossed the poster in their trash basket and headed for the closet. He didn’t remark on her imported black teddy, but why should he? She had a vast collection of sexy sleepwear, and he saw her in or out of one of the pieces nearly every night. Sometimes she wanted to throw them all away and head to Wal-Mart for a set of comfy cotton pj’s.
As he went about his bedtime routine, she slid under the covers and opened the book she’d left on the table, but she didn’t even pretend to read it. Instead, she gnawed over the ugly memory of Ryan kneeling at Sugar Beth’s feet. What a terrible miscalculation she’d made. She’d forced her husband to choose sides, and he’d chosen the wrong one.
She was sick of her jealousy. All evening he’d watched Sugar Beth. He’d been discreet about it, but you couldn’t live with a man for so long and not know what he was thinking. Tonight Winnie had to make love with him until he was so mindless he forgot about Sugar Beth. Give it to me, babee … Just like a third-rate porn star. But the thought of the gyrations, the moaning, the mess, made her feel exhausted and resentful.
Ryan finished in the bathroom and slid naked into bed. He turned on his side so he was facing her. She only had to brush against him and he’d be hard. He reached out and stroked her hair, then ran his finger under the strap of her teddy to graze her nipple.