Call Me Irresistible (30 page)

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 . . .

L
adies.” Ted’s gaze flicked from Meg’s white server’s apron to his mother, who’d suddenly turned into a whirlwind of motion.