Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch (26 page)

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Authors: Victoria Pade

BOOK: Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch
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So how could he possibly explain, when she'd just told him that she hated workaholic men, that he already had a business appointment on a Sunday? He might try to pass it off as a family thing, but the fact that he was so embroiled in business even with his family made that seem almost more pathetic. He couldn't cancel brunch with Truman and Mona. But he couldn't stand to turn down Mitzi.
“Brunch sounds great,” he lied.
She looked at him doubtfully. “Are you sure you don't already have plans?”
He chortled. “Of course not. What time should I pick you up?”
“How about ten?”
Ten! Good grief, he was supposed to be at Mona's at ten. But then, maybe he could push that up to nine-thirty...
“Ten it is,” he said, smiling.
And then, as if he didn't have a care in the world, as if he hadn't just promised to do something that was physically impossible and was bound to bring troubles raining down on him like cats and dogs, he allowed himself to be tugged down the sidewalk by Chester with a lighthearted skip.
 
“WITHOUT WHITING'S we might as well change our names to Smith or Jones. That store is our lifeblood!”
There! Ted thought proudly. That sounded exactly like something tedious and schoolmarmish Grant might say. Of course, the reason was that Grant himself had written the phrase “store is our lifeblood” across Ted's palm.
But when he looked up, he discovered that all his eloquence in defense of keeping Whiting's in the family had succeeded only in putting Uncle Truman to sleep; and Mona, bored beyond tears, was now on her fifteenth extra-long, extra-nicotine menthol cigarette.
“Grant dear,” she explained in her throaty drawl, “you know I never think about business, especially when it comes to that store.”
Truman jolted awake. “Poor?” he bellowed. His hearing-aid batteries were running low on juice again. “Of course we're not poor! But no one's rich enough that they should turn their nose up at a gold mine, young man.”
Ted shook his head. “But don't you think—”
Truman wagged a thin, knobby finger in his face. “You'd feel differently if you'd suffered through the Great Depression, mark my words!”
Ted rolled his eyes. Truman hadn't exactly suffered through the depression. “It was the store that kept this family well-off during hard times,” he reminded his uncle.
Truman frowned. “‘Course it was!” he barked. “Don't go lecturing me, you whippersnapper.”
Mona exhaled a long plume of minty smoke and shrugged her thin shoulders. “If the second depression hits tomorrow, wouldn't it be just as good to have the security of all that delicious Moreland money as a bunch of troublesome old stores?”
Ted gaped at her, for the first time understanding the frustration Grant must feel trying to save the store. But what he couldn't understand was Grant's abandoning his favorite cause at such a critical juncture, and for what? That bridesmaid!
Ted would never understand that at all. Hadn't Grant's experience with Janice taught him anything? Love must be a terrible thing, to make someone as sensible as Grant behave so irrationally. Not that Grant had mentioned love in relation to that Mitzi character. God forbid! But for him to send Ted in his place to a business discussion...
Well. The man had to be pretty desperate.
Mona's eyebrows, plucked until they were perfect thin black arches above her eyes, crooked even more. “Forgive me, Grant, I know this means a lot to you, but having spent an unhealthy amount of my life asking men if they want one olive or two in their martinis, I always find it difficult to pass up cash.”
Ted was surprised. Mona rarely mentioned her history as a cocktail waitress, the position she had held when his father—a two-olive man if there ever was one—had met her. Having never had to wait tables himself, or do anything more arduous than spend a summer as a shoe clerk at Whiting's, he could hardly argue with her logic. He sighed.
“Aren't you going to talk some more?” Mona asked. “You usually don't give up so easily.”
Ted thought, but failed to find any more to say. His gaze focused on the heap of melon rinds on his plate. How could he think on a practically empty stomach? Mona had been on a fruit-and-mineral-water diet for ten years. Maybe starving was a leftover habit from her minimum-wage days, too. “How 'bout a bagel?” he asked. “And maybe an omelette, if it's not too much trouble. I'm starved.”
Mona laughed. “You sound just like that brother of yours! That man wolfs down enough chow to feed a whole cruise ship.”
Again Truman shot out of his semislumber with an undignified snort. “Blue chips!” he cried. “What about blue chips?”
Mona flicked the elderly gentleman an annoyed glance. Although it was hard to stay annoyed at Truman for long. First, he was the oldest of the Whitings, the head of the old-money Austin clan, and dressed like a Kentucky colonel in elegantly tailored white suits in summer that hung loose over his old thin frame. Though a dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon and a spendthrift, his irrepressible style endeared him to everyone, especially someone so style- and name-conscious as Mona.
“Not blue chips,” Mona corrected him, “cruise ship.”
Gray eyebrows rose in wonder. “Is Grant running off on a cruise, at this important juncture in the family's travails?”
Ted grinned. Uncle Truman was the one person in the world who actually thought Grant was the irresponsible one.
Mona sighed in exasperation. “Not Grant—Ted. I was talking about how much Ted eats.”
Truman shook his head. “'Course he eats a lot! He's a sportsman, best damn football player I ever saw. You weren't there, Mona, during the state championships back in eighty-four.”
To Ted's dismay, Mona waved her hand to stop him. Sports bored her. “Grant, do you think Ted would take out Joy Moreland? I promised Horace Moreland that I would try to show his daughter a good time while she was here.”
Ted nearly fainted, and it certainly wasn't just from hunger. She wanted him to squire around that Moreland woman? “What?”
“Well, you said you wouldn't do it.”
“Oh, I did, did I?” That stinker Grant—he'd probably planned to foist this Moreland chick off on him as well.
Truman brayed in dismay. “Ted can't be wasted squiring some girl! He's a sportsman! He needs to entertain the male Morelands, on the golf course...maybe take them out on that boat of his. Fine craft!”
Ted grinned, feeling a little crafty himself. “You're absolutely right, Uncle Truman. We shouldn't squander Ted's talents. If anything, we should be encouraging my dear brother to spend less time at the office and more time on the golf greens.”
Truman grunted his agreement. “Damn straight.”
He was loving this! Ted proceeded to do an imitation of one of Grant's patient, long-suffering sighs. “All right. I suppose I'll take Joy out on the town.”
Mona beamed with pleasure. “Will you? Oh, you darling!” She leaned forward, puckered her bow lips and sent him a string of little air kissies. “I know you'll just love Joy. She's the most adorable creature.”
“Is she? Good.” Maybe the adorable creature would help get Grant's mind off that frightful woman he seemed to be stuck on now. Mitzi, for God's sake.
Ted winked at Mona. “Now that I'm being so cooperative and all, do you think you could persuade your cook to rustle up an omelette?”
Giggling, Mona tossed back her perfectly coiffed head. “Oh, Grant, you kidder. You're getting to be just like Ted!”
 
“CHURCH LET OUT LATE?” Mitzi quipped when Grant showed up at her door at ten-thirty.
Grant was lucky to get here that early. Wresting Ted out of bed and prepping him for brunch with Mona and Uncle Truman was a feat of Herculean magnitude. It had taken an abundance of begging and wheedling, with a promise of an extra week's paid vacation finally doing the trick. Grant had been so proud of his accomplishment that he hadn't thought to dream up an excuse for his tardiness.
At the moment, Mitzi's suggestion sounded as good as the truth. “Uh, yes, as a matter of fact.”
Mitzi blinked in surprise. And appreciation. Grant's Sunday best, apparently, was a pair of well-worn jeans that hugged every contour of his mouthwatering bod. “I guess the dress code's changed since the last time I darkened the doors of Sunday school.”
He glanced down at his jeans. “Oh, I always wear casual clothes to church, because nobody sees me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “No one sees you?”
He nodded, thinking frantically. “Yes, because I'm...in the choir.”
That really surprised her. And impressed her, for some odd reason. “I didn't know you could sing.”
“Me?” he asked. “I'm a regular Caruso!” To demonstrate, he hummed a few shaky bars of a song.
One of her dark eyebrows arched. “Hmm, Caruso does Blues Traveler,” she said. “What kind of church is this?”
“We're a progressive denomination.”
Desperate, too, apparently. The Met wouldn't be knocking down Grant's door anytime soon. “You should have told me you had somewhere to go this morning. We could have set the time back.”
“I was afraid you wouldn't understand.”
“Ridiculous!” How strange, and cute, that he should be nervous about what she would think of him. Of course, what she thought was that he had to be the sexiest choirboy in America, but she left that opinion unspoken as they got into his car and sped to a sprawling restaurant on a hill overlooking Lake Austin.
Because the restaurant was already filling up, they snagged an inside table and wasted no time ordering coffee and enough food to feed North Dakota for a day. Mitzi had to keep reminding herself not to ogle Grant; just watching his tanned, muscled forearm passing their menus back to the waitress was enough to make her schoolgirl-giddy.
He leaned back in his chair and made a production of stretching out his long, jean-clad legs. “I sure do love to relax. Nothing like a long, leisurely Sunday morning.”
“Really.” She tilted a glance at him. “I heard you practically live at the store.”
“Whoever told you that obviously doesn't know me very well.”
“It was Marty.” His oldest friend.
His placid expression turned pained. “Well, sure I work—during the week. Nine to five. I do have a work ethic, but I would never let that bleed into my free time. A man has to set his priorities, after all.”
His words were more moving than Beethoven's
Seventh.
She leaned forward and told him confidentially, “Would you believe that I went out with a guy once who was so wrapped up in his work that he sent his best friend to fill in during our Valentine's date so he could stay at the office?”
Grant drew back, appalled.
“I guess he thought I wouldn't notice.”
“How terrible!”
“Well, it's a story with a happy ending,” Mitzi assured him. “I broke up with the boyfriend, and the best friend ended up getting married to the waitress at the restaurant where we had the Valentine's dinner.”
As Grant laughed, it occurred to Mitzi that she wasn't the best huckster for her own love life. She did tend to dwell on the disasters. She decided she needed to do a better sell, as they said in her business, or change the subject.
She changed the subject. “Did Kay tell you I was in advertising?”
Grant's eyebrows squished together adorably. “She told me you were a photographer.”
“That's what I'd really like to be,” she said. “But in this lifetime I have to earn a buck. And I assume you do, too.” She reached into her purse and pulled out the paper she'd been reading while waiting for him, and held up a page containing an ad for Whiting's. “If so, this ad won't help you much.”
As the waitress served their food, Grant studied the black-and-white layout, which mostly outlined sale items. “Bad?”
“Honestly? If I put this paper by the back door, I don't think Chester would pee on it.”
He gave it a closer squint and nodded. “It is kind of flat. I don't know why I didn't see it before.” Taken aback, he looked up at her. “I thought you didn't like to talk business.”
“I dislike shoddy workmanship more. And of course, if the choice is between business or rambling on about my nonexistent love life, I'd pick business any day.”
“Really?” His voice was a husky drawl. “I'd take your love life.”
She gazed into those blue eyes of his and felt her heart flutter again, but not so rustily this time. There was something definitely enticing about the way his eyes were twinkling at her. But just when she thought she'd swoon into her French toast, Grant appeared to be distracted by something outside. His pallor took on the color of old hard cheese.

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