The Wedding Gift (5 page)

Chapter 7

After the poor receptionist
had called upstairs, I was sent over to the elevator to go up to
Mr. Willets’ office. The funny thing was that, when I got into the
elevator, the buttons were the usual ones - G, 1, 2, etc. - but
instead of the number five for the fifth floor, the top button said
P1, for 'Penthouse One', I guessed. It struck me as pretty
hilarious; I mean, a penthouse?

This looked to me like
another of Miz Willets’ silly old decorating schemes and doesn’t a
building need to have like fifty floors before you could have a
penthouse? I made a note to tell Jessie about this when I got
outside; it would cheer her up. We could make fun of the old bitch
and her fake penthouse ideas all the way home.

When I got off the
elevator, there was another big fancy fake antique desk in front of
me with another not very good looking woman sitting at it. I
guessed that Miz Bethany really tried to lure women who needed that
dental plan of hers into working for her husband so as to avoid any
possible temptation he might have to run for the hills at the first
opportunity. Though, let me tell you, if I had been a man, I would
have looked right past Miz Bethany’s pretty botoxed face and
grabbed this gal, or Alice downstairs, and started over
again.

But if there was one thing
that being the prettiest looking girl in town had taught me, it was
this - men never looked beyond how a girl looked … well except
maybe Donny Readle, and he was strictly not part of what I needed
to be thinking about right then.

The secretary looked up at
me through her thick glasses and smiled real nice.
“
You just go right on in, Honey, he’s
waiting for you.”
I thanked her and opened
up one side of the huge double doors to his office and sauntered on
in. I nearly died when I saw what Miz. Bethany’s idea of an
executive suite was. The office was humongous and it had real high
ceilings too. But she had covered every inch of it in dead animal
heads. Along with all the poor dead animals, there were lariats and
cowboy hats and cow patterned rugs on the floor, along with the
biggest Texas style desk I had ever seen.

Heck, there was even a
river rock fireplace, in an office (a penthouse office) in downtown
Dalton, which, by the way, our whole downtown consists of about
fifteen buildings altogether. I smiled real wide at Mr. Willets
sitting behind this huge ole desk; he wasn’t a very big man and the
desk made him look even smaller than he had to be.

He stood up and came around
the desk towards me. “
Well, Miss Worthier
- our next Corn Princess - to what do I owe this
honor?
”

I smiled real wide at him.
“
Well, Mr. Willets, I just got to thank
you so much for taking the time to see me and all. I came here to
see you on business from Dalton High actually
.”

He laughed a little at
that. “
Oh, business, huh? Well, Sugar, if
its business from the high school, I imagine it’s about needing
something, so before you say another word, I best get Junior on in
here. Junior, he handles all our endowment money and
such
.”

I tried to protest that I
would just take a minute of his time, and he didn’t need to bother
Junior. I didn’t think a little old scoreboard seemed like
something that needed an endowment, whatever that was, and,
besides, I didn’t want to drag this out too long and leave Jessie
out in that truck all day. But he had already hollered out the door
to Robin, his secretary, to “
tell Junior
to get on in here
.”

He kept on smiling real
wide at me; he told me he didn’t know how to use the damn intercom
system that his wife had insisted on which he said seemed real
stupid to him as it was just himself, Robin, and Junior up here in
the penthouse. It seemed real stupid to me too, but all I did was
flutter my lashes and say I was real bad with gadgets myself. He
lit up even more then and started sidling over to me so, after all,
I was pretty glad to see young George coming through the
door.

George was twenty-six last
year when we met and, like I said, he is not tall, but he isn’t a
little scrawny guy like his daddy either. He is pretty stocky, and
that day he filled out this sort of sharp looking navy suit at the
shoulders real good. He smiled all wide when he saw me and came
over and took my hand in both of his. George has real small hands
himself, which I could not help but notice.

“
Well if it isn’t the
prettiest girl ever born in Dalton.
”

I smiled back at him,
pleased that he had called me by my unofficial title. I gathered
right then that he had noticed me around town. I myself had not
noticed him so much as the beautiful Jaguar that he drove sometimes
and the Humvee he drove the rest of the time.

But I wasn’t interested any
in flirting with anyone so old, and so I launched right in to why I
was there and how, as the school secretary and head cheerleader, I
had been chosen to ask them for help.

George, he just kept
looking at me and grinning like an egg suck dog, till his daddy
interrupted and asked him what he thought they could do for the
school. Finally he looked away from me and turned to his daddy and
I walked off a little ways to stand in front of some poor stuffed
bear to let them talk more privately.

I’ll admit I was a little
flattered by his attention. George was a lot older than me, true,
but he was rich, rich, rich! Every girl in town wanted him to talk
to them, and he had looked at me with eyes that burned just as hot
as any boys at school did. So while he was talking to his daddy
about the scoreboard, I used the chance to really look at him. He
was short like I said, but stocky and he had a head of real thick
sandy hair, and his mama’s big brown eyes which, on him, didn’t
look hard like river pebbles but warm and sparkly.

I decided I liked George
Junior after all, and when I like a man, I flirt with him. My daddy
says I came out of Mama and started flirting with the doctor. I
dimpled up at him (well not up exactly) and told him that since he
was one of Dalton’s old football heroes, he should want to help the
school for sure to keep the field where he had come to greatness
alive. This was laying it on pretty thick, since I later found out
that in three years of playing, poor George had been in like one
game but, here in Oklahoma, you can’t say anything better to a man
than that he can play football well.

It didn’t take but five
minutes of this kind of talk until young George was telling his
daddy that it was their obligation to help out their old school and
I had a check for thirty thousand in my hot little hand. That was
about ten thousand more dollars than we needed, so I was already
imagining my hero status back at school and thinking we could put
in new vending machines or maybe even a steam room in the locker
room.

Anyway I was in such fine
mood then, that I had clean forgotten about Miz Bethany and what
she had said to Jessie. When I noticed out the big window in the
office that it had gotten dark outside, I went into my full blown
Southern Girl charm routine and, thanking both Georges as sweet as
I could, I said I had to run on home though and help my mama with
supper and that they were just heroes - well you know all that sort
of thing. Young George he insisted on escorting me downstairs and
outside.

As soon as we got into the
elevator, he made his interest clear. “
Leeann, Sugar, I am so glad you came by today. I have been
wracking my brains for a way to really meet you, and then you just
showed up here. You know I see you around town all the time, and I
swear, Girl, I can’t take my eyes off of you, so now here you are
and I ain’t letting you out of this elevator till you agree to have
dinner with me tomorrow night
.”

Shoot, I was truly taken
aback by that. I mean he was old and he was a Willets so I knew my
daddy would kill me dead and then murder me if he found out about
this. And, to be strictly honest, he just wasn’t all that
attractive to me. But I didn’t want to say something that hurt his
feelings, 'cause I thought it might just make him reach out and
take back the check I was holding. So, to buy time, I just looked
down pretending to be all bashful, which I purely am not I can tell
you.

I shook my head and said in
this real little girl voice “
Oh, Mr.
Willets, that’s so nice of you, but I can’t. This is only Tuesday
and I am not allowed to date on school nights
.”

For some reason that seemed
to make him even more heated up about me, which was not my
intention at all. “
Well, Leeann, then how
about we make it this Saturday night? We can take the plane to
Dallas and eat us some dinner up at Turtle Creek and, Leeann,
please call me George. Mr. Willets is my father
.”

Oh shoot, he got my
attention then. I said like a perfect fool, which I purely am not,
“
The mansion at Turtle Creek in Dallas?
You have a plane?
” I was babbling, and he
liked it, of course. All men do, 'cause they always hope that their
woman is more foolish than they are themselves. At least that’s
what Jessie says, and I do think she is right about
that.

“
Yep, I got me that old
Gee four down to the airfield and I got me a lazy ass pilot with
nothing to do. He just sits around on our payroll watching the
grass grow. Shoot he’ll be almost as happy as I will to fly you to
Dallas. What do you say?
”

To tell the strict truth I
couldn’t think of anything to say, so I gaped up at him, and I must
have looked about as smart as a shocked calf, but he mistook my
confusion for some sort of negotiating tactic. I guess he thought I
was holding out for more goodies to entice me onto that plane,
because the next words out of his mouth were the ones every girl
want to hear.

“
Now, Leeann, if you are
worried about not having the right clothes for Dallas, then why
don’t we go up a couple hours before supper time and hit that old
store Neiman Marcus. Hell, my mama always says if they don’t have
it at Neiman’s, then you don’t want to wear it
anyways
.”

I laughed like I was in
perfect agreement with what he said; just like I was one of those
girls who got to use the world’s most expensive store like my
private closet. I think, looking back now, it’s the only thing Miz
Bethany ever said that ended up being true.

I acted real flustered, and
by that time we were standing in the lobby; the receptionist,
Alice, was trying real hard to look like she wasn’t listening to
every word we were saying.

I knew I was going to say
yes. I didn’t much want to go to dinner with him, but I sure did
want to go to Neiman Marcus and pick out the kind of dress I had
only seen on TV and don’t you judge me. I had been wearing the
clothes my mama sewed for me my whole life. They were real pretty,
but I have to say it had galled me every minute of my life to hear
from those sad cows Maddie and Audrey about their old shopping
trips to Dallas and how they had seen Mariah Carey in a magazine
wearing the same jeans they had on …always talking real loud about
how their Cotillion dresses had set their daddies back a packet,
though I have to say it, it didn’t much help them - but on me? Oh,
what would those clothes look like on me? So yes, yes is what I
said right then “
Sure, George, I would
love to go to Dallas with you
.”

Right about then Jessie
started honking up a storm and he was asking me what time should he
pick me up, and I had to think real fast about that because he
could not pick me up as daddy would shoot him dead and then murder
him, and there would be no Neiman Marcus for me for sure. So I said
to him “
Here George, you give me your cell
number real quick and I’ll call you tomorrow
.”

He looked real puzzled
then, as I’m sure he did not see me as the kind of girl who had to
call boys, but the other way around.

I made up a story quick
about how I was grounded and not allowed to have phone calls this
week, so then he asked for my cell number, and of course I didn’t
have one. Nobody in my family owns a cell phone, unless you count
my brother Randy who has one from his company on account of being a
plumber and them needing to get in touch with him at all
hours.

Before I had to come up
with another whopper for him about my non-existent cell phone,
Jessie was coming through the doors, yelling up a storm about how
she had been stuck outside for a month of Sundays. When she saw me
talking to George, she gave us a real funny look and so I just
stared at him with this kind of desperate expression and he grinned
back at me real cute and pushed a card into my hand. I curled my
fist around it so Jessie wouldn’t see and waved goodbye and ran
outside on the double.

On the way home I meant to
tell Jessie about my date, but she was so fired up about Miz
Bethany that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. When we got to my
house, I asked her if I could sleep over at her place on Saturday,
and that shut her up right quick because we always slept over at my
house, on account of her mama being somewhat irrational, and
somewhat mean as a water snake as well. I didn’t give her any time
to question me. I just said thanks, that was great, like she had
agreed, which she had not, and gave her a quick hug and then I
scampered inside my house.