Right Brother (15 page)

She knew Darcie had kept talking to give her time to recover.

“I know you mean well, Darcie. But, really this isn't necessary. I saw to that.”

“Oh, yeah? How'd you do that?”

“I told him all the reasons it never should have happened.”

“Reasons besides being on
Jerry Springer?
No.” She held
out a hand as if Jennifer had been about to reply. “There's no reason you should tell me anything. Me or anybody else. I know about feeling you have no clue what's going on. But it'll settle down. At some point everything will just be real obvious. At least that's how it worked for me.”

“You didn't have a nearly teenage daughter,” Jennifer said dryly.

Darcie gave her a considering look that for some reason reminded Jennifer of Trent. “What's that got to do with it?”

“That's the thing about being a mother. You're supposed to be sure of things.”

“Nah,” Darcie said. “You're supposed to be human and do your best. Besides, I said you didn't owe me or anybody else any explanation. That includes Ashley.”

“Well, it's all moot anyway.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I told Trent I don't trust him.”

“Ouch.”

 

Less than two weeks before the Grand Reopening, Jennifer halted at the threshold of Trent's office when she saw he was on the phone and started to back out. But he waved her in.

By the second day after that encounter in the parking lot, they were close enough to their usual way of dealing with each other that she'd felt confident no one else could sense the underlying tension, though she did.

His gaze followed her as she took the chair across the desk, while he listened intently to whatever was being said on the phone.

He sighed a concession. “Okay… Yes, I mean it…. You know me better than that, Tracy. I'll be there…I've got all the info.” He snorted, amusement and annoyance in the sound. “Fine, fax it again just in case…. Yeah, it'll be good to see you, too, Tracy.” His voice gentled on those words.

She shouldn't have come in. She should have ignored his gesture. She didn't need to hear his private conversation. She didn't need to know about his life outside of Drago—outside of this building for that matter. He could have a harem of hundreds for all she cared.

No, she definitely shouldn't have come in. Because she had a lot of work to do. She couldn't afford to just sit here.

But could she walk out? Wouldn't that look like…well, something?

She would look through the papers she'd brought in, act as if she'd forgotten something, give him that one-finger-raised be-back-in-a-minute gesture, then slip out. By the time he finished his call she could have gotten all sorts of things done.

Jennifer opened the folder with the list of parts sales from the first weeks of their Web site and started flipping through them. Before she could proceed with her act, however, he was wrapping up the call.

“Right, I'll see you then. Bye, Tracy.”

His hand still on the receiver, he gave Jennifer a rueful smile and said, “How'd you like to go to Chicago with me Saturday night?”

Visions of harems didn't exactly burst into oblivion, but they did grow hazy. But that might have been from feeling suddenly light-headed. “What?”

“It's this benefit thing downtown. The wife of a former teammate who's with the Bears now got involved, and she heard I was in the area, so she's twisted my arm to go. It'll be a really nice event—Tracy never does anything halfway. I can guarantee it'll be worth the trip.”

“I don't think that's a good idea.”

His gaze on her sharpened and the skin over the bones of his face seemed to tighten. But his voice remained easy when he said, “I won't cause you any trouble, Jennifer. You made
yourself clear. I wouldn't mistake this for a date, so you needn't worry about that.”

“I'm not—” She started to lie before he cut her off.

“It is, however, a great business opportunity. If you knew Tracy, you'd know that the top movers and shakers in the Chicago metropolitan area and beyond are bound to be there—and I do mean bound. She'd tie 'em up and drag 'em if she had to. So think of the contacts you could make. These kinds of contacts can be golden.”

To succeed in business, she could not let personal feelings of discomfort prevent her from making the most of opportunities.

Oh, she didn't have any delusions that Stenner Auto could compete with major Chicago area dealers. But they could aspire to nibble market share from outfits in the suburbs always stretching hungry fingers to the west. Why couldn't consumers take a pleasant drive to the country to look for a car? The right contacts might help.

“Golden,” she agreed. “What time do we leave?”

 

“What on earth am I going to wear?”

“The dress you wore at the Lilac Ball,” Darcie said.

“It's a dozen years old.”

“This is a new group of people—they won't have seen it before.”

One of the things Jennifer most liked about Darcie was her hardheaded sensitivity. She didn't ask why Jennifer didn't buy something new, she simply plunged into the problem at hand, recognizing the realities.

“They would have seen the original it was patterned after fifteen years ago when it was in style. This is Chicago,” Jennifer said. She sounded remarkably like Ashley in the moment, and she didn't even care. “And these are society types. They'll probably be wearing Versace, Valentino and Dior.”

“Sounds like a law firm.” Darcie chuckled.

Jennifer gave her a harried glare. “I need to look good—great—for this event. Because it's such a good business opportunity,” she rushed to add when Darcie's eyes lit up.

“You can wear my dress—the one I wore to the Lilac Ball. You said it was a classic style, and Zeke sure liked it. Though there's a button or two you'll have to sew back on.”

Jennifer forgave her friend's reminiscently lascivious grin. Darcie deserved that good—and apparently hot—memory, especially considering the way she'd suffered when Zeke left the day after the ball. It had taken the dope several long weeks to come to his senses and come back to Darcie.

“It is a classic style and it looks fabulous on you. But in case you haven't noticed, we have different shapes.”

“Sure, rub it in,” Darcie grumbled.

“You've got to be kidding. You
are
kidding, right?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I sure hope you lie better than that when you have to interrogate dangerous criminals. I am talking about my disbelief that you could still be stuck on that thing from high school of thinking you don't have a good figure. You have a fabulous figure.” She eyed her friend's curves. “But that means that, in addition to being several inches shorter than you,
I
don't have enough to fill the top of that dress the way it needs to be filled.”

Darcie wouldn't accept that. She made Jennifer try on the dress.

Standing in front of the mirror with the fabulous dress of varied shades of red hanging loosely from her shoulders, Jennifer sighed. This dress matched Darcie's figure the way Darcie matched Zeke.

She sighed again. Would the pieces of
her
life ever fit?

“So, it's a little long,” Darcie said. “We can hem it.”

“Length isn't the major problem.”

“So, we'll take it in.”

“We? We both flunked that section of Home Ec. And even if we could…” Jennifer reached behind her and pulled the fabric tight.

“Geez, you look like one of those anorexic Hollywood starlets. Like a Popsicle stick wrapped in pretty fabric.”

Jennifer gave a pained chuckle. “Just what I always wanted to hear.”

“But you don't usually look like that. You're gorgeous. When you wear that clingy, swingy purple dress, the place has to go under a flood watch for all the men drooling.”

This chuckle was more genuine. “Nice image, Darcie.”

“Well, it's true. I don't suppose you could wear that purple dress. No, no, you're right. Not for this. Let me think. I'll come up with something.”

Which is how Jennifer came to be standing in Josh Kincannon's basement Thursday night trying on dresses.

She'd said absolutely not when Darcie explained that she'd asked Josh if they could try on clothes his designer wife had left behind when she left him and their three children several years ago. But Darcie was driving.

“How could you even ask him, Darcie?” she demanded. “You know how devastated he was when she left, even if he did jump right into Super Dad mode. And how could I think of wearing his wife's dresses?”

“Why not? He's over her now. And the clothes are sitting in the basement. He said he'd tried to ship them to her, but she was out of the country or something and they came back. Xena won't let him get rid of them.” Alexis Kincannon, now nine years old, had been nicknamed Xena practically in babyhood for her warriorlike and commanding personality. “He said he'd love to see the things get some use.”

“And what's Xena going to say?”

“Are you kidding?” Darcie pulled to the curb in front of the Kincannons' comfortable brick house. “I'm not stupid. I asked her first.”

So, Jennifer tried on dress after dress that Melissa Kincannon had designed and made, then left behind, along with her family. The dressing room consisted of ducking behind the trio of tall wardrobe-style moving boxes that held the dresses. Instead of a three-way mirror, she checked her image in two precariously stacked mirrors that left the region of her upper thighs a mystery unless she shifted to just the right angle that then blocked a view of her waist. Her panel of judges, seated in two rows on the stairway, was distinguished and varied.

Darcie, of course. Xena, who added expert commentary. Darcie's mother, whose arrival had surprised Jennifer. And Ashley, who had come with Martha Barrett, and whose arrival had stunned Jennifer.

Darcie had waggled her eyebrows at her to communicate that she'd explain later, and Jennifer had had to be satisfied with that.

Ashley had assumed a veneer of boredom that kept cracking into heated debates with Xena.

“If she's not going to choose the blue one—” Jennifer heard Ashley say from the far side of the moving boxes, referring to a dress she would never in a million years wear in public, since it had taken décolletage to a new low. Xena had said something about her mother being inspired by the movie
Gypsy,
and Darcie had muttered that a stripper wearing that dress would have nothing left to lose. “Then this last red one should be it.”

“Blondes can't wear red,” Xena declared.

“Says who?” Ashley sounded closer in age to Xena than to the thirty-year-old sophisticate who inhabited her daughter's body all too frequently.

“Everybody knows reds wash out blondes,” Xena declared
in eerie imitation of Melissa Kincannon. “Maybe that dark red one from the beginning. The one that's the color with the other name. You know,” she insisted, impatient, “like your ring, you said, Mrs. Barrett.”

“Garnet,” Darcie's mother supplied.

“Eeeuw,” Ashley said. “That was an old lady's dress.”

“That was from Mom's
African Queen
period. But she didn't want to make it in white. She said it had more depth in that other color.”

“Garnet,” Mrs. Barrett repeated.

“Are you ready?” Darcie called.

Jennifer stifled a grin. Darcie had about had her fill of fashion.

“Just a second.” She zipped herself up, and emerged.

The discourse cut off instantly. The four females stared at her.

“Well?” she asked.

They just kept staring. She went to the stacked mirrors, moving forward and back, trying to see if the narrow-skirted black dress looked as good as it felt. She twisted, trying for a view of the distinctive cutout back.

“That's it,” Darcie said, slapping her thighs. “That's the one.”

“That's from Mom's
Breakfast at Tiffany's
period.” In the mirror, Jennifer saw Xena's pride, as well as a wistfulness quickly hidden.

“I have the perfect necklace for you to wear,” Mrs. Barrett said.

“I have an evening bag that'll be great,” Darcie said.

“Thank you, thank you both. But what do you think about wearing black in late July?”

“Black is always appropriate for a formal event,” Mrs. Barrett said.

“If I looked like that in that dress, I'd wear it as my wedding dress,” Darcie said.

“Darcie!” Her mother gasped. “Not black.”

“I said
if
.”

Jennifer turned to her daughter. “What do you think, Ashley?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You'll have to wear your hair up.”

“Good idea, Ash.” Darcie nodded.

“But what do you think of the dress, Ashley?” Jennifer persisted, not knowing why she did, fully aware that this could backfire into a snippy comment in a heartbeat. “Is this the one I should wear?”

Ashley looked up. For that instant, she was once more the loving, sweet girl she'd been until this past winter. “You look beautiful.”

Then the instant was gone.

 

“I can't believe you got Ashley to come,” Jennifer admitted to Darcie in the car on the way home.

“You kidding? A chance to go through another female's clothes? Did you see the way she coveted that ‘slit to the belly button' blue number?”

“Please, don't remind me. But really, Darcie, I was astonished to see her. When I told her I was going to this benefit with Trent—”

“She had a hissy fit.”

“She wasn't happy. She's going through a rough time. Plus, she didn't exactly take to Trent, and then there was the guacamole incident. Even when I explained that Saturday is strictly business—”