From his manner, Ellie concluded he probably didn't want her discussing domestic things like gardens and homes with his mother.
“How exactly do you want me to act?” Ellie asked. “And what should I talk about?”
Mark smiled again, and she felt a rush of pleasure. “You've got a mom,” he said. “You'll know what to say and how to act.”
“Don't you feel guilty about lying to your mother?”
Mark shook his head. “I know my mom. It's only when I'm
not
seeing anyone that she panics and puts me on a guilt trip because she doesn't have grandchildren. The minute I do meet someone, she scolds me for neglecting my career and says I've got plenty of time to get married.” He relaxed his hands lower on the wheel. “I'd rather not have to stage this little charade, but no one's getting hurt.”
Ellie bit her tongue, and a little sliver of disappointment shook her heart.
Speak for yourself, Mark Blackwell.
She'd promised him a wacky performance for his money, but deep down she wished today could be different. It was easy to imagine herself as Mark's girlfriend, on her way to meet his family at a picnic. But, a deal was a deal, and today she'd be everything Mark Blackwell wouldn't want in a partner. The bad thing about it was, she wouldn't have to do much of an acting job. She realized, for the most part, just being herself would be suitably unsuitable.
Gloria Blackwell strutted out to the car exactly as Ellie had envisioned. Buxom and conservatively dressed in a shapeless jumper. Neat hair in a low bun. Plump elbows and arms full of pot holders and steaming casserole dishes.
Gloria gave Ellie's outfit a long glance, then offered a shaky smile. Introductions were cheery and forced. Gloria asked Ellie to move to the back seat of Mark's sedan, citing her perpetual car sickness as the reason she needed the front passenger seat. As Ellie moved to oblige, she heard the woman whisper to Mark, “Isn't she going to miss her prom?”
“Be nice,” Mark whispered back.
Ellie smiled wryly. This would be the easiest money she'd ever made. The thought did not ease her conscience.
“Ellie, dear,” Gloria asked when they were on their way, “what do you do for a living?”
Ellie hesitated a split second, then said, “I was laid off from a secretarial job a few days ago.” She saw Mark frown at the news, then his face cleared, as if in understanding. He winked at Ellie in the mirror. He thought she was making it up to get under his mother's skin!
“So you're unemployed?” his mother asked, her disapproval thinly veiled.
Ellie ground her teeth, but maintained a sweet and pleasant voice. “Well, I'm really an artist, working on my portfolio and doing commissions on the sideâlike painting your son's portrait.”
“An unemployed artist,” Gloria chirped. “How interesting.” She addressed Ellie by looking at her in the side-door mirror. “My late husband dabbled in paintâit never earned him a penny.”
Ellie sat back in her seat, biting off a defensive retort. Gloria Blackwell had disliked her on sight. That fact might have bothered her if she thought this thing with Mark was going anywhere. But since he'd made it clear he wasn't interested in pursuing a relationship, she could relax. So what if his mother pooh-poohed her occupation and clothes? Mark said he wanted to go for shock value. For three hundred and fifty dollars, she'd be Madonna for a day.
“So how did you meet my son?”
“The first time we met, he dumped a cola in my lap and paid me off to avoid a scene.”
“And...the next time?” Gloria ventured.
“In the men's room at his law office. Your son has an enormousâ”
“I don't thinkâ” Gloria tried to interrupt.
“âbladder,” Ellie finished.
Gloria fanned herself. “Do your parents live in Atlanta?”
“No, Florida.”
Mark's mother breathed an audible sigh of relief at finding a safe subject. “That's nice. Are they retired?”
“Semi-retired,” Ellie said pleasantly. “They run a restaurant.”
“How lovely!”
“At a nudist colony.”
Gloria gasped and a sudden fit of coughing seized Mark.
Ellie bit back a wry smile.
For the rest of the drive, Gloria conversed with Mark, making general comments about the picnic and who would be there. Ellie guessed Mark's mother would not be directing any more questions her way, so she relaxed into the soft leather seat and listened to the woman's chatter.
“Did I tell you your uncle Jerome will be there? I know you're not fond of him, Marcus, but he is your grandmother's only brother. He's married again, did you know?”
Ellie smiled as Mark made a big show of counting off on his fingers. “Is this the fourth wife, or the fifth?”
“Fifth. You know the second Julia was really a gemâwe all wish he'd kept her.”
“I don't remember his second wife.”
“No, I'm talking about Julia, his third wife. His second wife was also Julia, but we didn't care for her. She sniffed all her food before eating it. Always sniffing, it was very annoying. But his third wife, Juliaâthe second Julia, we always called herânow
there
was a nice girl. Real Southern manners, and a proper wife she was.”
Ellie couldn't resist. “If she was such a proper wife, why did he get rid of her?”
Gloria jerked her head around quickly, as if she'd forgotten about their passenger. She adjusted the mirror so she could see Ellie. “I really wouldn't know,” she said airily, as if gossiping was beneath her, then adjusted the mirror back with a snap.
“Here we are,” Mark said cheerfully, shoving the gearshift into Park and turning off the ignition.
“How am I doing?” Ellie whispered as they walked to the back of the car.
“Great,” he said, smiling. “I think she hates you.”
Ellie frowned, then nodded agreeably. She was earning her pay, wasn't she?
She spied several shelters within walking distance, but a sign bearing the name “Blackwell” led them to one off to the right and up a small incline.
“I thought this was your mother's family,” Ellie said to Mark as they unpacked the food.
He smiled. “It's both, really. Without getting too complicated, my dad and four of his brothers married mom and four of her sisters.”
“Is that legal?” Ellie asked.
This time he laughed. “It's legal, but sometimes I don't think it was very smart. All of their children are double first cousins. It makes for a pretty tight-knit group.” He pulled a huge cooler from the trunk of his car, and led the way up the path. Gloria hurried ahead, visibly crestfallen that one of her sisters had beaten her to the punch and, having arrived first, was already spreading vinyl tablecloths over the ten or so picnic tables in the shelter.
Within a few minutes, several carloads had arrived, and Ellie's head spun from the names and faces she'd tried to commit to memory. Everyone, including Gloria, seemed impressed with the chocolate cake she'd made. “It's low-fat, too,” she said to Gloria.
“Well,” harrumphed Mark's mother, giving Ellie a sweeping glance, “not everyone was meant to look like a stick.” The cake was thereby relegated to the lowly salad table, to occupy a spot beside a plate of unpopular celery and carrot sticks.
After an hour, Ellie decided to take a break from the adults and mix with Mark's young cousins. Delighted to discover several of them had brought in-line skates, she retrieved hers from her bag and joined them on the paved parking lot, ignoring disparaging looks from Mark's mother. She taught the more experienced skaters a few moves and was soon enjoying herself very much, laughing in spite of the sick feeling building in her stomach. She felt like a fraud, but it was equally disheartening to know that even when she was being herself, Mark's mother disapproved.
As unobtrusively as possible, Ellie watched Mark mix with the odd collection of relatives. The fussy aunts, the crying babies, the joke-telling men were so different from the stoic manner he put on. Ellie wondered how he'd metamorphosed into the polished, articulate executive he'd become. He was obviously everyone's favorite. It was gratifying to see he'd originated from homespun peopleâgood, decent people with simple wants and needs whom he seemed to care about. This was a side of him she hadn't expected to discover, and it caused an unsettling shift in the characteristics she'd assigned to him.
It bothered her, too, that his family was so different from hers. He'd mentioned he was an only child, like Ellie, but Mark's extended family was large and varied, warm and comfortable around each other. She tried to conjure up images of long-forgotten aunts and uncles from faded photographs she'd seen in family albums. Both sets of grandparents had died before she was a toddler. Ellie's mother had been the youngest of her three siblings by nearly a generationâshe wasn't close to them at all. Her father had one brother left, living somewhere on the West Coast, she recalled. She wondered how many unknown cousins she had all over the country, and made a mental note to pump her mother for more information the next time they talked on the phone.
She stole a glance at Mark, and felt a zing go through her at the sight of him, his head thrown back, laughing. She envied Mark Blackwell and his rowdy relatives. Ellie sighed. A big, close, loving family was all she'd ever wanted, and all she'd never gotten.
Mark slapped his cousin Mickey on the back, enjoying a shared joke. His gaze slid to Ellie, an annoying habit he'd adopted in the last hour, along with every male relative at the picnic over the age of ten. His smile died and his mouth went dry as she whirled on the skates, causing her skirt to billow alarmingly high.
“Where did you snag
her?”
Mickey whispered hoarsely, admiration tinting his voice.
Mark jerked his head around to find the eyes of his balding, chunky cousin riveted on Ellie. A strange feeling of possessiveness descended over him. “She's an artist and my office commissioned her to do a painting.”
“An artist, huh? That explains it.”
“That explains what?”
“Why she's not like every corporate female clone I've ever seen you with.”
Mark frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“Not that you haven't dated some beauties, cuz,” Mickey hastened to add. “It's just that my tastes lean toward warmblooded creatures.” He exhaled heavily. “And that woman is hot.”
Mark's frown deepened. He hadn't hired her to be hot. Guilt stabbed him in the gut when he remembered the money he'd paid her. The thought struck him that it might be nice if Ellie Sutherland had accompanied him of her own volition, instead of having to be bribed. Then she could have acted naturally and his family could have fallen in love with her...wait a minuteâwhat was he thinking?
His cousin let out a low whistle through his small teeth. Mark joined him in holding his breath when a particularly risky move revealed every square inch of her rock-hard thighs and the barest glimpse of white cotton undies. Mark licked his lips nervously and Mickey dragged a handkerchief out of his back pocket to mop his forehead.
“I don't think she hit it off with Mom,” Mark said carefully, attempting to plant a seed of dissent.
“That settles it,” Mickey said, nodding confidently. “Marry her.”
Someone rang a bell to signal the meal being served. Ellie removed her skates and rejoined the adults, dutifully giving disappointing, but true, answers to repeated questions from Gloria's sisters about what she did for a living and how she'd met Mark. Mark hovered close by, as if to verify she was doing what he'd asked of her. Every infant at the gathering squalled when she held them, and soon the new mothers were keeping their babies to themselves. Ellie slipped her camera from the bag and snapped two rolls of pictures, the women politely rigid when she focused on them, the men curiously hamming for the camera.
Indeed, it seemed the chilly reception extended to her by the Blackwell women wasn't a feeling shared by the Blackwell men. They buzzed around Ellie continually, laughing and flirting, elbowing appreciation to a silent Mark. Uncle Jerome, the marrying man, shadowed her every move, offering her lively, if suggestive, conversation throughout the afternoon. Even beating the men at horseshoes didn't banish their smiles and winks. When it looked as if the female relatives were about to descend on her with tar and feathers, she rejoined the children. This time, she pulled out her sketchbook and drew caricatures of the ones who could sit still long enough for her to render a pastel drawing. The children gleefully took the sketches to their parents, and before long, an audience had gathered.
The sudden attention made Ellie nervous and she noticed a frown on Mark's face. He wasn't paying her to make a favorable impression. She glanced at her tablet. “One sheet of paper left,” she said. “Gloria, how about it?”