It was an unexpectedly homey scene, Ronnie thought.
Both Quinlan and his mother looked up as she entered. Quinlan had exchanged his stained suit for a navy polo shirt and jeans, and his hair was slightly damp, leading Ronnie to assume that, like herself, he’d had a shower.
“Feeling better?” Mrs. McGuire asked. Quinlan merely grinned, slowly, adding about two dozen creases to his cheeks and the lines around his eyes as he looked her over. In blue-and-yellow plaid slacks and a yellow T-shirt with matching plaid trim, both at least a size fourteen where she wore a size six, Ronnie felt like
a clown. If the pants had not had a drawstring waist, she wouldn’t have been able to keep them up.
“Nice outfit,” he said, meeting her gaze at last.
“Thanks,” she replied with a saccharine smile. His knit shirt revealed broad shoulders and surprisingly muscular arms, and his jeans fit him. Obviously the clothes were his own, kept at his mother’s house. Lucky him.
“Don’t tease,” Sally McGuire told her son, shaking her head at him reprovingly and standing up. To Ronnie she said, “Would you like a piece of cake? And a glass of milk? Or a cup of coffee?”
“I’d love some cake. With milk, please. They just seem to go together, don’t they?” Ronnie gave Quinlan one more quelling look as she sat down.
“They do,” Mrs. McGuire agreed over her shoulder, lifting a glass cover from a cake stand on the counter and cutting into a scrumptious-looking red layer cake lavished with creamy white icing.
“Thanks for loaning me some clothes,” Ronnie said as Mrs. McGuire slid a huge wedge onto a plate and placed it before her.
“Oh, you’re welcome. I just wish I had something more your size.” Pouring milk into a glass, Mrs. McGuire chuckled suddenly. “In more ways than one. Too bad we can’t have our cake and be slim, too, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Ronnie agreed as the glass of milk joined the cake in front of her. Sliding her fork through soft cake and buttery icing, Ronnie inhaled the heady scent. Her mouth suddenly watered. She didn’t often permit herself sweets, but today she just couldn’t summon the
willpower to resist the treat. “It looks wonderful. I don’t eat a lot of desserts.”
“I can tell,” Quinlan said. There was something in his expression that told Ronnie he admired her figure. Well, there was nothing surprising in that, she thought. Keeping an admirable figure was the reason she watched what she ate, swam whenever she could, and worked out with Nautilus equipment three times a week.
The cake melted on her tongue in a burst of creamy sweetness. Ronnie’s eyes almost closed at the gustatory pleasure of it.
“This is scrumptious,” she said, and took another bite.
“Mom’s Red Velvet cake is famous. Everybody who’s ever eaten any remembers it.” Quinlan was halfway through his own piece of cake. His hunk had easily been twice as big as hers, and he seemed to be putting it away with no trouble at all.
If this was the way he ate ordinarily, she was surprised he managed to stay so lean.
She put another small bite of cake into her mouth, savoring it. It was so good, such an unexpected treat for her chicken, fish, and salad-accustomed palate, that she wanted to make it last as long as she could. Only the knowledge that Quinlan was watching her with amusement kept her eating steadily.
“This is really delicious,” she said with careful understatement to Mrs. McGuire, and took a sip of milk. Whole milk, of course, where she never drank anything but skim.
If she ate like this often, she soon would weigh two hundred pounds, she thought.
“It was my grandmother’s recipe. I can still taste her cream cheese frosting. It was out of this world.” Mrs. McGuire settled into her place at the table with her own cake and milk.
“It couldn’t have been better than this,” Ronnie said, taking another bite.
“Oh, before I forget, here are your pearls.” Quinlan pulled a paper-towel-wrapped bundle from his jeans pocket and pushed it across the table.
“Thanks.” Ronnie said. Unwrapping the paper towel, she slipped the necklace into her own pocket and put the earrings back on her ears. With her fingers once again steady, it was the work of only a moment.
“They’re lovely.” Mrs. McGuire admired the jewelry with her eyes. Quinlan’s gaze followed the same path as his mother’s, but he didn’t say anything.
“Thank you.”
Mrs. McGuire smiled at her. “Are you from Mississippi originally?” she asked, cutting into her own slice of cake.
Ronnie shook her head. “Massachusetts. I grew up in Boston.”
“Is your family still there?”
“My father and one of my sisters are. My other sister lives in Delaware with her family. My mother is in California now with her new husband. So we’re kind of scattered.”
“You’re one of three sisters? So am I. The oldest, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m the youngest.” Ronnie put the last bite of cake into her mouth with regret. It would be months before she would allow herself something so fattening again.
“How old are you?” Quinlan asked suddenly. His
brows met over his nose in a slight frown as he looked at her.
“Twenty-nine,” Ronnie answered as Mrs. McGuire
tch-ed
at her son in disapproval.
“You look younger,” Quinlan said as his mother good-humoredly took him to task for asking a lady her age.
“You must be—thirty-seven,” Ronnie guessed, refusing to be put on the defensive because of her youth. She knew what he—and his mother—were probably thinking: that Lewis, at sixty, was more than twice her age. She reminded herself that Quinlan, at least, worked for her. She did not have to explain herself to
him
.
“Good guess. You ought to try working one of those age-and-weight booths at the fair.” His frown relaxed, and she no longer felt as if she were being judged. “How’d you know?”
“Easy,” she said. “Marsden’s thirty-seven. If you were college roommates, it stands to reason you’d be about the same age.”
“Oh, dear, don’t you like Marsden?” Mrs. McGuire shook her head, alerted by something in Ronnie’s tone. “I always thought he was such a polite boy.”
“He used to call my mother
ma’am
whenever they met,” Quinlan explained. “And tell her how nice she looked.”
“Marsden didn’t approve of his father marrying me,” Ronnie said to Mrs. McGuire. “I don’t think I’ve seen his polite side yet.”
“What about Joanie? And Laura?” Quinlan asked. He had finished his cake and was sipping a cup of coffee.
“I’m afraid they’re in Marsden’s camp.” For the first year or so of the marriage, Lewis’s two daughters had in fact been as close to rude as they dared to be in their father’s presence. Apparently having resigned themselves to it somewhat by this time, they were simply cool whenever they had to be in the company of their younger stepmother. Not that they were in Ronnie’s company very often. Though both lived near Sedgely, the only time Ronnie saw them and their families were occasions such as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And Lewis’s birthday, of course, which was coming up next month and for which they had a huge party every year.
“I always thought Joanie in particular was such a nice girl,” Mrs. McGuire said. “There was a time …”
She broke off, looking self-consciously at her son.
“Go on, Mom, spill all the family beans,” Quinlan said dryly. To Ronnie he added, “I used to date Joanie. Mom hoped we’d make a match of it.”
“Really?” Ronnie smiled at him with exaggerated sweetness. The more she learned about his connections with Lewis’s children, the less inclined she felt to rely on her earlier feeling that she could trust him. “Too bad you didn’t. Then you’d be my … stepson-in-law.”
“Sounds incestuous, doesn’t it?” Quinlan chuckled, dispelling the tension. “All that’s water under the bridge. I married somebody else, Joanie married somebody else, and I haven’t thought about her in seventeen years. Does she have any children?”
“Two,” Ronnie said. “A boy and a girl.”
“I know Marsden has a couple. What about Laura?” Mrs. McGuire asked.
“One. A girl, Jilly. She’s six.”
“That makes you a step-grandmother,” Quinlan said, as if he had just discovered the fact and found it in equal parts appalling and amusing. “Do the kids call you Grandma?”
“They call me Ronnie, when they speak to me at all,” Ronnie said coolly. “Believe me, we aren’t the Brady Bunch.”
There was a silence as everyone digested this.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do family pictures.” Quinlan was frowning, his thoughts having clearly turned to business while mulling over Ronnie’s words. “You know, doting Grandma and Grandpa surrounded by the kids. When Grandma is younger than the children, the imagery just doesn’t work.” His gaze fastened on Ronnie. “What we need to do is make you look more mature. Less glamorous. Grandma to His Honor’s Grandpa is too much to hope for, but you should at least be able to look like somebody’s mom.”
“But the fact is I’m
not
somebody’s mom. I don’t think I ought to try to look like something I’m not.” Ronnie’s chin came up, and she returned his thoughtful regard unflinchingly. She’d been down this road before, with other consultants. They all wanted to change her, to improve her. She was tired of it; what was so wrong with her the way she was?
Both Quinlan and his mother seemed to be studying her. Their eyes were the same, Ronnie discovered, glancing from one to the other. Like Tom, his mother had been blessed with deep gray-blue irises surrounded by a ring of smoky charcoal, set beneath thick, dark-brown
brows and lashes. Beautiful eyes, she thought. Then, weighing eyes.
“Projecting an image is what politics is all about. All I’m asking is that you try to project the kind of image that will help your husband get reelected.” Quinlan’s voice was patient. He leaned forward, his arms folding on the tabletop. His plate had been pushed to one side.
“What exactly do you have in mind?” Ronnie asked warily.
Quinlan looked her over again, slowly. Ronnie got the impression that every aspect of her appearance was being analyzed, with much found wanting.
“Do you dye your hair?”
“What?” Surprise at the question made Ronnie’s voice go up an octave.
“Do you dye your hair?” He repeated it as though it were the most reasonable question in the world.
“That’s not something you should ask a lady,” his mother protested mildly, while Ronnie responded with an indignant “No!”
“I can’t believe that dark red color is natural,” Quinlan said, staring at it intently. “It’s too—red.”
“Well, I do beg your pardon, believe me,” Ronnie replied, affronted. “Not that the color of my hair is any of your business. You work for me, not the other way around.”
“Tommy …,” his mother began, only to be silenced by a shake of her son’s head. He focused on Ronnie, his gaze intent.
“Listen up, Miz Honneker: I was hired to make the good citizens of Mississippi want to vote for your husband come the next election. He’s well liked in the state, well thought of, highly electable. His biggest negative
is—you.
You
are what we’ve got to make more acceptable to the voters. You know they don’t like you. You had ample proof of it today. You think they don’t like you because they believe you stole the Senator from his first wife. That’s a fair enough assessment. But the way you look is not helping. It’s like rubbing salt in the wound. You look like the kind of woman who could—and would—steal another woman’s husband. You just look too damned young, and too damned—sexy, for a politician’s wife. At least a winning, sixty-year-old politician.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. McGuire murmured, glancing from Ronnie’s angrily flushing face to her son’s determined one as they locked glances across the table. “I think I better leave you two to hash this out alone. Tommy, dear, mind your manners. Please.”
Mrs. McGuire rose, picked up her plate and glass, and left the table. Depositing her dishes in the sink, she walked out of the room.
When she was gone, Ronnie held Quinlan’s unyielding gaze for a moment longer, the light of battle in her eyes.
“This isn’t going to work,” she said with precision. “It’s obvious that you have a problem with my being so much younger than Lewis. Well, I have a problem with your having a problem with that and with the fact that you have such close connections to Lewis’s children. I just don’t feel comfortable working with you. Although I’m very grateful for all your assistance today, I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate our association. I’m sorry.” She pushed back her chair and stood up, reaching for her dishes.
Quinlan remained seated, watching her. “Are you
trying to tell me I’m fired?” He didn’t sound, or look, particularly perturbed by the idea.
“My, you do catch on quickly, don’t you?” Ronnie gave him a quick, glittering smile, and turned away to carry her dishes to the sink.
His voice followed her, faintly amused and dripping honey. “Miz Honneker, darlin’, I was hired by the Committee to Reelect the Senator. Not by you. They’re the only ones who can terminate my employment.”
Ronnie turned back from the sink, rigid with temper. “I won’t work with you. I don’t trust you. And if I say you’re fired, you’re fired. Believe me, Lewis will back me up.”
Quinlan’s brows snapped together and his lips parted as he started to reply. Obviously thinking better of what he had been about to say, he grimaced and stood up, leaving his dishes behind. His gaze met hers as his brow cleared.
“No need to go off half-cocked,” he said with wry humor, walking toward her. “I guess that red hair must be natural, because you do have the temper to match. Politics is a game, and to win the game sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. I know you don’t want His Honor to lose the election because of you. I can help you become an asset to him instead of a liability. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Ignoring her fierce frown, he took her elbow and steered her toward the back door, which opened off a closet-sized mud room piled with boots, backpacks, and miscellaneous jackets.
“You want to help him win the election, don’t you?” he coaxed, opening the back door. He ushered her across a small concrete stoop, down two shallow
steps, and over a too-crisp patch of dandelion-infested lawn.