Lady Be Good

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Kenny disengaged himself as soon as he could and headed for the play yard, where he scooped the baby into his arms. “How are you doing, little brother?”

  Was it Emma’s imagination, or did he place unnecessary emphasis on that last word?

  Peter let out a squeal of delight. At the same time Shelby came through the doors. She wore white leggings and an oversized lime-green V-neck cotton cardigan. She looked like Mr. Traveler’s daughter instead of his wife.

  “Lady Emma, it’s such an honor having you with us this evening. I don’t know if Kenny told you, but I’m crazy about everything that has to do with England. I have a whole collection of books about Princess Di if you’d like to see them. Did anybody introduce you to my husband Warren?”

  He gave her a warm smile. “Lady Emma. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Just Emma is fine. Thank you both for inviting me.”

  “It’s our honor,” Shelby gushed, then gestured toward one of the banquettes. “Tell me how you’re enjoying your trip. Both Warren and I love London, don’t we, Warren? Do you live near the city?”

  Emma explained that she lived several hours away by car in Warwickshire, then answered Shelby’s questions about her trip. Before long, Shelby was regaling her with stories of backpacking in England after she’d graduated from college and a research project she’d once done on D. H. Lawrence. As she spoke, Torie stood off to one side, sipping a glass of wine and watching Kenny and Peter with a deeply unhappy expression on her face. Warren, in the meantime, seemed content to sip his bourbon and let his wife do the talking.

  Shelby, who looked plump, blond, and merely pretty in this family of dark-haired demigods, glared at Torie as she lit up. “Put that out. You know I don’t like it when you smoke around Peter.”

  “We’re outside. I’m not even near him.”

  “No, you never are, are you?” Hurt clouded Shelby’s eyes, and Emma remembered what Torie had said earlier about not being able to have a child. Had that caused the sadness that lurked just beneath her outrageousness?

  “Warren, Lady Emma doesn’t have a drink,” Shelby said.

  “What would you like?”

  “A soft drink would be fine.”

  Warren wandered over to a bar set into one end of the terrace and addressed his son in an overly hearty manner. “Kenny, what about you? I’ve got one of those sissy red wines you like.”

  “I’ll get it later.” Kenny didn’t even bother to look at his father. Instead, he propped Peter on his shoulders, holding his arms to keep him steady, and took his little brother over for a closer view of a squirrel that had climbed into the branches of an olive tree.

  Torie folded her fashion model’s body into one of the banquettes and crossed her legs. “So what do you think of Mother Shelby, Lady Emma?” She splayed her fingers through her dark hair and propped one elbow on a paisley pillow. “I know you’re dying of curiosity, but too polite to ask. Shelby’s twenty-seven, exactly thirty-one years younger than our daddy and a year younger than me. Doesn’t that just about turn your stomach?”

  “Torie, can’t you at least wait until Petie’s in bed?” Kenny said.

  She ignored him. “Daddy knocked her up about a year and a half ago, and they had to get married.”

  Warren looked amused, but Shelby had stiffened. “You’ll have to excuse Torie’s rudeness, Lady Emma. She’s very threatened by my relationship with her father.”

  “Revolted is more like it,” Torie snapped.

  “That’s enough, girls.” Warren spoke mildly, as if he’d grown so used to their bickering that it didn’t bother him all that much. He sipped his drink and looked at Emma. “Shelby was Torie’s little sister in their college sorority. They’ve been best friends for years, although you wouldn’t know it now. They even shared an apartment between one of Torie’s marriages.”

  “I was only married twice,” she retorted. “Don’t make it sound as if there were a dozen. Besides, the first marriage barely lasted six months, so it didn’t count.”

  “You made me buy that awful pink and lavender maid-of-honor dress,” Shelby said, “so it definitely counted.”

  Torie blew a thin stream of smoke. “Yeah, well, all of us know that Kenny had you out of that dress by midnight, so it couldn’t have been too awful.”

  Emma sat up a little straighter. Tonight’s episode of Dallas had taken an unexpected turn. It occurred to her that just being associated with the Traveler family might be enough for Beddington to call into question her character.

  Kenny sighed. “I didn’t have her out of the dress, and you know it.” He kissed Peter on top of his head and swung him back into his play yard. “Do we have to do this every time we get together?”

  “Leave ’em alone,” Warren said. “It’s part of their ritual.”

  Torie gave a dry laugh. “Wouldn’t it have been funny if Kenny’d knocked you up, too, Mother Shelby? One of those corny father-son bonding activities.”

  “That’s disgusting even for you,” Kenny said. “Now settle down, Torie. I mean it. Shelby and I had one date. We kissed each other at the door, and that was it.”

  “Did you use your tongue?”

  “I don’t remember,” he growled.

  “I remember.” Shelby shot Torie a superior look. “And I’m not telling.”

  Kenny headed for the bar.

  Warren Traveler chuckled. “Home sweet home. Right, son?”

  “Whatever.”

  The Rolex on Warren’s wrist gleamed as he took a sip from his drink. “I hear you and Ted Beaudine went at it today. Word is you beat him by three strokes.”

  “He shot two under. We both had a decent round.”

  “I swear, when I get my hands on that sonovabitch Beaudine . . . If I was you, I’d have my lawyers all over this.”

  Emma realized he wasn’t talking about Ted Beaudine, but his father, Dallie.

  “I’m handling it,” Kenny said.

  “It’s the week before the damn Masters! Every top player in the world is heading for Augusta except Kenny Traveler. You can’t let Beaudine get away with this. All you have to do is call Crosley. He’s the best lawyer in the state, and he told me—”

  “I asked you to stay out of it, all right?” Emma heard the edge of steel in Kenny’s voice and watched Warren’s almost invisible withdrawal.

  Torie made a languid movement on the banquette. “I’m half starving to death. If we’re not eating soon, I swear I’m gonna order a pizza.”

  As if on cue, a maid appeared with a large tray holding individual salads. Shelby rose and directed them to their places. As Kenny moved toward the table, Peter let out a wail and gazed piteously at him, then extended his arms to be picked up.

  “Leave him alone,” Warren said. “You’ll spoil him.”

  “That’s what big brothers are for, right, Petie?” Ignoring his father, Kenny walked over to the playpen and lifted Peter out.

  Shelby frowned at her husband. “You can’t spoil a baby by picking him up, Warren. I keep telling you that. I’m not like your first wife, and Peter’s not going to end up useless and lazy like Kenny, so stop worrying. Besides, all my books say that, if you don’t meet their needs when they’re little, you’ll pay the price when they’re older.”

  He regarded her with a mild irritation that didn’t mask his fondness for this too-young wife. “I guess I might know a little more about raising kids than you.”

  “Like you did such a wonderful job,” she retorted.

  “She’s got you there, old man.” Kenny threw his father a faintly mocking look as he tucked Peter under his arm.

  The maid had set out five bone china plates holding salads that combined Bibb lettuce, avocado slices, and wedges of ripe pear with a crumbling of Gorgonzola. Shelby took Peter from Kenny and tried to set him in his high chair, but he started to fuss, so Kenny took him back, then scraped off the Gorgonzola to give the baby a piece of pear. As he began to eat his salad, Kenny seemed oblivious to the mushy bits of
fruit that were dripping on his slacks.

  Shelby questioned Emma about any contacts, no matter how remote, she might have had with the royals, then Torie cut in with a story about a European trip she and Shelby had taken several years ago. The two of them began trading stories and, for a little while, they seemed to forget they’d become enemies.

  The salads were replaced with an entrée of herb-crusted lamb and roasted potatoes. Kenny and his father began discussing some new computer softwear being developed by TCS, and Emma noticed that Warren acted as though Kenny couldn’t understand the technology, even though Kenny didn’t appear to have any trouble.

  When Warren introduced Dexter O’Conner’s name to the discussion, Torie immediately reacted. “Could we talk about something else, please?”

  Shelby leaned across Emma to wipe Peter’s chin. “I don’t know why you dislike Dex so much, Torie. Nobody else does.”

  “I do,” Kenny said.

  Torie shot him a grateful look.

  Warren tossed down the dinner roll he’d just buttered. He might be insecure when it came to his son, but not with his daughter, and Emma saw the strength of will that had made him such a successful businessman. “It doesn’t matter whether she dislikes him or not. The first two times she got married for herself, and this time she’s going to do it for the family. Unlike her last two husbands, Dex doesn’t happen to be a scumbag. He’s one of the brightest new minds in the business, and TCS is going to take advantage of it.”

  “I’m not marrying Dexter O’Conner just so you can get your hands on the next microchip wonderboy.”

  “Then you’d better be ready to support that emu farm yourself, Princess, because I’m not doing it much longer.”

  The evenness in his tone told Emma he wasn’t bluffing, and she suspected Torie realized it, too. Although Warren obviously loved his daughter, he had apparently decided enough was enough. Emma’s and Torie’s circumstances were too much alike for her not to sympathize. But she also wondered if Warren might not be doing his daughter a favor by making her stand on her own feet.

  Torie apparently decided to retreat. She took a sip of wine and turned to Emma. “So, are you and Kenny going to Austin tomorrow?”

  Emma carefully avoided looking at Kenny. “I’m not certain.”

  Torie regarded her curiously. “Something wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Both of you have been acting funny all night. Too polite, like one of you is really pissed off at the other, except I’m not sure which one.”

  “Me,” Kenny said.

  Torie’s fork paused in midair. “What’d she do?”

  “I won’t embarrass her by talking about it.” He pushed his dinner plate out of Peter’s reach.

  “Well, that’s no fun. Tell us what happened, Lady Emma.”

  “A misunderstanding on my part, that’s all.”

  “Must have been a big misunderstanding,” Shelby said. “Kenny doesn’t hardly ever get mad.”

  “Oh, really?” Emma stabbed at her lamb, and her sense of being ill-used overcame her British reserve. “He’s been angry with me since the moment we met.”

  Kenny glared at her. “I have not!”

  “You certainly have.” Everyone was staring, but injustice bubbled inside her to the point where she didn’t care. “You’ve complained about everything. You don’t like carrying my luggage or the way I hold my brolly or the fact that I walk fast. You say I’m too conservative, and you tell me I’m too bossy. You refuse to accept my apology for a very natural misunderstanding. You don’t even like the way I dance!”

  “You lead!”

  “And who made the rule that only men can do that?”

  The others were watching intently, except for Peter, who blew a pear-flecked spit bubble. Mortified by her outburst, she set down her fork and tried to regain her dignity. “I simply misinterpreted Shelby’s visit this afternoon. As a result, I became upset with Kenny, and now he’s upset with me.”

  Everyone continued to regard her with interest except Kenny, whose brow had furrowed. “When she says she got upset, what she really means is that she slapped me.”

  “Oh, my God!” Torie’s mouth dropped.

  “You didn’t!” Shelby’s eyes widened.

  Kenny glowered at Emma. “The slap wasn’t the important part, and you know it.”

  “Tell us why you did it,” Torie said. “I’m sorry, Kenny, but I’ll bet she had a good reason.”

  “Thanks a lot for the vote of confidence.” Kenny shot her a disgusted look.

  “Well . . .” Emma’s inherent sense of breeding fought against her need to defend herself. Then she remembered that none of these people seemed to have any compunction about airing their dirty linen in front of her. When in America, do as the Americans. “What Shelby told me led me to believe that . . .” She could feel herself faltering, and she sat a bit straighter in her seat so she could deliver the truth bang-on. “I mistakenly assumed Peter was Kenny’s child and that Kenny had abandoned him.”

  Torie’s wine glass stalled in midair. “Uh-oh.”

  Shelby looked shocked, and even Warren seemed taken aback. “No man in the Traveler family would ever do anything like that, not even Kenny.”

  It occurred to Emma that the Travelers had a peculiar moral code. Apparently it was acceptable for Kenny to pretend he was a gigolo, for Torie to go through two husbands and live off her father’s money, for Warren to get a woman thirty-one years his junior pregnant, but it wasn’t acceptable for her to experience a very natural misunderstanding.

  “Shelby called Peter a forgotten child,” she pointed out with some asperity. “She told me Kenny had abandoned his responsibility to his own flesh and blood. And Peter looks like a miniature version of Kenny, doesn’t he? What else was I to think?”

  Torie glanced over at Kenny and shrugged. “Put like that, I guess it’s a natural conclusion for somebody who doesn’t know you too well.”

  Kenny would have none of it. “She knows me plenty well.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Emma pointed out. “We only met three days ago, and, technically, you’re my employee.”

  That brought Warren’s eyebrows to the center of his forehead, but Kenny merely snorted.

  Shelby had been silent, but suddenly it was as if someone had lit a fire under her. “Peter looks exactly like your baby pictures. You’re two peas in a pod, and that’s what makes this whole situation so ugly. You only have one brother on the face of this earth, Kenny Traveler, and you’ve turned your back on him.”

  Kenny rescued a table knife from Peter’s reach. “I haven’t turned my back on him.”

  But Shelby was off and running. “You’re lazy and irresponsible. You don’t go to church, you roam all over the country, you refuse to date any of the nice girls I’ve found for you, you hand your money over to drug runners, and you don’t show one single sign of settling down. If that isn’t turning your back on your responsibility to your baby brother, I don’t know what is.”

  Emma wasn’t following this, but, as she tried to sort it out, Shelby’s voice grew choked. “Your father is fifty-eight years old! He doesn’t eat right. He doesn’t get enough exercise. He’s a heart attack waiting to happen, and he could die any minute! That leaves Peter and me. And if something should happen to me, my baby boy would be alone.” Her face crumpled. “I know all of you think I’m being silly about this, but that’s because none of you know what it’s like to be a mother.”

  Torie shoved herself back from the table and headed for the bar.

  Shelby went on. “I never knew I could love anybody like I love Peter, and I just can’t stand thinking about my baby all alone in the world.”

  “He wouldn’t be alone,” Kenny said with such exaggerated patience that Emma suspected he’d been over this ground before. “In the first place, the chances that both of you will die before he’s grown are minuscule—”

  “Don’t tell me that. It happens all the time!”
/>   “—and I told you I’d be his guardian.”

  “What kind of guardian would you be for a little boy? I can’t sleep at night worrying about it. You live all over the place, you currently have no job! You get into fights and mess around with bitchy women.” She shot Emma a quick, apologetic glance. “I didn’t mean you.”

  “Thank you.” Emma realized no one had mentioned the possibility of Torie becoming Peter’s guardian. Why was that?

  Shelby looked over at her husband. “You agree with me, don’t you, Warren?”

  “I’m not ready to climb into the grave yet, but I have to say that it’s hard to see Kenny as anybody’s guardian.”

  Emma’s spine stiffened, and even though this was none of her business, she couldn’t keep silent. “Kenny would make a fine guardian.”

  They all stared at her.

  She blinked her eyes, not quite certain what had come over her, but knowing she had to speak. “It’s obvious he cares about Peter, and Peter adores him. Shelby, I sympathize with your concern, but as an educator, I believe I can safely tell you it’s misplaced. One only has to see Kenny and Peter together to understand that you couldn’t find a better protector for your son.”

  Everyone looked over at Peter, who was busy gumming away on Kenny’s thumb.

  Shelby’s eyebrows drew together. “Just this afternoon you thought Kenny had abandoned him. Haven’t you changed your mind awfully fast?”

  Emma replied simply. “I know him better now.”

  For the first time since their blowup, Kenny regarded her with something other than chilly courtesy. The beginnings of a smile caught the corners of his mouth, but whatever response he might have made was lost as Shelby leaned forward.

  “But Peter’ll need a mother’s influence, too. And what if Kenny marries someone awful, like that bitch Jilly Bradford?”

  Torie returned from the bar, a wine glass in her hand. “I don’t know why you ever asked her out, Kenny. The only thing she had to recommend her was an eleven handicap. Plus a D cup.”

  “She had other things,” Kenny said defensively. “Unlike your and Shelby’s friends, her IQ was in three digits.”