The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  That was the second time someone had insinuated she was all about appearances. On the one hand, it thrilled Rebecca to know that Tom thought highly of her, particularly after a drought of anyone thinking of her at all. But on the other hand, it wasn’t as if she had any experience with the media. What few media encounters she’d had had been more than ten years ago after winning the Miss Texas crown. Nevertheless, she knew she could do it, just like she knew she could do the Silver Panthers. How hard could this be? All she had to do was have confidence (A Woman’s Guide to Meaningful Employment); visualize herself in the role; and give off an appearance of self-assurance and capability (Unqualified Applicant Rule 11: Never wear pink and never go sleeveless).

  It was obvious that Uranus and karma were making plans for the permanent renovation of her house! Yeah bay-by, her life was finally about to turn around. And to keep it on track, Rebecca made time to practice her self-visualization techniques, and jotted down her three daily positive affirmations:

  Nice clothes

  Good, phone presence (phone bank) with a HEART, unlike some people

  Hard worker (yard signs) when some people think their lame ideas are all the work they need to do. P.S. there is nothing wrong with placing yard signs where they are aesthetically pleasing to the eye!

  And thereby being fully prepared, Rebecca arrived at the Four Seasons in a tastefully low cut, sheer lavender blouse with full sleeves, a knee-length black skirt, and black knee-high boots. She spotted Tom in the very crowded bar, noticed he’d even managed to snag a table in the center of the room, where he was flanked by two twenty-somethings. That surprised Rebecca—for some reason, she had pictured “media types” as looking generally like Tom Brokaw mini-mes.

  When Tom caught sight of her, he came instantly to his feet. His companions—a male and female, both thin and wiry and dressed in black, both sporting black-rimmed matchbox glasses, and both with the bed-head look, only hers a little longer—swiveled in their seats to have a look.

  “Rebecca!” Tom called, as if she hadn’t seen him, which of course she had, since they were looking directly at each other and waving.

  Visualizing Rebecca, campaign strategist, she marched forward to greet them. “Hi, Tom. How are you?” she asked as she reached the table, confidently extending her hand.

  “Great! I’d like you to meet Gunter Falk and Heather Hill. They are with DGM and Associates, our new media consultants. Gunter, Heather, this is an old and dear friend of mine, Rebecca Reynolds.”

  “Umm . . . Lear,” Rebecca politely corrected him as Heather shifted, folding her arms on the table as she had a look at Rebecca from the top of her head to the tips of her boots.

  “Yo,” said Gunter, giving her a two-finger salute as he slid down in his chair so deep that he was practically prone, looking a little like an elongated semicolon. “You work with Tom’s campaign?” he asked, as he, too, eyed her critically—so critically that Rebecca was beginning to feel just a smidge self-conscious.

  “Ah, yes,” she said, feeling, all of a sudden, that she looked like some souped-up soccer mom, and definitely not a player. Unqualified Applicant Rule 7: Be confident! If you aren’t confident in yourself no one else will be confident in you, either.

  “Rebecca, would you like something to drink?” Tom was asking her.

  “I’d love a glass of wine.” Like an entire barrel.

  He smiled reassuringly as he held out a chair for her. “We were just talking about a look for the campaign.”

  “Masters!” someone shouted. Tom jerked his head up, saw whoever it was and waved. He then leaned down, patted Rebecca on the shoulder. “Rebecca, tell them what activities we have planned, okay? I’ll be back in a sec. Oh, hey! If you didn’t know it, Rebecca was Miss Texas!” he announced in what was becoming a really annoying habit of his, and stepped away from the table before Rebecca could frantically grab his coattail and pull him back.

  “Really?” asked Gunter, outwardly amazed, as Tom strutted away.

  “Well,” Rebecca said, laughing nervously. “That was more than ten years ago.”

  “But that’s so cool,” Heather said, nodding in unison with Gunter. “But probably way too old for us to use,” she added thoughtfully.

  Well, thanks, Heather! Want to borrow my comb? “Fortunately, I’m not the one running,” Rebecca reminded her with a sheepish laugh.

  “Right,” Gunter said, nodding again. “Let’s get a drink. And then you can tell us what all the campaign has going on.”

  What all the campaign had going on? All she knew was that Tom wanted her to meet some people! Heather and Gunter were discussing what they would order from the bar, so Rebecca tried to think. Here she was with media types, talking about . . . what? She had no idea what Tom had in store.

  The waitress appeared with two martinis and a glass of wine. White wine. Rebecca despised white wine; it made her silly. But she took a good, fortifying sip all the same and looked at her new companions, Frick and Frack, who blinked back at her. Okay. She’d been at the top of Dallas’s social scene, which meant she had swum in shark-infested waters many times. A couple of kids from L.A. shouldn’t be a challenge. Where the hell was her alter ego, anyway?

  “So. We’re looking for some of your upcoming events and how we can weave those into a couple of TV spots about Tom,” Heather said. “You know, Tom Masters doing good things and meeting people, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh,” Rebecca answered brilliantly.

  “Yeah. . . . So what have you got?” Gunter pressed her.

  “Let me think,” she said, and hid behind a sip of wine as she looked to where Tom was standing, between two chunky gray-haired dudes, and thought, in answer to Gunter’s question, that what she had was a good swift kick in the ass for Tom. In fact, she visualized it, which caused her to smile.

  “Something good, huh?” Gunter asked.

  Be confident. Be strong. Be assertive! “Yyyess!” she said, perhaps just a tad too enthusiastically. “We have an appearance at the Silver Panthers lined up. We’re throwing a little party the night before their conference begins.”

  Neither Frick nor Frack said anything for a moment; they seemed to be mulling it over. But slowly, Gunter began to nod. “No, that’s good—we can actually use that in a couple of spots.” He suddenly sat up, intent on Heather. “I’m thinking of something like those arthritis pill commercials. You know the one that has all the old people dancing and looking hip?”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . and there’s the old guy who gets into a rocket and decides to check out the universe?” Heather reminded him.

  “Sweet,” said Gunter. “We can get some shots of old dudes like that at the party.” Frick and Frack smiled thinly at each other, then at Rebecca. “So when is this deal?”

  “This Thursday evening.”

  “We’ll get a photographer out to get some shots of Tom dancing with an old lady,” Gunter said.

  Never mind the fact that Rebecca was fairly certain that old lady was not a politically correct term, but they had the wrong idea if they thought there would be any dancing. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but there won’t be any dancing—”

  “You said party!” Heather said accusingly.

  “Yes, but not dancing—”

  “Then what?” asked Gunter.

  “Then bingo.”

  “Bin-go?” Gunter shouted, sounding more clueless than upset.

  “Lots of senior citizens play bingo.”

  “I know seniors play it. But I didn’t think that was what Tom had in mind.” He looked hopeful that Rebecca might, perhaps, be kidding.

  She was so not kidding. She had thought long and hard about how to engage the Silver Panthers, had even consulted Jo Lynn (who thought her idea was genius, thank you very much, Frick and Frack). Tom could mingle a little between games and even take one of the breaks to deliver some sort of speech. “Think of how good Tom will look, hanging out with seniors,” she said. “It will be a great way to
get their attention.”

  “It is a great venue,” Heather reluctantly conceded. “Don’t get me wrong. I mean, the object is to get Tom and voters in the same place at the same time, right? In a place that feels comfortable to them.”

  Okay! Heather and her hair were coming around!

  “I suppose we could shoot something there. Actually, it might be kind of cool.” She looked at Gunter. “A sort of hip throwback, something like that.”

  “Right!” Rebecca brightly agreed, having absolutely no idea what Heather meant.

  “Talk to me,” Gunter said, and the two of them proceeded to brainstorm as if she wasn’t sitting right there between them. The one time she tried to interject, Frick flashed a thin, go-over-there-and-leave-us-alone smile, which had unhinged her so completely that she could do nothing but down her wine.

  So Rebecca looked around for Tom. While she was drinking that godawfully sweet white wine and doing his business with Frick and Frack, he and his pals had pulled up another table and chairs. Apparently, Tom meant to have a little party. She imagined herself dropping a potted plant on Tom’s fat head. In the course of visualizing that, she noticed that one of his pals—the one with the duck lips and bald pate—was smiling at her.

  Ugh.

  Unbeknownst to Rebecca, Ben was smiling at her, too. “Je-sus, who the hell is that?” he asked, motioning toward Rebecca’s back with his bourbon.

  Matt looked up; his heart did some strange, annoying little flip that he paid no heed. “You don’t want to know, trust me.” He noticed that Tom was there, too, along with Representative Jeffers and Fred Davis. Hello, what is this?

  “Like hell I don’t. What are you saying—you know her?” Ben demanded.

  “Yeah. She’s working on Tom’s campaign. But she’s a beauty queen from outer space and believe me, you don’t want to get within a ten-mile radius. What I want to know is what the hell is she doing here with Tom.”

  “Jealous?” Ben scoffed.

  “Hell no,” Matt said as he stood up.

  “Let’s talk about slogans a moment,” Gunter was saying, drawing Rebecca’s attention back to him. “Maybe you can help us out.”

  And maybe I’ll just have another glass of wine.

  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” Gunter asked.

  “Me?” Rebecca asked, just as one of the men who had joined Tom lunged across the table, hand extended, and shouted, as if anyone could have possibly cared. “Hey! Fred Davis is the name!”

  Rebecca looked at his hand. Was that his cologne she smelled? Because it smelled like—

  “Matt Parrish,” she heard behind her, and saw that French-cuffed hand intercept Fred’s, sliding in dangerously close to her head.

  “Oh great,” Rebecca muttered into her glass.

  Matt had startled Gunter so badly that he’d almost slumped right off his chair. Fred Davis did not seem surprised, but neither did he seem particularly happy. He frowned, extracted his hand, and melted back into his seat next to Tom. Heather, however, lit up with a smile so sudden and blinding that Rebecca was tempted to get her shades out. Instead, she signaled the waitress for another glass of wine. Then she turned and looked at Matt just to make sure she wasn’t a little tipsy and had imagined the whole thing.

  Nope. That was him all right, looking too cool, the old cucumber in a suit routine, smiling that terribly charming, lopsided smile at Heather. Barf.

  He shifted his charming lopsided smile from Heather to Rebecca, and damn it if she didn’t see a little sparkle in his eye that made her belly flutter. “Having a little campaign strategy meeting?” he asked with a sly wink.

  Rebecca rolled her eyes.

  “Matt!” Tom boomed. “Hey, what brings you here?”

  “A client,” Matt said, reaching across the table to shake Tom’s hand. “Mind if I join you?”

  “The more the merrier,” Tom said.

  “That’s. Just. Grrrreat,” Matt said, smiling fiendishly at Rebecca. Then he disappeared to find a chair.

  Heather—Frack—took the opportunity to nudge Rebecca. “Who? Who, who, who?”

  “Him?” Rebecca asked, jerking a thumb at Matt’s back. Heather nodded and even Gunter seemed to inch up a vertebra or two to hear the answer.

  “Matt Parrish. I think he’s a junior lawyer somewhere.”

  Heather nodded again, anxiously awaiting more information, which Rebecca was not inclined to give until Heather put her eyes back in their sockets.

  “That’s pretty much it. Just one of those dime a dozen lawyers.”

  Ah, what a shame—Heather looked so disappointed. Until Matt pulled a chair up to sit between Heather and Rebecca, which was, of course, the placement God’s gift to women would take. Rebecca spared him a glance, noticed the handsome man behind him and perked up a little. Now who would have thought Matt would have a friend? But there he was, standing behind Matt’s chair, just as handsome (okay, not quite as handsome), and decidedly less smug-looking.

  Matt planted his elbows on the table as the waitress delivered a glass of wine to Rebecca. “How you doing?” he said to the waitress, shooting what was obviously his trademark, I’m-gonna-get-lucky smile at her. “How about bourbon on the rocks?”

  “Sure,” she said, smiling for the first time since Rebecca had seen her. And behind her, Heather was smiling. Hell, even Gunter was smiling. But Matt was looking at Rebecca. “So—”

  “Excuse me!” Rebecca suddenly called, catching the waitress before she took Heather’s and Gunter’s orders. “One more, please?” Wouldn’t want to be caught with nothing to numb her into oblivion if he was going to stay very long, would she?

  The man behind Matt was jostling him; Matt groaned, said to Rebecca, “Meet Ben Townsend, my partner.”

  Beaming, Ben Townsend stuck out his hand, knocking Matt back out of the way as he did so.

  “Ah . . . hi, I’m Rebecca,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “Hiii,” he said, and angled himself so that he was standing between Matt and Rebecca. Only the room was packed, and he really couldn’t do much but stand between them, smiling down at her. “So . . . Matt says you’re new in town?”

  “I’ve been here a couple of months.”

  “Great, great. Matt says you’re doing fabulous work for Tom’s campaign.”

  No way! Rebecca leaned forward and peered around Ben’s thigh at Matt. “He does?”

  With a roll of his eyes, Matt said, “Actually, Ben, I hadn’t mentioned it.” Then to her, he said, “Pardon Townsend—he has to go prepare for a trial we can’t afford to lose. Right, Ben?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ben said dismissively, without bothering to look at Matt, still grinning like a neon sign. “It’s a big profitable case. Not the kind Matt’s used to bringing in. But hey, it was really great meeting you, Rebecca.”

  “Thanks,” she said, wishing this partner had signed on to the campaign. “A pleasure meeting you, too.”

  Ben turned up the wattage on his smile. “You know, maybe we could get together sometime, and—”

  “Ben, the trial?” Matt interrupted.

  “I guess that’s my cue,” Ben said laughing. “Bye for now.” He winked at Rebecca as he walked away.

  “He’s nice,” Rebecca said with a scowl for Matt.

  “No, he’s not. Trust me,” Matt said smugly, folding his arms on the table in front of him. “So, what have we got here? Spending a little quality time with Tom?”

  Rebecca smiled sweetly and shrugged.

  “So? What’s going on?” he asked, looking and sounding a little too impatient to suit her.

  “Oh, big doings,” she said low, and with her finger, beckoned him closer. Matt leaned in, all ears. She glanced around, whispered, “We got some new mouse pads for the computers today—they’re Texas flags.”

  With a loud groan of exasperation, Matt sat up.

  “Parrish!” Tom shouted from the other table. “Did you meet our new media folks?”

  Heather was smiling pathetic
ally at the back of Matt’s head, anxious for her introduction. God, did women drool over him like this all the time?

  “Media folks. That’s interesting, isn’t it, Rebecca? Sounds like a meeting all campaign strategists would want to attend,” he said. “Well? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  Rebecca looked to Tom, but he was in the middle of some howling joke he was telling yet another new arrival to join the group. “This is Gunter Falk and Heather Hill. Matt,” she said, “is working on Tom’s campaign, too.”

  “Ooh, really?” Heather asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  “Yes. Really,” Matt said with a wink that wound Frack up all over again. “So what are y’all talking about here?” he asked as someone else squeezed in next to Rebecca, jostling her, and pushing her into Matt, so that she was all but sitting on his lap, an extremely uncomfortable situation, And hard. Matt was hard. His body—leg, arm, torso—was solid as a rock. The horrible thing about it was that she kind of liked that hard feel, liked it enough that she felt compelled to fortify herself with a nice big gulp of white wine.

  “Just trying to develop some good campaign jingles,” Heather interjected before Gunter could open his mouth. “Something we can turn into radio spots. You know, attention getters, something really sweet that will click in the minds of listeners around the state and stick with them.”

  While Heather droned on and on about that, Rebecca noticed that Tom was glad-handing two more men who had stopped by to join the party. This was insane—they wanted to come up with campaign slogans in the middle of Tom’s happy hour party? Ah well, when in Rome . . . and she was feeling a little warm and creative now. Rebecca picked up her glass of wine and said, “Well, Masters seems pretty usable,” as the two new guys found chairs and pulled them up to the table to join Tom.

  “Okay,” said Gunter. “Masters . . . Masters . . .”

  “Like . . . ‘Why settle for a bachelor when you can have a Masters?’”