“I will blame you if you don’t do everything you possibly can to make her feel welcome,” he warned. “Please, Mother, do this for me.”
“I can only do so much,” she claimed, though with far less antagonism.
“Mother, we both know that your guests will take their cues from you. See that you send the right signals, or you can count me out for the rest of the holiday festivities.”
“You are an incredibly stubborn and willful young man,” she accused, but there wasn’t much heat behind the words.
“I learned from two masters,” he replied. “Tell Dad hello for me, okay?”
“Of course, though I don’t think I’ll mention how obstinate you’ve been.”
Tom laughed. “Of course you will. You won’t be able to resist. I love you, Mother.”
She sighed dramatically. “And I you,” she said.
Despite her words, it was obvious that he’d put that love to the test. Something told him that as long as Jeanette was in his life, there were going to be a lot more tests. What he didn’t understand was why his mother had taken such a dislike to her. He knew in his gut that it went beyond that ridiculous incident at Chez Bella’s. And he also had this odd feeling that it wasn’t even about Jeanette personally, but about what she represented.
That’s where he got hung up. What could his relationship with Jeanette possibly have to do with his parents? Did they see her as some kind of threat to his relationship with them? That would only happen if they persisted in being antagonistic toward her.
Obviously if things with Jeanette progressed the way he hoped they would, then he was going to have to sit his mother and father down and work this out. He wanted them to appreciate her as he did. If they couldn’t, well, he didn’t want to think about what that might mean. He would wait and cross that road when he got to it.
* * *
Jeanette was finishing up a huge stack of paperwork in her office when she looked up to see a vaguely familiar man standing in the doorway. That he looked like an older version of Tom was even more of a shock. Even if she hadn’t seen him at a distance weeks ago, she would have recognized Tom’s father, though what he was doing here was beyond her.
“Mr. McDonald, what can I do for you?”
He seemed surprised that she’d guessed his identity. “You know who I am?”
“You and your son look a lot alike. And we almost met on your first visit to Serenity. Would you like to come in and sit down? Or we could go out on the patio if you prefer.”
“Here will do,” he said, striding into the small office and making it feel even more cramped.
He perched on the edge of a chair across from her and regarded her with blatant curiosity. “I can see what my son sees in you,” he said eventually. “You have a certain elfin appeal.”
Jeanette had no idea how to take the comment, so she said nothing.
“You’re all wrong for him, you know.”
“A few weeks ago I would have said the same thing,” she responded.
“Really?” He sounded startled by her candor.
“Our worlds are pretty far apart,” she continued. “But Tom’s almost convinced me that we can bridge the divide.”
He seized on her phrasing. “Almost?”
“He’s a pretty persuasive man.”
Her comment clearly distressed him. His gaze narrowed. “What would it take for you to have a change of heart?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly, or at least he hadn’t meant what the question implied.
“My wife tells me you’ve lived in Paris, so you’re not just some little country girl who naively believes that love conquers all, am I right? You know how the world works.”
“I’d like to think so,” she said cautiously.
“Okay, then, what will it take for you to break things off with my son?”
“What will it take?” she echoed. “Are you actually offering me money to stop seeing Tom?”
“Money, a job in some other city, whatever it takes,” he confirmed. “My son has a brilliant future ahead of him, once he gets this crazy idea about working for local government out of his head. To achieve his full potential, though, he needs the right woman by his side, someone with social stature.”
Jeanette had been so taken aback by the entire visit up until now that she hadn’t had time to get seriously offended, but Thomas McDonald was rapidly crossing a line. She stood up.
“I think you should go,” she told him.
“Not until we have a deal.”
“Then you’re going to be sitting here by yourself for a very long time,” she said. “I have no intention to listening to any more of this. It’s insulting not only to me, but to your son. It’s obvious to me that you don’t respect the kind, decent, hardworking man he is. He loves the work he’s doing and it’s important work.”
“He’s planning Christmas festivities,” he scoffed. “A man like Tom should be passing laws, making the world a better place, not worrying about the decorations on some ridiculous tree.”
“Because that’s the kind of thing you and your wife pay some lowly person to do for you, is that it?” Jeanette retorted. “I’ve heard all about the holiday spectacle that goes on at your home, so that must matter to someone. Your wife, maybe? Not that she would hang a single ornament herself, of course. That’s what the peons are for.”
“The point is—”
“The point is that you’re a snob, Mr. McDonald. And I won’t listen to another word you have to say about me or about your son. What goes on between Tom and me is none of your business.”
“You’re wrong,” he said heatedly. “I will not allow him to throw his life away on the likes of you.”
“You don’t even know me,” she said. “Now, get out.”
“I will tell my son how rude and disrespectful you’ve been,” he announced haughtily.
She smiled at that. “And I’ll tell him how insulting and offensive you’ve been. Which do you think will make him angrier?”
He looked surprised. “You’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that,” he said grudgingly.
“Something you should probably keep in mind,” she said.
“I told Clarisse this was a bad idea,” he muttered, looking defeated.
Discovering that his wife had been behind the visit was less of a shock than it should have been. Jeanette knew there was no love lost there. She just didn’t know what had triggered the woman to send her husband over here to try to buy her off.
“We’re agreed on that much,” Jeanette told him. “It was a lousy idea.”
His eyes sparked with a hint of respect. “Under other circumstances...” he began, but his voice trailed off.
“What?” she prodded.
“This bad blood between you and my wife, it runs deep,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know. What I don’t entirely understand is why. Or what would make you come over here to try to pay me off to get out of Tom’s life. It’s not about what happened at Chez Bella, is it?”
Mr. McDonald shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the benefit of giving her a more complete answer, so Jeanette simply waited.
“You know that my son and I have been at odds over his future for a long time now,” he said eventually.
“He’s mentioned that,” she said.
“It’s not about me wanting to control him or even about me giving two hoots about social standing or anything like that.”
“But your wife obviously does,” Jeanette said.
He gave her a rueful look. “You say that as dismissively as my son does. What neither of you understand is how important status is in certain circles. Clarisse came from money. Her family’s reputation was sterling, something I couldn’t say
for my own. Oh, we’d had money, social stature and respectability at one time, but my father had pretty much squandered the money and our reputation by the time I was an adult. He made bad business decisions. He gambled. And he had affairs. A lot of men may do that, but they’re far more discreet about it than my father was. Everyone in Charleston knew. He humiliated my mother and left me and my brother to scramble to keep the family from losing everything.”
“That must have been hard,” Jeanette said quietly. She thought she was beginning to understand.
“You have no idea unless you’ve been there. Here I was a young man with good connections, but barely two cents to my name, when I met this amazing woman who could have married anyone. Clarisse’s parents knew the state of my family’s finances, to say nothing of all the stories about my father. They were adamant that there would be no wedding.”
His expression turned nostalgic. “Clarisse was formidable even back then. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She loved me and believed in me. She saw the future we could have even when I was far from certain about it. When her parents wouldn’t bend, we eloped. That’s how much faith she had in me.” He met Jeanette’s gaze. “So you can understand why I would do anything for her.”
“I think I can,” she said. “And I can also see why she would view someone like me as a threat to everything she’s wanted for your family. She wants Tom to marry someone who can make his life easier, not someone he might need to defend at every turn, someone who doesn’t fit into his world.”
He seemed surprised. “It’s generous of you to try to see her point of view, especially after how badly I’ve behaved today,” he said. “I’m truly sorry for that.”
Jeanette believed him. “Have you ever told Tom any of this?”
“No. When he and his sisters were young, we didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. We wanted them to have the happy, normal childhood to which they were entitled as McDonalds.”
“It might help if he understood what happened back then.”
“You’re probably right. Clarisse and I like to think we’ve put that time behind us, but obviously it’s not as deeply buried as we’d hoped. It still has the capacity to influence the way we react to certain things today.”
“Tell him,” Jeanette urged.
“I’ll do that if you’ll do one thing for me,” he bargained.
“I won’t break things off with your son,” she warned.
He smiled. “Of course not. Just please give my wife some time to get used to the idea. I think once she gets to know you, she’ll appreciate that you’re exactly the right woman for our son. You have real integrity and that’s something she treasures.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
He regarded her hopefully. “Can we forget all about this visit?”
“I don’t think I want to forget all of it,” she said. “You’ve given me a perspective I really needed to have.”
“Then some good came out of it?”
She smiled. “Some.”
“Fair enough. Will you come with him to the dinner party? It’s important that he be there, and my wife is under the impression that he won’t come without you.”
She didn’t want to admit that Tom hadn’t mentioned anything about a dinner party, so she merely nodded. “If he wants me to.”
He shook his head at her response, a faint smile on his lips. “You remind me of someone.”
“Oh?”
“It’s ironic, really, but you’re a lot like my wife.”
She frowned. “And here we were getting along so well,” she said.
He laughed. “No, it’s true. You’re both stubborn and willful. And when you love, you’re going to do it with everything in you and damn the consequences. No wonder my son’s infatuated with you. I almost feel sorry for him.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Take it from a man who’s been married to a woman like that for forty years. It keeps life interesting. Challenging, but interesting.”
He walked past her then and left her with her mouth open. The encounter had been eye-opening. If someone had predicted an hour ago that she could actually like a man who’d just tried to buy her off, she would have laughed. Somehow, though, with his candor, Mr. McDonald had won her over. And she thought maybe she’d earned his respect as well. All that remained was to see if that made any difference whatsoever in how things went from here on out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tom had been calling Jeanette on her cell phone for hours, but she hadn’t been picking up. Frustrated, he walked over to the spa and saw a light still shining in her office. He knocked on the front door. When no one responded, he walked around and tapped on her office window. She had a ten-pound weight in her hand and was holding it up threateningly when she lifted the shade to peer out.
“You!” she exclaimed, lowering the weight and setting it on a chair. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”
He gestured toward the front of the building. “Let me in.”
She frowned at the request. “I’m busy.”
“Five minutes,” he argued. “We need to talk.”
“I need to work,” she countered. “Maddie needs these reports on her desk in the morning and I have supplies to order. Everything piled up while I was spending time with my dad.”
“None of that is as important as us needing to talk.”
“Okay,” she finally said. “I can spare five minutes. I’ll meet you on the porch.”
Since the last time he’d seen her she’d been in a far more receptive mood, he had to wonder what had happened in the interim. Whatever it was couldn’t have been good.
She unlocked the front door and stood just inside, blocking his way. “What’s on your mind?”
“That seems to be evolving,” he replied. “I came over here to discuss one thing, but now it appears we should be talking about whatever put you into this snit you’re in.”
She regarded him indignantly. “I am not in a snit.”
“Really?”
She scraped her hand through her hair, leaving it in spikes that only made her look younger and more alluring. He really, really wanted to end this ridiculous argument they seemed to be having and kiss her, but in her current mood that might get him slugged. Since she was no longer holding that weight, it might be worth the risk.
“Look, I really am busy,” she said. “Let’s do this another time.”
He ignored the request and tried to get a fix on the situation. “Have you had dinner?” he asked. Maybe low blood sugar had sent her into this dark mood.
“No. I’ll grab something when I get home.”
Just as he’d thought. That might not be the total explanation, but it was something he could grab on to. He shook his head. “Nope, dinner can’t wait. You need food now. Let’s go.”
“Speaking of moods,” she grumbled, “when did you turn all dictatorial?”
“About two minutes after I got here,” he replied. “If you’ll just close up, we can go to Sullivan’s for dinner and then maybe we can have a rational conversation. After that, if you need to work, I’ll bring you back here.”
She scowled at him. “Rational? What are you implying?”
“Jeanette, would you just let me in on why you’re so annoyed? You’re obviously determined to pick a fight with me.”
“So what if I am? I certainly do not want to do it at Sullivan’s where Dana Sue will be poking into our business.”
“Okay, then,” he said with exaggerated patience. “We’ll stop by there and pick up something to go. We can eat at your place. If that still doesn’t suit you, we can order a pizza.”
“Why are you so intent on feeding me?”
Tom was rapidly losing his fragile hold on his own temper, but he did it becaus
e he didn’t want this silly argument to escalate. Even so, he didn’t choose his next words as carefully as he should have. “I’m hoping it will improve your mood before I ask you what I originally came over here to ask you.”
Her gaze narrowed. “My mood is just fine or it would be, if you’d stop nagging me about it. Is this about the dinner party at your parents’ house?”
Tom regarded her with dismay. Pieces suddenly slid into place, giving him a clearer picture of what was going on. He could think of only one way she could have known about that dinner party. And that would have put her into this mood in a heartbeat.
“Has my mother been in touch with you? What did she say? Did she upset you? Tell you to turn me down? Is that why you’re acting like this?”
She flushed guiltily. “I haven’t spoken to your mother.”
“Then how the hell do you know about the dinner party?” he asked, then was struck by the obvious. He knew exactly how his mother operated. When she couldn’t interfere without stirring Tom’s ire, she would delegate the task to his father. Of course.
He turned away and started to pace. Now his temper was about to skyrocket out of control. When he thought he had a grip on it, he paused in front of her, determined to get to the bottom of what had happened. “She sent my father over here, didn’t she? Please tell me that my father did not come barging in here and give you a rough time.”
“Tom, it’s okay. Leave it alone,” she said, a pleading note in her voice.
Tom took that for a confirmation. “How can I leave it alone? I won’t have them interfering in my life or trying to intimidate you. It’s past time for us to have this out.”
“I handled your father,” she said with a touch of pride. “In fact, I think he and I totally understand each other now.”
He shuddered just imagining how that had played out. “Was it anything like the way you handled my mother?”
For the first time since his arrival, she grinned. “I was a tiny bit more diplomatic. So was he—in the end, anyway.”
“What did he say to you?”
“It doesn’t matter. And your reaction just now is exactly why I promised him I wouldn’t say anything to you about the visit.” She looked flustered. “I thought I’d have more time to figure out how to avoid slipping up. Now I’ve gone and broken my word to him.”
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