by Gina Wilkins
Chapter Two
It was, to say the least, an interesting meal. The Gambill clan was as colorful as their hair. They talked a lot, and everyone at once, so it was sometimes hard to follow all the conversations going on around him. He tried to keep them all straight—the men talked about baseball, Karen and Stacy chatted about their kids, Virginia and Lois seemed determined to learn everything there was to know about James, Shannon kept up a running beneath-her-breath commentary, and the kids interrupted every few moments with requests, tattling and other bids for attention.
“What type of medicine do you want to practice, James?” Virginia asked, cutting off a sports comment from her husband.
“I’m considering pediatric infectious disease, though I find pulmonology intriguing, too.”
He saw no need to mention that he had a younger cousin with cystic fibrosis, which perhaps explained his interest in pulmonology. Watching Kelly’s lifelong battle with the disease and hearing about the excellent care she had received from the doctors at the children’s hospital had probably been part of what had influenced him to enter medical school after receiving his advanced science degree, despite his parents’ displeasure that he’d chosen to leave academia. His parents were more interested in theory than practice in almost all disciplines, expounding that the true geniuses developed science while those of lesser intelligence and imagination put it to everyday use.
“Lou has a touch of emphysema,” Lois said eagerly, drawing James’s thoughts away from his parents’ affectations. “Maybe you could listen to his lungs later.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a stethoscope with me,” he replied.
Virginia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Lois. You’ve been after poor James for free prescriptions and exams ever since you found out he’s a medical student.”
Lois huffed. “Aren’t you the one who asked him to look at your granddaughter’s rash?”
“That’s different. I was simply asking for an opinion, not drugs.”
“I didn’t ask him to prescribe anything for Lou. I just thought he might want to listen.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Virginia demanded with a shake of her head.
“They’ve been arguing like that for more than sixty years,” Shannon informed James quietly, leaning toward him so he could hear her better over the noise of all the others. Her shoulder brushed his as they sat side by side on the bench.
A bit too keenly aware of that point of contact, he tried to concentrate on what she had said. “So they knew each other before they married brothers.”
“They’re first cousins. They were raised almost like sisters. Makes the family tree a little complicated.”
“I see. And you all live in this area?”
“I live in Little Rock, and so do Stu and Karen. Stacy and J.P. live in Bryant. Uncle Lou and Aunt Lois are visiting from St. Louis and staying for a few days with my parents in Sherwood. They have two daughters and five grandchildren of their own back in Missouri. Needless to say, it’s pretty crazy when both families get together on occasion.”
“Are you from this area, James?” Virginia asked.
Swallowing a bite of his juicy, perfectly grilled burger, James wiped his mouth on a paper napkin before replying. “I’m from northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville. My parents moved there from Tennessee when I was twelve. They’re both professors at the university.”
“Got my degree there,” Stu commented as he scooped potato salad onto a plastic fork. “Karen and I met at a music club on Dickson Street when I was a senior and she was a junior.”
“You’d have been a student there after Stu and Karen,” Lois commented, looking James over assessingly. “Stu’s thirty-eight. You’re—what—thirty?”
“I will be on October fifth. But I didn’t get my degree at Fayetteville. I went to Vanderbilt.”
Several of the people around him frowned and he could tell he’d just lost a few Arkie points.
“I’m still a Razorbacks fan, though,” he assured them. “Uh—woo, Pigs.”
The frowns turned to chuckles and conversation moved to the prospects for the next SEC football season.
“Nice save,” Shannon murmured into his ear. “Do you even like football?”
“Couldn’t care less,” he replied from behind his burger.
She laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
A noisy argument erupted from the kids’ table, requiring adult intervention, and then the overlapping conversations moved to new topics. During the next twenty minutes, James learned that Hollis was a retired quality-control manager, Virginia had been a dental hygienist, Stu was an elementary school principal, Karen an accounting office manager and Stacy was a stay-at-home mom married to a police officer.
“You haven’t mentioned what you do,” he commented to Shannon when there was a momentary lull in the chatter.
“Shannon drifts,” Stacy murmured, hearing the question.
Virginia seemed both annoyed and mildly alarmed by that remark. She looked at James as if worried he’d take Stacy’s comment the wrong way. “Shannon is so good at everything that she has a hard time narrowing her interests down to one career.”
Shannon grinned. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m too good to pin down.”
Her mother frowned at her.
Ignoring the silent censure, Shannon looked at James again. “I’ve had a few jobs that didn’t work out. You might say I get restless easily. But I just started a new business and I like it quite a bit.”
“What’s your new business?”
“I’m running a kids’ party business. I call it Kid Capers. Birthday parties mostly, though I do an occasional tea party or other special-occasion event. I handle all the planning and make the arrangements so all the parents have to do is show up and write a check afterward. It’s fun.”
“I see. Is there a big demand for kids’ party planners?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She shrugged. “The struggling economy isn’t helping, but there are still quite a few people who are willing to pay to have someone else take care of all the party details.”
“I’m surprised you’re free on a Saturday afternoon. Did you leave this day open to spend time with your family?”
“I, um, didn’t have any bookings today,” she admitted. “Like I said, a lot of people are pinching pennies these days.”
“Shannon really does throw some amazing parties,” her mother said loyally. “She has a binder full of themes for the clients to choose from or she takes their ideas and makes them work. She’s young, of course, and just getting started, but we’ve all offered to assist her in any way we can.”
“And as much as I appreciate the offer, I’ve told you repeatedly that I’ve got everything under control,” Shannon said with a firmness that made James suspect there had been a few arguments about that subject.
“By working part-time at a toy store to pay her bills,” Stacy murmured.
“Just twenty-five hours a week,” Shannon said quickly. “The manager there is very good to let me keep my weekends free for my new business and I enjoy working at the toy store. For one thing, it keeps me current on what’s popular with the kids for party themes.”
Shannon’s father chuckled. “I keep telling Shannon these fancy parties for kids are just downright frivolous. Back when our kids were little, we had cake and ice cream and a bunch of neighborhood pals over for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and Twister. That was the extent of it.”
“Mama hired a pony for my birthday once, remember, Hollis?” his brother, Lou, reminisced. “My tenth, I think. I still remember how much fun that was.”
“And she didn’t need a planner to help her with it,” Hollis said pointedly.
Shannon tilted her head at him. “Okay, Dad. We got your point.”
She didn’t sound cross, exactly, James decided, studying the family dynamics. More resigned and just a little irked, as if she were used to her family indulgently dismissing her work—rather as if she didn’t
like it, but half expected it, anyway.
“Do you remember a special birthday party from your youth, James?” Lois asked, looking eager to jump into the conversation again.
“I never actually had a birthday party. My parents weren’t really into that sort of thing.”
The sudden silence around the table was rather jarring after so much chatter.
“You never had a birthday party?” Virginia asked. “Surely you had a few friends over for cake.”
“Well, no. But my parents always took me to a nice restaurant on my birthday.” Uncomfortable with that conversational direction, he picked up the last segment of his sandwich. “This hamburger is delicious. What seasonings did you use, Hollis?”
“That’s a family secret,” Hollis replied with a grin. “We don’t share it with anyone who isn’t born a Gambill or married into the family.”
“It’s Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce,” Shannon said with a roll of her eyes. “So, you can make your own hamburgers without proposing to anyone here.”
“Now you’ve done it, Shannon,” Stu scolded her with mock outrage. “Now we have to kill him.”
“Stu’s only joking, of course, James,” Lois said in a stage whisper.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I know.”
“When do we get the ice cream, Mama?” one of the twins called out.
Hollis climbed out from behind the picnic table. “The ice cream is ready. Who wants strawberry and who wants peach?”
“Strawberry!”
“Peach!”
“Chocolate!”
Karen sighed. “We don’t have any chocolate, Jack. You’ll get peach.”
The kids went crazy when the rich homemade ice cream was spooned out of the stainless-steel tubs. The adults attacked the dessert with almost as much enthusiasm. James accepted a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which he enjoyed very much.
Shannon jumped a couple of feet when one of her little nieces dropped a scoop of strawberry ice cream down the front of her top.
“Holy kamoley, that’s cold!” she said, her voice suspiciously high-pitched as she snatched frantically for paper napkins. Rather than helping, her family laughed heartlessly as she did a funny dance trying to swipe the sticky, ice-cold mixture from her skin.
“Since she started her kids’ party business, Shannon’s taken to saying holy kamoley in place of any curse words,” Stacy explained to James with an indulgent, big-sister smile. “It’s rather annoying, but we’re getting used to it.”
He thought it was sort of funny, himself. Never having had an older sibling—or a younger one, for that matter—he wondered if Shannon minded being treated like one of the little kids dashing around the tables.
It was an interesting family, he mused, continuing to study them as they finished the dessert. Noisy, freewheeling, outspoken, good-humored, they gabbed and joked and argued and teased. So very different from his own family. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a family like this one, how he might have turned out.
An argument erupted among some of the children, and though it was dealt with quickly and firmly, everyone had to laugh when little Sammy piped in with a gusty, “Holy ’moley!”
James grinned, thinking how much his friend Ron would enjoy hearing about this eccentric clan. Ron usually had a funny anecdote to share when the study group managed to get together these days; next time, James would have a story of his own.
“Can we go swimming again?” one of the kids asked when the ice cream bowls had been scraped clean.
“No more swimming today,” Stacy said firmly. “But we can play ball. We brought the plastic bats and balls and the little rubber bases and there’s plenty of room on the grass over there to play.”
“Will Uncle Stu be the pitcher?”
Stu nodded. “Gladly. Aunt Shannon can be the catcher.”
“We don’t actually form teams,” Shannon explained to James. “We just let each kid bat and run the bases. That keeps them entertained for a while.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Want to join us? You can play shortstop. Aunt Lois tends to get distracted and wander off during the game.”
He chuckled, but shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d better head back to Little Rock. I have to be at the hospital early in the morning.”
The entire family protested when he announced he was leaving. He shook hands with the men again, waved off another round of thanks for his rescue of young Kyle, accepted hugs and cheek kisses from the women—and was less surprised when they were offered this time, since he’d gotten a bit more familiar with their demonstrativeness.
Lois insisted on giving him a handful of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in a paper napkin. She told him she intended to bring them out after the ball game, in case anyone could possibly still be hungry by then.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll enjoy these.”
“Good. I hope to see you again sometime,” she replied. Tugging at his arm to get him to bend closer to her, she whispered, “My niece is single, you know.”
He smothered a smile and evaded the comment by saying, “It was very nice to meet you, Lois.”
“Shannon, why don’t you walk James to his car?” Virginia suggested.
He supposed he should have insisted he didn’t need an escort, but he figured he’d be wasting his breath. Not to mention that he didn’t mind spending a little more time with Shannon, even if only to walk to his car.
Once again he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking when she nodded in response to her mother’s hint and turned to walk with him. Maybe she was simply thinking along the same lines as he—that it would be useless to protest. Not particularly flattering, if that were true.
He let her walk a couple of steps ahead of him toward the parking lot. Her thin white cover-up fluttered when she walked, floating around her slender body to end at midthigh. He could just see the outline of her yellow bikini through the now-dry fabric. Her hair had dried into a mop of soft red curls that looked temptingly touchable.
When she glanced back at him with a smile, it occurred to him that she wore no makeup, but she didn’t need enhancement. He found the splash of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks intriguing and couldn’t imagine why she would want to hide them. While she probably wouldn’t be described as a true beauty, he couldn’t imagine anything he would change about her fresh, pretty features.
He realized abruptly that he didn’t want to tell her goodbye and drive away without any prospect of seeing her again.
James cleared his throat as they reached his car, and Shannon braced herself, wishing they could skip past what she sensed was coming. She had hoped he would be immune to her relatives’ heavy-handed hints.
“I enjoyed the meal with your family,” he said, giving her one of his intriguingly faint smiles. “Thank you for inviting me to join you.”
“The least we could do,” she assured him. “And everyone enjoyed meeting you.”
She hoped that sounded casual and generic enough.
He frowned just a little, as if it had indeed caught his attention that she hadn’t referred specifically to herself, but he smoothed the expression almost immediately. “I’d like to hear more about your business sometime. It sounds very interesting.”
“You should check my Web site. Kid Capers dot com. All the details are there.”
His frown lasted a bit longer this time. “Um, yeah, I’ll check that out. But what I meant was, I’d like to hear more from you. Maybe we could have dinner sometime?”
He really was an attractive man. His dark hair was so thick and temptingly touchable. His elusive smile made her want to go to extra lengths to earn it. She liked the way he moved—with a deliberateness that was both elegant and masculine all at the same time. Her prided instincts told her this man was actually a study in contrasts—cordial, yet reserved; friendly, yet private; open to others, yet somehow closed on a personal level.
It was the latter quali
ty that made her smile regretfully and shake her head. “I’m afraid I’m very busy right now, between my part-time job and getting my new business off the ground. I know you’re quite busy, too, so perhaps it would be best if we just say goodbye. It was very nice meeting you, James.”
His expression unreadable, he nodded and shook the hand she offered him. She tried without much success to ignore the frisson of awareness that went through her again when their palms touched so briefly. There were most definitely sparks here, she thought, rather quickly pulling away. Which didn’t mean she should place herself in a position to get burned. She still bore the scars from the last time she’d played with fire, romantically speaking.
“Goodbye, Shannon. Enjoy your ball game.”
With that, he climbed into his car. She turned to rejoin her family, but couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder as he drove away. She was aware of a funny little pang inside her when the car disappeared from her sight. Ordering herself to get over it, she drew a deep breath in preparation for her family’s scolding for letting that nice young doctor slip away.
Shannon hung up her cell phone with a satisfied smile. “And it’s a deal,” she murmured, pumping her fist in a gesture of success.
Devin Caswell, her friend, housemate and occasional assistant, clapped her hands with a muted cheer. “You got the gig?”
“Booked it.”
“Details?”
Shannon glanced at her notes. “Birthday party, nine-year-old girl, first Saturday in September—two weeks from tomorrow—at the home. The kid takes dance lessons, plays soccer, loves purple, like every other nine-year-old girl in the world and enjoys handcrafts. Her mom wants each guest to leave the party with a hand-crafted item to keep as a favor. I suggested decorated tote bags or headbands or beaded necklaces or friendship bracelets. She liked them all.”
Devin chuckled. “Going to be interesting trying to work all of that into a two-hour party.”
Wrinkling her nose, Shannon made another note on the pad. “The mom gave me free rein to come up with the projects, though I have a somewhat limited budget. It won’t be a big bash, but I’ll still make a small profit and that’s what counts. Maybe I’ll get some more jobs out of it.”