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Four
Jenna shook hands and smiled until her cheeks ached as Ava and Drew introduced her to the people at the table in the restaurant. Ava looked gorgeous in her skin-tight black lace dress. Ava and Drew’s cousin Harold Maddox was there, straitlaced and unsmiling in his dark suit and tie. Harold had the Maddox height and good looks, but he wasn’t as striking as Drew and Ava. Drew’s Uncle Malcolm she’d already seen in Ava’s pictures. He was an older, grimmer version of Drew, shriveled by age and twisted by arthritis. Malcolm’s partner, Hendrick Hill, was bone-thin and bald, with sharp cheekbones and sunken cheeks. He studied her doubtfully with deep-set, suspicious eyes beneath thick black-beetled brows. His wife, Beverly, was his polar opposite. Short, round and friendly, she had a blindingly white pixie cut and lots of white gold jewelry dangling over her midnight-blue silk caftan. Her smile froze for only a moment when Drew introduced her as his fiancée, and all eyes fastened instantly on Jenna’s hand, which she’d been quick to position so that the stunning engagement ring was visible to all.
“Fiancée?” Malcolm Maddox’s bushy gray brows knit together. “What’s this? How is it that I’ve never laid eyes on you before? Where did you come from, girl?”
“Uncle,” Ava reproved him. “Manners, please. She’s an old friend of mine, and you’re meeting her now. Be nice.”
“I was just waiting for the right moment to tell you, Uncle,” Drew said. “Things got crazy.”
“Hmmph,” Harold muttered. “I’ll just bet they did.”
Ava elbowed Harold, but no one else seemed to notice. They were all staring at her. Then Bev’s brilliant smile flashed as she made her way around the table to hug and kiss Jenna. “Oh, my goodness! Congratulations! How exciting. I wish you all the best.”
The warmth of the older woman’s good wishes made Jenna feel guilty. The benevolent older lady reminded her of her own mother, gone six years now.
The meal proceeded pleasantly enough. Jenna had Drew on one side and Bev on the other, and Ava and Bev were both masters of the art of cheerful, entertaining chitchat, to which Jenna did her best to contribute, though it was hard to concentrate with a scowling Uncle Malcolm dissecting her furiously with his eyes from across the table.
Sometime after the appetizers, Bev took her hand and lifted it to examine the sapphire ring. “The sight of that ring really brings me back,” she murmured, a catch in her voice. “Diana and I were sorority sisters, back in the day. She was so special. Brilliant, funny. A real beauty. Ava is her living image. I miss her so much, even now.”
Jenna smiled into the wet eyes of the other woman, and squeezed her hand. “I wish I could have known her.”
“Oh, me, too.” Bev dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, sniffing delicately. “So, how did you and Drew meet, anyway?”
Jenna froze, panicked, and Ava piped up. “Oh, that was my doing. I take full credit for that. I am Cupid personified, people. Arrows and all.”
“Why am I not surprised,” Uncle Malcolm muttered.
“I met him for the first time eleven years ago,” Jenna explained. “Back when Ava and I were in college.”
“I was on leave,” Drew said. “In between tours in Iraq.”
“He came to visit me on his way to Canada,” Ava said. “He was going to do the Banff-Jasper Highway in the Canadian Rockies on his motorcycle.”
“So long ago?” Bev looked bewildered.
“That was long before we got together,” Jenna explained. “He was unimpressed with me at the time, particularly after I dumped a pitcher of sangria all over him. Not my finest moment.”
“Oh, dear.” Bev tittered into her white wine. “How awful.”
“It was,” Jenna said ruefully. “I wanted to die.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Drew lifted her other hand to his lips and pressed a hot, seductive kiss against her fingers that sent shivers rippling through her body. “My shoes stuck to the floor when I walked for days afterward. But it was worth it in the end. Baptized by Gallo port and peach nectar.”
His smile made her go molten inside. Oh, he was good. She knew it was for show, and even so it made her feel like she was the only woman in the world. And now she was staring back at him, starry-eyed, mouth slightly open, having completely lost her train of thought. The Drew effect. Whoa. Debilitating.
The waiter arrived and began serving the entrees. Bev patted her hand and waited, clearly amused, while Jenna struggled to orient herself in the conversation.
“So, when did you and Drew reconnect?” Bev asked, gently nudging her back on track.
Another split-second-panicked pause, and once again Ava jumped to the rescue.
“Actually, that was my fault, too,” Ava said. “Last spring Jenna asked me to do PR for her Arm’s Reach Foundation, so I went down to see the Women in STEM speech in San Francisco to talk strategy. Drew was down there, too, working on the Magnolia Plaza job. The three of us had dinner, and it all came together. Like magic.”
Jenna stabbed a couple of penne with vodka sauce on the end of her fork, trying to breathe down the panic. Okay. Thanks to Ava, she and Drew now had an origin story. Yay.
Drew’s eyebrow tilted up for an instant, like Ava’s did when she was doubtful about something. Then he kissed her hand, going with it. “Changed my life,” he murmured.
“Huh. I was down in San Francisco working on Magnolia Plaza, too,” Harold said slowly. “Funny that I never ran into Jenna once that entire time. We were there for three months.”
