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If his mind hadn’t been wrapped up in Eden, he might’ve been able to come up with a lie. As it was, he could only stare back at Deirdre, which had her grabbing his arm.
“Good. We’ll use Samuel’s empty office.” She pulled him toward the office in the corner of the room.
“But, Mother,” Olivia protested, “I wasn’t finished with Nash.”
“We’ll only be a minute, darling.”
Once they were inside with the door closed, Nash found his voice. “Ms. Beaumont, I really don’t know anything about decor or decorations.”
“Of course you don’t, dear.” She patted his arm before sitting down in Samuel’s chair behind his desk. “Have you ever seen such a sterile office in your life?”
Samuel’s office was pretty sterile. The top of the desk held only an ancient laptop, and the bookcase held design books that looked as if they had been shelved according to height and width.
“How can a man live like this?” Deirdre continued as she opened one drawer of the desk after the other. “He needs some serious help.”
“Umm… I don’t know if we should be going through his drawers, Ms. Beaumont.”
“We’re not,” she said as she pulled out a notebook and thumbed through it. “I am. So who is my daughter trying to fix Samuel up with at the ball?”
Nash blinked. Obviously, Deirdre was more cunning than he’d first thought. He probably should’ve lied, but he had never been good at lying. Hiding his true emotions, yes. Lying, no. Especially to a mother.
“She is convinced that he’s interested in Doug the UPS guy.”
Deirdre stopped thumbing through the notebook and stared at him for a split second before busting out in laughter. It was a full, tip-your-head-back barroom kind of laugh that Nash wouldn’t have thought went with a woman like Deirdre. Of course, he hadn’t taken her for a woman who would eavesdrop and go through people’s desk drawers either.
He waited for her to stop laughing before he asked, “I’m going to assume that you didn’t know that Samuel was gay.”
She smiled the sly smile again. “No, I’ve heard the rumor.” She placed the notebook back in the drawer. “So how does she plan to get them together?”
“She’s thinking about inviting Doug to the Lover’s Ball and have him and Samuel in couples’ costumes.”
“Brilliant!” Deirdre clapped her hands together. “That’s a marvelous idea. I must say that I’m quite proud of Olivia’s deviant nature. She was always so wrapped up in French Kiss that I didn’t think she’d gotten anything from me. Obviously I was wrong.”
Nash cleared his throat. “Obviously.”
“Well.” She got up from the chair. “I guess that takes care of that.”
“So we’re not going to talk about decorations?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Would you like to?”
“No. I just thought…”
Deirdre walked to the door and opened it. “I’ve discovered that it’s best if men leave all the thinking to women.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Why don’t you just give it up, Huckabee?” Mike Foster stood in the doorway of the janitor’s closet that Eden had claimed as her office after the new girl Stella hired had taken over Eden’s cubicle.
Eden continued to browse the library periodical webpage. “Because I want to be a reporter.”
“And I really wanted to be a professional football player.” He walked in and almost tripped over the caster mop bucket Eden had pushed into the middle of the floor to make room for the old filing cabinet she was using as her desk. “But I’m not exactly what you would call coordinated.”
Eden swiveled her chair around. “So you’re agreeing with Stella and telling me that I suck at being a writer.”
“No. I loved the piece you did on the Halloween Pooch Parade. Your flowery prose is very good at enticing people. I wanted to run out and get a ‘cuddly, furry friend’ after reading your article.” The smile faded. “But I don’t know if that style works with hard-hitting reporting.”
“I just need the right story and I can be hard-hitting.”
