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“Shallow?” Marci drawled. “I think it’s honest. I think every woman daydreams about a man with, shall we say, certain generous parts, don’t you?”
“You didn’t edit that out!” Jaine shrieked at the television, jumping to her feet and dumping poor BooBoo to the floor. He leaped to safety barely in time, turning to glare at her. She ignored him. “This is in family time! How coul
d you put something like that on the air?”
Ratings, that was how. With news at a premium, television stations across the country were scrambling for viewers. Sex sells, and Marci had just sold it for them.
nine
The phone rang. Jaine hesitated, debating whether or not to answer it. No more reporters should be bothering to call, since Marci had given them their story, but considering the timing, the call was probably from someone who knew her and had just heard her name on television and wanted to talk to her, as if her fifteen minutes of dubious fame could somehow rub off on him/her by association. She didn’t want to rehash anything about that damn list; she just wanted it to die.
On the other hand, it might be Luna or T.J. or Marci.
She finally answered on the seventh ring, prepared to lapse into an Italian accent and pretend to be someone else.
“How could you do this to me?” her brother, David, snapped.
Jaine blinked, trying to shift gears. God, would he never get over not being given temporary custody of their dad’s car? “I didn’t do anything to you. It isn’t my fault Dad wanted to leave the car here. I’d rather you have it, believe me, because now I have to park my car in the driveway instead of the garage.”
“This isn’t about the car!” he half-yelled. “That thing on television! How could you do that? How do you think it’ll make me look?”
This was getting weird. She thought rapidly, trying to come up with some way this would affect David, but the only thing she could think of was perhaps he didn’t meet all the list’s criteria and he didn’t want Valerie to know there were criteria. Discussing her brother’s physical attributes wasn’t something she wanted to do.
“I’m sure Valerie won’t make any comparisons,” she said as diplomatically as possible. “Uh, I have a pot boiling on the stove, and I need to—”
“Valerie?” he demanded. “What’s she got to do with this? Are you saying she was in on this … this list thing?”
Weirder and weirder. She scratched her head. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about,” she finally said.
“That thing on television!”
“What about it? How does it affect you?”
“You gave your name! If you’d ever gotten married, you wouldn’t still have ‘Bright’ as your last name, but no, you have to stay single, so your name is the same as mine. It isn’t a real common name, in case you’ve never noticed! Just think of the ribbing I’m going to take at work because of this!”
This was going a bit far, even for David. His paranoia was usually much less pronounced. She loved him, but he’d never quite gotten over his conviction that the universe revolved around him. His attitude had at least been understandable when he’d still been in high school, because he was tall and handsome and had been wildly popular with the girls, but he’d been out of high school for fifteen years.
“I don’t think anyone will notice,” she said as carefully as possible.
“That’s your problem; you never think before you open your big mouth—”
She didn’t think now; she just did what came naturally. “Kiss my ass,” she said, and slammed down the phone.
Not the most mature reaction, she thought, but a satisfying one.
The phone rang again. No way was she answering it, she thought, and for the first time wished she had Caller ID. Maybe she needed it.
The ringing went on and on. After she counted twenty, she snatched up the receiver and yelled, “What!” If David thought he could harass her like this, see what he thought when she called him at two in the morning. Brothers!
It was Shelley. “Well, you’ve done it now,” was her sisterly opening shot.
Jaine rubbed between her eyebrows; a definite headache was forming. After the exchange with David, she waited to see where this one was going.
“I won’t be able to hold up my head in church.”
“Really? Oh, Shelley, I’m so sorry” Jaine said sweetly. “I didn’t realize you have the dreaded Limp Neck disease. When were you diagnosed?”
“You are such a show-off. You never think of anyone but yourself. Did it ever cross your mind, just once, how something like this would affect me, or the children? Stefanie is mortified. All her friends know you’re her aunt—”
