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“Dad,” Caleb said firmly, “your mother was a waitress at a truck stop when your father met her. Or have you forgotten that?”
“My father wasn’t running for the U.S. Senate when he met her.”
“That’s totally irrelevant.”
“That’s the only thing that is relevant! Don’t you know what this girl’s background is going to do to your campaign, son? And this,” glancing down at the newspaper he tossed it onto the table, “this fairy tale Bobby’s trying to sell the public—it’s never going to work. Voters don’t care about sappy stories, they care about their bank accounts.” He shook his head slowly, then closed his eyes and pressed a hand to them.
Vidalia gripped his arm. “Sit down, you foolish old windbag, before you fall down.” She guided him to a chair. “Kara, get some of Selene’s calmin’ tea brewing. That with the chamomile and valerian root.” As Kara shot into action, Vidalia eyed the older man. “You had a stroke last spring, didn’t you?”
He looked up, defensively. “I’m completely recovered from that.”
“Didn’t learn anything from it, though, did you?”
Maya pulled out a chair and sat down beside the old man. Caleb sat beside her and turned the newspaper around so he could examine the story. Maya watched him reading it over and saw his lips pull into a smile. Then he pushed it toward her. “It’s good,” he told her. “It’s very good.”
“Good? Bah, it’s fiction! Any fool can see through that sorry excuse for a cover story,” his father said.
Kara put a teacup down in front of the older man, and then Selene appeared with a big amethyst in one hand and a bowl of mixed herbs in the other. “I heard yelling. What’s up?” She set the amethyst in the middle of the table. The glittering purple stone winked and glimmered.
“My father arrived,” Caleb said. “You can call him Cain. Dad, this is Selene, Maya’s sister, the one you haven’t insulted yet tonight. The two you have are Kara, her other sister, and Vidalia, her mother.”
He lifted his brows. “Vidalia? Like the onion?” He stopped short of sniffing in derision.
“That’s right. They named me that because I’m so good at making arrogant jackass men cry like babies.”
“Easy, Mom,” Selene called from the range, where she was fiddling around. “The negative vibes are going to be cleared out of this room in just a few seconds.” She poured the remaining water from the tea kettle into a saucepan, lit the burner underneath it and stirred it slowly while sprinkling her herbs into the water.
“What the hell is this? You have some kind of witch doctor in the family, too?”
“Careful, or she’ll turn you into a toad,” Caleb told his father. “Drink your tea.”
His father sipped. “Bad enough about the stripper in the family! Now we have voodoo!” His brows went up, and he licked his lips; then he sipped some more of the tea.
“We do not have any strippers in this family, Mr. Montgomery,” Vidalia huffed.
“Actually, Maya’s sister is a highly successful model,” Caleb said.
His father grimaced but kept sipping his tea. “I don’t care if she’s an Oscar-award-winning actress,” he muttered. “This marriage can’t happen. I won’t let it happen.”
“You don’t have a choice in the matter, Father.”
“Son, don’t you see what’s going to happen here? You’ll lose your shot at the Senate.”
“I’d rather lose my shot at the Senate than lose my shot at being a father to these babies.”
His father’s head came up, and his eyes seemed frozen. “Babies? There are two?”
Maya saw the look Caleb sent his father. There was a message in it, one his father seemed to see and read. He said, “Yes, twins. It was in the article.”
The old man’s gaze slid toward Maya, then lower to her belly, and she could have sworn there was something new there. A hint of…could that be concern? Worry? At least it wasn’t blatant hostility.
“I got so wrought up I never finished reading the whole thing,” he said.
Steam was rolling off Selene’s brew now, and she was waving a hand at it as if to send it around the room. It gave off a pleasant, woodsy aroma. Then there was a tap on the door. Bobby came in, Mel right behind him. Both of them were smiling as they shouldered their way into the crowded kitchen.
Kara looked at them. “Where did you two meet up?”
“Just now in the driveway,” Mel quickly told her. She had a bag of groceries in her hands, which she handed off to Vidalia. “Bobby says he has good news.” She got out of the way, sniffing the air as she went to check out Selene’s concoction.
