Hissy Fit (30 page)

The kitchen was full
of people. The caterers were bustling about, filling jugs with iced tea and lemonade, chopping the roasted pork and loading it into large foil warming dishes, and Austin’s helper had commandeered the big soapstone farmhouse sink to fill her flower vases.

Will stood in the middle of it all, issuing directives that everybody seemed to be ignoring, while Stephanie fluttered around being…Stephanie. Erwin barked and jumped and ran in circles until it looked like he had worn his short brown legs down to a nub.

A.J. came in and set the casserole on the big marble-topped island that had just been installed earlier in the week

“Help me get those runners laid down before people start tracking in clay on the new floors, will you?” I asked A.J.

“Keeley,” Will said, staring right at A.J. “Introduce me to your date.”

I felt my face heat up. “This is my friend A.J.,” I said deliberately. “But I think you two have already met.”

A.J. held out his hand to shake, but Will acted like he hadn’t seen it. “Oh yeah, maybe we have met.”

“Well, we haven’t met,” Stephanie said, twining one arm around Will’s waist and extending her own hand to shake A.J.’s. “I’m Stephanie Scofield. It’s so nice to see Keeley in a social setting for once.” She leaned forward and gave A.J. a confidential wink. “You’ve got to see what you can do to get this girl to slow down and smell the roses. Up until now, the only man I’ve seen her with is that perfectly sweet florist friend of hers. If you know what I mean.”

Just at that minute, Austin bustled into the kitchen, holding out a glass canning jar full of wilted daisies and zinnias. “Keeley!” he exclaimed.
“You’ve got to help me salvage this thing. The water must have spilled out of it in the van on the way over, and I didn’t bring any spares.” He stopped talking when he caught sight of A.J.

“Oh,” he said, dramatically, looking A.J. up and down. “How are you, Andrew?”

Nobody in Madison ever called A.J. Andrew. But A.J. was being a sport. “I’m fine, Austin,” he said. “Hope you’re the same.”

It got very quiet in the kitchen as everybody gauged everybody else’s reaction to the fact that I’d brought my ex-fiance to the party.

“Yumm!” Stephanie said, in an exuberant attempt to break the stalemate. She poked the tip of her pinkie nail into the top of my casserole. “What is this divine creation you’ve brought, Keeley?”

“Grits and greens,” A.J. said proudly. “It’s from an old family recipe.”

“Whose family?” Will drawled.

“Mine,” I said firmly, as Stephanie poised a spoon over the casserole. “It’s got collard greens and grits…and ham hocks and smoked jowl and bacon bits.”

Stephanie dropped the spoon to the counter with a clatter.

“And parmesan cheese and half and half and chicken stock,” I added. “What did you bring, Steph?”

Will dropped a fond kiss on the top of Stephanie’s head. “She brought something all the way from Atlanta,” he said, pointing to an elegant silver chafing dish on the marble countertop.

“Stop bragging, Will!” she protested. “Really, it’s nothing special. Just some couscous with roasted red peppers and shallots,” Stephanie said modestly.

I found a pair of scissors and started attacking the stems of Austin’s wilted flowers. “I’ll fix these,” I told him, “if you’ll help A.J. get those runners in place.”

“Sure,” Austin said.

“Okay,” Will said, looking around at the controlled confusion.
“I’ll get out of your hair and see what’s happening outside. Coming, Steph?”

“Absolutely,” she said, following him out the back door. “Come on, Erwin,” she called, “Mommy wants to show you the ponies.” The dachshund dashed out the back door.

I was trimming the ends of the daisies and zinnias and poking them back into their container when Miss Nancy sidled up beside me. “Speaking of show and tell,” she said in a loud stage whisper, “lookit what I just found in the trash over here.” She held it out. It was a plastic carry-out container from Eatzi’s, the poshest deli and takeout food shop in Buckhead.

We both laughed. “Well, she wasn’t lying about that. She did bring it all the way from Atlanta.”

Nancy shook her head. “That must be one fancy piece of tail.”

“Miss Nancy!” I said, pretending to be shocked.

“He’s shopping for diamonds, did you know that?” she asked, her expression grim.

“An engagement ring?”

“No,” she admitted. “Earrings. But you just wait. She’ll have a diamond ring on that third finger of her left hand any day now. And he’ll have a matching one. Right through his nose.”

When I was satisfied that everything was in place in the house, I walked outside to take my casserole to the food tent. The grounds were filling up rapidly. By three o’clock I estimated that there were at least a couple hundred people milling around the old plantation house.

It was funny to see all these people who associated themselves with Loving Cup. In all the months I’d been back and forth to the bra plant, I’d only ever seen a handful of people, mostly office workers or maintenance men. But the people crowded around the tables, laughing and gossiping, oohing and aahing over the house, and filling their plates from the endless rows of food, seemed like a huge family—and the majority of them were women. These were the stitchers, I realized, whose machines had been mostly idle for so
long. Many of them knew and greeted me. “Your daddy sold me my first car when I was sixteen,” gushed one woman. “Wish I still had that thing. Old as I am, it’d be a by-God antique.” I was surprised too by how many of the workers were Hispanic.

I’d gone back into the house to show it off to Dianne Yost, who ran the local public relations firm Will had hired, when Stephanie joined up with the tour.

They were examining the pencil sketches taped to the foyer walls. “The muralist has been taking photos of local scenes for weeks,” I explained. “And these,” I said, pointing to the smears of gray, blue-green, turquoise, and gold paint on another sheet taped beside it, “are the colors he’s using.”

“It’s all the same colors,” Stephanie said, wrinkling her nose. “How is that going to look?”

“It’s a technique called grisaille,” I explained. “It’s supposed to be tone on tone. And when we put the console table I bought in New Orleans here, and this big, gilt Empire mirror above it, it’ll really set a beautiful, peaceful tone for the rest of the house. Don’t you think?”

Dianne nodded enthusiastically. “Let me know when it’s completed, and I’ll send somebody over to photograph it,” she said. “I think maybe we could place something in
Veranda
magazine. And of course we’d buy an ad for Loving Cup, to get a double hit.”

“It’s going to be wonderful,” Stephanie said, as we walked through the rest of the rooms. “And I’ve loved those adorable sketches you send every week.” She twinkled at Dianne, “Keeley does the sweetest sketches. Every room, all the furniture, the pictures, everything. And I’m in them all! In the bedroom, at the dressing table, in the dining room, pouring wine. And my little dog, Erwin, he gets star billing too. How precious is that?”

“Very,” Dianne murmured. She was jotting down notes to herself and taking digital photos as we walked and talked. When she excused herself to find her children and see that they’d eaten, Stephanie followed me back out to the kitchen.

“Has the bidet been delivered yet?” she asked. “I didn’t see it upstairs.”

“No, it’s still on back order,” I said. “But I’m sure it’ll be here by deadline.”

“Deadline.” She sighed. “Will has been dropping hints like crazy about that deadline. I swear, he has swept me totally off my feet. And I’m putty in his hands. I’ve never met a man with his energy. And determination. I’ll be so glad when he gets this overseas thing taken care of. Then we’ll really be able to sit back and enjoy all this. I think we’ll be spending a lot of weekends out here, thanks to you, Keeley. It’ll be the ideal place to entertain my business clients. And Will’s, too.”

“Weekends?” I said.

“And some holidays,” she added. “I know it’s a little early, and don’t you dare tell Will, but I’ve got my eye on a house over on Tuxedo Road in Buckhead. And I wouldn’t dream of hiring anybody but you to decorate it. Wait until you see it, Keeley. There’s a swimming pool, and a guest house—that’ll have to be completely gutted—and a tennis court…Oh, and I almost forgot. There are two vacant floors in my law firm’s office tower. I’ve talked to our broker, and Will can have state-of-the-art high-speed Internet access. There’s a nice reception area, and the executive suite is to die for, and of course, the best thing is, we’re only fifteen minutes from the airport.”

“But Loving Cup is here, in Madison,” I protested. “He’s not thinking of closing the plant. He wouldn’t throw a picnic and then throw everybody out of work.”

Stephanie went over to the back door and closed it, then poked her head into the dining room to make sure we were alone.

“I shouldn’t tell you this and spoil Will’s surprise, but I happen to know that he is planning a big announcement today. That’s one of the things I love about him. He really talks to me about his business. Do you know how rare that is in a successful man? Will recognizes that I have a head on my shoulders—not just a pretty hairdo. That’s
what all these trips to Mexico and Sri Lanka have been about. He’s lined up a maquiladora down in Mexico. And as soon as he has the financing nailed down, they’ll start producing. The new line should be in stores by next spring.”

I was too stunned to say anything at first. “But…the underwire—Will told me he’d figured a way it could be produced here in Madison. The thread could be woven in Alabama and the fabric made in South Carolina…and the plant here would be retooled…”

Stephanie made sympathetic clucking noises. “That was just Will being a cockeyed optimist. But the economics don’t work. He can’t compete with Maidenform and Vanity Fair and the others if he tries to keep production domestic. He feels awful about it. And the plant here won’t completely close down. Not yet.”

Somehow I made it out of the house and managed to extricate myself from Stephanie’s clutches. I felt like I’d been hit up the side of the head with a two-by-four.

I walked around among all those smiling, happy workers, and I felt like a complete traitor. I’d helped Will build his little Xanadu, and now these people were all going to pay for it with their livelihoods. Well, at least it was for a good cause, I told myself. Stephanie seemed to be head over heels for Will. I’d done my job.

Out in the meadow there was a sack race in progress. As I got closer I saw that Will and A.J. and two Hispanic teenagers seemed to be leading the pack of ten contestants. The two adults were red-faced and gasping from their efforts, hopping furiously toward the finish line. Five yards away, A.J. managed to grab the lead, with Will hot on his heels, and the two kids closing in fast. I saw Will glance around, and then suddenly he seemed to lose his balance, sprawling to the ground and somehow taking A.J. down with him. The shorter of the two kids hopped past both of them, and the crowd cheered for the winner.

I was standing at the iced tea dispenser, handing out cups of ice when A.J. and Will came limping up. Will took the glass of iced tea I
handed him, gulped it down, and then motioned for another. “A.J.?” I said, offering him a cup.

“Nah,” A.J. gasped. “I think it’s Miller Time for me.” He headed off for the kegs on the far side of the tent.

Will gulped the rest of his tea and threw the cup in the trash. “You and Nancy did a great job organizing all this in such a short time,” he said. He mopped at his glistening forehead with a handkerchief.

“Miss Nancy did all the hard work,” I said. “I just showed up.”

“And made it all work,” Will said. “Don’t sell yourself short. If you ever get tired of interior design, I wish you’d come to work for me. You’ve got a great eye for design, and you’re detail-oriented. Of course,” he added, picking at the strap of my bra that was sliding off my shoulder, “you don’t know squat about bras, but I could teach you that.”

I slapped his hand away. “The way I hear it, you’re not exactly in a hiring mode these days. So if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll keep the job I have.”

“Huh?” Will said.

“Stephanie tells me you’re going to make a big announcement today,” I said. “On Labor Day, of all times. You certainly do have a flair for irony.”

Will looked down at his watch. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. And yeah, I guess it’s about that time. I’ll give everybody a little more time to eat, then I’ll take the stage.”

He gestured toward the food tent. “I’ve seen you bustling around all afternoon. Let’s go over there and get a plate before all the good stuff gets gone. Nancy will have my hide if I don’t have a slice of that fresh apple cake of hers.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging and heading toward the food.

I started looking around for A.J. He wasn’t in the crowd of men milling around the beer keg, and he sure as hell wasn’t taking a pony ride. After fifteen minutes of circling the meadow, I decided to look
in the house. I checked all over the place and finally found him, coming out of the bathroom in the pump house.

“Hey,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s okay to use the bathroom in here, isn’t it? I didn’t want to mess up the fancy ones in the house.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I think I’m ready to leave now.”

“Can I just look around in here?” he asked.

“Why not?” I said. “I’m sure Will would want you to. That’s one of the reasons for this whole shindig. To show everybody how rich and successful and tasteful Will Mahoney is.”

A.J. walked around the sleeping area, touching the walls and looking out the windows. He paused at the bed, with a puzzled look on his face.

“Have I seen this bed someplace before?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed the fabric of the quilt. “I’d love to have a big old bed just like this someday.”

“You almost did,” I told him. “I bought it for us. After the wedding was called off, it was just sitting there in storage. It was way too big for my place, and Will needed furniture in a hurry for this place, so I sold it to him.”