Turnabout's Fair Play (8 page)

She followed the slow-moving group in the aisle ahead of her and warned Jack about not stepping on her skirt as she picked her way down the bus’s steps. She took the outstretched hand offered her when she reached the bottom step—which sat just a little too high for comfort off the pavement below—and started to step down. But when she looked up to thank the helpful guy, she almost took a header into the asphalt.

Jamie O’Connor grinned at her. “Flannery.”

“Jamie.” She yanked her hand out of his as soon as both feet hit the ground. But she couldn’t be rude. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head. “My pleasure.”

Before she could say anything else to him, he turned to assist an older woman down. Flannery lifted the long skirt of the evening gown and, slipping her hand through the crook of Jack’s elbow, headed into the hotel.

Yep, she might be envious of her friends’ happiness and coupledom, and she might even be lonely and afraid of being alone for the rest of her life. But she was nowhere near desperate enough to go out with someone like Jamie O’Connor. No matter how polite he’d decided to be tonight or how highly Jack thought of him.

Chapter 5

A
side from the towering white cake and the beautiful woman in the wedding dress, the ballroom reminded Jamie forcefully of a formal dinner at the end of a sales conference. Seats had apparently been very carefully assigned; even though the salad course was just being cleared away, from his position at a table near the front of the cavernous room, he’d already counted eighteen instances of business cards being exchanged.

Why hadn’t he thought to print up some cards with his personal contact information to bring with him tonight? Oh yeah—because he’d been under the impression he’d be attending a
wedding
, not a business-networking event.

Instead of joining in the get-to-know-you chatter around his table, Jamie just listened. Only one of the other three ushers sat at the table with him, and out of the three, Dennis Forrester was the one Jamie would have picked last if forced to choose. But as Dylan and Jack sat at the head table with their dates—the two maids of honor—Jamie had to make do.

Usually he’d be in his element in a room full of five hundred people. Tonight, though, the noise of the voices, the silver against china, and even the soft sound of the band on the stage at the other side of the room clawed all the way up his last nerve and jumped all over it.

He stole another glance at the front of the room. He hadn’t imagined it during the wedding—Flannery McNeill looked decidedly unhappy. Oh, she tried to hide it, laughing and talking with Jack Colby on her right and Caylor on her left, but an almost-visible aura of melancholy surrounded her.

Not his problem. He returned his attention to the dinner plate in front of him. Filet mignon and salmon. Could this get any more cliché? The small, bacon-wrapped steak did at least come with a blue-cheese butter sauce on top of it, so that added something a little different.

“Jamie, you said you work in sports marketing?” Dennis Forrester, now apparently finished finding out everything about their table companions, turned his focus on Jamie.

Jamie cut a small bite of the steak. Right between rare and medium rare—just the way he liked his beef. “Yes, for the Gregg Agency.” As far as Jamie had seen, the news of the merger with the Memphis company hadn’t hit the business journals yet.

“Ah.” A flash of something—speculation? knowing?—flashed through Dennis’s brown eyes. “I’ve worked with Armando Gregg on a few boards and committees of different charities around town. Good man.”

If you insist
. Jamie nodded.

“How long have you been there?”

“Thirteen years.” Actually, when he’d looked at the calendar, his final day would be just two weeks shy of the anniversary of his start date.

“So I guess you know Cole Samuels, then.” Dennis cut into his sweet potato puree–stuffed, roasted Portobello mushroom. For a fleeting second, Jamie wished he’d ordered a vegetarian plate, too. He didn’t like a lot of veggies, but he could eat yams and mushrooms with every meal.

“I haven’t had the chance to meet him, but I’ve been talking with his agent about a few opportunities.” The steak was pretty good, too. Jamie glanced over to the table on the other side of the long head table where Cole Samuels sat. After catching four touchdown passes to help win the Super Bowl—and then being named league MVP for the year—Cole Samuels was recognized by everyone in the room.

But if Jamie wasn’t going to be working at the Gregg Agency anymore, what was the point in trying to meet the star football player?

Applause broke out as the last of the dinner plates were removed from Jamie’s table. He looked around. Bobby and Zarah had risen and made their way to the side table where the wedding cake dwarfed even six-foot-three Bobby Patterson.

The addition of flashes from digital cameras around the room to the three from the professional photographers turned the scene into a brief paparazzi frenzy of flashing lights and people jostling for the best, least-obstructed angle.

Seriously? Who needed that many photos of someone else’s wedding and reception? He scanned the tables he’d had his back to all evening. Several women purposely caught his eye. He knew what they were selling…and he wasn’t buying. But it put him on his guard against the advances that were certain to come later. After working in the marketing and sales industry for more than a decade, not only had he become someone who could sell a sloppy joe to a bride wearing white gloves, but he’d also learned how to handle come-ons from beautiful, rich, lonely women—even the persistent ones.

Jamie swiveled, twisting the black fabric chair cover with him. Seeing the wait staff emerge from the kitchen carrying silver carafes, he turned his coffee cup right side up. He’d stuck with the watered-down iced tea throughout dinner while many at the table indulged in wine and cocktails from the open bar.

The first couple of years at the advertising agency, he’d gone out on Thursday and Friday nights with the guys—and it hadn’t taken him long to realize just how stupid and unlikable alcohol made them. Not everyone was like that, sure, and he’d been around plenty of people who could have a glass or two of wine and seemingly not be affected by it at all. But he preferred to keep his wits about him—and not take any risks when it came to driving himself home from such events.

Coffee, however, was his vice. Black, creamed, straight, sweet, plain, flavored—it didn’t matter. He’d take it any way he could get it.

“Regular or decaf, sir?” their waitress asked.

“Regular, please.”

Dennis Forrester raised an eyebrow before requesting decaffeinated coffee. “I don’t know how you young people can do it, so much caffeine so late at night.”

Jamie almost snorted. The head of the historical society where Zarah Mitchell…Patterson worked acted like people in their thirties were teenagers. He couldn’t be that much older. “What can I say? I’m a night person, so it doesn’t bother me.” He doctored the brew with one pack of artificial sweetener and a splash of half-and-half.

More servers came around with plates of the wedding cake. “The cake layers are french vanilla, dark chocolate, and red velvet.” The main server for the table nodded, and he and each of the other three set dessert plates with a generous-sized slice of the three-layer cake in front of each person at the table. “The frosting on the outside is cream cheese buttercream. The filling between the vanilla and chocolate layers is raspberry, and the filling between the chocolate and red velvet layers is Italian cherry. Enjoy.”

Jamie cut into the red velvet layer—at the back of the piece so he got the thick layer of frosting with the first bite. The moist, light cake with its almost-chocolate flavor mingled on his tongue with the creamy sweetness of the frosting and then melted. He started to groan—then remembered where he was.

Perfection.

If coffee was his vice, sugar was his addiction. And with his family’s history of heart problems, he didn’t give in to that temptation often—especially since he’d been somewhat tubby as a kid. But hey, wedding cakes were a rarity in his life. He’d shed the puppy fat as a teen running around the woods with paintball guns some days after school and almost all day on the weekends. He wasn’t about to let his predilection for sweets cause him health problems or stop him from looking his best. Not when people were apt to judge someone negatively if the least bit overweight.

The music started, and the bandleader announced the bride and groom would have their first dance. Then the dance with the mother of the groom and father—no, grandfather of the bride. Jamie had a clear view of the dance floor when the full wedding party took to the floor and the band started playing Patsy Cline’s “Today, Tomorrow, and Forever.”

Jamie’s eyes locked on to the tall blond being two-stepped around by the smoothest dancer on the floor—and he wasn’t at all surprised that Jack Colby was a good dancer. In her heels, Flannery was almost as tall as her boss, which made them seem well suited for dancing together. For the first time tonight, she looked like she was truly enjoying herself. Jack apparently said something funny, because she threw her head back and laughed.

The song drew to a close, and Jack dipped her, just like in all the old Astaire-Rogers movies the ladies at the nursing home loved watching so much.

“Come on. They’ll want everyone involved in the wedding out there to help encourage folks to dance.” Dennis stood and motioned Jamie to follow him.

Wait—had Dennis Forrester just asked him to dance? Jamie rose slowly and followed him…at a distance. But Zarah’s boss stopped at the table just short of the dance floor and asked an older woman there to dance, apparently someone he knew.

Jamie looked around. Really, there was only one person here he wanted to dance with tonight. He took a deep breath and moved forward with purpose.

Flannery’s little toe on her right foot hurt where the sandal’s strap rubbed on the knuckle. All she wanted to do was sit down and maybe surreptitiously take the shoes off under the table, since the tablecloth touched the floor in front and on the sides.

She stepped off the dance floor and—found her way blocked by Jamie O’Connor.

“Hey, Flannery.”

It didn’t matter how handsome he was. The way he looked at her—no,
scrutinized
would be a better word—creeped her out a little.

“Hi, Jamie.”

“You look really nice tonight.” He rocked from heel to toe—which only emphasized the fact that, with her in these shoes, he was a little bit shorter than she. Which meant they were probably about the same height in actuality.

“Um, thanks. You look nice tonight, too.” No lie—he was breath stealing dressed in a tuxedo. She hadn’t missed the fact that almost every woman in attendance tonight had, at one time or another, been eyeing him as if he were a plate of caviar in a room full of Spam sandwiches.

“I like your hair up like that, how it shows off your neck. With that dress, it’s almost like you’re the lead actress in a vampire movie, just waiting for Dracula to come along and bite you.”

Flannery’s hands flew to her throat—which had just closed in around her windpipe. “Excuse me?”

Jamie’s mouth flopped open and closed a few times. “N–no, I meant…what I meant to say—” His face glowed like Chernobyl’s meltdown.

Flannery was pretty sure hers was in the same condition. She returned her hands to her sides, gathering up her skirt just in case she needed to run away.

He took a deep breath and a step back. “I didn’t m–mean to say that. I wanted to ask you to d–dance.”

Not in this lifetime
. “Yeah…um, look. Thanks, but my foot really hurts, so I’m going to go sit down.”

Instead of moving closer to get past him between the tables where they stood, she turned and went around the table to her right.

Dracula? Really? That was his idea of a pickup line? At least he’d had the good grace to look embarrassed when he realized he’d totally wigged her out.
Dracula?

Back at the head table, she pulled the sandals off, flagged down the waiter, and asked for another piece of cake and a refill of her coffee.