“I think you should go,” she told him.
“Not until we have a deal.”
“Then you’re going to be sitting here by yourself for a very long time,” she said. “I have no intention to listening to any more of this. It’s insulting not only to me, but to your son. It’s obvious to me that you don’t respect the kind, decent, hardworking man he is. He loves the work he’s doing and it’s important work.”
“He’s planning Christmas festivities,” he scoffed. “A man like Tom should be passing laws, making the world a better place, not worrying about the decorations on some ridiculous tree.”
“Because that’s the kind of thing you and your wife pay some lowly person to do for you, is that it?” Jeanette retorted. “I’ve heard all about the holiday spectacle that goes on at your home, so that must matter to someone. Your wife, maybe? Not that she would hang a single ornament herself, of course. That’s what the peons are for.”
“The point is—”
“The point is that you’re a snob, Mr. McDonald. And I won’t listen to another word you have to say about me or about your son. What goes on between Tom and me is none of your business.”
“You’re wrong,” he said heatedly. “I will not allow him to throw his life away on the likes of you.”
“You don’t even know me,” she said. “Now, get out.”
“I will tell my son how rude and disrespectful you’ve been,” he announced haughtily.
She smiled at that. “And I’ll tell him how insulting and offensive you’ve been. Which do you think will make him angrier?”
He looked surprised. “You’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that,” he said grudgingly.
“Something you should probably keep in mind,” she said.
“I told Clarisse this was a bad idea,” he muttered, looking defeated.
Discovering that his wife had been behind the visit was less of a shock than it should have been. Jeanette knew there was no love lost there. She just didn’t know what had triggered the woman to send her husband over here to try to buy her off.
“We’re agreed on that much,” Jeanette told him. “It was a lousy idea.”
His eyes sparked with a hint of respect. “Under other circumstances...” he began, but his voice trailed off.
“What?” she prodded.
“This bad blood between you and my wife, it runs deep,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know. What I don’t entirely understand is why. Or what would make you come over here to try to pay me off to get out of Tom’s life. It’s not about what happened at Chez Bella, is it?”
Mr. McDonald shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the benefit of giving her a more complete answer, so Jeanette simply waited.
“You know that my son and I have been at odds over his future for a long time now,” he said eventually.
“He’s mentioned that,” she said.
“It’s not about me wanting to control him or even about me giving two hoots about social standing or anything like that.”
“But your wife obviously does,” Jeanette said.
He gave her a rueful look. “You say that as dismissively as my son does. What neither of you understand is how important status is in certain circles. Clarisse came from money. Her family’s reputation was sterling, something I couldn’t say for my own. Oh, we’d had money, social stature and respectability at one time, but my father had pretty much squandered the money and our reputation by the time I was an adult. He made bad business decisions. He gambled. And he had affairs. A lot of men may do that, but they’re far more discreet about it than my father was. Everyone in Charleston knew. He humiliated my mother and left me and my brother to scramble to keep the family from losing everything.”
“That must have been hard,” Jeanette said quietly. She thought she was beginning to understand.
“You have no idea unless you’ve been there. Here I was a young man with good connections, but barely two cents to my name, when I met this amazing woman who could have married anyone. Clarisse’s parents knew the state of my family’s finances, to say nothing of all the stories about my father. They were adamant that there would be no wedding.”
His expression turned nostalgic. “Clarisse was formidable even back then. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She loved me and believed in me. She saw the future we could have even when I was far from certain about it. When her parents wouldn’t bend, we eloped. That’s how much faith she had in me.” He met Jeanette’s gaze. “So you can understand why I would do anything for her.”
“I think I can,” she said. “And I can also see why she would view someone like me as a threat to everything she’s wanted for your family. She wants Tom to marry someone who can make his life easier, not someone he might need to defend at every turn, someone who doesn’t fit into his world.”
He seemed surprised. “It’s generous of you to try to see her point of view, especially after how badly I’ve behaved today,” he said. “I’m truly sorry for that.”
Jeanette believed him. “Have you ever told Tom any of this?”
“No. When he and his sisters were young, we didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. We wanted them to have the happy, normal childhood to which they were entitled as McDonalds.”
“It might help if he understood what happened back then.”
“You’re probably right. Clarisse and I like to think we’ve put that time behind us, but obviously it’s not as deeply buried as we’d hoped. It still has the capacity to influence the way we react to certain things today.”
“Tell him,” Jeanette urged.
“I’ll do that if you’ll do one thing for me,” he bargained.
“I won’t break things off with your son,” she warned.
He smiled. “Of course
