Her hand immediately went to her hair, which was curling wildly after all her earlier attempts to tame it. “Oh, no.”
“Stop,” he commanded. “The look suits you. Please don’t fix it.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Where’s this guesthouse?”
He led the way to what had once been a gatekeeper’s cottage, guarding the main entrance to the large property. It was only slightly smaller than her new house and had been decorated with a masculine touch in burgundy and navy blues, accented with beige. She studied it, then turned to him. “Your mother did this for you, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “They had some crazy idea I’d move back home if I had my own place on the property, at least until I married and settled down to the life they envisioned for me.”
“Did you ever live here?”
He shook his head. “But they haven’t given up hope. I keep telling them to rent it out, but they refuse to do it. My father says I’m bound to come to my senses one of these days and move back to Charleston, where a good address really matters.”
Just then she glanced at the clock sitting over the fireplace mantel and realized they were late. “Look at the time. Your mother is going to kill us...or me, anyway. She’ll blame this on me.”
“I’ll tell her it was my fault,” Tom promised.
“Two minutes,” Jeanette said and ran for the bathroom.
Tom had been right, her cheeks were glowing and her hair was mussed, but in a way that some women paid a lot of money to achieve. She straightened her clothes, washed up and replaced the lipstick that had been lost to his kisses. In exactly two minutes, she returned to the living room.
“Will I do?”
“You’re gorgeous,” he assured her.
She rolled her eyes at the biased comment. “Thanks, but you’d better find an explanation for our tardiness that has absolutely nothing to do with what actually happened.”
“Not a problem. I’ll tell her that we left a bit late, got stuck in traffic.” He led the way along a path to the brightly lit house.
It was a rare warm evening for this time of year, and music and laughter poured from the open windows and the French doors that led to the terrace. They slipped inside through the open doors.
“Well, there you are!” his mother said, zeroing in on them at once. “I thought perhaps you’d forgotten the way home.” She frowned as she surveyed Jeanette, but her greeting was polite enough.
“Thank you for including me,” Jeanette said, even though Mrs. McDonald looked as if she’d just tasted a slice of lemon. That sour expression was getting to be way too familiar.
“Tom, you need to find your father and let him know you’re here. There’s someone he wants you to meet.”
“Okay,” Tom said. He started to reach for Jeanette’s hand, but his mother stepped between them.
“Jeanette will be just fine with me. I’ll see that she meets everyone, though I imagine she’s met quite a few of them since they were regulars at Chez Bella.”
Tom froze. “Mother, if you’ve done anything to deliberately make Jeanette feel uncomfortable...”
“She’s a guest in my home,” his mother said stiffly. “McDonalds do not embarrass their guests.”
He gave her a hard look, then nodded. “I’ll take your word on that.”
Jeanette watched him walk away with dismay, but since there was no other choice, she drew herself up, plastered a smile on her face and said, “Your decorations are beautiful, Mrs. McDonald. I love the nutcracker theme. I’m sure you’ve been working on it for weeks.”
It was true. This room absolutely sparkled with twinkling, multicolored lights. It was filled with the fragrance of evergreens, even though Tom had told her the boughs on display were artificial, and the nutcracker theme had been carried out with enthusiasm. There were hundreds of them on the tree, larger ones on the mantel and life-size nutcrackers at the entrance to the room.
Across the hall the decor—from what she could glimpse of it—was the Sugarplum Fairy with pale pink, purple and silver ribbons woven through the boughs and accompanied by thousands of tiny white lights.
Jeanette had been in department stores with less attention to holiday detail.
“This house has always been a showcase during the holidays,” Mrs. McDonald said proudly. “It’s a tradition I’ve been happy to continue.”
“Are your daughters here? I’d love to meet them,” Jeanette said.
“Not tonight. This is a business dinner, not a family celebration,” she said pointedly.
Jeanette winced at the distinction and the less-than-subtle implication that she wouldn’t have been included had it been for family.
For the next half hour she endured curious glances and cool greetings from women who’d once told her some of their most intimate secrets. They weren’t used to meeting her on an equal footing and it was plainly awkward for all of them. Not that any of them were outright rude. They simply didn’t know what to make of her presence, especially without Tom by her side and past gossip about the lawsuit threat from Mrs. McDonald still ringing in their ears.
Jeanette held her head up, chatted briefly and then found her way to the bar, where she asked for a glass of wine. She took it onto the terrace, intending to stay only long enough to regroup, when she heard raised voices coming from another room. Since Tom’s was one of them, she drifted in that direction.
* * *
“Dad, how many times do I have to tell you that I am not joining a law practice in Charleston?” Tom demanded heatedly. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that conversation was for Dwight Mitchell and for me?”
“And do you know what a fool you’d be to turn him down? Mitchell and McLaughlin is one of the oldest, most prestigious firms in Charleston. In the state, for that matter. If you join that practice, you’ll be set for life, not just financially, but for whatever political career you want to pursue.”
“I’m not going to practice law and I’m not going to run for
