We hung up with her promising to be quick, which was so not like her. I didn’t really want to stay put in the hotel, in case you-know-who came down, but I did want to get out of town fast and this was the best alternative for that, making allowances for daughterly duties and all. If I agreed to meet her somewhere, or God forbid go to her penthouse, that would just take more time.
I camped out in the lobby in a comfortable chair as inconspicuously as I could, out of view of the elevator, behind a New York Times even, for safe measure. After a few minutes, you-know-who actually did come down, but he didn’t notice me on his way out of the hotel. I dropped my paper and got around to plugging in the airline site on my phone to change my ticket.
Noticing the time on the cell, I was immediately irritated. Where the hell was my mother?
I turned to see her entering the lobby, perfectly made up and looking as if I did have a sibling, namely her.
And my heart dropped.
Oh God. This just kept getting better. Jed was right next to her, and they were chatting as they approached me.
I got up and Mom kissed me on the cheek. “Here’s my girl,” she said. “Ravishing as ever.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Look who I met outside of the hotel, honey.”
Mom must have taken in Jed’s shocking good looks and the quality of his suit, pricing it down to the cent, and been drawn to him like a magnet.
Maybe I should remind her she was already married, although of course there was always room for trading up. But no need. It was clear whom she was scoping the corporate titan out for, and it wasn’t herself. Hard to believe even my mother, though, had actually accosted a perfect stranger and dragged him back in here to meet her daughter.
Jed was smiling easily. “What a coincidence, eh? I thought you’d already gone, but when I saw your mom, my first thought was that it was you.”
“Yes, he grabbed my arm and said ‘Angie?’ and of course I knew he meant you.”
Too bad he hadn’t said “Suzy.” Maybe he wouldn’t be here right now.
“He thought I was your sister! Can you imagine?” My mom laughed as if she hadn’t been through that routine a million times.
He probably wasn’t even flattering her. That was the especially annoying part of this whole scenario. Well, one of the very many annoying parts of it. This was turning out to be the worst possible outcome I could have envisioned, other than Jed being at the meeting this morning in the first place, needless to say.
“Oh, okay,” I said with all the enthusiasm I could muster, which wasn’t much.
“Yes, and I didn’t even have a chance to introduce myself. Jed Worth.” He shook my mom’s hand.
“Natalie,” she said, omitting her last name as she always did in order to prompt the man to insist she call him by his first name, which Jed predictably did.
I stuck to Mr. Worth. “Mr. Worth’s company is purchasing my client’s company. We’re business associates.”
My mother ignored the “associates” part of that and honed in on the fact that was of most interest to her. “You own a company? How nice. Have I heard of it?”
“I doubt it,” I said, lying. “It’s very obscure.”
But she didn’t read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover as if it were the society pages for nothing. “It’s not that computer company, is it? Worth Industries?”
“Actually, it is.” I preempted whatever phony self-deprecating response he would have made, since he knew his company had garnered a headline or two and was an up-and-coming stock to watch. “Thanks for bringing my mom to me, Mr. Worth.”
“Jed, please,” he said, tongue in cheek.
“But I know you have an important meeting to go to. We’ve taken up enough of his time, Mom.”
She looked uncertainly between us.
Of course my attempt to hurry Jed along had exactly opposite effect. “Don’t be silly. I have a few minutes. Natalie said you were meeting for coffee. I’d love to join you. I was going to try to take Angie to brunch myself,” he told my mother, “but she’s always in such a hurry.”
“Really?” That one word conveyed an intense amount of interest on my mother’s part. She was nothing if not obvious. “Well, if you’ll help Angie with her bag, Jed, I’ll run in and get us a table.”
She disappeared through the revolving door to the hotel’s restaurant before I could stop her.
He tried to take my garment bag, but I yanked it back, glaring at him. “Next time I’m in Denver, I’m going to drop in on your mom. How’s that?”
He laughed. “She’d love it. Believe me.”