“Yeah, well, we’d see how much you’d love it,” I grumbled the empty threat. “What were you even doing out there?”
He shrugged. “Hailing a cab?”
I didn’t know if I believed him, but the alternative was that he had followed me downstairs. And I wasn’t quite full enough of myself to suggest that. And also there was that door-slamming-in-my-face thing.
“Give me a break,” he said. “She looks just like you at first glance. I thought it was you.”
“Well, you could have left it at that.”
“She was really psyched about it. She insisted I come back in with her so she could tell you.”
“It happens all the time,” I said.
“I bet. Good genes.”
“Oh, shut up. Just my luck. Great timing.”
“I thought you liked my sense of timing, Suzy,” he said in an undertone.
“You didn’t have to say you’d have coffee with us.”
“I wanted to.” There was a quiet insistence in that.
“Fine. But you better be leaving after a minute,” I said as we went into the restaurant. “I’m warning you.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
My mom was already at a table, and she waved to us.
“I ordered us coffee,” she said as the waiter brought over a pot. Then she ordered a poached egg as well, explaining, “I just got up. I’m famished.”
I tried not to make a face at the usual evidence of my mother’s birdlike appetite and restrained myself from ordering fried eggs and bacon to get a rise out of her. I didn’t want to drag this out any longer than I had to. Neither Jed nor I ordered anything.
“So how long have you two known each other?” she asked when the waiter left.
“We actually met only yesterday,” Jed said.
“At work,” I fudged. “On the deal.”
“Angelina is all work,” Mom confided to Jed in the backhanded-compliment way I had long ago forgiven her for. “Always has been. She studied all the time when she was in school.”
“Yes, it was a radical concept,” I volunteered. “Listen, it’s very polite of you to sit down with us, Mr. Worth, but it’s really not necessary and I insist we not keep you here any longer.” I turned to my mother. “We’re business associates, Mom, as we said, but the truth is Mr. Worth is on the other side. So we’re actually adversaries at this point.”
Jed stared at me like alpha males everywhere who hate to be ordered around. “So now we can’t even have coffee together, Angie? That’s a pretty strict reading of your ethics rules, isn’t it? Do you want me to call Bob to sit in so it’s all kosher?”
My mom hurriedly interceded. “Come on, honey, don’t get all lawyerly on us.” She laughed, patting my hand. “Relax.”
“I was just saying that to your daughter, Natalie, as a matter of fact.”
“I relax just fine,” I snapped at him.
“I remember,” he said.
My mother followed the exchange with her radar on high alert and when I noticed that—not that I was surprised by it, since fixing me up with someone on the Fortune 500 had always been her life’s ambition—I clamped my mouth shut.
The waiter was back to pour us more coffee and give mom her egg, and I busied myself with the familiar exercise of ingesting caffeine. On an empty stomach already in knots from all this tension, the brew went down like day-old Dunkin’ Donuts instead of the quality blend it undoubtedly was.
The two of them carried on the conversation quite nicely without me, which, when there was a good-looking rich guy in the vicinity of my mother, consisted of her talking him up.
What was his permanent place of residence, she inquired politely. Well, I knew that one. Denver.
Vacation homes? She got around to that with just the right note of admiration for his answer. I listened with half an ear to talk of a villa in Italy and a condo in Hawaii.
And since rich guys always want to talk about this one, she worked in alma mater just to make it well rounded. MIT. Big surprise there for a computer company guy.
She finished with what was always the most important. Marital status?
Chapter Five
I perked up for that one, aware I’d forgotten to ask, God help me. He smiled. “I’m single.”
My mother was through with her poached egg and pushed her plate away, pleased with the whole endeavor.
“It’d be so great if you’d come up with us sometime to our house in the Hamptons, Jed. I can never coax Angelina to visit, but maybe if you join us she won’t be so bored.”
I huffed out a breath, not quite sure why I had let this go on so long. Not sure why he had either. Probably just to bug me. But it was getting ridiculous.