“Well, I guess we’ve both got a little work to do.”
My cell rang as we walked to the elevator. “Cassie,” I said, glancing at it. “I’ll text her later. I’m so glad she likes you, by the way. That best-friend test is so important.”
“Not as important as the other one,” he hinted as he pushed the button for the elevator.
“Don’t start with that.”
“She wants to meet you, Angie.”
I put my arms around his neck after we stepped into the elevator and found it empty. “I’m afraid of your mother,” I admitted, only half kidding.
He put his hands around my waist, his blue eyes sincere. “All right, I’m going to tell you the truth. I had to tell her you took my virginity.”
I laughed and stood on my tippy-toes to kiss him. “Now I’ll never meet her.”
“Afraid you’ll have to. She’s insisting on a shotgun wedding.”
I froze as the doors to the elevator opened and we went out into the Renaissance Center, the high-rise complex where my firm had its offices. The W-word had scared me, but if he could tell he didn’t let on as we walked hand in hand. “Remember how I met your mother and it was a big surprise and everything?”
I stopped. “You did not. Tell me you did not!”
He flashed me a tentative smile. “It depends on how mad you’ll be if I did.”
“Furious!”
“Okay, in that case, I have to meet my mother for dinner at that steak house you like on the bottom level, but I’ll be at your place to have wild sex with you by about nine. How’s that?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“My mom won’t like that.”
“Jed! How could you do this to me?”
“I didn’t. She did. She was threatening to fly commercial to Detroit just so she could meet you. And if you knew my mother, well, she doesn’t fly commercial anymore, and she’d be blaming me for it if I didn’t let her have the plane to come here, and then by extension she’d be blaming you and, well, then she’d really not be in the proper mood to meet you. So she flew in with me this afternoon.”
“Why didn’t you at least tell me?”
“What? I had to meet your mother at the spur of the moment on our very first date.”#p#分页标题#e#
“You call that a date?”
“It’s what I was calling it with my mother. And once she found out I’d met yours, you know how that is. It’s a status thing, I think.”
I shook my head. “You are so going to pay for this later.”
He grinned. “Bring it on.”
With a great deal of sighing, I continued walking to the restaurant and he fell in beside me.
“And here I was absolutely certain I’d cured you of that high-handedness thing,” I said.
“It was a momentary setback for the greater good.”
“What greater good?”
“Getting you to meet my mother.”
We were almost at the restaurant and I stopped him again and leaned forward to whisper, “Shouldn’t we just go to my place and do what we usually do the first night we’re together? Well, every night we’re together, I mean.”
“You’re not going to make me stand my mother up by giving me an erection.” He kissed me. “Unless you’re willing to do something really creative with it. I always did want to have sex in an elevator.”
“The scenic glass ones?”
“Exactly.”
I pulled away with a laugh. “Another time.”
“Don’t say I didn’t offer you an out.”
Actually, though, I was kind of glad the decision was taken out of my hands. Now that she was here, I couldn’t refuse to meet her. And I had been slow about agreeing to do it, even though I’d been to Denver quite a bit since Jed and I had taken the plunge from hookup to exclusive, which was on the second day I even knew him, now that I come to think of it. I’d met Vernon, a shy, thin boy who looked as if he’d been to hell and back but was recovering. Clean six months. I met some of Jed’s other friends.
I was crazy about this guy. So, what the hell? I guess I should meet his mother.
The steak house was dim, but I recognized her immediately, even though I had never seen a picture of her. She didn’t resemble him much. It wasn’t that. In fact, she had red hair, a natural redhead it looked like, and she was tiny. But she looked like him somehow. Confident and funny and—even though it would normally seem odd to describe such a pixieish woman this way—powerful. I shook her hand as Jed set down my briefcase and introduced us.