Tempting the CEO(23)

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Worth. Jed’s told me so much about you.”

“Please, call me Mary.” She gave her son a playful scowl. “And I can just imagine what he’s been telling you about me.”

“All good things, Mom.” He kissed her cheek and took a seat next to me, across the table from his mother.

“He’s not still using that one about how I think he’s saving himself for marriage, is he? He gets such a kick out of that one. Came up with it when he was seventeen to keep his girlfriends from wanting to meet me.”

“An oldie but a goodie,” he said without remorse. “Can we have the wine list?” he asked a passing waiter.

“I was just happy,” she continued, “that the first time I met you, Angie, wasn’t when you were walking down the aisle.”

I glanced over at Jed uncomfortably.

“Mom likes to bring up a wedding in the first two minutes of meeting one of my girlfriends. It’s kind of like a litmus test,” he said to me in an aside over the wine list.

I laughed. “Oh. Okay then. Well,” I told her, “you ought to meet my mother. You two would get along great.”

“I have and we do.”#p#分页标题#e#

Jed muttered, “I had absolutely no hand in that.”

“Yes, Natalie was at a spa in the Denver area and we got together for lunch. You two look just like sisters, I have to say.”

“You and everybody else who meets us,” I couldn’t help putting in.

“Jed looks exactly like his father.”

“Where is he again?” I asked just to bug Jed, even though I knew already. Why should I be the only uncomfortable one here?

“Oh, in the South of France now, I think. We’re never quite sure. On his I-don’t-know-what-number rich older wife. Living off his looks, which have been remarkably resilient,” she commented while Jed ordered a very fine red wine.

“Good genes,” I said.

And then she dropped the A-bomb. “Have you two set a date?”

Jed shook his head ruefully. “She cannot help herself.”

“I don’t believe in beating around the bush, Angie. I’ll tell you straight I’ve barely ever met a single girlfriend of Jed’s, or if I do, she’s gone in a week, he goes through them so fast.”

“That is so reassuring,” I said between my teeth, and she surprised me by laughing.

“I know. I was just about giving up on grandchildren unless there was a DNA test involved or something. Until he meets you and right away I can see he’s a goner.”

“Mom, for Christ’s sake.”

As much as I was eating this all up, I decided to bring us back to the real world. “Your son’s wonderful, Mrs.— Mary, but we’ve only known each other six months.”

“See, Mom, now you’ve blown it. I had a ring and everything. You’re so not invited to the wedding.”

I shook my head as his mother’s mouth dropped open. “He’s kidding,” I said.

“Maybe,” he singsonged.

“Be nice to your mother,” I scolded as he grinned at me. I knew he was just needling her and tried to keep up a stern face, but as ever, he charmed me. From that first interlude at the ice machine, he had charmed me. It was hard to stay mad at Jed.

Of course his mother had much more practice.

She scowled at him again, then said, “Excuse me. I’m going to the restroom.”

He called after her, “You better not be texting Natalie.”

I slapped him on the arm when we were alone, but I did think it was funny. His mom’s desperate quest for a daughter-in-law and Jed’s tongue-in-cheek resistance to it.

“What?” he said. “We both have kind of supersize mothers.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what that says for us.”

“I love you.”

He’d never said it before, and for a second I was furious that he had the gall to say it for the very first time in the middle of a dinner with his mother instead of when the two of us were alone, in bed maybe. Or at least over a romantic candlelit dinner, again alone.

“I love you,” he repeated for good measure. “I think I loved you from the minute I saw you hand Bob his head on a plate.”

“Like I believe that.” I managed to keep my tone level, the same as it always was in our usual teasing banter. But my pulse was racing and my face felt hot. I unknotted the Chanel scarf around my neck and tossed it on the back of my chair.

I love you.

Wow.

I was using the wine list to fan myself when he captured my hand and kissed it softly.

It was a lot to digest, and automatically I stuck to the banter. “You better not have a ring in your pocket.”#p#分页标题#e#