“You’ll be the most beautiful one there.”
“You never know,” A.J. said, accepting his kiss on the cheek. “I haven’t put on my shoes yet and barn boots are still a possibility. Far more functional than the pinpointed high-risers I got to go with the dress.”
“I’m so glad you’re back home.”
“Papa, I told you not to get used to this. I’m only staying here until I can find a place of my own.”
“I know, but I keep hoping…” At her warning glance, Garrett cleared his throat. “I’ll let you finish dressing but I wanted to give you a little something.”
He pressed a leather-bound box into his daughter’s hands and interrupted her string of protests.
“It’s my birthday. You can’t turn me down.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I know. Now, when this is all through, you and I will get together at the end of the night, won’t we? Just like we always do.”
Holding his gift in her hand, A.J.’s eyes misted over with tears as she recalled their yearly ritual. “Yes. Yes, we will.”
Garrett reached out and stroked her cheek. “Your mother would have been so proud of you. Of your strength and your independence. All that fire inside of you comes from her.”
She grasped his hand. “I love you.”
“Thank you for saying that. I really need to hear it, some nights even more than others,” he said softly. Then he disappeared down the hall, the familiar smell of that spiced cologne drifting after him.
A.J. closed the door and went over to her bed, the dress draping in a cascade around her as she sat down. Unlatching a golden clasp, she opened the box and gasped. A pair of ruby and diamond earrings were nestled in a bed of satin. Even to her jaundiced eye, they were glorious. She plucked one out and held it up to the light, watching the sparkle and flash of the stones. She put them on to please Garrett and to shore up her confidence a little more.
After she stepped into her shoes, she smoothed the dress over her waist, did a recheck on the backs of the earrings and straightened her spine. Leaving the safe haven of her room, she took the winding staircase cautiously in her heels, telling herself not to feel nervous. She’d been through similar evenings countless times and, though they were unpleasant, nothing was going to happen that she hadn’t seen before.
Reality turned out to be quite the opposite.
When she walked into the formal living room, which was filled to capacity with a glittering crowd, she wasn’t prepared for the reaction. Tolerant smiles turned to surprise and astonishment as people saw her and stopped talking.
She felt like Elvis, back from the dead.
Then the whispering started. She wasn’t sure whether they were commenting on her return to the family fold or her stallion or her trainer or her gown. She felt like she’d been hit with a spotlight on a stage and the glare was overwhelming.
Faced with all the stares and murmurs, she forced herself not to turn around and run back to her room. Stiffening her resolve, she dived into the crowd and started to weave her way through the throng of people, with no particular destination in mind.
One step into the room and she was accosted by a stuffed shirt and his trophy wife. The manufacturer of toothpicks and a renowned womanizer, the man ran his greedy gaze over A.J. like she was a piece of art up for sale. The woman beside him, his third wife if memory served, looked fierce.
“If you aren’t full of surprises,” he was saying before he came even closer and whispered in A.J.’s ear, “Why you’ve hidden such talent under those riding clothes is a mystery.”
With men like him, she thought it was self-explanatory. As gracefully as she could, she tried to peel his arms off of her.
To A.J.’s relief, Garrett materialized out of the crowd to rescue her. The lech immediately assumed the guise of propriety though it didn’t reach his eyes, and it was a relief when, after some conventional talk, she and her father headed over to the bar. By the time she had a glass of chardonnay in her hand, she was getting a sense of what Devlin had been talking about. At every turn, she heard her name floating in the air, part of the swell of conversation that swirled in the room like acrid smoke. Catching the quick eyes and faster tongues of the crowd, she felt like public property. She didn’t like it.
And she liked it even less as the evening wore on. After the elaborate buffet was unveiled in the dining room and picked away at, the crowd returned to the grand living room for an evening of dancing and dessert. If she’d thought her big entrance was bad, she found the ball intolerable. Men who’d spent the evening looking at her finally had a socially acceptable excuse to touch her. Once on the dance floor, their intentions were obvious, earning her more vicious looks from their wives. After an hour, she had a headache coming on from the clash of a dozen different colognes and she was exhausted from fighting off cloying arms.
The life of a siren was overrated, A.J. decided, scratching her nose.
Not able to stand another dance, she tried to take refuge in conversation, only to get trapped by a former English professor who’d retired from his day job at a prestigious university but hadn’t given up his avocation for being a verbose blowhard. He was a curmudgeonly old man, with white hair growing out of everywhere. There were little tufts at his ears, twin hedges over his eyes, a section of beard under his chin, which he’d been missing for quite some time.
As he droned on, A.J. put herself on autopilot and found she was more than ready for the speeches to start, the white chestnut cake to be cut and the evening to come to an end. The fact that her toes were numb and she was tired of feeling like she was walking on top of a fence didn’t make time pass any faster.
“So that, my dear, is the difference between crass innovation and an enduring classic,” Professor Rogaine’s voice crescendoed as another couple of people joined them. Though they did dilute the elderly man’s dull conversation, A.J. found herself squirming under the eyes of one guy who seemed all too interested in what she might have been hiding in her bodice. She felt like asking him whether he thought he’d lost his wallet down there.
Breaking free from the group, she pivoted, only to find herself caught in another tight knot of people. Her escape foiled, she tried to take a deep breath but all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. Her chest grew tight.
All this and now she was coming face-to-face with claustrophobia. She eyed the doorway with desperation and ambition. She was about to bolt, had committed to making a bid for freedom, even if it meant missing her father’s birthday toast, when she saw a guard there was no sneaking past. Between her and the salvation of the stairway stood Regina, holding court.