“You too.” She shook his arm slightly.
“I’m the mediator here. My issues are off the table.”
“Can you do that, Matt?”
“Supposed to be good at it.” He smiled and folded her hand into his as they waited for the elevator. “Your presence will lower the territorial testosterone.”
“I see. I’m a mother substitute here.”
“Kinda.” He grinned. “You’re a very versatile woman. These midlife men will be on their best behavior in front of a hot young chick like you.”
“You’ve planned all this out.”
“Darn right. On the radio I have to improvise. It’s made me adaptable under pressure. On TV or here, I’ll need an underlying plan, to be more in control. The producers and I have talked about that. The audience needs to identify with both the host and guests.”
“‘The producers and I,’” she whispered affectionately in the elevator as they streaked up at stomach-swooping speed. “I feel like I’m engaged to Prince William.”
“Now, that’s a male-pattern baldness family history I’d rather not have for all the jewels in the Tower of London. Also the paparazzi. Kate Middleton is a brave woman.”
“Oh, you’ll get the paparazzi, brother,” Temple said.
By then the maître d’ was showing them over a carpet where the soft hush of hundred-dollar bills falling had been replaced by the sweet chime of seventeen-hundred-dollar-an-ounce gold rings clinking against the finest French crystal.
A stocky blond man stood at Temple’s arrival for Matt’s introduction.
“Miss Temple Barr, this is Jonathan Winslow.” Matt waited for them to shake hands.
Then the waiter pulled out Temple’s chair and—as waiters everywhere did, from pretentious low-end to plushest high-end—pushed it in not quite far enough for a woman as short as she. Darn! On this thick carpet, trying to inch the seat forward would be more awkward than a father and his bastard son having lunch together, which, double darn, was happening right under her nose.
“Temple owns a PR business in Las Vegas, including the Crystal Phoenix account,” Matt told his father, “and her problem-solving talents sometimes extend to murder.”
His father’s snow white eyebrows lifted above the reading glasses he’d donned. “Murder she wrote. How interesting as well as attractive. I’m a garden-variety businessman, I’m afraid. No special talents except managing the money other people made before me.”
“Sounds like a good trick these days,” Temple said.
“I’m delighted to meet the lovely Miss Barr. May I call you Temple?” he asked. “I really like the name. I have a daughter named Torrence.”
“Of course. What does Matt call you?” Temple asked.
The men’s exchanged looks went from surprised to rueful.
Matt answered, “We’ve managed to avoid addressing that issue so far. I’m Matt, of course, being younger.”
“And I’m Jon,” his father said. “I travel in circles where nothing is abbreviated, including names, and I’m damn weary of being Jonathan.”
Temple decided “Jon” was a clever diplomatic way to find a “special” name for just Matt to use, skirting any adoption of a role—“Dad”—both would regret and couldn’t use in front of others anyway.
“Jon without an h.” She almost tasted the spelling. No unnecessary elements. “It suits you, Mr. Winslow.”
“And you will now use it forthwith, Temple?”
“Of course, Jon. As a PR person I’m a great believer in the right name for the right occasion.” Actually, her using the familiar form of address before Matt did would help ease him into the new relationship.
Meanwhile, their water glasses had been swiftly and silently filled by the technique of pouring from the ewer’s side, not its spout. The spa water bottle remained on the table for refills.
Temple had worn her highest heels, the David Letterman female-star strutters that were pretty much as hobbling as bound feet … and still the linen napkin wanted to slide off her lap. The “lovely Miss Barr” could use bib clip.
“I think drinks are in order,” Jon suggested when the waiter reappeared.
The drink menu was an abridged version of War and Peace between an obesely padded leather jacket.
Temple ordered an obscenely expensive glass of white wine whose vintage and vintner she didn’t recognize. Jon ordered single-malt scotch, the kind Max favored. Matt surprised her by asking for a Bombay gin martini.
“Unfortunately,” Temple said of her wine, “I’m the designated walker.”
“Yes.” Jon grinned. “What is with the women wearing all these extreme high heels? They can’t be comfortable.”
“Temple’s always been a footwear connoisseur,” Matt said. “Don’t worry. She works at home in bare feet most of the time.”
“In my case,” Temple added, “I got the short stick in the genetics lottery. Also, the heels make excellent defensive weapons.”
“It’d be better to run,” Matt said.
The menus came next, just as padded as the liquor ones but larger. They all studied them as if needing to pass a test.
“You are my guests, of course,” Jon said. “So how are you?” he asked Matt. “How’s the trip business going?”
“You are the trip business.”
“How’s your mother?” Jon had turned businessman brusque.
“Well, but more than somewhat confused, as you can imagine.”
“Same with my brother.” The waiter came to take their orders and then they were left in blessed peace for a few moments. The level of attentive service at this restaurant assured a good many necessary “time-outs” in the conversation.
Temple suspected they all ordered just to get it over with. Salads were too messy for delicate, groundbreaking conversations, Temple knew from experience. Your mouth was always sprouting spinach leaves that wouldn’t chew, or your fork was pursuing vagrant bleu cheese crumbles just as words were most urgently called for. The guys ordered steak entrées and she wild salmon.
“You should know,” Jon told them while the tablecloth still hosted only drinks, the roll basket, and butter containers, “and this might be a bit shocking. I want to come out of the closet.”
That shut their mouths.
“In terms of our”—he gestured back and forth between himself and Matt—“relationship.”
Matt, shocked, opened his mouth to speak.
“You’re right, Matt. Secrets are corrosive. Besides.” Jon looked sheepish. “My brother knows something is wrong. I can’t keep him in the dark much longer.”
“I don’t even know your brother’s name,” Matt said. “Why should he be the deciding factor in anything that involves my mother, as well as you?”
“Because he loves Mira and wants to marry her.”
“If he does, he’ll let her come to terms with the problem on her own. She won’t even talk to me about it.”
“It’s not a problem.” Jon smiled the same heart-stopping way Matt did when he was pleased. “Knowing Philip, he’ll win her over. Consider me the advance guard for a better future trip to Chicago,” Jon told him. “You’re not exactly nobody. The extended family only knows you’re a ‘distant relative,’ but is wild to meet you,” he added as ruefully as Matt spoke of his birth father’s family. “Now that I’ve seen the lovely Miss Barr, that’ll go double.”
Matt just shook his head, trying to imagine—like Temple—who, when and where, would tell Mira the family that had banished mother and infant son thirty-five years ago was strong-arming their belated introduction into their bosom.
After a few sips all around, Jon broached what seemed an even more uneasy subject for him. “Since the … revelation, I’ve studied the family financial structure.”
“I’m financially fine,” Matt said. “I’d be financially fine if the best job I could find was at a fast-food place.”
“I understand that. I admire where you are. I admire your independence. I’m not thinking according to need. I’m thinking according to … justice. Moral responsibility. My parents’ family had an inflated notion of their position. They opposed my enlisting in the armed forces. They wiped my wishes and obligations and responsibilities away like bread crumbs off a table.”