“I prefer to think of it as a variation on bouillabaisse. It was hardly the strangest thing ever to cross my palate. A particular dinner in China comes to mind. They do things there with snakes-”
“That shouldn’t be discussed before dinner,” Jayne said firmly, giving him a look of disgust. She took Rachel by the arm again and steered her toward the dining room, interrogating and commenting all the way, her conversation flowing from one topic to the next without pause. “I think it’s just wonderful that you’ve come back to take care of Addie. We all try to check in on her from time to time, but it’s not the same. I hear you’re a singer. Will you look for work here in Anastasia?”
“I have a job lined up at the Phylliss Academy of Voice in San Francisco,” Rachel said, seeing no reason to hide the fact from them. At any rate, she needed to practice saying it. She was going to have to tell Addie soon, so they could make plans to sell Drake House and move.
“San Francisco?” Jayne said it as if it were a place totally foreign to her.
Bryan merely stood silent, his expression carefully blank.
“Yes. As soon as I get my mother’s affairs in order, we’ll be selling the house and moving to the city.”
“Does Addie know about this?” Bryan asked, taking great care to sound more neutral than he felt.
Rachel nibbled at her lower lip. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Not yet.”
At that moment Addie made her grand entrance into the dining room. Her style of dress was even more incongruous than Jayne’s. Over her flowered housedress she wore a filmy pink robe trimmed in pink ostrich feathers. On her feet, her ever-present green rubber boots. She took in the group with one regal, sweeping glance.
“Hennessy, my G and T, please.”
Rachel grabbed at Bryan’s coat sleeve. He turned toward her and her concern momentarily fled. He was so close. His mouth was no more than inches from hers as he leaned down toward her. She moistened her lips nervously as the memory of his kiss came flooding back. Beneath her fingertips and the fine wool of his jacket his arm was a rock of muscle.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, easily reading her mind. “There’s almost no G in Addie’s G and T. I just splash some on the ice so I’m not really fibbing when I give it to her.”
He turned toward the sideboard to mix the drink. Rachel sighed, helpless to stop the sweet warmth flooding her chest. It would be so very easy to let herself fall for him. He was handsome and charming in a rather bizarre sort of way. He was so kind and solicitous toward Addie. She watched him hand her mother the weak drink. He winked at Addie and pretended to pull a quarter out of her ear.
“You’re an idiot, Hennessy. I don’t know why I keep you on,” Addie blustered, shooing him away, but there was a rare twinkle in her eye and a bloom in her cheeks that hadn’t been there when they’d returned home after the incident in the park.
How Rachel envied him that easy rapport with her mother. He didn’t have the burden of a past full of pain and mistakes weighing down his every word. He didn’t have the burden of a future full of heartache and sacrifice holding him back. He could walk away anytime he liked, and no one could ever fault him. He didn’t have to deal with issues like selling Drake House. All Bryan had to worry about was pulling quarters out of people’s ears.
They sat down to a meal of thick, aromatic beef stew and hot biscuits. It wasn’t exactly a five-course dinner to go along with the china and silver on the polished walnut table, but it was hearty, healthy fare and required only one utensil to eat it-an important consideration for Addie, who was slowly losing her ability to deal with a full complement of flatware.
“Hennessy is quite an adequate cook,” Addie said, dipping her biscuit into the gravy on her plate and nibbling at it delicately. “He’s an impudent rascal, insisting on eating at the table with the rest of us, but I tolerate him.”
Rachel frowned. Bryan wasn’t the butler, and she didn’t see any reason for him to be treated like one. But when she opened her mouth to set her mother straight, Bryan caught her eye and shook his head ever so slightly.
“That’s very big of you, Addie,” he said. “Not everyone is as generous and forgiving as you are.”
Addie gave him a shrewd look. “Remember that, young man.” She tossed back the last of her gin and tonic and thrust the glass at him for a refill. Lifting her nose slightly, she glanced askance at Rachel. “Some people don’t appreciate generosity and sacrifice, and look what happens to them.”
Rachel ground her retort between her teeth and choked it down with a piece of potato.
“Did I mention how stunning you look tonight, Addie?” Bryan said affably, handing her glass back to her filled with tonic water and a slice of lime. “I can’t think of another woman who could wear that outfit quite the way you do… unless it might be Jayne,” he added, grinning across the table at his friend, who stuck her tongue out at him.
Addie beamed and fluffed her ostrich feathers.
“And didn’t Rachel find a beautiful dress?” Bryan said, not realizing the way his voice dropped and softened. Nor did he realize the longing that shone in his eyes.
Rachel sat directly across from him, between Addie, at the head of the table, and Jayne. A tiny smile of gratitude canted the corners of her lips.
Addie gave her daughter a hard, assessing look, “Yes, it’s very suitable. For once you don’t look like some cheap, wandering Gypsy.”
The smile faded away as Rachel closed her eyes and counted to ten.
“Rachel,” Jayne said brightly as she picked around the meat in her stew. “Tell us all about your career as a singer. My, how exciting that must be. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
“That’s not much to tell,” Rachel said, bracing her shoulders. She kept her head down, her eyes trained on her plate as she tried to extricate herself from the subject as quickly as she could without being rude. “We played a lot of clubs, managed to get on a couple of PBS folk music shows.”
“That’s wonderful.” Jayne smiled. “I just love folk music. It’s very spiritual. So visual and honest in its images. Don’t you agree, Addie?”
Addie’s lips pinched into a white line. “Drivel. Opera is the only pure form of vocal music.”
Jayne never missed a beat, turning back to Rachel. “You said ‘we.’ I take it you have a partner?”
“Had,” Rachel said shortly. Her fingers tightened on her fork in anticipation of the comment her mother would surely make.
“Feckless little ferret.”
“Mother, please…”
“Addie, I love your hair in that style. What do you call it?” Bryan asked.
Addie scowled at him. “A braid. Honestly, Hennessy, there are times I wonder if you aren’t mentally deficient.”
“Well, the color is marvelous,” he went on, grinning as he speared vegetables with his fork.
Addie’s attention shifted between Rachel and Bryan, between unpleasantness and inanity. Bryan’s wink won her over, and she turned toward him with a pleased look. “You think so?” she asked, stroking the frazzled braid that lay over her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking of dying it. I saw a color on television called Sable Seductress.”
“Oh, no. Blondes have more fun. Take it from me,” Bryan said, winking at her again.
Addie blushed and turned toward Jayne. “He’s such a flirt.”
“Always has been, Addie,” Jayne said. “His whole family is that way. Why, it would make you swoon to see all those men together. They look like something out of Gentleman’s Quarterly.”
“Where is that Australian tonight?” Addie demanded, her mind already drifting from the topic of Bryan.
“Reilly’s in Vancouver shooting a movie,” Jayne said, automatically glowing at the thought of her husband.
Bryan managed to steer the conversation in Jayne’s direction for the remainder of the meal. He coaxed her into speaking at length about her husband’s acting career and her own budding career as a director. As curious as he was to learn more about Rachel and her past, he wasn’t eager to have Jayne prize the information out of her there at the dinner table, where Addie could carve it all up for ridicule.