Skinny Dipping (15 page)

Her mother, knowing full well her point had been made with surgical precision, didn’t bother pushing the blade deeper. “Promise me you’ll mingle. That’s all I ask.”

It would be so much easier if Mimi could convince herself that her mother was only interested in Mimi’s success, or lack thereof, inasmuch as it reflected on her, but Mimi knew this wasn’t true. Solange wanted the best for all her daughters. She just had a very specific definition of “best”: challenging work, satisfaction in a lucrative career, social standing. She’d been waiting Mimi’s entire life for her to “sort through things and find a purpose,” and no matter how many times Mimi had told her mother she
had
a purpose (which was living with as few complications as possible), Solange refused to believe it.

Not my daughter. You have too much potential. I refuse to believe you intend to squander it.
How many times had Mimi heard a variation on this theme? A thousand? Two?

Poor Solange. Still, if it would make her mother happy…

“Sure,” Mimi said.

“Excellent.” Solange nodded approvingly. “Sarah knows everyone here. So, if you want to know who anyone is, ask her.” She turned to Mary. “Your father is in dire need of salvation. He’s been tending to your grandmother for the last fifteen minutes. I’d go, but…”

But Mother Werner despised Solange, Mimi silently finished. Mimi had never met Solange’s mother-in-law. For years, the old lady, a staunch Catholic as well as a second-generation German American, had not recognized her son’s marriage to a divorcée, and a French one to boot, and so had never visited the Werner household while Mimi lived there. From the few remarks Sarah had let drop over the years, Mimi thought Solange had probably met her match in Mother Werner.

Mary lifted her chin like a soldier who’d been given a suicide mission and chugged off through the crowd, her gown swishing. Solange turned the laserlike focus of her gaze on her youngest. “Hm. You look awfully well, Sarah.”

Sarah’s smile held a hint of trepidation, and Mimi realized she was hiding something. Mistake. Solange could detect dissembling like a guard dog can sense fear. She had a similar reaction, too: attack. Mimi had long ago learned simply to tell the truth and mentally hum until the storm of words passed.

“You, too, Mom,” Sarah said, tucking a lock of her blond hair behind her ear and leaning forward to kiss their mother’s cheek. “Happy anniversary.”

Solange was so startled by this unprecedented display of affection from the most undemonstrative of her very undemonstrative children that she became flustered and lost whatever train of thought she’d been pursuing. She blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, said, “Oh. Well. Thank you. Ah…Well…Be sure to introduce Mimi around,” and disappeared back into the crowd.

Mimi eyed Sarah thoughtfully.
Sarah
handle Solange? Nah.

“What’s up with Mary?” she asked when Solange had vanished. “She’s reached new levels of bitchiness.”

“Cankles,” Sarah answered without preamble.

Cankles, the uninterrupted merging of the lower calf with the ankle resulting in a column effect, were the curse of the Werner women. Mary had them; Sarah had them to a degree. You could lose all the weight you wanted and do toe raises until you fainted; there was no cure for the Cankle Gene. Thankfully, Mimi did not carry any Werner genes.

“You may have noted the floor-sweeping dress,” Sarah went on. “She’s covering them up. She’s become preoccupied with them.”

“But she’s always had cankles.”

“I know, you know, but I’m not sure she did,” Sarah said. “It’s like she looked down one day, discovered them, and has been pissed off ever since.”

She grieved for her sister’s cankle tragedy for a few seconds before shaking it off and sweeping a champagne flute from the tray of a passing server. She lifted the glass in Mimi’s direction and twinkled at her. “Here’s to us, Big Sister.”

This was unsettling in the extreme. In all the years Mimi had known her, Sarah had never, not even once, twinkled. It was like Sarah had had a personality transplant.

“You look pleased with life,” Mimi said.

“I am.” Sarah nodded eagerly as if she’d been waiting for an opening. “I’m seeing someone.”

“Seeing
someone
?” Oh, poor Sarah. Mimi didn’t know for a certainty, but she strongly suspected—and she was usually never far off mark in her strong suspicions—that Sarah had never had a serious relationship before. Mimi asked, “Female or male?”

“Male. Definitely, extravagantly male.”

The twinkling, the laughter, the dress, the cleavage. All was explained. “So, you’re in love, huh?”

Sarah’s brow furrowed and she looked at Mimi like she hadn’t understood her. “Love?”

Mimi was pretty sure her face wore a similarly confused expression. “Yeah. Love.”

Sarah’s face cleared. “Wow, Mimi, I didn’t realize until now just how much older you are than me. I’m not in love. We hook up on weekends.” She leaned forward, her voice lowering to a whisper.
“The sex is fantastic.”

“Oh,” Mimi said because she didn’t know what else to say. Good for you? Congratulations? Does he have an older brother?

“He’s my first,” Sarah said happily.

“But not last.”

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy,” Sarah said with such casual insouciance Mimi was taken aback. “Smart, too. He’s one of my—”

“Professors,” Mimi said, feeling a stir of anger.

“No. One of the grad students I tutor.” She giggled.
Sarah
giggled. “Isn’t that naughty?”

“Yeah. My sister, the Ivy League Mary Kay Letourneau.”

Sarah gave a ladylike snort. “Oh, he’s older than me. But what makes it great is that neither of us wants a relationship. But we’re not pathetic bedroom prowlers, either.”

“Does Mary know?”

“Good lord, no! She’d go Judge Judy on my ass.”

Ass? Sarah didn’t use vulgar language. Did she?

“I knew I could tell you, though.”

Mimi wondered why and was about to ask when Sarah grabbed her arm and pulled her into the crowd. “Mom at twelve o’clock high. She’ll be over here in a few minutes unless she sees you talking to someone.”

“I am talking to someone.”

“Me? Thank you! Aren’t you a honey?” Sarah said, tickled. “So, who do you want to meet?” She looked around the room, her eyes narrowed purposefully. “Aha! See that guy over there? Darn, he just turned. He’s talking to Congressman Popitch. Dark hair, tallish?”

Mimi nodded.

“Dad just sold BioMedTech to an equity trading company and he’s their ax man. Man, I bet he has stories to tell.” Sarah was practically licking her lips.

“Ax man?”

“You know nothing about business, do you, Mimi?” Sarah asked pityingly.

“Nope.”

“He’s the scouting team and advance unit all rolled into one. When his company is deciding whether or not to buy a business, they send him in to scope out the situation, find the weak links, and determine the business’s value. If his company goes ahead with the purchase, he makes recommendations about how to, ah, trim the fat.” She made a cutting motion across her throat.

“Cold,” Mimi said. Which is exactly why she never wanted to be in business. All the responsibility, all the cold-blooded decisions to be made, all the people depending on you to make a sound judgment. What if you had hay fever that day and your judgment was impaired? No, thank you.

“Growth, especially economic growth, is never painless.” Sarah cast an appraising look at the tuxedo-clad back. “But if your head has to be on the chopping block, he’s the guy I’d want swinging the ax.”

“Oh?” Mimi asked.

“I met him a couple days ago. Sex appeal. He oozes it.”

“Okay, I’m in,” Mimi said in the spirit of cooperation.

“Great,” Sarah said. “Just don’t tell Mary I introduced you. Mary”—Sarah’s grin was conspiratorial—“has a crush.”

As opposed to Sarah, who had a boy toy.

Sarah led the way to where the two men stood in conversation. They were closing in for the kill—the Charbonneau tendency to see things in hunting terms must be catching—when their prey must have sensed their approach and turned.

Wow,
was all Mimi could think. He’d been smooth before, but the tux and dress shirt had jettisoned him into the Rolls-Royce league. The Phantom line. His jawline shone, his eyes glittered, his white dress shirt glowed, even his manicured nails had a soft luster. And his hair, Mimi thought disbelievingly staring up at him, was perfect. Warren Zevon would have been proud.

“Hi, Mimi,” Joe Tierney said. Yup. His voice was still the sexiest soft masculine purr she’d ever heard.

His gaze flickered over her, quickly, no more than a second of assessment, but she saw the surprise in his eyes. So she let her gaze drift over him, too, only in a much more speculative manner.

“Well, don’t you clean up nice?” she said.

Joe burst out laughing. Mimi had said exactly what he’d been thinking and she knew it. She looked lovely, womanly and relaxed. A floaty peacock blue dress followed her curves as though made for her, the color turning her tanned skin amber while around her throat hung a magnificent pearl and diamond necklace.

Both the dress and the necklace surprised the hell out of him. He’d thought she was poor. Hadn’t she said something about not being able to afford a replacement for one of those shacks neighboring Prescott’s lake home? Maybe it was just the Olsons. Anyway, he’d still have pegged her as more of a madras caftan type, one who wore lots of handcrafted bead necklaces and parted her hair in the center for special occasions.

“Aren’t you going to return the compliment?” she asked. Beside her, Sarah Werner and Congressman Popitch traded startled glances.

He tipped his head and gave her a slow once-over. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “I rather miss the seaweeds.”

“No, you don’t,” she chided him without criticism.

Of course, she was right. Only for a minute there he’d forgotten. A chasm separated their lifestyles. His life was controlled, structured, and refined; hers was unstructured, unplanned, and messy. In fact…what was she doing here? The incongruity of seeing her at a party given by and for the Midwest’s most successful and conservative citizens struck him broadside. He’d been so caught up in the pleasure he felt on seeing her again, he hadn’t asked how it had occurred. And on closer inspection, she was simply a more polished version of the Fowl Lake bon vivant he’d met last September.

In spite of the designer dress, she hadn’t bothered with high heels or stockings, and the only makeup she wore was lipstick. She’d wrestled her thick curly hair into a plait and coiled it at the nape of her neck, but a few mutinous tendrils, mostly silvery ones, had escaped and drifted like spider silk around her temples. He glanced at her hands, long fingered and light boned, the nails cut rather than filed, and unpolished. Maybe she was some sort of wacky trust-fund baby. He could look into the future and see her in another two decades; she’d be a full-fledged eccentric complete with waist-length gray hair and caftan, wearing a fortune in pearls around her neck as she Birkenstocked her way to the co-op.

“I forgot your phone number,” he abruptly told her, though God alone knew why. She hadn’t asked and in fact looked surprised he’d mentioned it. She hadn’t expected him to call, he realized. This disconcerted him. Hadn’t she wanted him to call?

“I tried looking you up in the phone book,” he went on. “Do you know how many M. Olsons there are in Minneapolis?”

“Quite a few, I’d imagine,” she said, her smile giving nothing away.

“You know Mimi, Mr. Tierney?” Sarah Werner, Tom Werner’s pretty young daughter asked, recalling Joe to the fact that he and Mimi were not alone. It was unlike Joe to forget his social skills.

“I’ve had the pleasure. We met at a family gathering,” Joe answered. At Sarah’s inquisitive look he added, “Her family.”

“Excuse me?” Sarah said.

“He said ‘at her family gathering,’” Congressman Popitch repeated, pleased to be able to add something to the conversation.

“But
we’re
Mimi’s family,” Sarah said. “She’s my sister.”

Joe couldn’t disguise his surprise. He couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to be associated with the conservative, slightly stuffy, socially prominent Werners.

“Half sister. Same mother. Hello, Walt,” Mimi said, turning to Congressman Popitch.

Solange? Solange was the driving force behind Tom Werner. A woman with a mind like a steel trap and a will, Joe was convinced, that could be subverted only by black magic. It had been Solange who’d convinced Tom to sell BioMedTech. He couldn’t see Mimi insisting on anything. She hadn’t even raised her voice in protest when her beloved lake shacks were being put on the auction block. This was interesting—

What was he thinking? He didn’t want to be interested in Mimi Olson. She was a Bohemian nutcase in a family of Bohemian nutcases, since she clearly hewed to her Olson relatives more than her mother’s. What did he want with a nutcase? Besides the obvious, he admitted, as his gaze touched discreetly on the small, curvy figure the slippery-looking material slithered over. Besides, he added sanctimoniously, she was also Tom Werner’s stepdaughter, which made her, by his own rules, off-limits. There, he thought, convinced.

Now the only question that remained was why he’d had to convince himself to stay away from Mimi Olson when he hadn’t had to do so with Delia Bunn, a woman who in every respect fit his criteria for a “really attractive woman.”

A sudden commotion on the other side of the room, near the big arched windows overlooking the lake, drew their attention. Sarah stretched herself on her tiptoes, looking over heads. “Oh, dear. Poor Mother.”

“What’s going on?” Mimi asked.

“It’s Grandmother. She—she’s dancing. Excuse me.” She hurried into the press.

“So, you’re Werner’s stepdaughter,” Joe said to Mimi. She’d been looking after Sarah but now returned her attention to him.

She gave a light guffaw. “No one has ever referred to me as Tom’s stepdaughter. Even Tom. Do they, Walt?”

“I doubt it,” Congressman Popitch agreed.

A muffled crash came from across the room. Mimi turned toward it. Around them, people had gone from interested to embarrassed and were now trying to cover up the sounds of whatever was happening with overanimated conversation, their eyes determinedly averted from the other side of the room.

“How do they refer to you, then?” Joe asked.

“Hm?” She wasn’t paying attention. She bit her lower lip, clearly struggling with some dilemma. “Would you excuse me?” she abruptly asked.

“By all means,” he said. “Promise you’ll come back later?”

“Sure.” She gave him an odd half smile, then nodded at the congressman. “Keep fighting the good fight, Walt,” she said and headed into the crowd.

“You’d never guess she shared any of the same DNA with the other Werner women, would you? Couldn’t be more unlike her half sisters,” Congressman Popitch said, watching Mimi disappear. He shook his head. “Talk about a loose cannon.”

Joe angled his head inquiringly. “You know Mimi Olson well?”

Popitch snorted. “Not really. But who does? Can you imagine? Here she’s born with every advantage. She’s cute, Solange claims she’s a genius—and I use the word ‘claims’ advisedly—Tom’s as connected as they come and unaccountably fond of her, Solange is rich in her own right—you’ve heard of Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow depilatory? That’s Solange’s family”—here Walt leaned in and after a quick look around whispered—“and Mimi doesn’t have those unfortunate Werner legs, if you know what I mean?”

Joe, even on brief acquaintance with the Werners, did.

“Yet what does she do for a living? Cons lonely folk into thinking she’s talking to their dead loved ones. Course, Solange tries to keep that on the lowdown, but it’s not a secret. What a waste.” Popitch sighed.

Joe found himself nodding in agreement, but what he was really thinking was that he was intrigued. All over again.