Turnabout's Fair Play (9 page)

Out on the dance floor, Jack was making Zarah, now without the ridiculous tiered bustle and train attached to her elegant A-line wedding gown, look like the woman in the fluffy dresses in the old musicals Caylor liked watching whenever they got together for movie nights, whirling her around the floor to a 1940s tune. Zarah’d made Bobby take dance lessons with her—if she was going to be forced to dance, she didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of so many people—and it showed in the ease and comfort with which she moved around the floor.

And Jamie …

Flannery sat up a little straighter. Jamie O’Connor danced with Bobby’s grandmother. And when that song ended, he danced with Zarah’s grandmother. Then he danced with another older lady. All this despite the fact that several cougars prowled the perimeter of the dance floor, obviously waiting for a chance to pounce on one of the best looking—and obviously single—men here.

She sighed, propped her chin on her fist, and scraped the frosting off the cake, saving it for last. Jack, the jerk, had told her after three dances that she’d have to find another partner, because he wasn’t going to dance with her again tonight.

A dapper man, probably in his forties, came up to the table. “Would you like to dance?”

“No, thank you.” Flannery smiled at him—and when he realized she wasn’t going to explain why, he frowned and left. She returned her full attention to the cake. There were plenty of men here she could dance with, and in other circumstances she might—

“May I ask you to dance?” A twentysomething guy—she was pretty sure she’d seen him with a petite brunette during supper—stood across the table from her.

“You may, but I’m not dancing tonight.”

After what Jack had said, followed by another unfortunate encounter with Jamie O’Connor, she was officially off men tonight.

It only took declining six other offers for the men in the room to get the clue—she didn’t want to dance.

She finished off the cake and coffee and sat watching the few hundred guests who hadn’t left right after the cake cutting mill about the room. It reminded her of a dinner at a writers’ conference—everyone seemed to have an agenda of whom they wanted to talk to before the evening ended and they missed their chance. She’d figured with the caliber of friends and acquaintances Bobby’s folks had—the majority of people here tonight—it would be more of a see-and-be-seen kind of event. But too many business cards had been exchanged in the last thirty minutes to write this off as a simple high-profile society event.

Would anyone notice if she got another piece of cake?

A familiar sound echoed from what seemed to be a great distance. She straightened from her slumped position in the chair and grabbed for her purse under the table. She pulled out the phone. New text message from…Jack Colby?

N
EED TO SEE YOU
ASAP. JC

Flannery looked around—there, on the far side of the dance floor. Jack raised his arm and motioned her over.

The thought of putting her shoes back on made her groan, so she left them under the table with her purse—but carried her phone with her. If something had come up at work, she might need it.

The hem of her skirt dragged on the floor, since it had been altered to just skim it when she had shoes on. She lifted it a little to keep from tripping, not caring if anyone noticed she was barefoot. Bridesmaids
always
took their shoes off during the reception.

Apologizing her way through the clusters of people blocking her path, she finally made it over to the group Jack stood with.

Immediately she dropped the skirt, regretting the decision to leave the shoes on the other end of the room. She swapped the phone to her left hand and extended her right. “Cole Samuels—good to see you again.”

The professional football player engulfed her hand with both of his. “Wow, you look fantastic. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you coming down the aisle.” He turned to the woman by his side. In normal circumstances, she’d be an average-height woman; beside this meat mountain, she looked positively tiny. “Amy Joy, this is Flannery McNeill, my editor.” He beamed at Flannery on those last two words.

His wife’s smile broadened, and she shook Flannery’s hand. “Flannery? Like the author, Flannery O’Connor?”

Flannery kept her cool. Why had her mother named her after someone famous?
Let the standard explanation begin
. “Yes. My mother was a big fan of literature, so she named her daughters after three of her favorite authors.”

“Ooh—what are your sister’s names?” Amy Joy asked.

“Emily and Sylvia.”

“Emily…for Emily Dickinson, the poet, right?”

Flannery nodded.

“And Sylvia …” Amy Joy’s porcelain-doll features crumpled into a frown. “I can’t think of who that would be for.”

Whom
, Flannery mentally corrected. “Sylvia Plath. I can’t say I share my mom’s taste in literature completely.”

Not only did Amy Joy resemble a china doll, but she also had a music box–worthy tinkling laugh. “It’s so nice to meet you. Cole hasn’t stopped talking about his book finally getting published. You’re the first publisher who took him seriously and didn’t try to talk him out of writing fiction and into writing about his experience winning college and pro championships and being an MVP and all that.”

Flannery’s smile returned, and she shrugged. “I’m a fiction editor. If Cole wrote nonfiction, I wouldn’t be the one working with him, so why would I try to talk him into that? I have to say I’m kind of surprised to see y’all here. I thought you lived in South Carolina during the off-season.”

Cole nodded. “Oh, we do. But Tank Patterson is my mentor. He’s part of a group of former players who offer to kinda take rookies under their wings and help them out throughout their careers. When I found out Tank Patterson wanted to mentor me, I couldn’t have been happier. He’s always been one of my role models. I don’t know Bobby as well as I’d like, but I couldn’t miss the wedding of Tank’s son.”

Of course. Zarah had told her about the connection when Flannery first mentioned she was considering acquiring Cole’s novels.

Jack touched her elbow. “Cole, Jamie, and I were just chatting—brainstorming, really—about some marketing ideas for Cole’s books.”

She cricked her neck, turning her head too fast, finally noticing someone else stood on the other side of her boss. Jamie gave her a tight smile and a dorky little wave.

“Jamie is a sports marketing rep at a large agency, so he’s got a lot of ideas for how we can possibly use some of Cole’s other endorsements to help leverage the marketing and sales of the novels.” Jack beamed at her as if he’d planned this turn of events all along.

“Is that so?” Flannery kept her smile plastered on—no need for Cole to know how much she loathed Jamie O’Connor. “Well, I’d be happy to listen to your ideas and take them to the marketing director when it comes time for that.”

“Oh, we can do better than that.” Jack wrapped his arm around Flannery’s waist and pulled her close into his side. “I’ve asked Jamie to set up a time when you and he can sit down with Cole and discuss some marketing ideas together. It’ll have to be this week, as Cole and Amy Joy are headed back to South Carolina on Friday.”

Amy Joy pulled a beeping phone out of her purse. “Oh, look at the time. I told the sitter service we’d be back to the room by eleven, and it’s ten after. It’s going to take us forever to get back through this hotel and find our room again.”

Jamie stepped forward and extended his right hand to Cole. “Good to talk to you tonight. I’ll give you a call Tuesday morning to set up that meeting time.”

“Great, we should know by then what our plans are for the rest of the week.” Cole inclined his head to Flannery and Jack. “It was great seeing you guys again. I’m really excited about working with your publishing house on this project.” He took his wife’s hand, and they left—though not easily, with many people wanting to speak to the sports star.

Flannery tried to pull away from Jack to escape, but he pulled her up against his side again. “Not so fast there, Speed Racer.” He turned, forcing her to face Jamie. “Jamie, based on the ideas we’ve already discussed, will you be able to find out before your meeting with Cole what endorsement deals he has and which ones might be to our advantage?”

“Sure. It’ll take some work, but I can do it.” Jamie glanced furtively at Flannery, then returned his dark-gray eyes to focus on Jack.

Still embarrassed? He should be. “Jack, why do I need to be at that meeting?” Did she sound like she was whining? She cleared her throat. “Jamie and Cole can meet and talk about his endorsements, and then Jamie can e-mail me—”

“No.” Jack squeezed her a little tighter, his expression clearly indicating he knew what she was trying to do. “I want you there in that meeting, too. No matter how much Jamie knows about sports marketing, he’s not an expert on publishing and marketing fiction. And before you ask, no, I’m not going to send Shandi or anyone from our marketing department. They don’t know anything about the project, and it would take you longer to get them up to speed than it would for you to just go to the meeting yourself.”

Flannery hoped her eyes conveyed to Jack just how much she absolutely and totally hated him at this moment. Work with Jamie O’Connor?

She’d rather let Dracula chow down on her neck.

Chapter 6

D
racula? Really?”

Jamie glared at Danny, whose eyes almost disappeared behind the high, full apples of his cheeks in his effort to contain his laughter. “It was just like seventh grade and Lisa Jackson all over again.”

Danny leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his coffee cup held in both hands. “She didn’t slap you, too?”

“No—but I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had.” Jamie scrubbed his hands over his face. He probably should have shaved for church this morning, but frankly, the only reasons he attended that church were because it was just down Old Hickory Boulevard from his townhouse community, and it was where all the big money in town attended—and he really didn’t care about impressing them anymore. “Man, I was such a
dork.”

The word tasted foul in his mouth, so he took a swig of the strong house coffee: black today, just like his mood.

“And you couldn’t just laugh it off with a wink and a smile and get her to see the humor in it?”

“No. I totally lost it. Started stammering like an imbecile. A dorky imbecile. I don’t know what it is about her that’s so different from every other beautiful woman I’ve been around. I can usually handle myself. Flirt. Laugh. Make them fall in love with me, even if just for five minutes.”

“I remember. You got really good at it in college. As I recall, that’s the only way you made it through Advanced Macroeconomic Theory—because the professor thought you were cute.”

“See—that’s what I’m talking about. Even sixty-year-old women, who should know better, fall for me. So why do I completely lose my cool whenever I’m near Flannery McNeill? I’m such an idiot.” Jamie pushed his cup back, leaned over, and pressed his forehead, nose, and chin against the table. He hoped it had been cleaned recently. He let his arms dangle from his shoulders.

Danny’s bolt of laughter brought Jamie upright again.

“What?”

Wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands, Danny shook his head. “I can’t believe you still do that face-plant move. Remember the time—”

“You swore you’d never bring that up.” The memory of a face-plant leading to getting his forehead stuck to a table in the middle-school cafeteria only added to his current sense of self-scorn. “I blame it on the job. If I hadn’t found out Friday morning that I’m losing my job, I might have had it more together last night and not embarrassed myself like that.”

“Whoa—what? You’re losing your job? What happened?”

Jamie started the story with rushing to get to work on Friday morning, and the more he talked about it—about the sense of expectation he’d walked into the meeting with only to have it crushed—the better he started feeling, not just about the fact that he’d be unemployed by the end of the week, but about what happened with Flannery last night.

How long had it been since he’d had someone other than Cookie with whom he could talk about things like this? Oh, yeah…five years, since the last time he’d communicated with Danny.

Before he realized it, he’d launched into the details of Bobby Patterson’s bachelor party, wanting to focus on the one patch of fun he’d had this weekend. He imagined his own eyes held a nostalgic gleam similar to the one that came into Danny’s eyes.

“I miss our paintball days.” Danny nodded, rubbing his chin in a contemplative manner. “But I have to say, the gaming I’m into now is a lot safer.”

“Yeah—I was going to ask you about that.”

“Really? Because you looked a little scared when I mentioned it yesterday.” Danny grinned at him, and the years fell away. Jamie forgot about getting laid off and embarrassing himself in front of Flannery. All that remained, all that mattered, was the lifetime of shared experiences he had with the man who sat across the table from him.