Lou, reminisced. “My tenth, I think. I still remember how much fun that was.”
“And she didn’t need a planner to help her with it,” Hollis said pointedly.
Shannon tilted her head at him. “Okay, Dad. We got your point.”
She didn’t sound cross, exactly, James decided, studying the family dynamics. More resigned and just a little irked, as if she were used to her family indulgently dismissing her work—rather as if she didn’t like it, but half expected it, anyway.
“Do you remember a special birthday party from your youth, James?” Lois asked, looking eager to jump into the conversation again.
“I never actually had a birthday party. My parents weren’t really into that sort of thing.”
The sudden silence around the table was rather jarring after so much chatter.
“You never had a birthday party?” Virginia asked. “Surely you had a few friends over for cake.”
“Well, no. But my parents always took me to a nice restaurant on my birthday.” Uncomfortable with that conversational direction, he picked up the last segment of his sandwich. “This hamburger is delicious. What seasonings did you use, Hollis?”
“That’s a family secret,” Hollis replied with a grin. “We don’t share it with anyone who isn’t born a Gambill or married into the family.”
“It’s Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce,” Shannon said with a roll of her eyes. “So, you can make your own hamburgers without proposing to anyone here.”
“Now you’ve done it, Shannon,” Stu scolded her with mock outrage. “Now we have to kill him.”
“Stu’s only joking, of course, James,” Lois said in a stage whisper.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I know.”
“When do we get the ice cream, Mama?” one of the twins called out.
Hollis climbed out from behind the picnic table. “The ice cream is ready. Who wants strawberry and who wants peach?”
“Strawberry!”
“Peach!”
“Chocolate!”
Karen sighed. “We don’t have any chocolate, Jack. You’ll get peach.”
The kids went crazy when the rich homemade ice cream was spooned out of the stainless-steel tubs. The adults attacked the dessert with almost as much enthusiasm. James accepted a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which he enjoyed very much.
Shannon jumped a couple of feet when one of her little nieces dropped a scoop of strawberry ice cream down the front of her top.
“Holy kamoley, that’s cold!” she said, her voice suspiciously high-pitched as she snatched frantically for paper napkins. Rather than helping, her family laughed heartlessly as she did a funny dance trying to swipe the sticky, ice-cold mixture from her skin.
“Since she started her kids’ party business, Shannon’s taken to saying holy kamoley in place of any curse words,” Stacy explained to James with an indulgent, big-sister smile. “It’s rather annoying, but we’re getting used to it.”
He thought it was sort of funny, himself. Never having had an older sibling—or a younger one, for that matter—he wondered if Shannon minded being treated like one of the little kids dashing around the tables.
It was an interesting family, he mused, continuing to study them as they finished the dessert. Noisy, freewheeling, outspoken, good-humored, they gabbed and joked and argued and teased. So very different from his own family. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a family like this one, how he might have turned out.
An argument erupted among some of the children, and though it was dealt with quickly and firmly, everyone had to laugh when little Sammy piped in with a gusty, “Holy ’moley!”
James grinned, thinking how much his friend Ron would enjoy hearing about this eccentric clan. Ron usually had a funny anecdote to share when the study group managed to get together these days; next time, James would have a story of his own.
“Can we go swimming again?” one of the kids asked when the ice cream bowls had been scraped clean.
“No more swimming today,” Stacy said firmly. “But we can play ball. We brought the plastic bats and balls and the little rubber bases and there’s plenty of room on the grass over there to play.”
“Will Uncle Stu be the pitcher?”
Stu nodded. “Gladly. Aunt Shannon can be the catcher.”
“We don’t actually form teams,” Shannon explained to James. “We just let each kid bat and run the bases. That keeps them entertained for a while.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Want to join us? You can play shortstop. Aunt Lois tends to get distracted and wander off during the game.”
He chuckled, but shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d better head back to Little Rock. I have to be at the hospital early in the morning.”
The entire family protested when he announced he was leaving. He shook hands with the men again, waved off another round of thanks for his rescue of young Kyle, accepted hugs and cheek kisses from the women—and was less surprised when they were offered this time, since he’d gotten a bit more familiar with their demonstrativeness.
Lois insisted on giving him a handful of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in a paper napkin. She told him she intended to bring them out after the ball game, in case anyone could possibly still be hungry by then.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll enjoy these.”
“Good. I hope to see you again sometime,” she replied. Tugging at his arm to get him to bend closer to her, she whispered, “My niece is single, you know.”
He smothered a smile and evaded the comment by saying, “It was very nice to meet you, Lois.”
“Shannon, why don’t you walk James to his car?” Virginia suggested.
He supposed he should have insisted he didn’t need an escort, but he figured he’d be wasting his breath. Not to mention that he didn’t mind spending a little more time with Shannon, even if only to walk to his car.
Once again he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking when she nodded in response to her mother’s hint and turned to walk with him. Maybe she was simply thinking along the same lines as he—that it would be useless to protest. Not particularly flattering, if that were true.
He let her walk a couple of steps ahead of him toward the parking lot. Her thin white cover-up fluttered when she walked, floating around her slender body to end at midthigh. He could just see the outline of her yellow bikini through the now-dry fabric. Her hair had dried into a mop of soft red curls that looked temptingly touchable.
When she glanced back at him with a smile, it occurred to him that she wore
