was all the payoff she needed.
Tally harrumphed, knowing she’d lose the argument again. Then she glanced at Ryan Stoddard. “Shall I slip him your phone number so you can pretend you’re not making the first move?”
Jade tore her attention off the necklace—on loan here tonight before being moved to a larger local museum run by Tally’s society—and frowned at her overly romantic godmother. “Absolutely not. I can arrange my own introduction, thank you.”
“You need more than an introduction,” Tally said in disgust. “Darlin’, you need a shove into a naked man’s arms.”
Jade raised a brow. “I somehow don’t think I’m going to land in a naked man’s arms immediately after an introduction.”
Something like that might happen to Jenny, the flighty member of their family. But not Jade. Not the mysterious one.
Tally smiled, catlike. “Well, now, that depends on who does the introducin’.”
Tally had been looking for a love life for Jade for two years, ever since Jade had ended a relationship with a man she’d cared about but who’d never really understood her. He’d asked one too many times, Who wants to make a living telling ghost stories? Rick had never appreciated or respected the kind of life she’d chosen for herself.
Respect was important to Jade. Having come from a family who’d done without it a lot of the time, she was determined never to feel lower than anyone else. Any man in her life had to be one she respected in return. One who could match her in wits, challenge her in ideas, and keep her on her toes. He had to support her choices, no matter how crazy her life got. With her family, her life sometimes got really crazy.
And she had to love him beyond all reason.
So far, she hadn’t met such a man. She certainly wouldn’t here, tonight, with all the rich snobs looking down their noses at her—a member of that side of the famous local family.
“You never know what can happen at a first meeting,” Tally said, apparently not noticing Jade’s distraction.
“Actually I do,” Jade said. “Remember the handsome guy who came on the garden walking tour a few years ago, saying he was looking for movie locations?”
“The producer?”
“He wasn’t.”
“He whisked you off to his fabulous place on the beach.”
Jade crossed her arms. “Not his.”
Tally sounded a little less enthusiastic as she asked hopefully, “He drove that beautiful sports car?”
“Rented.”
“Well, darling, I hear this man,” she nodded toward the dark-haired, blue-suited stranger, “is exactly who he claims to be. A nationally known, wealthy, professional architect. So if at first you didn’t succeed…try again.”
“No.” Jade ignored the older woman’s hopeful look. “And don’t say a word to my mother about this. It’s not what you think.” She lifted her drink to her lips, murmuring, “It’s a private matter. One I need to clear up with him.”
“A matter of getting naked and between the sheets?”
Rolling her eyes, she ignored Tally’s salacious chuckle. “No. Now go mingle. Be sociable. Rule the world through your glove-covered iron fist. I think I see someone wearing cream-colored shoes with a taupe dress. Go skewer her with that sharp tongue of yours.”
Tally gave a delicate shiver. “Hideous. Money truly is wasted on the color-blind and those one generation out of the trailer park.”
Jade chuckled, knowing Tally herself was only two generations out of the trailer park.
The older woman’s eyes lit up, spying a wealthy older man who’d recently moved to town. Jade recognized the look. Tally was a fund-raiser supreme.
“Right on time,” Tally whispered, greeting the man with a languid little wave of her hand. “That’s Leonard something-or-other from Chicago. He’s here with his wife who wears altogether too much jewelry. I have to make nice with them before somebody tells her only tarts and carpetbaggers’ wives wear so much jewelry to an event like this.”
“Nobody here would say it—except you. Now be nice or I’ll warn your prey to hide his wallet.”
That reminded Jade of her own victim. She began to look around for Ryan Stoddard, target of her search-and-destroy mission. Searching hadn’t been tough—he’d certainly stood out. The destroying part might be more difficult. But he deserved it.
Anyone who broke the heart of her baby sister deserved destroying. He was just lucky Jade was only going to humiliate him, not castrate him like she’d prefer to do.
“There is one other person who could get away with saying such a thing,” Tally said, after probably trying to decide whether or not Jade had been paying her a compliment. “Your mama. I wish she hadn’t chosen this month to go on her cruise. I need her here.”
“It is her honeymoon,” Jade said, not bothering to keep a dry note from her voice.
“What’s one more honeymoon to your mama?”
That sentence, in a nutshell, could probably explain Jade’s entire life. They’d each had their own ways of dealing with Daddy’s death more than a dozen years ago. Jade had grown mature before her time. Jenny had settled firmly into her role of spoiled baby. And Mama had just kept getting married, hoping she’d find someone else to love as much as she’d loved Daddy.
A shrink would probably say their past explained why Jade felt so protective of her sister, Jenny. It had been the two of them, facing the zaniness of their world with a much-married mother and a scandalous family, for a long time. Though only five years older, Jade had become so used to mothering her sister that she sometimes forgot they were just siblings.
It incensed Jade to remember the tears on her sister’s cheeks. Jenny deserved some payback for what Ryan Stoddard had done to her. And Jade was going to see that she got it.
“Jade? Are you listening to me?”
She returned her attention to Tally. “Of course. But I have to say, this time I think Mama’s finally met her match. A man with money who doesn’t let her tell him what to do.”
Tally nodded. “I have high hopes, too. But I do miss her. I needed her tonight. I don’t suppose you…”
Jade narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. I’m not one of your society matrons. Most people in this room have no idea who I am, and I like it that way.”
Tally frowned. The argument was an old one.
“Besides,” Jade added, “if I want somebody to drop dead, I’ll tell them to drop dead. Not, ‘How delightful you look, sugah. Oh, I just love your hair. Why, it’s almost exactly the shade and style of my grandma’s French poodle.”’
Tally chuckled as Jade laid on a heavy Southern accent, which was nearly nonexistent in her everyday speech. “You’re
