Right.
Well, there you go.
I wasn’t all better.
But I was a little better.
I smiled down at her. “Thanks, honey.”
“We’re outta here,” Pepper declared, taking Juno’s hand. “I’d say knock ’em dead, but I already know you will,” she said to me.
She gave me a wink.
Juno gave me a wave.
And they took off.
“Are you gonna survive?” Mag asked after they disappeared.
“If you don’t stop being a smartass, I’m going to tell Boone you’ve been mean to me,” I replied.
Mag started laughing and then he went back to the living room.
That wasn’t the threat I thought it would be.
So noted.
“I’ll help you pack,” Evie offered, and then she too scooted off the bed.
She helped me pack. She then hung with me while I redid my makeup (not too much, but definitely making an effort), put some flowy loose curls in my hair, donned the not-ripped skinny jeans that were ankle length, topped that with a creamy, off-the-shoulder blouse that flared out at bell sleeves, a slender necklace that sat at the base of my throat, and nude strappy sandals.
When I was done, it was time.
So off we went to Boone’s.
And after we dropped my bag, Evie and Mag took me downtown to Jax Fish House.
After offering me encouragement, Evie stayed in the car as Mag walked me in.
And after he got us in the door and located Boone, he bent his head and said in my ear, “It’s gonna go great, Ryn.”
I looked up at him.
He smiled down at me.
“Hey,” Boone greeted, obviously also having seen us and meeting me at the door.
My guy.
Such a great guy.
I looked up at him.
He smiled down at me.
Okay, now I was better.
“I’m gone. Have fun. Tell your folks I said hi,” Mag bid.
“Will do. Later,” Boone replied, took my hand, and asked, “Ready?”
Nope.
I nodded.
He squeezed my hand, his eyes sparkled, thus I knew he totally knew I wasn’t ready.
Then he led me to his parents.
I nearly fell flat on my face when he did.
Not because Boone’s dad was folding out of his seat, smiling a friendly smile that seemed so genuine, if it wasn’t, he would give Robert De Niro a run for his money in the acting stakes.
And also, he was a tall, lean, very attractive man.
No.
Because Boone’s mom looked like Ralph Lauren’s wife, younger, but no less gorgeous.
I’d seen a documentary about Ralph, and his wife was in her seventies, but looked like an aging-gently forty-five-year-old woman who looked more like thirty-five.
Mrs. Lauren was soft-spoken, sweet and openly adored her husband.
I’d marked that as goals (when I found a guy) and had totally forgotten about it until just then.
Now I remembered.
And I might never be soft-spoken (nor would I want to be, that just wasn’t me), but I hoped I was sweet (just my version), able to openly adore my man and had Boone’s mother’s timeless beauty until the day I died.
I mean, she had to be in her fifties and looked like an aging-gently thirty-five-year-old woman who looked twenty-five.
I reminded Mag of her?
How sweet was that?
“Dad, this is Ryn,” Boone introduced when we made the table. “Rynnie, this is my dad, Porter.”
“Ryn, really pleased to meet you,” Porter Sadler said, taking my hand in a warm grip.
Okay, the emphasis on “really” felt good.
“You too,” I replied.
His mom was up and also smiling at me, hand extended.
“Ryn,” she said when I took it. “I’m Anne-Marie. Lovely to meet you.”
“And you,” I replied.
She let me go.
Boone and his dad bumped into each other as they both tried to pull out my chair.
Like father, like son.
They shared a grin and Porter backed off.
I sat at the square table, boy, girl, boy, girl, which meant I was facing Anne-Marie.
Boone tucked me under, and I did another quick scan of both his parents just to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, and noted right off Boone got his father’s body, and his mother’s hair and eyes.
For the first time, I wondered what his brothers looked like.
“Was that Mag at the door?” his mom asked.
“Yeah, he couldn’t stay. He says hi,” Boone answered.
“Evie was in the car, my friend, his girlfriend,” I explained. “We’d been shopping. I think he was ready to get home.”
“Ah,” Anne-Marie murmured, clearly having experience with men and shopping. Then, “Your friend, Mag’s girlfriend?”
I didn’t want to get into the whole Lottie-matchmaking thing, considering it might lead to the whole I’m-a-stripper thing.
Fortunately, Boone had a ready response.
“We got mutual friends,” he said.
“Ah,” Anne-Marie repeated her murmur.
“So, Boone tells us you’re flipping a house,” Porter launched in.
“Yeah,” I confirmed, picking up the menu in front of me for something to do with my hands, but I didn’t study it.
“We’d love to see it while we’re here,” Anne-Marie noted.
I smiled at her. “That’d be great.”
She smiled back.
The server appeared and asked if I’d like a drink.
“Gin gimlet,” I ordered. “Hendrick’s please.”
“A girl who knows her gin,” Porter stated approvingly.
“I don’t know my gin, really,” I admitted. “I just know I like Hendrick’s better than Bombay, Tanqueray or Beefeater.”
“What he means is, a girl who likes gin, so he’ll have someone to drink it with,” Anne-Marie shared, which meant that martini in front of her was vodka.
“And if she likes Hendrick’s better than all those, she knows her gin,” Porter asserted.
Anne-Marie shook her head in a men and their pretentious ideas about booze gesture.
I grinned at her.
“After I put this drink order in, would you like me to get some appetizers going for you?” the server upsold.
I looked at my menu.
The Sadlers ordered oysters.
I figured out what I wanted for my meal, and oysters had no part in it since I tried one once, it moved in my mouth, and I was done with oysters forever.
I then set my menu aside.
“That’s a very pretty top,” Anne-Marie noted.
“Thanks, and you’re just very pretty,” I replied. “You remind me of Ralph Lauren’s wife. Though obviously younger.”
Her brows went up. “Ricky Lauren?”
“Have you seen her?”
Her face warmed and she was even more stunning. “Yes, and that’s quite a compliment, thank you.”
“I wonder if she knows she’s lookin’ in a frickin’ mirror at herself thirty years older and complimenting her own reflection?” Porter asked Boone.
Boone started laughing.
Anne-Marie snapped, “Porter!”
“Darlin’, she’s got blue eyes, you got green, and thirty years on her. She’s not blind,” Porter returned. He turned to me and winked. “We Sadler men have a definite type.”
Now it was me who started laughing.
“Porter!” Anne-Marie snapped again.
“What?” he asked her.
“You don’t discuss a lady’s age…ever, and you don’t tell your son’s girlfriend she looks like his mother,” she pointed out.
“Again, she’s not blind,” Porter pointed out in return.
“Oh, my goodness, what is she thinking of us?” Anne-Marie asked the ceiling.
It hit me then th
at they might be nervous too.
“I think your husband is funny and I think it’s an amazing compliment that anyone would say I look like you,” I told her. And when she turned her attention to me, I finished, “And that isn’t blowing sunshine because I really like your son and I really want you to like me. You’re just that stunning.”
Her face warmed again, and I had a feeling it wasn’t because I told her she was stunning.
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought.
Maybe it was going to be awesome.
If we could steer clear of the stripper thing.
At least for a while.
Like, as long as it took for me to get my house-flipping biz up and running and I wasn’t stripping anymore.
Porter cleared his throat.
Boone squeezed my thigh.
Porter gave us a break by talking about the Phillies’ chances that season (they sounded grim). Then Boone and he had a mild argument about how Boone was now a fan of the Rockies, which Porter clearly thought was an alarming display of disloyalty. Boone obviously disagreed. My drink was served, their oysters were served, and we all ordered our mains.
After the server walked away, casual as you please, before slipping an oyster delicately in her mouth, Anne-Marie noted, “So, Boone tells us you dance at a gentlemen’s club?”
Oh shit.
Boone got tense.
My body got so tight I thought it would snap in two.
“Annie,” Porter growled.
“As I shared earlier, if she thinks she needs to be embarrassed about that, I don’t know why,” Anne-Marie said shortly to her husband. “And she needs to know we feel that way and get it over with.”
She looked to me.
And then she laid it out.
“When I was young and in college, I thought my mother’s generation did all the work. Burned their bras, yada yada yada.” She circled her now-empty oyster shell. “Then the first job I had, my boss called me ‘Sunshine.’ The whole time I was there, even in meetings, he’d say, ‘Sunshine brought this to our attention.’ Or, ‘Sunshine found it in the brief.’ It was humiliating.”
“Oh my God, I’ll bet,” I replied.
“I worked for a lawyer. I was a paralegal,” she informed me. “I asked him to stop. And he told me to stop being so sensitive. It was a compliment. I had a sunny disposition. I tried to explain it didn’t feel like a compliment and again asked him to refrain. He was not pleased I was telling him how to behave, even if what I was telling him was how I wished to be addressed. Within a month, I was laid off. But before that, it was clear I’d been branded a troublemaker. In order to stay employed, the next time something like that happened at another job, and it happened, I kept my mouth shut.”
That was the worst.
“I’m so sorry,” I said like I meant it, because I so totally did.
“What I’m saying is, Ryn, that a woman who judges a woman on the decisions she makes about her life is no woman at all. Even if you grew up your whole life wanting to be an exotic dancer, that would be your choice and the instant a woman makes another woman feel badly about her choices, or worse, tries to take them away, we’ve lost.”
“Are we at war?” Porter asked conversationally.
“Not with you, you’re enlightened,” Anne-Marie answered blithely.
“Well, thank God for that,” Porter muttered, reaching for his beer.
“I’m glad you understand,” I said to Anne-Marie.
But Porter answered, “My wife’s point is, sweetheart, there’s nothing to understand.”
Oh God.
This was great!
Because Boone’s parents, especially his mom (but also his dad), were totally awesome.
I smiled at him then at her.
They smiled back.
Then Anne-Marie’s face turned stern when she aimed it at her son. “And now you can just relax.”
“I will remind you that I asked you not to bring that up with Ryn,” he returned, very unhappily.
Uh-oh.
“And you asked that because she’s clearly embarrassed by it and I wanted to set her mind at ease,” Anne-Marie shot back.
“I still asked you to let her bring it up, and I didn’t think that was too much to ask,” Boone retorted.
Anne-Marie looked a trifle abashed.
But only a trifle.
“Son, when has your mother ever done as asked?” Porter noted and looked to me. “This is how I’m enlightened. She steamrolls me.”
“I do not,” Anne-Marie declared testily.
“Are we eating oysters?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Do Boone and I like oysters?” he pushed.
“You like them fine,” she sniffed.
“I’d rather have shrimp cocktail,” he said. “But oysters are your favorite food.”
“We’re not destitute, Porter Sadler.” She flipped an elegant, buff-polished, perfectly-rounded-long-nailed hand at the table. “If you want shrimp cocktail, order it.”
He appeared horrified and did not hesitate to explain why.
“Woman, you don’t eat seafood in a landlocked state. The only reason we’re at this restaurant is because it’s your favorite one in Denver and we always come here when we see Boone.”
She turned her eyes to me. “This is his rule. No seafood in landlocked states. Like airplanes haven’t been invented. And refrigeration.”
“It isn’t a hard and fast rule,” Porter told me swiftly, like he didn’t want me to think he was crazy. “We eat it at home and we’re landlocked.”
“Barely,” Anne-Marie muttered.
I turned to Boone and declared, “I totally love your parents.”
Boone looked in my eyes a beat.
Then he leaned my way, caught me behind my neck, pulled me his way, and with his handsome face in mine, he burst out laughing.
* * *
As had become our drill when Boone and I went to his pad together, he went in first, I stood at the door, he turned on the lights to make sure no bad guys were lurking in the dark, and I wandered in when he gave the all clear.
And this was what we did that night after dinner with his folks then going to El Chapultepec to listen to some jazz before Porter noted the time change and declared himself “pooped.”
Though he looked like he could take on the night, but Anne-Marie was pretending like she wasn’t waning.
They were Ubering over in the morning to have coffee and doughnuts to tide us over here, late brunch at Racines after we showed them the house.
And then, on the way home, I’d talked Boone into letting me cook them my lasagna tomorrow night. Something which I assured him was my mother’s recipe, she’d taught me how to make it, and it was the only thing in my culinary repertoire that I could promise was delicious.
I was looking forward to it.
All of it.
“It’s cool, baby,” Boone called.
I went in, turned, closed the door, locked it, and did this saying, “I hope we start bickering like your parents. They’re hilarious.”
When I turned around, I nearly cried out, because Boone was right there, I wasn’t expecting it, and he’d frightened me.
I was frightened no more when Boone’s hands went right to my ass, I was shifted and walking backwards, Boone walking forward and talking.
“Didn’t get the chance to tell you I like these jeans,” he muttered, squeezing my ass.
“Good to know,” I muttered back, sliding my hands up his chest.
“And your shirt is fuckin’ awesome,” he went on.
“The sleeves were annoying. They get in the way when you eat.”
The backs of my legs hit the bed and then my blouse was gone.
Well, that took care of that problem, not that I was eating anything else that night.
I hoped Boone was, though.
“Told you they’d love you,” he whispered.
“You failed to
mention I’d love them,” I whispered back.
He smiled at me.
Then he slanted his head and kissed me as he fell into me and we landed on the bed.
And I would find that Boone wasn’t done eating that night.
But he wouldn’t be the only one with something in his mouth.
Chapter Twenty
Never in My Life
Ryn
I never had a single worry, and I told Boone that. You see, I was a late bloomer too,” Anne-Marie announced.
It was the next morning and we were sitting at Boone’s round dining room table, Anne-Marie and me.
Boone and Porter were in the kitchen, Boone making his mother more coffee, Porter getting another doughnut.
Just to say, the Sadlers could put away coffee.
And Porter could put away doughnuts.
“Don’t let her feed you that crap,” Porter stated, approaching the table. “I’ve seen pictures of her when she was at every walk of her life and been at her side for more than half of it, and she’s always been gorgeous.”
He stopped to bend over to kiss the top of her hair.
Anne-Marie was smiling happily.
Porter straightened and moved back to his chair, saying, “But no joke, Boone was one scrawny, ugly little cuss.”
I choked on my coffee.
“Porter!” Anne-Marie bit out.
“I’m not lying,” Porter said.
“Truly,” Anne-Marie turned to me, “if I get through this weekend without killing him, it’ll be a miracle.”
“If I get through this weekend without killing both of you, it’ll be a miracle,” Boone said from the kitchen.
Anne-Marie twisted toward her son. “I’m not acting up.”
“Mom, you’re telling my girlfriend what an ugly fuck I was.”
“Boone Andrew Sadler! Language!” she cried irately.
Oh my God, these people were funny.
“Mom, I’m thirty-three. I can say ‘fuck’ in my own house, especially when you keep talking about this shit with my woman,” Boone retorted. “I think you get I like her. So I’d also like her to hang around after you leave.”
I fought, and won, against the desire to laugh.
“It isn’t like you didn’t tell me yourself, honey,” I reminded him, though in his current mood, I did it carefully.
“Yeah, Rynnie, but I’m not a huge fan of it bein’ discussed through Dad eating three doughnuts,” Boone returned.
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