“I guess you’re right,” Kate said, smiling. “I wouldn’t want to miss out.”
“And there’s plenty of punch, too,” Luke said.
Leda socked him in the arm, grinning as if she were making a joke, but from the way Luke’s mouth tightened, it hurt. Oh, dear.
“Can I have some punch?” River asked, glancing up at his mother. “I know I’m not supposed to have sugar, but shouldn’t we be celebrating Aunt Dottie’s new house?”
“She left her husband, River,” Kate said dismissively. “Uncle Beau is probably the dullest man alive, but failure is nothing to celebrate.”
Dottie’s gaze darted to Beau, whose eyes were on her. It was obvious he’d caught the namedrop. Of course, it wouldn’t mean to him what it did to her, and she suspected he’d accuse her of using her niece’s Ayahuasca if she were to tell about all the signs she’d witnessed over the last few days.
When she turned back, Kate was studying River. “I thought you weren’t feeling well? Maybe you should go lie down.”
If the concern had been unfeigned, Dottie would have been delighted, but she saw the little glances Kate kept darting toward the kitchen, where Leonard had finally disappeared to find a vase.
Oh, Kate made her so mad she could spit.
Dottie cut across the room to River. “Your mother is wrong about one thing, my dear, this is a celebration. Even more so because you’re here. No punch, though.” She winked at Beau, feeling a delicious little thrill. “A little bird told me there’s enough alcohol in it to pickle someone.”
Then she stooped down and wrapped her arms around River, giving him a hug before she swooped him into the air. It put uncomfortable pressure on her knees and her hip, but she did it anyway, and his anxious look, like he didn’t know who he should be trying to please but thought he was doing a poor job of it, slipped away into childish joy for a brief, beautiful moment.
When she set him down, he glanced up at his mother. “Please, can I stay out just a little longer?”
“Well, I won’t be watching you. If your aunt wants you out here so badly, let her have that privilege.”
“With joy,” Dottie said at once, tweaking River’s chin with her fingers. “Now, has your stomach healed up enough for some brownies?”
His eyes got wide, and he nodded vigorously.
Dottie half-expected Kate to remind her that they didn’t eat sugar, but apparently she really had passed on the torch for River’s care. She’d already slid across the room toward Leonard, who’d emerged from the kitchen. He’d been walking toward Doris, but Kate got to him first.
So Dottie gave River two brownies, because he deserved them and had gone too long without any sweets, and clapped her hands twice. Everyone gave her their attention, and the feeling of Beau Buchanan’s eyes on her was like slipping into a warm bath.
“How about we all grab a drink—water or beer or punch, wherever your spirit guides you—and take a seat on the floor in the living room?” She’d prepared for this, putting out several large, tufted pillows and bean bag chairs.
Beau cleared his throat. “And for those of us who’d like to be able to get back up?”
Leda snorted derisively. “Old Man Beau needs a chair.”
“Isn’t she old too, Aunt Dottie?” River asked in a small voice that was perfectly audible. “Why’s she calling him that?”
Leda looked murderous, but Dottie just grinned at him. “It was a joke, my dear.” Turning to Beau, she added, “There are chairs, if you’d like to lord over the rest of us.” But she smiled as she said it, making it clear that she, at least, was joking.
He might be an older gentleman, with white hair and the craggy face of someone who’d been around for long enough to collect a piece or two of wisdom, but there was life in him, slumbering, perhaps, but vibrant and deep and rich. And she couldn’t help but be intrigued by that, and to wonder if she was meant to be the woman who drew it out.
He smiled back, brief but genuine. “I think I’ll take you up on that.”
She shuffled the guests into the order she wanted them in the circle, without making it look like she was affecting the outcome.
Good.
Everyone was seated with their drinks and plates of food. Leonard had Kate on one side, Doris on the other. River was between Kate and Dottie, and Beau sat in his chair on Dottie’s other side, with Leda and Luke next to him. Luke and Doris were next to each other, with a good distance between them. Which became larger when Leda shot an accusatory look at the younger woman.
Why it was accusatory, Dottie couldn’t hazard a guess. The only potentially offensive thing Doris had done was take a large glass of punch and sip it without gagging.
Given at least half of the guests seemed to actively dislike the other half, the gathering wasn’t overly promising. But Dottie wasn’t the sort who gave up at the first sign of trouble. She had a number of goals for tonight, and she meant to see them through.
“We’re partnering up,” she said brightly. “The person to your left is now your partner, starting with River, my guest of honor.”
She’d purposefully chosen counter-clockwise, knowing she’d throw Kate off. Her niece’s scowl proved she’d strategized correctly.
Dottie got up and grabbed several sketchpads from the bookshelf in the living room, plus a mason jar full of mismatched pens and pencils. She passed both around.
Beau barked a laugh. “Is this an art game, then? I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”
“No one thought you did, Beau,” Leda called out, but she seemed pleased as punch. Because she’d already guessed what they were doing.
They’d talked about this last weekend, when Dottie and Leda had painted their competing clown portraits.
“You know what would be an excellent ice breaker?” Leda had asked as she drew a nose as round and red as a cherry. “Playing Pictionary, only the twist is that you have to draw everyone as a clown.”
Smiling at her, Dottie said, “The credit for our fun this evening goes to Leda. We’re going to play Clown Pictionary.”
Beau didn’t bother to hide his groan, and if she were entirely honest with herself, she’d chosen the game partially to goad him—and to see if he was capable of being a good sport about Leda. While she didn’t fully disagree with his assessment of her, she didn’t agree either. He was being a grump, blinding himself to Leda’s good side. To her talent.
She took a hat off a side table and flipped it over, placing it in the center of their circle.
“Each team will come up with five different individuals to add to the hat. Try to select people who might be known to the group. Then we’ll go around the circle, clockwise.”
She was fairly sure she heard Kate grumble, “Sure, now we’re going clockwise,” but she ignored her and cleared her throat before she continued. “One person draws the selected individual as a clown, and the rest of us try to guess. If someone guesses before the time is up, then the artist gets a point.”
“I’ll have an obvious advantage,” Leda said with a sharp-toothed smile, then glanced at Luke and shrugged. “And an obvious disadvantage.”
Rather than look offended, Luke shrugged back as if to agree and took a sip of his punch.
“And if we don’t know who these famous individuals are?” Beau asked, lifting his brow. “I’m not known for keeping track of the latest celebrities or what have you.”
“That’s why we’re working in pairs,” Dottie responded. Her lips tilted up. “And for the moral support.”
Leonard said something to Doris that made her laugh.
“You said you’d watch River,” Kate said, her voice flat. “If you’ve changed your mind, I’m sending him to bed.”
The look River gave her would have melted a heart of ice, but his mother didn’t even appear to notice.
Beau cleared his throat. “You know, as much as I would love to have an artist of your caliber”—he nodded to Dottie—“as a teammate, I might benefit from a younger p
erson’s perspective. As I mentioned, I don’t have a good gauge on pop culture.”
“Aunt Dottie,” River said in an undertone that carried. “Did he just call you old?”
That word was being thrown around an alarming amount this evening.
Giving Beau a look that told him that she wouldn’t tolerate such a thing under normal circumstances, she said, “I believe he did, dear. But he raises a good point. Why don’t you join Beau, and I’ll work with your mother?”
She’d thank him later.
Kate’s sour look said she hadn’t gotten what she wanted but knew better than to say so.
Dottie and River shuffled spaces, and everyone spent a few minutes discussing their selections with their teammates.
Kate wanted to pick a shaman no one else, even Dottie, would know by name, and she argued that the celebrity Dottie had picked was much too old. Ultimately, they each put in two names, and they drew rock, paper, scissors for who would do the fifth.
The little game was a bittersweet reminder of the girl Kate had been. Although Delia had cut Dottie out, mostly, she’d seen Kate now and again at their mother’s house. They’d played rock, paper, scissors for half an hour once, in the middle of the night. Kate had woken up and couldn’t go back to sleep, and Dottie had been walking the house, restless, carried along by a wave of artistic inspiration but without a single canvas or drop of paint in the house to let it out.
Dottie missed the innocence of that girl, and for the umpteenth time, she wondered what had happened to her to make her this way.
What had been done to her.
But she couldn’t ask, because she knew that was the one question that would guarantee she never saw her niece or great-nephew again.
Doris put five folded slips into the hat, nodding Dottie’s way as if to say she no longer planned to slowly murder her. In fact, she looked as happy as someone who’d accidentally been served an Irish coffee.
Oh dear. Beau hadn’t been lying about that punch, had he? She’d served herself one of Beau’s beers, the strawberry rhubarb one that tasted of home and happy memories.
“She’s all wrong for him, you know,” Kate said in an undertone, clicking her water class with her nails. “I can spot your manipulations a mile away. You haven’t gotten any more subtle with age, but you’re usually a better matchmaker than this.”
“Oh? And why don’t you think they suit?” Dottie asked, giving her a look. “Because you’d prefer for him to be your plaything?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Kate admitted with a small smile. “He’s nice to look at, and I’m bored. But that’s not my point. A man like that won’t be satisfied with a mouse.”
“That’s the problem with you, Kate,” she said softly, glancing at River. He was laughing at something Beau had said to him, and then he scribbled down a name, glee in his eyes, and hurried over to the cap to put several slips of paper into it. Beau met Dottie’s eyes again, and he nodded slightly. But he didn’t have the look of someone who was doing her a favor and would expect to collect—it was obvious River’s joy and innocence, his sweetness, meant something to him. To this man who was being kept from his family. Her heart swelled, and she wanted to—
“Yes, Dot? You were going to list my many flaws to me again?”
“You can’t seem to see the beauty in small things, my dear. If I could give you one thing, it would be that.”
For a moment Kate looked stricken, as if the words had actually impacted her, but she shrugged it off like a paper cut. “You have a game to play, don’t you? You’ve always enjoyed them.”
“Yes, my dear, and so have you.”
Chapter Six
It quickly became apparent that they all had vastly different views on who qualified as a public figure. Doris had come up with the famous writer and Asheville native Thomas Wolfe. Everyone knew of him, but no one, least of all Luke, who had selected the slip, had the faintest idea what he looked like. River had picked his mother’s selection from the hat—that shaman she’d been so eager to enter into the running—and he’d actually known what to draw. Once he finished his sketch, Beau glanced at Dottie and added a curly clown wig and a pair of enormous shoes. Kate guessed correctly; no one else had a clue.
After they’d gone around the group twice, and everyone other than Kate and River was a little tipsy, Kate fished John Bonham’s name out of the bowl. Written next to his name was drummer for Led Zeppelin, and she’d instantly flipped it around for Dottie to see. “Your age will help us here,” she said in a whisper. “You play ‘Kashmir’ every time you make one of your angry paintings.”
“Yes, well, one needs to set a mood,” Dottie whispered back. “That doesn’t mean I know what the drummer looks like.”
“Think of the song and let your pen guide you.” She couldn’t tell if Kate was serious, or if she was maybe mocking her, but she liked the suggestion regardless. So she did it.
And she’d only gotten a third of the way through before Luke called out John Bonham’s name.
Kate gaped at her, then smiled, and it filled Dottie with both grief and joy. Grief, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d earned a genuine smile from her niece, and joy because at least she’d gotten this one. Even if it was for drawing a half decent rendition of John Bonham as a clown without having the first idea what the man looked like as a normal person.
“Can I keep it?” Luke asked, and Dottie handed it over.
“Was John Bonham your suggestion?” Beau asked in disbelief. “A drummer in a band from the seventies?”
Luke shrugged. “You like Led Zeppelin.”
“Maybe so,” he muttered, “but I don’t have their poster hanging in my bedroom like a teenage girl.”
“More’s the pity,” Dottie said, smiling at him. “If you had, you would have won the point instead of Luke.”
He grinned back and snagged a piece of paper from the hat before handing it immediately to River.
River beamed with pride as he unfolded the paper, and he laughed, lifting his little hand to his mouth as if to repress his giggles, as he studied it. He showed it to Beau, who handed him the pencil. “Better you than me, son. I’m the one who suggested it.”
He hadn’t put in more than a few strokes of his pencil before Leonard called out through laughter, “Ronald McDonald.”
Dottie started laughing too, looking at Beau, whose eyes danced with merriment.
What did a clown dressed as a clown look like?
Still a clown, apparently.
But Kate huffed a long-suffering sigh beside her. “He’d be better off not knowing who that is,” she said sharply, cutting a look at Beau.
As if he’d selected a star from pornographic movies rather than a figure no one could walk past a McDonald’s without noticing.
“Oh, we’d all be better off not knowing who that is,” Beau said with a wink. It was directed at Dottie, though, not Kate. Like he could tell how much Kate was getting under her skin, and he understood.
No doubt he did. From what he’d said, his son was much like her.
“Let’s play something else,” Kate said, her tone absolute.
Leda grunted, and the sound carried obvious dislike. “I like this game.”
“I know how to read fortunes,” Kate said, ignoring her. “I learned it from a woman in New Mexico. Wouldn’t you all like to know what the future holds?” She cocked her head and glanced at Leonard as she said it. He held her gaze for the sparest second, as if mesmerized despite himself, before looking away.
They were playing a game, all right, and this was Kate’s move on the chess board.
“Not me, thank you,” Beau said. “I’d prefer not to rush into an acquaintance with the future. I’m adequately pleased with the present.” He turned to River. “I see a deck of cards on that side table by the kitchen. What do you say to renewing my acquaintance with the game ‘Go Fish’?”
“How’d you know I knew how to play?” River asked, his tone almost awed.
His sweetness washed over Dottie, blunting the edge of Kate’s latest power play. The box was decorated with little fish and the words “Go Fish.”
“Your mother isn’t the only one with inklings,” Beau said, darting another glance at Dottie before hastening River away. “I have an inkling I’m going to have another brownie.”
“Well?” Kate pressed, her gaze still on Leonard, although he hadn’t looked back up at her. “Do I have any volunteers?”
Leda snorted. “Yes, but it won’t be pretty boy. You’ll start with me.”
Leonard blushed, but Doris whispered something to him and took his hand. He said something back, and then they were both standing.
Thank goodness they’d come to their senses.
They were leaving together, and not a moment too soon.
At some point in the evening, one of them, Leonard or Doris, had tucked the rogue tulip, the one she’d stuffed into her pocket, behind her ear, the color a pretty pop against her short, dark hair. That, with her flushed cheeks, made her very lovely indeed.
“Thank you for a wonderful evening, Dottie,” Leonard said.
“Yes, Dottie,” Doris said, meeting her eyes. “Thank you. But we’re both going to head home.”
“Indeed,” Dottie murmured delightedly, while she heard Leda say to Luke in a loud undertone, “The only place they’re going is into bed together.”
Doris’s blush deepened, but she didn’t back down. She just gave Dottie a hug, after which Leonard did the same, and then they were waving to everyone else and going on their merry way. But Dottie didn’t expect they’d get very far, not with Doris’s bungalow next door.
She’d found Doris her man, but that didn’t mean she could rest on her laurels. Only after she helped her friend get to the root of her issues with her sister would she feel she’d truly helped her.
Old Beau had called it a God complex, her desire to help people. Then again, Old Beau was a fool.
Kate was staring daggers at the door, but she rebounded easily enough, turning to Leda. “Let’s begin. Do you have any raw quartz, Dottie?”
All the Luck You Need (Asheville Brewing) Page 4
