I don’t even get a second to consider what she means before a woman with long, honey-blonde hair is on us. She’s tall and slender, dipped in diamonds, and wearing a floor-length, shimmering black cocktail dress. She’d be beautiful if she weren’t scowling.
“You’re late,” she scolds and my eyebrows rise.
“I’m fine, Mom, thanks for asking. How are you?”
What? This is her mother? I look a little closer. Yeah, I guess I can see a resemblance in the cheekbones, the shape of the face maybe, and the mouth.
“Don’t be rude to me, Piper.”
And now my eyebrows are mashing together in a frown. What’s with the attitude and the name? Except Ellie pays no attention to the comment.
“This is my boyfriend, Scott. Scott, this is my mother, Janine.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say after a beat of silence.
Janine throws me a scathing glance that’s somehow muffled by her face’s weirdly stiff features.
“Your father went to a lot of trouble to get these tickets,” her mother goes on, ignoring me. “The least you could have done is show up on time.”
Ellie finally relents under the criticism. “We’re not late,” she says through clenched teeth. “What are you doing here anyway? Dad said you guys couldn’t make it.”
“Well,” she scoffs haughtily. “I had to see why you were passing on a date with richer-than-Croesus Peter Denton.” She deigns to set her eyes on me again. “When are you going to grow up, Piper? These flights of fancy of yours have gone on for far too long.”
“Janine?”
“Dad.” Ellie sounds both accusatory and relieved as her father puts an arm around his wife’s waist. “You said you guys couldn’t be here.” Okay, now, it’s all accusation.
Ellie’s dad is as tall as I am, with graying hair at his temples. Behind his glasses, his expression is much more welcoming than his wife’s. He steps forward and brushes a kiss to his daughter’s cheek.
“Yes, well, plans changed,” he says with a trace of discomfort. “Are you going to introduce me to your young man?”
Ellie’s posture relaxes. “Dad, this is Scott. Scott this is my father, Jonathan.”
I smile when he puts out his hand for me to shake. “Nice to meet you, sir.” The man’s got a firm handshake, and I immediately get the impression that Ellie’s personality has a lot to do with his influence.
“Good to meet you, Scott.”
Ellie’s mother harrumphs. I shit you not; she actually, in real life, harrumphs.
Just then, the lights dim for a moment.
“Saved by the dinner bell,” Ellie says, her voice shaded with sarcasm which quickly becomes horror when she goes on, “We’re not at the same table, are we?”
She and her father share some kind of look. “No, the original table was already sold out. We’re over there,” he says, pointing to the other side of the room. “You kids have fun.”
Ellie and I both stare after them as they leave. “I am so sorry,” she whispers, leaning in to rest our temples side by side.
I reach my hand to her hip, pulling her closer. “Did we just get ambushed?” I ask on a laugh.
She turns to me with surprise. “You’re not upset?”
“Why would I be upset?” I manage to say with a straight face. “I’m sure your mom just wanted to make sure you weren’t dating a thug.”
Her mood visibly brightens at my reaction.
“Think the tux fooled her?” I add.
“Doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less what she thinks. She’ll never be happy with anything less than a billionaire.”
“Well, yeah,” I say with mock seriousness, “millionaires are so passé nowadays.”
Her smile makes all this worthwhile. “Thanks for being so understanding.”
“You do remember meeting my mom, don’t you?”
She slips her hand back into the crook of my elbow and we make our way to our seats.
“Your mom was actually very polite.”
“Just wait till you meet her when she’s sober.”
I pull out the chair for her before taking my own seat. For the next few minutes we ignore the world around us as we re-group with our heads together, joking, teasing, laughing . . . pretending. Because her mother didn’t just ambush Ellie, she assaulted her. And I don’t like it, even if Ellie did hold her own.
A waiter comes around, asking if we’d like red or white wine with dinner. When Ellie waves an uninterested hand and accompanies it with a weary, “Red, thank you,” I give her a questioning look. “It’s just easier this way,” she says in a low voice. “Wine is the last thing I’d ever drink. You don’t have to worry.”
I nod, and then follow her lead, all the while wondering what would happen if I asked the guy to scrounge me up a Coke from somewhere.
“What brings you here this evening, dear?”
Turning to the voice beside me, I find an older lady with snow-white hair, wearing enormous dangling sapphire earrings that pull heavily at her lobes. Her question leaves me a bit stumped.
“What brings me here?” I stall, adding what I hope is a distracting grin.
“Yes, Elizabeth was one of my closest friends. Honoring her memory is the least I could do.”
Uh oh. “Elizabeth?” I ask carefully.
“The Elizabeth McCarthy foundation is hosting tonight’s gathering.” She seems affronted that I don’t know this.
“Right. Sorry. It’s actually my girlfriend,” I sit back in my chair and gesture to Ellie, who’s talking to the man on her other side, “who has the passion for helping people. I’m just here to make sure another man doesn’t steal her away.”
The lady’s hostility dissolves. “Oh, my. How gallant.”
I decide if I have to chat, I may as well sound her out for a job for Ellie. It can’t hurt, right? “Ellie is going to graduate from Stanford soon and she’ll be in the market for a job where she can really make a difference.” My ears ring with how corny that sounds even if it is the truth. The old lady eats it up though.
“Really?” she says with enthusiasm as we both sit back in our chairs so the first course can be put in front of us. “Perhaps I could introduce her to Richard, he’s Elizabeth’s husband. Or was. I tell you, her passing last year was such a shock to us all.”
From there, I only listen politely as she goes on and on about people I don’t know. But I’m happy because an introduction to the guy in charge of this whole thing can only be a good thing for Ellie.
When dinner is done – I won’t complain about that, because it was pretty good – the speeches start, which turn out to be a total snooze fest. Ellie barely keeps a straight face when I give her my best long-suffering look.
“Oh, that’s him,” the old lady whispers, calling my attention to the stage. “That’s Richard.”
Again, I nod politely and hope that Dick will be able to do something for Ellie.
Finally, we’re able to get up and stretch our legs and ‘mingle’. After I introduce Ellie to my dinner mate, they chat for a bit. Ellie charms her with such casual ease that I can’t help but be impressed. By the end of the short talk, they’re all smiles and agree conspiratorially to wait for a time to catch Richard, or Mr. McCarthy, as Ellie calls him, when he’s not surrounded by so many people. Then Ellie and I spend a good hour working the room. Well, Ellie works the room and I watch in awe as she wheedles her way into conversation after conversation without seeming to intrude. She’s a natural; articulate, knowledgeable and charismatic.