“I see,” Jocelyn said with a cool smile. “He can cook and now he’s persnickety. What will you tell me next? He used to be a female?”
“Not that I know of,” Luke said innocently. “Did he tell you he wanted to be? I hear there are some really good clinics for that kind of thing nowadays. Not that I know anything about them, but I bet ol’ Rams knows a lot.”
Joce couldn’t keep from laughing. “You’re horrible. Just tell me the story.”
Luke ate a few more bites, then said, “It was simple really. Rams told Tess he didn’t like what she was wearing.”
“She didn’t take it off, did she?”
“Is that what the secretaries do in law offices in Florida? If so, I’m in the wrong state.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“No, she didn’t remove anything. It was just after she started working at MAW. That’s—”
“I know what it is. Go on.”
“You certainly have picked up on a lot around here. So, anyway, Tess had only been there about six weeks, but already she’d straightened out the whole office. She’d fired two secretaries and made the two she kept actually work. It was a true revelation to my cousin Rams. A woman who did some work to earn
what she was paid.”
“Does he know you talk about him like this?”
“Did he tell you about me?”
“I am happy to say that we never spoke a single word about you all night.”
“Hour and a half.” Luke waved his fork around. “I mean, technically speaking, it wasn’t really a whole night. It was just an hour and a half. Pretty short date, wasn’t it? Now if it had been me taking a woman out—”
“Yeah, I know. You would have made love on the blue corn chips. Get on with the story about Ramsey.”
“To make love on a bed of blue corn chips. Now, there’s something I haven’t tried. Do you know about this from experience?”
“My experience is none of your business. What did Ramsey do?”
“He didn’t do anything. He’s more of a talker than a doer. Now me…Okay, stop looking at me like that. Anyway, all the men in the office were pleased with Tess in every way. I mean, she’s smart and sassy, and did whoever told you about her tell you that she’s drop-dead gorgeous?”
“No,” Jocelyn said but didn’t elaborate.
“She is. A real knockout. Sometimes when she walks across the lawn I have to shut off the mower and just sit there and watch her. But, anyway, Rams wasn’t happy with what he had. As usual with him, he wanted more. Always more. He called her into his office for what he said was an ‘evaluation’ and told her that her work was excellent, but he wasn’t too pleased with what she wore. He didn’t like her jeans and shirt and he hated the cowboy boots. He told her that he wanted her to start wearing dresses to work. No more trousers.”
Jocelyn leaned back in the chair, her eyes wide. “What in the world did she do?”
“Wore a dress. Any more of that garlic bread left?”
Jocelyn got up and handed him the basket. “Sara said ‘low-cut’ and you said ‘red.’ So what was the dress like?”
“I wasn’t in town that day so I didn’t get to see it, but…Hang on a minute.” He leaned back in his chair and pulled his cell phone out of the little case on his hip. “I have to keep this with me at all times because I’m a volunteer with the fire department.” He pushed a few buttons. “Ah, here it is. This is what my cousin Ken sent me. He’s the W in MAW.”
Jocelyn took the phone and looked at the photo. It was of a woman in a red dress, except that there was very little to the garment. It was shorter than the Steps’ shortest, and the sides were open to the waist, as was the front. The woman’s face was turned away so she couldn’t see it, but her long, auburn hair fell in fat curls past her shoulders. And her body was magnificent.
“I see,” Joce said as she handed the phone back to him.
“Yeah, that’s what everyone said that day. ‘I see.’ The worst thing is that Rams had some of those blue bloods coming in from Williamsburg that day, and they saw Tess in her dress. But Ken said they took it pretty well. When their mouths hung open, Tess told them that Ramsey didn’t like her usual attire, so he’d told her to wear a dress and she did. After that, Rams was the butt of a lot of jokes.”
“And now I guess Tess wears whatever she wants to.”
“Tess does what she wants to do, and no one ever even makes a suggestion that she should do otherwise.”