Roz nearly dropped the phone but bobbled it just enough to keep it near her face. “Ms. Harris. I’m fine. Thank you. It was lovely to meet you last night.”
“Likewise. I hope you don’t mind that I asked Hendrix for your number. I’d like to take you to lunch, if you’re free.”
“I’m free.” That had probably come out a little too eagerly. Thank you, Jesus, she’d worn an outfit that even a future mother-in-law would approve of. “And thank you. That would be lovely.”
They made plans to meet at a restaurant on Glenwood Avenue, dashing Roz’s notion to go shopping for a date dress, but she couldn’t think about that because holy crap—she was having lunch with her future mother-in-law, who was also running for governor and who had presumably agreed to be a clown. Plus there was a whole mess of other things running through her head and now she was ne
rvous.
By lunchtime, Roz truly thought she might throw up. That would put the cap on her day nicely, wouldn’t it? A photo of her yakking all over a gubernatorial candidate would pair well with the one of her in flagrante delicto with the woman’s son.
Ms. Harris had beaten her to the restaurant and was waiting for Roz near the maître d’ stand, looking polished, dignified and every inch a woman who could run a state with one hand tied behind her back. In other words, not someone Roz normally hung around with.
“Am I late?” she asked Ms. Harris by way of greeting. Because that was a great thing to point out if so.
Ms. Harris laughed. “Not at all. I got here early so I didn’t have to make you wait.”
“Oh. Well, that was nice. Thank you.” A little floored, Roz followed the older woman to a table near the window that the maître d’ pointed them to.
The murmur of voices went into free fall as the two ladies passed. Heads swiveled. Eyes cut toward them. But unlike what had happened to Roz the last time she’d braved polite society, the diner’s faces didn’t then screw up in distaste as they recognized her. Instead, the world kept turning and people went back to eating as if nothing had happened.
Miraculous.
Roz slid into her chair and opened her menu in case she needed something to hide behind. Ms. Harris didn’t do the same. She folded her hands on the table and focused on Roz with a sunny smile that reminded her of Hendrix all at once.
“I’m so jealous that you can wear your hair up,” Ms. Harris said out of the blue and flicked a hand at her shoulder-length ash-blond hair. “I can’t. I look like a Muppet. But you’re gorgeous either way.”
“Um...thank you,” Roz spit out because she had to say something, though it felt like she was repeating herself. “Ms. Harris, if I may be blunt, I need some context for this lunch. Are we here so you can tell me to lie low for the foreseeable future? Because I’m—”
“Helene, please.” She held up a hand, palm out in protest, shooting Roz a pained smile. “Ms. Harris is running for governor and I hear that enough all day long. I like to leave her at the office.”
“Helene, then.” Roz blinked. And now she was all off-kilter. Or rather more so than she’d been since the woman had called earlier that morning. Come to think of it, she’d been upside down and inside out since the moment she’d caught Hendrix’s eye at the Calypso Room. Why would lunch with his mother be any different? “I’m sorry. Call me Roz. Rosalind is an old-fashioned name that would be better suited for an eighty-year-old woman who never wears pants and gums her food.”
Fortunately, Helene laughed instead of sniffing and finding something fascinating about the tablecloth the way most polished women did when confronted with Roz’s offbeat sense of humor. She hadn’t grown up going to cotillions and sweet-sixteen balls the way other girls in her class had, and her lack of decorum showed up at the worst times. Her father had been too busy ignoring the fact that he had a daughter to notice that she preferred sneaking out and meeting twenty-year-old boys with motorcycles to dances and finishing school.
“I think it’s a beautiful name. But I get that we can’t always see our own names objectively. If I had a dime for every person who called me Helen.” She made a tsk noise and waved away the waiter who was hovering near her elbow. “And then try to give your own kid an unusual name that no one on the planet can mispronounce and all you get is grief.”
In spite of herself, Roz couldn’t help but ask. “Hendrix doesn’t like his name? Why not?”
Helene shrugged and shook her head, her discreet diamond earrings catching the low light hanging over the table. “He says Hendrix was a hack who would have faded by the time he reached thirty if he hadn’t overdosed. Blasphemy. The man was a legend. You’d think your fiancé would appreciate being named after a guitar hero, but no.”
“He...he thinks Jimi Hendrix is a hack?” Roz clutched her chest, mock-heart-attack style, mostly to play along because she knew who the guitarist was of course, but she had no opinion about his status as a legend. Neither had she been born yesterday. You didn’t argue musical taste with the woman who would most likely be sitting in the governor’s chair after the election. “I might have to rethink this whole wedding idea.”
The other woman grinned wide enough to stick a salad plate in her mouth sideways. “I knew I liked you.” Helene evaluated Roz for a moment and then signaled the waiter. “As much as I’d prefer to spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out, duty calls. We should eat.”
Since it sounded like a mandate, Roz nodded, trying to relax as Helene ordered a salad and water. This wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition that she’d expected, not yet anyway. Maybe that was coming after lunch. She ordered a salad despite loathing them because it was easy to eat and obviously an approved dish since Helene had gotten the same.
And that was the root cause of her nervousness—she wanted Helene to like her but had no clue how to go about that when she had no practice cozying up to a motherly type. Furthermore, the woman had just said she liked her. What more did Roz need in the way of validation, a parade?
She sipped her water and yearned for a glass of wine, which would be highly inappropriate. Wouldn’t it?
“Thank you,” Helene murmured to her after the waiter disappeared. “For agreeing to this wedding plan that we came up with. It speaks a lot of your character that you’d be willing to do something so unconventional to help me.”
“I...” Have no idea how to respond to that. Roz sat back in her chair and resisted the urge to rub at her temples, which would only clue in everybody that she’d fallen completely out of the rhythm of the conversation. “I—You’re welcome?”
Smiling, Helene patted Roz’s hand, which was currently clenched in a fist on the tablecloth. “Another thing. You’re making me nervous, dear. I can’t decide if you’re about to bolt or dissolve into tears. I asked you to lunch because I want to get to know you. You’re the only daughter I’ve ever had. For as long as I’ve got you, let’s make this a thing, shall we?”
Unexpected tears pricked at Roz’s eyelids, dang it. The Harris family shared that gene apparently—Hendrix had that uncanny ability to pull stuff out of her depths, too.