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He stumbled back, dragging her with him.
“Put me down!” she squealed.
But putting her down gently wasn’t an easy feat. He took another step back, but then she kicked him again.
“Put me down!” she screamed again.
“I’m trying!”
“Cooper?”
“Yeah. Who else?” Finally, he wrapped an arm around her waist and managed to flip her over. He got a face full of fluffy white lace for his trouble, and her elbow slammed into his chin. He let her go and stepped back, holding his hands out in front of him to ward off her attack. “Are you okay?”
When she looked up, he realized she had a pair of earbuds in her ears and noticed the iPod shoved into the bodice of her dress. She yanked the earbuds out, and he could hear the music playing faintly.
She pushed down her skirt, glaring at him. “Of course, I’m okay. Or rather, I was! Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“You were upside down.”
“I was doing a headstand!”
“In your wedding dress?”
She opened her mouth to fire back some quip, but then hesitated, snapped her mouth closed and frowned. “Good point.” She grabbed the skirt of her dress and shook it out.
The dress didn’t look too bad. Her hair, on the other hand, was a mess. What had obviously once been some kind of fancy twist of curls on the back of her head had started to slide off to the side. One lock of pale golden hair tumbled into her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips moist and pink.
He’d known Portia for about two years and in all that time he’d never seen her looking so disheveled. So human. So sexy.
Yeah. And the fact that the image of her bright pink panties and her bare thighs was still seared into his brain had nothing to do with that. And what precisely had been on those panties of hers? From a few feet away, he’d thought they were misshapen white dots, but up close they’d looked like cats. Was that possible? Was there any chance at all that uptight, straitlaced, cold-as-dry-ice Portia Callahan would get married wearing panties with cat heads on them?
“What the hell were you doing?” he asked.
“I was meditating.”
“And singing along to eighties pop?”
“I was... I can’t...” She blew out a breath that made her hair flutter in front of her face. “It helps me think.” And then, she must have realized her hair was mussed, because she grabbed a stray lock of hair and stared at it. “Oh, no! Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!”
She jumped up and ran to the mirror. Still clutching the lock of hair, she turned this way and that, staring at herself in the mirror, muttering “oh, no!” over and over.
He didn’t have a lot of experience with panicking women. Zero experience, really. And, to be honest, his mind was still reeling that this was Portia who was panicking. Up until five minutes ago, he would have described her as slightly less emotional than the Tin Man. He would not have pegged her for the type to panic. Or wear pink kitty panties. Damn it, he had to stop thinking about her underwear. And her thighs.
And unless he wanted to be the one to explain to Caro Cain why the wedding was off, he suspected he needed to do some serious damage control.
So he made sure the door was locked and went to stand behind Portia.
He looked at her in the mirror. She was so busy freaking out she didn’t notice him until he put his hands on her shoulders. Then she looked up, tears brimming in her dark blue eyes. How had he never before noticed how dark her eyes were? Almost purple, they were so blue.
He dug around in his pocket, but found nothing to give her to wipe her eyes, so he pulled the silk pocket square from his suit pocket and handed it to her.
“Here.” She just stared at him, frowning. Crap, he was no good at this. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“It is?” she asked hopefully.
“Sure.”
She stared up at him, a tremulous smile on her lips. “You think so?”
“Yeah.” He felt a little catch in his chest. God, he hoped he wasn’t lying. “It’s just hair, right?” And, that must have been the wrong thing to say, because her lip started wobbling. “I mean, you can totally fix that!” He reached out and gave the lumpy twist a poke. “Just stick in a few more of those pin things, and it’ll be fine.”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t have any more pins!”
“Then how’d you get it up in the first place?”
“I had it done at a salon.”
“Oh.” He didn’t point out that if that was the case, she probably shouldn’t have done a headstand. It took a lot of restraint. Surely he got points for that, right? “Well, I bet the ones that came out are still on the ground over there. Let me look.” After a minute of crawling around on the floor, he stood up, triumphant. “Five.”
She was still sitting in front of the mirror, but she was looking calmer. And she’d done something with her hair so that it looked...more balanced. “Okay. Hand them over.”
He did, and then watched as she jabbed them in. When she was done, she met his gaze in the mirror.
“And it’s really going to be okay, right?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t mean the hair.”
“Yeah. I got that.” He swallowed. Who the hell was he to give relationship advice to anyone? Especially since he couldn’t stop thinking about Portia’s legs and how adorable she looked in that damn headstand and how she’d always been beautiful but he’d never known how pretty she was until now. “Yeah. It’s going to be okay. Dalton is a good guy. And you’re perfect for each other.”
Except he was lying. Until now, he’d always thought Portia was the perfect girl for Dalton. But this girl? This girl who did headstands in her wedding dress and freaked out and wore pink kitty panties? This girl had more going on inside than he’d ever guessed. This Portia was vibrant and intriguing, and startlingly appealing in this moment of vulnerability. And maybe Dalton wasn’t the right guy for her after all.
One
Twelve years later
Portia Callahan wanted to die of humiliation.
Only one thing kept her from actually doing it. If she died during the Children’s Hope Foundation annual gala, the charity’s silent auction would bomb. Everyone would be so busy gossiping about how Celeste Callahan had finally berated her daughter to death that no one would raise their paddles to bid.
So instead of dying, Portia stood in the service hallway outside of the Kimball Hotel ballroom and let her mother rant at her.
“Honestly, Portia! What were you thinking?” Celeste’s crisp pronunciation grated against Portia’s already frayed nerves.
She breathed out a sigh and let go of all the logical, sensible answers she could give. I was thinking of the children. I was trying to do the right thing. Instead she said what she knew her mother needed to hear. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
Which was also true. Three months ago, when she’d visited the inner-city Houston high school on behalf of Children’s Hope Foundation, she hadn’t been thinking about how her visit might “look” to the Houston society types. She’d been thinking about connecting with the students, encouraging them to dream of a life beyond minimum wage work. She’d been thinking of them and what they needed. There hadn’t even been anyone from the Foundation there that day. It had never occurred to her that the teacher snapping photos might send them in to the Foundation or that a few of them might end up in the photomontage that played in the background at tonight’s annual gala. And it had certainly never occurred to her that members of Houston high society might be offended by pictures of her playing a pickup game of basketball with former gang members.
“No, Portia. You clearly weren’t thinking. That photo...” Celeste sighed.
God, Portia hated that sound. It was how-could-you-do-this-to-me and what-did-I-do-to-deserve-you all rolled into one exhalation of disappointment.
“It’s not that bad,” Portia tried to explain. She kept her voice low, painfully aware that they weren’t really alone. Sure, her mother had dragged her off into one of the hotel’s service hallways, but the gala’s waitstaff were filtering past with trays of drinks and appetizers. A couple of them had even slowed down, straining to catch what they could of the argument.
“It would be bad enough if it was just the photo,” Celeste said. “But with Laney’s pregnancy, everyone is watching you, waiting to see how you’ll—”
“Laney’s pregnancy?” Portia interrupted. Nausea bloomed in her stomach, turning those butternut squash appetizers into bricks. “Laney is pregnant?”
Laney was Portia’s ex-husband’s current wife.
Not that Portia had anything against Laney. Or Dalton for that matter.
She was thrilled, just thrilled, that they’d found love and were blissfully happy. She really was. Or she really tried to be. But it would be easier if her own life didn’t feel so stagnant.
And now Laney was pregnant? Portia and Dalton had struggled with infertility for years. But apparently all Dalton needed was a vivacious new wife.
Portia pressed a palm to her belly, willing the appetizers to stay put.
“Laney is pregnant,” she repeated stupidly.
“Yes, of course she is. They haven’t announced it yet, but everyone has noticed the bump. Honestly, Portia, how do you miss these things? All of Houston has noticed, but you’re blissfully unaware of it?”
“I just didn’t—”
“Well, you need to. You simply have to be more concerned when gossip is brewing around you. And for God’s sake, try not to provide all of Houston with photographic evidence of your midlife crisis.”
“It’s not a midlife crisis!”
Celeste’s gaze snapped from self-pity to anger. “It’s a photo of you and five gang members, one of whom is staring down your dress and another of whom has his hand entirely too close to your person.”
“He was blocking. He wasn’t even touching me!” Was that really how the photo looked to other people? “Mother, it’s just a picture. There are fifty pictures in the slide show that illustrate the amazing work the foundation does. One of them happens to have me in it. It’s not that big a—”
“It is a big deal,” Celeste snapped. “The fact that you think it isn’t only shows how naive you are. A woman in your position—”
“My position? What is that supposed to mean?”
“A woman’s position in society changes when she goes through a divorce. You’ve seen this in your own life and in Caro’s. Thank God you’ve fared better than she has. So far.”
“Right,” Portia said grimly. “Caro.”
After her divorce from Dalton, Portia had stayed friends with her former mother-in-law. Caro Cain wasn’t the warmest person, but she was still easier to deal with than Portia’s own mother. And right now, Caro needed every friend she had. Her divorce from Hollister Cain had left her a social pariah.
“Do you know how many people are out there snickering about that photo?” Celeste demanded.
“Nobody but you cares about that photo!”
Celeste took a step closer. “This is how the world works. Stop being naive.”
“It’s not naive to want to help children.”
“Fine, if you want to help children, I can have Dede set something up.”
“I don’t need Daddy’s press secretary to set up a photo op for me.”
“Fine. If you don’t want my help, do this on your own. Go make puppets with a kid with cancer, but for God’s sake, stay out of the ghetto, because—”
But Celeste never got a chance to finish her thought, because just then, one of the waitresses walked by with a tray of champagne and somehow tripped, spilling a flute of the amber liquid down the sleeve of Celeste’s dress.
The older woman reared back, gasping in shock.
The waitress stumbled again and barely stepped out of the way before Celeste whirled on her. “Why you clumsy, little—”
“Mother, it’s okay.” Portia grabbed her mother’s arm, more out of instinct than out of fear that her mother might hit the girl.
Celeste jerked her arm free, her mouth twisting into a snarl. “I’ll have your job for this!”
“Let me handle this, Mother.” Portia looked nervously around the hall. It was empty now except for this one waitress. “Go on to the bathroom and clean up what you can. Champagne doesn’t stain. It’ll be okay.”
Celeste just glared at the waitress, who glared back, her jaw jutting out.
Portia guided her mother a step away toward the doorway that led into the ballroom. “I’ll handle it. I’ll talk to the girl’s supervisor.”
“That clumsy bitch shouldn’t be anywhere near a function like this.” Then Celeste flounced off to clean herself up.
Portia turned back to the waitress, half surprised to still see her there. The young woman looked to be in her early twenties. Her hair was dyed a dark maroon, cut short on one side and long on the other. She wore too much eye makeup and had a stud in her nose. And she was glaring belligerently at Portia.
“My name’s Ginger, by the way. If you’re going to go tattle to my boss.”
Portia held up her hand palm out in a gesture of peace. “Look, I’m not going to have you fired, but maybe you could just stay out of Celeste’s way for the rest of the night.”
Ginger blinked in surprise. “You’re not?”
“No. It was an accident.”
“Accident. Right.” Her tone was completely innocent, but there was a slight smirk to her lips as she stepped toward the door into the ballroom. Her smirk made her look so familiar. “Thanks.”
“Wait a second—” But the door swung open and two more waiters came into the hall and pushed past them. Portia reached for Ginger’s arm and stepped off to the side, where they weren’t in anyone’s way. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Tip the glass down your mother’s back? Why would I do that?” Ginger smirked again and Portia felt another blast of recognition. Like she should know this girl.
“I don’t know,” Portia admitted. She looked pointedly at the tray of champagne flutes. “But it seems like it’d be awfully hard to tip just one glass without them all spilling.”
“You gonna have me fired or not?”
Portia sighed. “Why would you do that?”
“What? Spill a drink on someone who’s verbally abusing her daughter in public? I can’t imagine why.” Ginger turned as if she was going to stalk off, but stopped and turned back before she reached the door. “Look, it’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t put up with that. Family should treat each other better.”
