Kylie Brant - Close To The Edge

“Damage control.” A blessed sort of numbness had settled over Jacey. “This isn’t a military operation, Mother.” She had a brief mental flash of Charlotte in uniform, stars on her shoulders, helmet and jack boots. She wasn’t so certain the woman hadn’t missed her calling.

“Reputations are fragile things, Jacinda. I’ve let it be known, quietly of course, that you’ve been seeing someone from out of town. We’ll have to act quickly so that you can line up an escort in time for the party. Had you answered any of my phone messages for the last week, we could have already gotten started on this.”

The words seemed to come from a distance. Anger burned through Jacey’s numbness. How dare Peter do this to her! The emotion was welcome, and she seized on it gratefully. It was easier to focus on than to acknowledge the rest of the tangled feelings crashing through her. Humiliation. Shock. Hurt.

A glance at her mother’s face had her shoving all that aside for the moment. She needed every wit about her in order to deal with Charlotte. “That won’t be necessary. I’m not going.”

“Of course you’ll go.” The certainty in her tone had Jacey’s jaw tightening. “Your failure to appear will only set people to talking even more. I’ll have Dorothy Genesson tell her bridge group that you’ll be bringing the new man in your life. She’ll hint about the seriousness of your relationship, and then we’ll let the word get around. You won’t have to stay long, but to save face you do have to attend, and appear madly happy with your current companion.”

Dorothy Genesson was as close to a best friend as Charlotte had. Both of them had been widowed for nearly ten years, and neither were eager to change that status. “Very Machiavellian, Mother. But there is no new man in my life.” Not that she had missed the lack overmuch in the last few months. “And I tend to think that beating the bushes for a man to playact with at the engagement party is even more pathetic than showing up alone, or not at all.”

“You always put the most negative spin on things. One does what the situation calls for.”

Just for a moment, Jacey thought of the biker she’d dropped earlier that evening. Somehow she didn’t think Charlotte would appreciate the association. “That’s always been my philosophy.”

“Excellent.” Her mother crossed to her and handed her a paper with a list of names printed neatly on it. Each was followed by an address and phone number. She must have taken it from the desk when she’d retrieved the invitation. “Dorothy and I put our heads together and came up with this list of five men. Each lives out of town, is single and would be a suitable escort. I assumed you’d like to do the contact and final selection yourself.”

The sheer gall of the action left Jacey speechless for a moment. Incredulity shredded that reaction, though, and quickly. “You’ve got to be joking. You expect me to call up some total strangers and beg for a date to my ex-boyfriend’s engagement party? This sounds like the plot for a very bad chick-flick.”

“Don’t be irreverent.” Charlotte sat down again. “You needn’t pursue a relationship with the man you decide upon, although any of the five would be quite appropriate, if you should decide to do so.”

“I’ll bet.” Cynicism flickered. She imagined that her mother had examined the bloodlines and portfolios of each and every candidate before placing his name on the list. “If I remember correctly, you approved of Peter, too, until quite recently.”

Voice sharpening, Charlotte said, “I won’t tolerate your impudence, Jacinda. Peter Brummond would have made an excellent match, and you have only yourself to blame for this fiasco.”

Settling back against the uncomfortable settee, Jacey readied for battle. This, then, was the crux of the conversation. Not the faux sympathy, nor the matter-of-fact plotting. If truth be known, she had far more experience dealing with her mother’s censure than with her understanding. “How exactly is that, Mother? Should I have had him shackled after we broke up so that he couldn’t meet anyone else?” She pretended to consider the idea. “Possible, perhaps, but leg irons are so difficult to come by.”

“If you had played your cards right, you could have finessed a proposal from him and this invitation would have your name on it, instead of that of some little social climber from Baton Rouge. You certainly had the time.”

“Finessed a proposal.” To give her hands something to do, she smoothed her dress over her legs. “That sounds very romantic.”

“You know what I mean. Romance is vastly overrated in these situations, at any rate. What matters most are similar backgrounds, breeding and position.”

She’d heard her mother’s views on marriage often enough to repeat them verbatim. They saddened and terrified her by turn. “If Peter and I had been interested in marriage, don’t you think it would have come up over the course of eighteen months?”

“If he wasn’t interested, you can blame that hobby of yours. What man wants to be married to a woman who insists on dealing with the criminal element all day long, and most weekends, as well?”

She opened her mouth, intending to straighten her mother out about her job again, then closed it. It was useless, and it really wasn’t the issue here.

Charlotte went on. “I just don’t understand you anymore, Jacinda. You never used to be so difficult. You were always such a pliable girl.”

Weak, Jacey silently interpreted. Scared of her mother’s displeasure, which could be earned so easily. Anxious to do whatever it took to please her, until she found that by doing so she was very rarely pleasing herself. It was shaming to admit, even to herself, just how much courage it had taken to stand up to Charlotte about her choice of careers. A lifetime of choosing the path of least resistance, she’d found, hadn’t prepared her for the task.

However, constant practice was making it easier.

The jackhammering in her temples made it difficult to concentrate. She rose. There was nothing left to say, at any point. “I have to leave, Mother. I…appreciate the worry you’ve gone through. But don’t concern yourself. I’ll take care of it.”

She began to cross to the door. Charlotte stood as well, just as the cook, Luella, entered with a tray of tea. “Don’t go yet. We need to develop a plan of action.”

“No, we don’t need to do anything. This is my problem, and I’ll take care of it in my own way.” Taking advantage of her mother’s unwillingness to discuss anything personal in front of the servants, Jacey continued with her escape. “I’ll call you in a couple of days, all right?”

There was no mistaking the disapproval in Charlotte’s silence, but Jacey was far past a time when it could change her mind. Slipping out the heavy front door, she hurried down the steps and to the car, a familiar sense of relief nearly swamping her.

Those who turn and run away live to fight another day. Her father’s oft-repeated saying sounded in her mind. It had always been accompanied with a conspiratorial wink. He hadn’t been one to confront his wife on many matters, opting instead for peaceful co-existence.

The rain had grown heavier. The streetlights shot the wet pavement with tiny splinters of light. She drove slowly, her headlights barely denting the inky darkness. Her earlier relief began to dissipate as the full weight of the situation struck her.

She supposed, by her mother’s definition, she and Peter had been perfectly matched. With his tall blond good looks, they’d made, Charlotte had often said, a handsome couple. Certainly he’d come from a family whose background and fortune had been deemed appropriate by her mother, as well. Jacey had known him since she was a child, and she’d wondered, the last several months of their relationship, if that long acquaintance was to blame for the lack of any real…passion between them. They’d seemed more like a couple married twenty years than two people supposedly in love.