Always the Baker, Never the Bride (17 page)

10

D
ad, the hotel isn’t even officially open yet,” Emma told him. “You can’t stay here.”

“All right then, I’ll stay with my little girl.”

“But my place is so small. Let’s get you a room at The Grapevine. It’s nearby, and you’ll be more comfortable there than at my place.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Norma interjected, Taking Gavin’s hand between both of hers, she told him, “You’ll stay with my husband and me. We have more than enough room, and we’d be so happy to have you.”

“Oh. Norma. Really.” Emma felt a little faint. “Y-you don’t want to do that.”

“Of course I do. I won’t hear another word, Emma. Gavin will just come home with me and stay with us for as long as he’d like.”

“How long will that be, exactly?” Emma asked her father, trying her best to sound casual, knowing that she’d missed that mark by leaps and bounds.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gavin replied. “I thought I might hang tight for the opening of this place. See my little girl in her element.”

“Dad! That’s two weeks away!”

“That’s wonderful,” Norma chimed in. “Just wonderful. We’d love to have you attend the opening, Gavin.”

“What’s that about the opening?” Georgiann asked from the doorway to the restaurant.

“Oh, Georgiann, you’ll never guess who this is!” Norma sang. “It’s Gavin Travis, Emma’s father.”

Georgiann inflated like a helium balloon and then bobbed her way across the room to Gavin’s side. “What a
pleashuh
to meet you, Mr. Travis.”

“Mr. Travis died a decade ago,” he told her. “You call me Gavin.”

“All right then, Gavin. I’m Georgiann Markinson. My little
bruthah
Jackson owns this establishment.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, lifting her hand and kissing it softly, an action that caused Georgiann to giggle, pushing Emma’s eyebrows straight up into a curious arch.

“Gavin is going to be staying with Louis and me,” Norma announced to her sister.

“That is really just so … umm … nice of you, Norma,” Emma sputtered. “Really, really nice. In fact, there’s still time to change your mind about that. I’m sure The Grapevine would be—”

“Don’t be silly,” Norma replied. “Louis and I will love having your father as our houseguest.”

“Oh. Well. If you’re sure.”

“In fact, we should all have dinner together tonight,” Norma exclaimed.

“What a wonderful idea!” Georgiann concurred.

“Everyone must come to my house for dinner,” Norma told them, and she grabbed Fee’s wrist and shook it.

Fee scrunched up her face in a forced excitement, and she nodded so eagerly that it made Emma a little dizzy. When Norma looked away, Fee and Emma exchanged wide-eyed stares tainted with panic.

“Emma, I’ll drive your father out to the house and get him settled, and you all come along whenever you’re ready. Dinner will be at seven sharp.”

“I’ll tell Jackson and Maddie,” Georgiann told her. “Shall I invite Susannah?”

“Of course!”

“Good then.”

Emma just stood there, feeling a little like an empty plastic bag swept up by a gust of wind as they all moved around her. Gavin kissed her cheek and squeezed her arm, but Emma still didn’t move a muscle except for the weak little smile she managed to give him.

“I’ll see you at dinner, Princess.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“I’ll just walk you two out,” Georgiann said as she headed for the front door, arm-in-arm with Gavin, Norma on the other side of him.

Emma and Fee stood glued to their spots, side by side, watching them go.

“Uh,” Fee said. “You remember that your mother is in town as well, right?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I thought I’d go upstairs.”

“To see Jackson?”

“No. To jump.”

Jackson escorted Leo Finch to the lobby and shook his hand, thinking that this man looked more like the prototype for an Internal Revenue Service auditor than a fire marshal. He could almost picture Finch on the cover of the government recruitment brochure for the IRS, smiling just enough to tip the hand of that chipped yellow front tooth, but not enough to inspire any real confidence.

“Thank you for everything.”

“Sure thing,” Finch replied, and then he pulled a very serious face, eyebrows pointing downward at his nose. “And remember. Only
you
can prevent hotel fires.”

The fire marshal quoting
Smokey the Bear
? It was too strange to be real.

“Ha,” he managed. “Good one. Have a good day.”

Not a great day. Just a good one. Preferably somewhere else.

Jackson watched the man fuss with his tweed jacket as he headed down the hotel driveway toward the street, and he wondered where he was parked. His musings were cut in two with the distant click of heels top-noted by Georgiann’s singsong voice.

He knew better, he really did. After all, he was an adult, the owner of the place, but Georgiann’s approach sent anxiety coursing through him. The second heel click heading around the corner would be Miguel, and he’d been successfully dodging him all day.

What was it about mild-mannered Miguel Ramos that could make a successful grown man hightail it and duck for cover?

Jackson knew the answer, but he didn’t stop to ponder it. He didn’t tiptoe away; oh no, there wouldn’t be any tiptoeing for him. But he did manage to keep contact between his shoes and the shiny marble lobby floor to a minimum as he made a beeline for the converted office that used to be his supply closet of choice in moments like these.

He eased open the door, slipped inside, and closed the door again. He didn’t mean to hold his breath, but he realized that’s just what he was doing.

“Oh, I’d forgotten Miguel Ramos was in the house.”

His hand still poised over the doorknob, Jackson closed his eyes and dropped his head against the door. He hadn’t noticed that the room was illuminated, or that Emma was sitting there. One deep breath of composure, and he turned around and gave her a clumsy smile.

“No judgment here,” she said with a grin, seated on the floral sofa in the corner, looking quite prim with her legs crossed and her arm draped over the back of the couch.

“Who are
you
hiding from?” he asked her.

“My family tree. You?”

Jackson nodded. “You had it right. My nephew.”

“Share my soda?”

“Sure.”

Jackson crossed the room and took a seat in the deep blue wingback chair while Emma refreshed her glass of cola, then handed him the can. Once he’d taken it, she raised her glass toward him, and he clinked the can against it with a nod before taking a drink.

“So, Jackson,” she began, then she leaned back into the couch and arched her brow at him. “How are we going to get you through this debilitating fear of the clergy?”

Jackson snickered and rested an ankle on the opposite knee. “I wish I knew.”

“Any other uniformed figures you hide from? Postal workers, dog catchers, maybe a medical professional or two?”

“No. No, it would appear to be an aversion to well-meaning pastors alone.”

He found himself carefully examining the fabric on the arm of his chair as she asked him, “Do you want to talk about it?”

After a long moment of consideration, he replied, “Not really.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to talk about your reasons for hiding in this room?”

Emma chuckled, then she closed her eyes and tilted her head to the back of the couch with a sigh. “My family tree has root rot.”

“I understand,” he told her with a grin.

“Oh, no,” she replied, lifting her head and braising him with the fire in her eyes. “Your family is just big and quirky, with a somewhat dim view of boundaries.” Jackson laughed right out loud at her perceptive analysis. “My family doesn’t know what boundaries
are
. And to make it worse, I don’t have a group of sisters to ease the burden of being the only child of Gavin and Avery Travis. You don’t understand. It’s just me, Jackson. No one else. Just me, wedged between these two great big—” she waved her arms in opposing circles, as if depicting a tornado in pursuit, “—
big
personalities.”

Jackson couldn’t help himself—he guffawed, then slapped the arm of the chair to punctuate his amusement.

“Oh, laugh it up, buddy,” she told him, her expression trapped somewhere between hilarity and utter panic. “But you’re going to be dragged into this vortex of human dysfunction. At this very moment,
Norma
is playing hostess to my
father
!”

“What—”

“Oh yeah. My father came to town today, and your sister took him home with her. Like an orphaned child headed for Disneyland, talking about having dinner and taking him to see the sights.”

“Well, that’s not so …”

“No, wait. There’s more.”

“More?”

“My Aunt Sophie isn’t doing so well in Savannah,” she said. Then wandering off on another trail of thought, she continued, “I think she might have Alzheimer’s, actually. They found her at the mall in her pajamas, I guess, waiting for the stores to open. That can’t be good, right? I mean, she wasn’t just walking in her sleep or something. She was confused, and she just—”

Their eyes met, and Emma stopped herself mid-thought.

“Sorry. Anyway. My mother got the brilliant idea, with the impeccable timing that she’s always possessed, to choose this exact moment in time to bring Aunt Sophie to Atlanta and get her settled in some assisted-living facility she knows about.”

“Well, that part is good, right? She’s taking care of your aunt, seeing to it that—”

“No. You don’t understand. My parents can
not
be here at the same time. It’s just a whole … a whole … recipe for
disaster
!”

“And you don’t think you’re just the slightest bit over the top with this?” he asked with a grin.

“Oh, fine. You hold fast to that, Jackson. I want to hear more from you once you’ve been in a room with both of them at the same time. I give you five minutes.”

“Until what?”

“Until you run screaming into the night.”

Something in her expression drained the amusement out of the conversation, and Jackson reached over and touched her arm.

“They’re that horrible?”

“The truth is, they’re wonderful people. Both of them. My mother is refinement and grace, with this really keen sense about decorum and courtesy. She’s lovely, she really is.” She smoothed her hair back with both hands and sighed. “And my dad is one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. He’s smart, and he’s well traveled, well read. He’s not refined like my mother, but he really knows what’s what. Do you get what I mean?”

Jackson nodded tentatively. “I think so.”

“They’re fantastic people, they really are. But you put them in a room together, Jackson, and it’s like … like …”

“Like you want to lock yourself in a supply closet?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. “At the very least.”

“When does your mother arrive?”

“Any minute.”

Jackson got the feeling from her reply that Houston command was at the ready, counting backwards toward liftoff.

“Do you want me to wait with you?”

“Oh,” she said on a sigh. “No. There’s no use in that. Go on. Save yourself.”

Jackson grinned. He drained the last of the soda from the can and set it down on the coffee table before standing up and facing her. When she looked up at him, he stretched out his arms for a moment, then tapped his chest with both hands before opening his arms again.

“Come on. Let’s hug it out.”

While chuckling, Emma groaned and pushed herself up from the sofa and smacked into his embrace.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Jackson told her, suppressing the smile that threatened to turn into full-on laughter.