Hot Button (4 page)

“Sorry.” I cringed when I said it—again.

Chase grabbed his nametag, and just as he marched onto the boat, I saw Kaz walk past the doorway. I waved him over.

“There are only a few more people in line,” I told him, getting up from my seat so I could pilot him into it. “If you could just…”

“Sure, Jo.” He took my place. “Something up?”

Kaz wouldn’t understand—or care—about the Thad/Chase smackdown or the missing nametag, so I didn’t even try to explain. “I need to buy one of our attendees a drink as an apology,” I said, and hurried after Chase.

Within ten minutes, Chase was enjoying a glass of Syrah courtesy of my personal credit card and not the conference account, the ruffled feathers were smoothed, and all our guests were aboard. By the time we cast off and set sail on the beautiful blue waters of Lake Michigan, I was on the second deck, doing a last count of the seats around the round
dinner tables with their white-linen tablecloths and the amazing centerpieces Helen and a dedicated subcommittee had put together—flowers cut from heavy paper in shades of ivory, brown, and pink, each with a button at its center. The centerpieces would be given away as door prizes at the end of the cruise, and already, I saw our guests eyeing them. I couldn’t blame them; the arrangements were clever and adorable, and a couple of them included buttons I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on. Too bad that, as conference chair, I wasn’t eligible to win one.

When she swept past me and toward the buffet line, Helen grabbed my arm. “Don’t argue,” she said before I could. “I know what you’re going to say. That you have one more thing to check. Or one more thing to do. Or one more person to get something for. If you remember, Josie, I told you that when you’re in charge of a conference like this, you have to pace yourself. You’ll never be standing at the end of the week if you try to do everything for everyone all the time. You need to look after yourself, too. That includes eating dinner. Now.”

“But…” I held back. “There’s a woman here all the way from Australia, and she doesn’t know anyone and—”

“She’ll make friends. Just like we all did at our first conference.” Another tug.

“But I don’t want anyone to feel neglected, and I want to make sure they’re all mingling and having fun and—”

“Oh, honey!” Helen had a glass of white wine in her hands, and though I’d never known her to be much of a drinker, I wondered if it was her first. There were two spots of vivid color in Helen’s cheeks and a spring to her step I’d never seen before. “You can’t be all things to all people,” she confided. “So don’t even try. If you do, you’ll be useless by day two of the conference. Remember that. Come on.”

She was right, and even if she wasn’t, I owed it to Helen to follow her advice. We took our places at the end of the buffet line, right behind Langston Whitman, one of my favorite people in all the button world. Langston was a tall, handsome African American in his forties and probably one of the only people in the room who wasn’t a collector. (Well, not counting Kaz, who I’d seen earlier charming the socks off a young fashion designer from New York who’d come to the conference to look at antique buttons because she was thinking about including some in her next year’s fall line.) Langston, in fact, catered to the rest of us. He was one of the vendors who sold all the paraphernalia collectors depended on: the awls we used to punch the heavy paper stock we mount our buttons on, those heavy-card-stock pages, plastic sleeves, wire, cleaners. Always impeccably dressed and soft-spoken, he was a pleasure to do business with. After we exchanged greetings and hugs, he introduced me to his partner (business and personal), a younger man by the name of Elliot, who had the flair of an artist and the face of an angel.

“Wait until you see what Elliot has been up to.” Langston’s eyes gleamed. He stepped forward and took white glass plates from the stack on the buffet table and passed them down to me and Helen before he grabbed his own. I followed him on one side of the buffet table, with Helen and Elliot on the other, and together, Langston and I piled our dishes with mixed green salad, lemon chicken, horseradish-encrusted grilled salmon, and roasted seasonal vegetables in all the glorious colors of the coming fall.

“He’s not just a woodworker, you know,” Langston said, with a quick smile at Elliot and one hand poised above slices of cheesecake and the sugar cookies shaped like buttons. “Elliot is an artist.” He took two of the cookies and put them
on his plate. “He’s making awls with hand-carved handles. Cherry, mahogany, oak. They are magnificent. You are going to be so impressed, Josie. I’m going to make a prediction—before this week is over, you’ll be carrying a full line of his tools in that sweet little shop of yours.”

I had no doubt of it, and told Langston so. We crossed the room together chatting about the different woods Elliot was experimenting with and took our places at one of the tables near the window. I’d gotten exactly one bite of lemon chicken into my mouth when I heard Thad Wyant’s voice rattle the chandeliers.

“You call that rare? Shucks, that little ol’ piece of beef could be used fer a doorstop. I said rare. You know, as in red. Mooing.”

That bite of chicken felt like a brick going down my throat, but I managed to choke out “Excuse me” to my fellow diners and got up from the table so I could hurry over to the buffet, where Thad was nose-to-nose with a man in a tall white toque.

Thad didn’t miss a beat. He took one look at me and poked his chin in the direction of the server, who was shaving thin slices of beef from a prime rib the size of my button shop. “You see what this here fella is trying to pass off as rare? I told him rare. Josie, sweetie, you understand that, don’t you? But this guy here—”

I took a look at the tag the server was wearing. “I’m sure Jorge is doing his best,” I said, and tossed the server a smile that I hoped would count as enough of an apology until I had a chance to slip him a little extra tip. “You know how restaurants are these days, Thad. They even have that little disclaimer on their menus. About how they can’t serve undercooked meat because of the risk of contaminants.”

“Horse hockey!” Thad swept off his Stetson and ran a
hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, which hung over his collar. “They don’t want to take responsibility for how their food is cooked so I should eat meat that’s better thrown out to the coyotes? I don’t think so. And another thing—”

This was pretty much when I became aware of the fact that the gentle buzz of conversation that had filled the dining room earlier had pretty much come to a halt, and a couple hundred pairs of eyes were trained on us. I knew I couldn’t waste another second. Over the last few months, I’d worked with Micah, the banquet manager, to put this dinner together, and I scanned the room, spotted him, and caught hold of Thad’s arm. One more apologetic smile at Jorge, and I ushered our guest of honor over to where Micah was standing.

“We need a steak,” I told Micah.

Thad stepped between me and Micah. “A filet.”

Don’t ask me how, but I managed to keep my best smile in place. “We need a filet for Thad, and we need it cooked as rare as rare can be.” I looked at Thad for confirmation, and when he didn’t contradict me, I turned back to Micah. “Mr. Wyant will be seated at my table. You can bring it over to him when it’s done.”

“Certainly, Ms. Giancola.” Micah was young and eager to make his way in the dog-eat-dog (no pun intended) world of Chicago restaurateurs. His expression was as smooth as the filling in the key-lime pie on the table over to our left. “But you do realize that the per-person buffet cost you agreed to doesn’t include individual dinners.”

“Of course she does.” Thad gave Micah a too-friendly slap on the back. “You sittin’ over there, Josie?” he asked, with a glance at the table where my dinner was getting cold. “I’ll be by in a jiffy, soon as I stop up at the bar and get this here drink refilled.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “A
jiffy.” He stepped away, his eyes on Micah. “That’s how soon that filet is gonna be ready, right? I mean, after you stop standing there staring at me, son, and get to the kitchen and put the order in.”

I swear I squeezed my eyes shut only for a second. Just long enough to pray for patience. When I opened them again, Thad was already at the bar, and Micah was waiting for me to give him the go-ahead. I did, and with a sigh, I went back to the table to sit down.

Helen was seated on my left, and just after I sat down, she dropped her napkin on the floor, bent to recover it, and crooned, “Well played,” on her way back up.

It was, and I congratulated myself.

Crisis averted.

Dinner guests back to chatting and eating.

Guest of honor happy.

For now.

My fork and the roasted vegetables on it were halfway to my mouth when that last thought struck, and my stomach soured, but since Langston had just turned to me to ask about the setup in the vendor room at the conference, I had no choice but to pretend everything was A-OK and go on eating. Good thing, too. Though my meal was a tad on the chilly side, the food was delicious, and I chomped my way through it, the tension unwinding inside me with each delicious bite.

At least until Thad arrived. Lucky for all of us, so did his filet just a minute later, and wonder of wonders, he didn’t have one word of complaint. Well, except to say that the meat was a tad underdone for his taste. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to take the edge off his appetite. He wolfed down his steak, pointing around the table with the tip of his knife to whoever’s attention he hoped to capture.

“And what’s your specialty, sir?” He poked his knife in Langston’s direction. “Let me guess: you look to me like one of them fellas who collects them cute little china buttons. What are they called, Josie?”

“Calicoes.” I was amazed that a man whose knowledge of Western-themed buttons was encyclopedic could be that out of touch when it came to any other buttons. Then again, I supposed that was why Thad was considered to be the leading expert in his field (don’t tell Chase Cadell). He was a specialist, not a generalist.

Langston had just finished the last of his grilled salmon, and he touched his napkin to his lips. “I’m afraid I’m not one of you,” he said. “Supplies are my specialty. I’m Langston Whitman.” He put out a hand to Thad.

Thad shook it readily enough, but his expression was clouded in confusion. “Supplies. Is that some kind of button?”

It wouldn’t have been all that funny of a joke coming from anyone else, but Thad was the conference guest of honor, after all. We all laughed a little more than was called for, and when we were done, Helen scooted forward in her seat.

“How soon can we see it?” she asked, her eyes on Thad. “You’re not going to make us wait until dinner tomorrow night, are you, Thad?”

He knew exactly what Helen was talking about, and his eyes lit up. I knew what she was talking about, too, and in spite of the fact that I told myself that it was nothing more than a button and that I had known for a while that it would be on display at this conference, a little tingle of excitement shot through me.

“You’d like me to say you can see it before then. I can see that in those pretty blue eyes of yours.” Thad was done with
his steak, so he wagged one finger at Helen. “You’re figurin’ I’ll say somethin’ like come on up to room 842 tonight at eleven and you’ll get a look at it—the Geronimo button.”

I may have been imagining it, but I swear, at the sound of those words being spoken, every person at the table caught his or her breath.

Everyone but Thad.

He slapped his knee. “Sure, you’re gonna have to wait. Just like everyone else. Ain’t that right, Josie?”

All eyes turned to me. “Thad and I have an agreement,” I explained. “You know, so that none of his thunder gets stolen before tomorrow night’s banquet. That’s the first anyone here at the conference is supposed to get a look at the Geronimo button.”

“I can’t wait.” Helen’s cheeks flamed. At least for a second. Then it was as if someone had turned off a switch. She cocked her head and stared at Thad. “But how—”

“Lookee this, my glass is empty!” Thad jiggled the ice cubes in his glass and got up from the table. “Gonna pay a quick visit over to the bar. Be right back, folks.”

Honestly, I thought about joining him. It had already been a long night, and officially, the conference hadn’t even begun. I talked myself out of a trip to the bar and a well-deserved glass of wine, though, wishing my dinner companions a pleasant rest of the evening and staying right where I was as they rose and scattered, walking around the room to chat with other conference-goers, heading up to the open third deck to watch the Chicago skyline in all its glory.

I would have to go outside eventually, too, but for now, I savored the peace and quiet, the smooth whoosh of the boat in the serene waters, and the contentment that comes after a good meal in (mostly) good company.

“Wanna dance?”

I didn’t even bother to look at him when Kaz flopped into the chair next to mine. “It’s not a dancing cruise,” I told him. I sat up and worked a kink out of my shoulders. “I should know. I planned it. No music.”

“We could hum and dance.”

Like I said, I was feeling content. I laughed. “Actually…” I pushed my chair back from the table. “I’ve got to go mingle. There’s a woman here from Australia—”

“Meghan Moran.” Kaz nodded. “I hooked her up—in a button conference way, I mean—with a couple ladies from Indianapolis. They’re hanging out like long-lost friends.”

“Thank you.” Had I actually said that to Kaz? Had he actually done me a favor? I eyed him carefully, but then, that wasn’t exactly uncalled-for; when Kaz is in a giving mood, it’s usually because he expects to receive something in return. “I don’t suppose you took care of the contingent from Paris, too?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Don’t speak the language. But that guy from the Czech Republic…” He glanced over to where I saw Alexander Benes talking to some folks. “He speaks really good English. He was telling me about the glass buttons they make at that factory of his.”

“And you were listening?” OK, call me cynical, but let’s face it—in the three years we’d been married, Kaz had never listened to word one from me. Not when it came to buttons.