“What’s next weekend?”
“He’s having a cocktail party for some of his clients. He wants you to serve as his hostess.”
“Me?” Connie exclaimed in surprise, then shot her friend a stern look. “Whose idea was that?”
“His very own. He probably wanted to tell you about it himself, but I’m too annoyed with him to care.”
“Well, he can just forget it. I’m not going to do it.”
Summer blinked in surprise. Connie’s reaction was something she hadn’t expected. “You’re not? Why?”
“Why should I?” Connie demanded belligerently, glaring down at her coffee. “Why should I do Derek any favors?”
For the first time Summer was conscious of a genuine surge of vexation at her roommate’s attitude toward her brother. “Because he’s going to ask you to. He’s trying to make peace, Connie. Why won’t you at least meet him halfway?”
“He’s got you taken in, Summer. This is just another way to manipulate me. He’s asking me to help out with his boring cocktail party to point out the contrast to the party you and I threw last week. He’ll probably lose no opportunity to inform me that his is the proper type of social entertainment.”
“I think you’re overreacti
ng. He’s giving the party, anyway, whether you serve as his hostess or not,” Summer pointed out logically. “He’s trying to show you that he trusts you to help him out without embarrassing him. That he respects you, Connie.”
“Why are you taking Derek’s side in this?” Connie demanded. “Are you in some kind of conspiracy with him? Just what did the two of you say about me yesterday, anyway?”
“Connie!” Summer set down her coffee cup and glared at her roommate. “You know better than that.”
Connie sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve just gotten too used to having to search Derek’s every action for ulterior purposes. You really think he’s doing this as a peace offering?”
“Yes, I do,” Summer answered flatly, not certain herself of why she was so sure of Derek’s motives. She only knew that she trusted him and she had believed him when he’d said he wanted to be closer to his sister. And she knew that she wanted to help. “Will you do it?” she asked.
Connie grimaced. “I’ll probably hate every minute of it, but I guess I will. But I warn you, we may all regret this.”
“I don’t think you will,” Summer assured her, devoutly hoping she was right. “Anyway, he invited me to the party, as well,” she said, hoping that fact would make Connie more enthusiastic about the event. Forgetting that only moments before she had urged Connie to trust Derek, she added in a mutter, “He probably hopes I’ll do something to embarrass myself. Well, I’ll show him that I can conduct myself as properly and respectably as… as Joanne Payne.”
Connie looked closely at Summer’s flushed face and gleaming blue eyes. “Summer, you’re not actually… interested in my brother, are you?”
“Interested?” Summer tried very hard to sound incredulous. “Connie, does Derek seem like the hero-type to you?”
“Well, no…”
“I categorically refuse to give in to an attraction to a stuffy businessman. Even if he does kiss like an angel.”
Again Connie remained wisely silent, though her eyes brimmed with sudden smothered laughter. “This should prove to be interesting,” she murmured after a moment.
Summer glared at her and drained her coffee. “I’m going to get ready for work,” she announced haughtily, rising to her full height with immense dignity.
Connie giggled and allowed herself to waste a few moments contemplating a tempestuous love affair between her sober brother and her happy-go-lucky roommate. It might definitely be interesting, she told herself gaily. Suddenly the idea of Derek’s cocktail party didn’t sound so bad.
“ARE YOU SURE I look all right?” Connie fretted on the doorstep of her brother’s home. She smoothed the skirt of her dark green strapless cocktail dress over her well-rounded hips, then straightened the scanty bodice, which clung as if by magic to her full breasts. The auburn hair, which was usually worn in a heedless riot of curls, had been subdued into a sleek chignon at the base of her slender neck.
“Connie, you look beautiful,” Summer assured her friend firmly. Summer hadn’t been present when Derek had asked his sister to attend this party, so she didn’t know exactly what had been said, but she assumed the conversation had been amicable enough. Connie was here. “Derek will be proud to have you as a hostess. How about me? Do I look okay?”
“More than okay” Connie replied sincerely. “You look fantastic.”
Summer had chosen an interestingly draped silk jumpsuit of a rich blue that made her eyes seem more incredibly vivid than ever, reflecting the sparkle of rhinestone buckles at her shoulders and tiny waist. A cut crystal pendant glinted from the deep décolletage, and matching earrings twinkled in delicate cascades from her earlobes. A spray of white baby’s breath was clipped at one side of her ultrashort hair to feminize the style for the evening, though Summer’s appearance left no doubt about her gender.
Summer lifted one foot and scowled at it, eyeing the delicate straps of her silver sandals beneath the tight ankle-length hem of her jumpsuit. “If only I could wear those deadly four-inch heels like you’ve got on,” she mourned. “There’s just something dangerous about a woman in four-inch spike heels.”
Connie laughed. “You would definitely be dangerous in four-inch heels, my friend. You don’t walk that great in flats.”