Ignoring the fact that she came across as an old lady on e-mail, Rebecca pulled Grayson from out behind her. “This is my son, Grayson.”
“Oooh, what a cutie!” Francine exclaimed. “Come here, sweetpea, and let or Francine have a look at you!” Rebecca pushed a reluctant Grayson forward. Francine leaned over her handlebars in a gravity-defying move and pinched his cheek. “You are such a cutie,” she said through clenched teeth, and abruptly let go.
“And this is my grandfather, Elmer Stanton.”
“I practically started the Silver Panthers,” he said.
“Did you?” Francine asked, clearly skeptical. “The place looks good, doesn’t it?” she said to Rebecca before Grandpa could continue. “You know, when you wrote me about this party, I thought you were out of your mind. Ask a bunch of Silver Panthers to a bingo party, and you are asking for trouble!” Francine laughed, braced her pudgy hands on her pudgier thighs. “But here we are, ready to go! Now all we’ve got to worry about is that the caller had to cancel.”
Rebecca was with her right up until her last statement. “What?”
“That boy you had lined up called here not a half hour ago and said some emergency had come up, so he ain’t gonna be here.”
She said it so cheerfully that Rebecca wondered if she’d heard her correctly. “Then who is going to call the bingo?”
“Hell if I know,” Francine said with a jolly laugh, then suddenly craned her neck to see behind Rebecca. “Well, will you lookie here, there’s my old friend Mary Zamburger! Pardon me, sugar!” She hit the accelerator of her scooter so hard that Grayson knocked into Rebecca trying to get out of the way.
“But . . .” Rebecca said, her voice trailing off as she whirled around to say something more to Francine—and saw Gunter and his photographer cowering near the entry.
“Now don’t you worry, Becky,” Grandpa said, patting her arm. “I’ll call the bingo.”
Chapter Sixteen
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere . . .
FRANK A CLARK
Chips and salsa were now the official state snack of Texas, thanks to the diligent efforts of Senator Masters.
Tom was really beginning to confuse the hell out of Matt. He had shepherded some good, decent legislation through the senate this session, but unfortunately, the only item to hit the papers was that stupid chips and salsa bit, and it made Tom look like a redneck. Matt’s opinion which was shared by Doug, and the two of them had plotted how to undo Tom’s damage that afternoon, with no help from Tom, who argued that he would get mileage out of any bill. “If you send a press release on anything that matters, there’s always a loser, which means someone to get bent out of shape. You know what happened to me on the campaign finance reform bill I authored—they might as well have nailed me to a cross on the capitol lawn. And besides, you can’t deny that every red-blooded Texan loves his chips and salsa. I know I do.”
“But they don’t love candidates who have nothing better to do with their tax dollars then sit around making up meaningless legislation,” Matt responded.
“Well, good God, Parrish, you sound like a damn Yankee!” Tom had laughed, clapping him on the back.
The whole thing had made Matt question his motives again, and what it was he hoped to achieve on this campaign. He was dreading the Silver Panthers event that evening, and probably would have skipped it altogether, taken some time to get his head on straight, had it not been but for one tiny little thing. Yep. Her again. The sexually repressed wacko.
He was, for reasons that could not possibly be less clear to him, feeling discouragingly protective of her. Or maybe it was possessive. Whatever it was, he didn’t like feeling it, particularly since, for all intents and purposes, she’d essentially had given him the ol’ heave-ho. In the aftermath of that, his assessment of what had happened (a full twenty minutes, a new personal best) between him and Miss Priss last week was that it had been an aberration in the space and time continuum. Nothing else would explain it. He knew she was trouble, that he was better off with women who actually liked him. So what if Rebecca was beautiful and sexy and just this side of odd? There were lots of intriguing women out there. There were.