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“Galen?”
“Hi.” He smiled, and the sheer charisma of it made her gasp. “I hope I’m not late. I had to return the ale I bought.” He held up a bottle of sparkling apple cider. “Hope this is okay. One of our local apple orchards makes it. I should have cleared it with you first, Brenda, but I took a chance.”
“Cleared it?” Mom gave that laugh again as she accepted the bottle of cider. “Oh Brenda, are you doing that micromanaging thing you do? You really need to relax.”
“Just trying to make everything perfect, Mom,” she managed. She caught Galen’s eye. He gave her a quick up-and-down once-over and grinned. She got the message. You look hot.
So do you, you sneaky mother-effer.
She wanted to drag him out of the foyer and interrogate him about his new haircut. Why? When? Who? What the hell? But her mother had commandeered all his attention.
“He outwitted us,” Granny whispered in her ear. “I didn’t know he had it in him.”
“Did you know he was going to get a damn makeover?”
“Ha! No. At first I was ticked off, but he’s such a looker it’s hard to stay mad.”
Brenda knew exactly what she meant. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. This was going to take some getting used to. It felt so surreal to be interacting with this devastatingly handsome man as if he was Galen.
“But all is not lost,” Granny murmured as they all trooped into the dining room. “He’s still Galen under those nice clothes.”
Granny had a point. Only Galen’s appearance had changed. He still had rough edges. He looked almost panicked when he saw the table arrayed with delicate bone china plates, which Brenda only used when her mother was visiting.
Ignoring his plate, he went immediately for the platter of deviled eggs. In less than three seconds, he’d popped eight of them into his mouth.
Brenda shot her mother a look, but she hadn’t seemed to notice his hearty appetite. Or she was choosing to ignore it while she circled Galen like a shark looking for an opening.
This was torture. No matter how much CeCe was rooting for some kind of Galen gaffe, Brenda wasn’t. She wanted her mother to like Galen—because she did, and because he deserved to be liked.
“So, Galen, how do you know my daughter?” Laney asked.
“I’ve…uh…had a—” He winced as Brenda kicked his leg under the table. She’d forgotten to mention that her mother knew nothing about them kissing. “I threw her friend off a cliff,” he blurted.
Mom’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
Brenda clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back her laugh. Granny covered her mouth with a napkin, likely also burying a laugh. Neither of them could come to Galen’s rescue.
“Oh, don’t worry, she was already dead.”
“What?” Mom was no doubt picturing a body being rolled off a cliff, concrete shoes style.
“Ashes,” Brenda gasped, finally managed to dredge up some words. “Galen helped me scatter someone’s ashes. It was Rosalind Stanley, remember her?”
“Oh.” Her mother shot Galen a glance full of outrage. She was wearing a St John’s Bay tweed suit in shades of “sunset at the country club.” Her hair had recently been touched up so it nearly matched Brenda’s. “It’s a strange way of putting it. And not really appropriate conversation material.”
Which part? Brenda wondered. The ashes part or the death part? Her parents and their friends didn’t like to talk about death, unless someone had come to an especially lurid end.
Galen looked rattled by his misstep. “I’m sorry.”
Brenda stepped in to do what she could. “You asked how we met, Mom. All he did was answer. Although technically, we met earlier than that.”
“Yes, I’ve known Brenda since she started teaching here. She was carrying boxes into the school to set up her classroom. There was a ficus plant.”
Brenda shot Galen a startled glance. That was news to her, that he’d watched her move in. “I meant when Olaf attacked your cooler of fish the other day.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” He looked around desperately, as if trying to find something else to talk about, anything else. “This food. It’s all so little. I was wondering if I could fit one of everything in my mouth at the same time.”
Brenda choked on a crostini. CeCe clapped her hands together. “Oh, do try, Galen! I’ll bet my pearl choker that you can.”
