Madame Davenport eyed Ginger and snapped the cover of the tablet closed. “My dear, you will not scrub anything but yourself into the person you want to be. You are hereby enrolled in the three-week session that starts tomorrow. On scholarship.”
For the second time ever, Ginger O’Leary gasped.
* * *
Have a few moments to help with a new pupil assessment?
James Gallagher read the text from his godmother and groaned. He used to help out at Larilla’s etiquette school quite a bit, playing the role of “upstanding young man in the community” so that Larilla could assess how students acted around the opposite sex and practice their newfound skills in conversation. Larilla had a list of men of all ages who loved helping out at the school, but all her favorites must be unavailable today.
The last time he helped with an assessment was last year, in the final days of Ava Guthrie’s course. He’d watched Ava transform from a “country girl,” as she’d called herself, into a “lady,” and he’d given her top scores in the final assessment. She’d hooked him, hadn’t she? A “well-educated businessman,” twenty-eight-year-old James Gallagher was one of Wedlock Creek’s “hottest catches,” per a ridiculous article in the Wedlock Creek Gazette that his sisters loved to tease him about. Last year, he’d even been thinking about getting himself removed from the eligible-bachelor list because he’d found his Ms. Right.
But Ava Guthrie had played him for the fool he was. After she’d gotten what she wanted—to be the kind of woman who’d attract a man like him—the grifter had gone for the kill, leaving town and taking James’s ability to trust. She’d sped off in the shiny new Fiat he’d bought her. Like an idiot.
After that fiasco, his godmother had kindly stopped asking him to help. Larilla knew he’d do anything for her, just as she would do anything for him. His parents and grandparents on both sides were long gone, and Larilla was all he had left of his mother’s side of the family. On his dad’s side he had the five half siblings he’d raised since his father’s and stepmother’s deaths seven years ago. Larilla had always been his rock. If she asked a favor, he was damn well going to grant it. Besides, a month and a week from now, he’d be in Paris, France, the start of his long-awaited summer sabbatical trip around the world. He wouldn’t be able to help Larilla with anything, and he owed her.
Be right over, he typed back.
Wonderful! We’re in the dining room.
It was just after six, but Larilla structured her course so that she met with a few students individually throughout the day and held group sessions twice daily. She always assessed new students over a private meal so that she could see how they conducted themselves at the table.
Larilla’s home, which housed the etiquette school, was just a few minutes’ drive from his place. He left his room, the converted attic bedroom, and headed down the steep steps of the big house his father had bought when he’d married James’s stepmother twenty-two years ago. None of his siblings were home, no surprise there. The quints were twenty-one now, and two—his brothers—had left town for their dream jobs, one involving a prosperous ranch and the other as a sous chef in a five-star hotel in Cheyenne. Two of his sisters worked as assistants to Larilla, wanting to learn the business, which pleased his godmother to no end, and then there was Josie, who was generally responsible for his carrying three rolls of Tums wherever he went. “You are responsible for your reaction to me, James, so don’t blame the heartburn on me!” Josie had bellowed a time or two.
He passed his dad and stepmother’s old master bedroom in the huge house. None of the Gallagher siblings had felt right about moving in there, including him. They used it as a family room so that they’d always feel their dad and Kerry with them when they were watching movies or TV, or having family meetings about who the slob who couldn’t cap the toothpaste or wipe up the spills on the kitchen counter was.
James couldn’t believe it had been seven years since he’d lost his parents. Or that he’d actually done it—seen the siblings through the throes of raging adolescence at thirteen to twenty-one-year-olds living their lives. He’d put his own life on hold to raise them, but come a month from now, James was hitting the road—the skies, actually—for a global summer trip of no responsibility to anyone but himself. He’d eat the best pasta in the universe in Italy. Amazing bread and cheese in France. Paella, a favorite of his, in Spain. Sushi and real ramen in Japan. He’d go on safari in Africa. Swim the coral reefs in Australia. He’d even try to learn to meditate in India, not that he could imagine relaxing to that degree.
He was going to see the world—without a care. He. Could. Not. Wait.
He drove over to Larilla’s blush-colored Queen Anne, the sight of which never failed to make him smile. With its three-story octagonal tower and ornate wraparound veranda, the house looked like an etiquette school. A sign noting Madame Davenport’s School of Etiquette hung from the side of the porch, where Larilla’s Persian cat, Esme, lay curled in a padded rocker in a patch of sunshine.
Once inside the gorgeously decorated home, which always struck him as “cozy museum,” he headed to the dining room, where he found Larilla seated at the head of the table, a young woman to her left. The platinum blonde looked like an extra from that movie Working Girl with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford—lots of skin, makeup and hair. They’d clearly just finished dinner, since there were serving dishes and plates on the table.
As he entered the room, the blonde let out an impressive wolf whistle and checked him out from head to toe and back up again.
Larilla jotted something down in the electronic tablet she carried everywhere.
“That’s probably the kind of thing I shouldn’t do anymore,” the blonde said to Larilla. “It’s not ladylike or whatever, right?”
“My dear,” Larilla began in that slight drawl of hers, “men have been catcalling women since the dawn of time. When I was in my late forties, a man walked past me on Main Street and said, ‘Hey, hot stuff.’ Boy, did he end up regretting that.”
The young woman’s eyes widened—in a gleeful way. “Whatja do?”
Larilla took a sip of her tea. “I bored him for a good fifteen minutes in the middle of the sidewalk on why it was inappropriate to comment on my appearance—anyone’s appearance, except perhaps to note that someone looked lovely today. Boring someone to death is an effective deterrent, I’ve noticed.”
“Kinda weird for me to tell this dude he looks lovely today,” the blonde said, raking her hazel eyes over him again.
“In that case, you simply ogle on the down low and keep mum,” Larilla explained with a wink.
The blonde beamed, and Larilla patted her hand.
At least he understood why his godmother had asked for his help when she knew he was still bitter as hell about what happened the last time he had anything to do with an etiquette student. The platinum blonde would probably need three courses before she’d graduate, and by then, James would be in Europe, on a gondola in Venice. This was one student who wouldn’t get to him.
Larilla turned to him. “James, I’m pleased to introduce my newest pupil, Ginger O’Leary. Ginger, my godson, James Gallagher.”
“Man, your eyes are blue,” Ginger said to him. “Guys get the best eyelashes too, am I right? I have to buy a new tube of mascara, like, every two weeks to keep up. Lahl!”
“Lahl?” James repeated. Was that a brand of mascara?
Ginger gaped at him as though he was nuts. “Lahl. El-oh-el. Get it?”
El-oh-el? What? Oh, he