A Bravo Homecoming. Christine Rimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ mashed potatoes with a healthy side of mushy canned green beans. On the rig, the kitchen was open round-the-clock and you could get yourself a huge pile of hot food—heavy on the starches and fats and red meat—any time you got the least bit hungry.

      Not here, though. Jonathan ordered room service for them.

      When it came, she wanted to break down and cry. All day being waxed and plucked and pummeled in the spa. And for dinner, she got an itsy-bitsy mound of barely cooked broccoli, three tiny red potatoes. And grilled salmon.

      Actually, it was delicious. But it wasn’t enough to keep a fly alive.

      She begged for more. Jonathan refused to let her even have one more dinky red potato. He said she wasn’t getting enough exercise to eat the way she was apparently accustomed to eating.

      It was too much. She yelled at him. “Jonathan, I would be frickin’ happy to exercise. I’ll go down to the gym right this minute and bench-press my butt off if you will only swear on your life that there’ll be a blood-rare T-bone and a baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream waiting for me when I get back up here to this frickin’ tasteful, so-classy suite.”

      He only shook his head. He was a slave driver, that Jonathan.

      After the piddly-ass meal, they had grammar lessons. He made her take a vow that she would never use the word frickin’ again in this lifetime. And then he tutored her on how to eat at a table set with endless pieces of unrecognizable silverware.

      It was actually pretty simple, once he explained that you started with the outermost fork or knife or spoon and worked your way in. And if in doubt, you waited to pick up the next tong or cracker or pointy lobster-picking thing until you were able to subtly observe what your host or hostess did with it.

      “Subt-ly,” Jonathan repeated, making a big deal of both syllables. “And by ‘subtly,’ I mean a sideways glance in the direction of the hostess in question. No open-mouthed ogling. One must learn, darling, to accomplish one’s goal in such a way as not to telegraph one’s ignorance to the table at large.”

      “Gotcha,” she answered, feeling vaguely resentful. Yeah, okay. She did have a lot to learn, but she’d never been the kind to stare with her mouth open.

      He sighed in a way that indicated she caused him endless emotional pain. “Gotcha. Another word you would do well to remove from your vocabulary.”

      “Jonathan, you keep on like this, I won’t have any frick—er, darn words left.”

      “But, darling, you will learn new ones. I will see to that—and as concerns your elbows…”

      “Yeah, what about ’em?” She pushed back her sleeve. “They’ve been creamed and scrubbed and buffed just about down to the bone.”

      “Yes, they do look much better.”

      “Thanks, but that’s not what I was getting at.”

      “It doesn’t matter what you’re getting at. You’re the student. You’re here to watch, listen and learn. And as to elbows, they are under no circumstances to be allowed on the surface of the table while one is still indulging in the meal. Understood?”

      “Yeah, I knew that.” Not that she’d ever cared all that much where she put her elbows while she was eating. But still. Everybody knew they weren’t supposed to be on the table, even if most people didn’t give a damn either way.

      “However.” There was a definite gleam in Jonathan’s beady little eyes. “After the meal, while one lingers, chatting, enjoying the heady conversation that so often swirls around the table when one is in good company…then, and only then, is it considered acceptable to delicately brace one, or even both elbows on the tablecloth.”

      She couldn’t help grinning. “Delicately, huh?”

      “Yes, well. We’ll have to work on that.”

      After the lessons on which piece of silverware to use when, they moved on to her clothing. He said they would try some preliminary shopping tomorrow. He wanted her to think about what colors would work on her—bright, vivid jewel colors, he said. “And some neutrals. But. No. Gray. Ever.” He made each word a sentence. And then he elaborated. “Gray does nothing for your coloring, Samantha. Less than nothing. Gray makes you look embalmed.”

      “Gee. Good to know.”

      “Sarcasm is not appreciated.”

      “I’ll keep that in mind, Jonathan—if you will.”

      There was more lecturing on the subject of natural fibers. She would wear cotton, silk, linen and wool. And only cotton, silk, linen and wool. “And no frills. We’ll go for simplicity with you. And some drama. But nothing fluffy or ruffled. Nothing too…precious. Because, darling, you are not the precious type.”

      Of course, he had examples to show her on his laptop. She thought he was absolutely right in his judgment of what should work well for her clothing-wise, so she didn’t give him too much of a hard time during the wardrobe lesson. She listened and did her best to absorb what he taught her.

      At nine-thirty that evening, she was allowed a cup of tea and an orange. He admonished her to hold her teacup just so, to sip without slurping—and never to chew with her mouth open.

      Somehow, he inspired the brat in her. She longed to open her mouth good and wide and stick out her tongue at him before swallowing the section of orange she’d been so cautiously, delicately munching.

      But she didn’t. She kept her mouth shut and she swallowed the orange and she sipped without slurping at her unsweetened tea.

      He gave her a book to read when he sent her to bed: Miss Manners’ Guide to the Turn-of-the-Millennium. She turned the pages with white-gloved fingers because both of her hands were greased up and encased in the special gloves they’d given her at the spa.

      She even laughed now and then. Miss Manners was funny. And most of her advice made sense really.

      Once you got past the strange realization that the way Miss Manners used words was almost identical to the way Jonathan talked.

      The next day was worse.

      It was the shopping. She hated it.

      She’d really thought she had a pretty good idea of the clothing rules Jonathan had drilled into her the evening before. But it wasn’t the same, being out there in some fancy, expensive department store, trying to choose something vivid in color with nice, simple lines—in cotton, linen, silk or wool—when there were racks and racks packed with skirts and blouses and dresses and every other damn thing you ever might consider wanting to wear.

      It made her feel sick to her stomach. Suddenly she was longing to be back on the rig, wearing her boots and coveralls, slathered in drilling mud, hitting the deck as Jimmy Betts swung a length of pipe in her direction.

      Plus she was starving. Frickin’ starving, as a matter of fact—and no, she didn’t say the forbidden word out loud.

      But boy, was she tempted to.

      She needed a decent meal and she needed to not have to shop anymore.

      But СКАЧАТЬ