“Are they married?”
“Yes. Leigh is forty-four with three boys. Preston is forty and he has a son and a daughter. Evangeline is thirty-eight and is the mother of twin girls.”
“Your parents are lucky to have so many grandchildren.”
Cameron heard the wistfulness in Jasmine’s voice, and wondered if her parents had missed the opportunity to become grandparents. “They treat their grandbabies as if they were a part of a royal family. I’m ashamed to say they’re spoiled rotten.”
Jasmine met his eyes when she glanced at him. “Is Uncle Cameron also guilty when it comes to spoiling them?”
He smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
Cameron wanted to tell Jasmine that there were times when he missed not fathering children when interacting with his nieces and nephews. He’d watched them grow from infants to toddlers, and now tweens. His brother and brother-in-law bemoaned the approaching time when their daughters would begin dating, and Cameron always reminded them there was good and bad karma and they had to reap what they’d sown. Preston had had a new girlfriend every few months until he met his match when a girl he really liked refused to go out with him. He chased her relentlessly until she gave him an ultimatum: she wouldn’t sleep with him unless he married her. He married Madison and gladly turned in what he’d called his tomcatting card to become a husband and father.
“You said you divided your summers between North Carolina, New York, and the Philippines. Which did you like best?” he asked.
Jasmine decelerated as she entered the tunnel. “It’s a toss-up. I enjoyed going to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, because I got to see my cousins. We’d get up early and go swimming or berry-picking and between my aunties and my grandmother I learned to cook Southern cuisine. The weeks I spent in Manila were with my grandmother who taught me Tagalog and Spanish, and how to prepare traditional Filipino dishes. My last two weeks of the summer were on Long Island’s north shore where my father’s youngest sister had once been a private-duty live-in nurse and cook for an investment banker who had a former beauty pageant winner-wife who’d been diagnosed with brain cancer. After she passed away, he gave Danita the house, which had been a wedding gift to his wife, because she had been his late wife’s constant companion when she’d been unable to do anything for herself.
“My aunt rented out rooms to tourists over the summer months, while during the off-season she attended culinary school to perfect her cooking skills. Once she graduated she reopened the house as a bed-and-breakfast. She married a fellow chef and that’s when they decided to expand and open the restaurant in a converted barn.” Jasmine paused, smiling. “I loved spending those weeks on the North Fork because I had a bedroom that overlooked the Sound.”
Cameron stared at Jasmine’s delicate profile as she maneuvered through the tunnel. Although he’d grown up in a privileged home, he envied the woman sitting less than a foot away. Her summers were filled with love from family members who contributed to her becoming a well-rounded adult.
Cameron knew when he took a woman out on their first date that it would either lead to a second or it would be their last. But something told him when he’d asked Jasmine to dance with him at Hannah’s reception that she was different from any of the other women he’d dated or had been intimately involved with. Before that he’d spent the better part of an hour watching her interact with those sitting with her. He had also noticed her body language when a man held her too close when dancing. Her ring-less fingers indicated she wasn’t married or engaged, which had given him the opening he needed to approach her. Cameron did not want to pat himself on the back for his good luck in spending more time with Jasmine than he’d originally planned, but he intended to enjoy every moment they had together.
Tapping a button on the steering wheel, Jasmine turned on the satellite radio and tuned the station to hits from the eighties.
“You like disco.” Cameron’s question was a statement. He remembered her saying she liked old school music.
“Not all of it. One year my school had a lip-sync talent show and I performed ‘Last Dance’.”
Cameron tried imagining Jasmine belting out a Donna Summer hit. “Who would you be if you had the choice of being three female performers?”
Jasmine met his eyes for a second. “I’d have to pick Tina Turner, Christina Aguilera, and Whitney Houston.”
“If you had to choose one, then who would it be?”
“I can’t choose just one. I love Tina Tuner for her energy and longevity. I went with my mother to see her perform at Jones Beach when I was in junior high school and it was as if I had been holding my breath during her entire performance because she was just that mesmerizing. When it comes to Whitney Houston’s voice, I always felt it was like a gift from heaven. She could sing the alphabet and make it sound wonderful. Last, but definitely not least is Christina Aguilera. She has the reputation of having one of the most skillful and powerful voices in today’s music industry. Now, if you had to be three male performers, who would you be?” she asked, turning the tables on him.
“I would be Mick Jagger,” he said without hesitating. “Now that’s longevity. Mick will be singing and prancing across the stage when he’s eighty.”
“He’s almost eighty, Cameron. Did you know he recently became a father for the eighth time at seventy-three?”
Cameron grimaced. “No. He should’ve been celebrating becoming a great-grandfather at that age.”
Jasmine giggled. “He’s already a great-grandfather.”
He shook his head. “It looks as if he has no intention of slowing down. Then of course I would’ve loved to have been Michael Jackson, because he’s the ultimate showman.”
“I agree.”
“I was so taken with him that I even learned to moonwalk,” Cameron admitted.
“You didn’t!”
“Yes, I did. Of course it took nearly a week before I could slide backward without losing my balance.” Cameron didn’t tell Jasmine that he’d practiced incessantly because he’d wanted to impress his friends.
“And who’s your third one?” she asked.
“Marvin Gaye.”
