He gave me a lopsided smile. “Sorry, but no.”
“Alas.”
He took a sip of his beer, and I froze as I recognized the label. As casually as I could, I asked, “Malone, what are you drinking?”
“A Blue Moon.”
I had not specified to the universe which blue moon I meant. But it couldn’t be the beer. What was Malone going to do? Hold the bottle up and let us kiss underneath it as if it were mistletoe?
“Oh boy.” His face contorted.
“What?”
“You need to come with me, so sip a bit of that liquid courage.”
“Why?”
“Grandpa spotted you and inclined his head. I’m afraid you must be vetted.”
My nose wrinkled. “Like a show pony?”
“Something like that.”
I took a sip and stood. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. I’m happy to help relieve your boredom and to attempt to make Selena jealous, but I didn’t sign up to have an old man check my teeth.”
“He won’t check your teeth.”
“Thank God.”
“He has people for that.”
“Dammit, Malone.”
He took my hand and gave it a squeeze; electricity ran up my arm, and happiness spilled over my head and down my body. As we approached a group of people standing at the edge of a dais, the crowd of men parted to make room for us. Each of those men sized me up. I stood straighter, which had the unfortunate—or fortunate, depending on your point of view—effect of pushing my chest forward.
Conversation stopped.
“Grandpa,” Malone said as he released my hand with one last reassuring squeeze and then stepped forward to hug his grandfather.
His grandfather’s eyes bored through me, and I had a flash of the future. Malone would one day look like this: hair more sandy than gray, eyes crinkling, still trim, still commanding.
But not as scary. No, Malone would always have a twinkle in his eyes.
“This is my date, Stella Stark.”
Lucius Malone looked me up and down. He didn’t have to check my teeth to make me feel like a show pony. “Stark. Of the Kennesaw Avenue Starks?”
“Uh, more like the McDonald Street Starks?”
He nodded. “And you know this boy is going back to California?”
“He has made that abundantly clear.”
“Good. Nice to meet you.” He turned back to his cronies, and Malone escorted me to our table once more.
“Malone, I think he just relegated this pony to the glue factory.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied in such a way I knew he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
