Time and again, p.33
Time & Again, page 33
"Perhaps it does," Ruby replied.
"Somebody really ought to get Kara," Katy said. "I hate that she's inside while we're out here having such a nice time."
"She's working," Friday reminded her.
"So am I," Lisa said, chomping on the pineapple spear from her frozen drink, which she held with one hand as she continued typing with the other. She stood up to her shoulders in the pool, with her laptop open just on the ledge, a posture she'd adopted almost immediately upon her arrival outside.
"Does booking concert venues from the swimming pool really count as work?" Mike teased.
"I don't know, Mike," Yumi said. "Does playing guitar count as work?"
"Absolutely does," he replied. "But I can't do that from the pool."
"Sure you can," Ruby said. "You just haven't tried hard enough. I'd tell you to go get your guitar right now, but you're still on restriction."
"You're gonna like this, Miss K," Lisa said, taking another bite of pineapple. "Angel, you'll want to listen to this, too."
"Oh yeah?" Angel floated over, and--in contrast to just a few days ago--Lisa seemed totally at ease with her.
"I don't like things," Ruby teased in reply. "But tell me anyway."
"Well," Lisa said, "you'll like this. Meg said to tell you, because she's sure it'll make you smile."
"All right," Ruby said. "If MerMeg says I'm likely to smile, then there's got to be something to it. What is it you're so excited by, Lisa? Other than the fact that you've had an international pop star in your DMs all day--?"
"Well," Lisa replied, turning around to face Ruby where she sat under the shade of a giant umbrella, "I've been able to book Prather's venues out from under him in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth. Apparently, the campaign is having a hard time paying its bills. Meanwhile, they've sold tickets in every one of those towns that they'll have to refund if there's no rally and no photo ops. So now we're the better show in the better venue, and if he decides to cancel because of that, his whole campaign's going to go broke--like to the level they'll have a hard time running any sort of a campaign at all broke."
"Oh, you're right," Ruby said. "I do like that. Anything that fouls a fascist's plans is cause for smiling. Doubly so when it fouls both his bank account and his authoritarian ambitions."
"Madam," one of Ruby's staff interrupted as he stepped behind her to replace her near-empty drink with a fresh one. "The kitchen would like to know if you have a preference for dinner."
"Mr. Stevens has asked to use the grill," she replied, loud enough to be sure Jaccob would hear. "I'll leave it up to the chef's discretion as to whether or not he's allowed. Tell the kitchen we'll be fine with a casual steak dinner either way. And let's do that on the patio."
"Yes, ma'am," the butler replied, looking around the group for any other drinks that might need attention before he left.
"You're really going to let me cook?" Jaccob asked, looking up at her from his spot in the pool just at the foot of her chaise.
"Not exactly," she replied. "I'm delegating that decision to my chef. If she doesn't mind, then I don't. I figure it's supposed to be a nice enough night we can eat on the patio either way. There are too many of us for the small dining room and the large one tends to intimidate first time guests."
"Oh, wow," Katy said. "For what it's worth, I love a big fancy dining room."
"Of course you do," Ruby said to her. "You were a Kappa at Baylor. I'll be sure to have the two of you out for a formal dinner soon enough. But this little weekend retreat was a bit spur-of-the-moment. I hardly prepared this bunch to have to dress for dinner."
"Have you always been this fancy, Miss K?" Angel asked her.
"Oh, heavens no," Ruby replied. "I had a miserably blue-collar upbringing and entered adulthood with nary a clue as to how the upper classes did things. Why, when I was your age, I wouldn't have known what to do with a black-tie dinner invitation if I'd been folded up and stuffed inside one."
"Says the woman who slayed a dragon in a ballgown," Jaccob said.
"Well, yes," Ruby said, "these days I can be almost as dandy as you, when the occasion warrants. Although, I will guess your ability to look dandy was probably born of success and wealth rather than a need to make up for being bullied in your teens."
"Um--" Jaccob said. "You would be wrong about that."
"Oh, please ... Are you trying to tell me you weren't the star quarterback? Voted most likely to succeed?"
"Okay," he said, stifling a chuckle. "I was voted most likely to succeed. But I, um, I didn't play ball until college."
"Really?" Ruby asked.
"Yeah, no," he replied. "I ran track, but I'm not a natural athlete. That's why the suit. I was always into building gadgets and tinkering with tech. One day, I realized that I could build myself a way to be everything I hadn't ever been."
"So you were already into the tech stuff in high school?" Katy asked him.
"Oh yeah. Big time."
"All those years as a tech bro, and you still suck at video games," Yumi joked.
"Did they even have video games when you were in high school, Dad?" Mike asked.
Jaccob wrinkled his nose. "Yes." He chuckled. "But I wasn't any good at them back then, either. I've always been more of a robotics guy. If it hadn't been for the computer lab and the metal shop, I'd have had a pretty miserable time in high school."
"Stands to reason," Ruby said. "I swear I only showed up to high school for the free music lessons."
"Wait," Mike said, "Miss K, were you in band?"
"Jazz band," she replied quickly. "Not Marching. And I was the pianist for the school orchestra."
"I was on the math team," Jaccob confessed. "But, like I said, my big thing was robotics. I was mostly into circuits and microchips."
"While I am sure the math team is not a proven path to popularity, if you were already into building things like this--" Ruby gestured with her left hand enough to make her diamond bracelet bangle against her wrist. "--surely you must have been getting noticed for it."
Jaccob inclined his head and smiled at her. "Noticed, yes. But that's not exactly the kind of thing that gets you a date for the prom."
Ruby nodded. "So who'd you go with?"
"Yeah, Dad," Mike asked, "who'd you take to prom?"
"I didn't go," he replied. "I was out of town at a robotics competition that weekend."
"I didn't go to mine either," Ruby shared.
"Yeah?"
"I was playing bass in a community production of Jesus Christ Superstar."
"You play bass?" Mike asked, sounding impressed.
"Not as well as I play piano," she replied. "But yes."
"Cool," Mike said.
"You know," Jaccob added. "I did theatre in high school, too."
"Really, Dad?" Mike asked. "I never knew that."
"Yeah," Jaccob replied. "I did the lights. The school let me build them a whole new lighting system that had a control board with a computer monitor and everything."
"You're trying to tell me you were a straight man hanging around the theatre department, and you didn't have girls throwing themselves at you from every direction?" Ruby asked, sitting up straighter and looking down at him over the top of her sunglasses.
"I don't think you properly appreciate just how big of a nerd I was," he replied.
"You really want me to believe you weren't cute?"
"Nah, Miss K," Mike said, "I've seen pictures of Dad in high school. He, um ... peaked late."
Jaccob let his jaw drop as he shook his head at his son's remark.
"That's all right, darling," Ruby said. "So did I. We're doing fine now, though, aren't we."
"I'd say so," Jaccob said.
"Excuse me, Mr. Stevens," an unfamiliar voice joined the conversation. The group of them turned their heads to see a member of the household staff standing behind Ruby's chaise. "If I may--?"
"Um--" Jaccob pulled himself up out of the pool and looked dubiously over at the uniformed young woman. "What is it?"
"Chef says you're welcome to use the grill," the young woman said. "But she'd like you to come into the kitchen to discuss details."
"You'll need to dry off a little first," Ruby told him. "The kitchen floor gets very slippery when wet, and the last thing we need this weekend is a concussion."
"Oh." Jaccob shrugged as he looked around at the others. "Excuse me." He crossed quickly to a stack of flawlessly rolled pool towels on a low table just behind Ruby's chaise. He patted himself dry with one as best he could before draping it over the back of the nearest empty chair and then grabbed a second one to wrap around his waist. He walked past Ruby again, careful to keep from dripping on her, to slip his shoes back onto his feet. "I'll be right back," he said, smiling down at her.
"Take your time," she said back. "We'll be here."
"I'm telling you, Miss K," Mike said, as Jaccob headed toward the kitchen. "Dad is good with a grill. Heck, you should have seen when we were in Bermuda--" His voice trailed off as a good bit of color drained from his face. His eyes were wide, and he bit his lip while screwing his face into a proper frown. "Damn. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up, huh?"
"Not to worry, Mike," Ruby said. "You can't hurt my feelings; I don't have any."
"Yes, ma'am," Mike said.
"What--?" Katy was clearly confused. "Mike, why--?"
"The trip he's referring to," Ruby said to Katy, "was two years ago--right after the White House bombing. Jaccob and I were together when they left on that trip and ... by the time they returned, that was no longer the case. It was all very messy and complicated, and I believe Mike was concerned he'd brought up a possibly painful memory. But what's past is past, and I'm quite over the whole episode. Plus, I think I'm about to hear an amusing story, and possibly have a laugh at Jaccob's expense. So please, Mike, do go on."
"Well," Mike said. "Chuck wanted the trip to be just us, and Dad's got his 500 Ton license, so we left the crew in town. And before the chef got off board, she locked up everything. The entire galley, except for one refrigerator, was padlocked closed. She even took the knobs off the stoves and the oven."
"Oh my," Katy said.
Ruby laughed softly.
"Yeah. Have you been in my dad's office?" he asked Katy.
"No," she replied. "Not yet."
"So, he has a bunch of clippings on the wall in there," he said. "Framed pictures cut out of newspapers from times he wound up wrecking things while in the suit. As it turns out, our yacht chef has her own collection. All over the galley, she has pictures taped on the walls of Stardust-related fires and explosions. And, I guess, she didn't want her galley added to the list of casualties."
"I can only imagine," Ruby said.
"But he has this grill that clamps on to the transom rail," Mike said. "And that's how he cooked everything for us the whole trip. Didn't so much as scorch the teak on the swim platform."
"Well, that's good to know," Ruby said.
"He won't singe your pergola, Miss K," Mike assured her.
"And if he does," she replied, "I happen to know we're both well insured."
Mike laughed at that, shaking his head as he jiggled the ice in his mostly empty glass. As if on cue, a pair of butlers appeared poolside, one with a tray of fresh drinks and the other with a case of tools and implements she set onto a stone and zinc counter adjacent to the poolside grill.
It was only a few minutes later when Jaccob returned, dressed now in khaki pants and a polo shirt, and followed by Ruby's head chef. "Turns out you have a whole chateaubriand in there," Jaccob reported, coming to sit on the foot of Ruby's chaise. "Chef is going to slice it up into filets, and then I'm going to do them on the grill while she handles sides and dessert. And that includes the risotto she's already started on for our vegan hero."
"That sounds like a delightful plan," Ruby said.
"Glad you approve," he replied, reaching over to squeeze her ankle. "Chef's going to show me around the grill for a minute, then we'll get it lit and starting to preheat. She said someone will bring the steaks out when it's time to put them on. I told her I could come inside and get them, but--"
"You have the staff's blessing to use the grill," Ruby said, "but I've heard no negotiation as to the kitchen. If I were you, I'd be thankful everything else is being handled by professionals."
"You may have a point."
"I've been told I'm very smart."
"You're a lot of things." He leaned in to take her hand and kissed her knuckles gently before standing up to head to the grill where the chef was waiting.
"I know we just talked about how we're not expected to really dress for dinner," Katy said, as she swapped out her empty drink for a fresh one from the steward's tray, "but I think I'll go change in a minute anyway. I just don't feel right at the table in a wet swimsuit."
"I think I'll come up with you," Lisa said, closing the lid on her laptop and boosting herself up to sit on the side of the pool. "I want to get changed, too. And I need to plug in my laptop. Plus, I want to check in with Kara and tell her there's about to be food."
"I'll go with you, too," Yumi said. "Katy's got a point about not wanting to eat in a wet swimsuit."
"Yeah, me too," Friday said.
"Good idea, I'll come too," Angel agreed, even though she appeared completely dry already.
"I suppose," Ruby said, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise, "if everyone else is getting changed, I ought to as well. I'd hate to feel underdressed at my own table."
"Don't worry, Dad," Mike called to Jaccob, as the others began to gather their things and move toward the house, "I'll stay and hang out with you while the ladies go in and get primped for dinner."
"Oh yeah?" Jaccob smiled. "Cool. Wanna ... learn how to grill a filet to impress a lady?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Getting "primped" for dinner, as Mike had put it, turned out to be more of a production than Ruby had anticipated. Deciding what to wear had been easy enough, but the heat and humidity were doing unbecoming things to her hair, and it took just about every ounce of willpower she had to keep from using magic to cope with it.
She decided to wear it up in a loose bun with a scarf threaded through it to tamp down the worst of the flyaways.
On her way back downstairs, Ruby took a small detour in hopes of checking on Kara and the progress setting up the control and surveillance hub. One look at the state of the room was enough to make her regret that choice. What had started the day as a casual media lounge had been transformed into a chaotic hybrid of a cartoon superhero lair and a poorly managed live TV control room. Tangles of wire and cable ran across the floor between the dozen or more screens arranged in three separate banks around the room. Open crates and loose ties cluttered the floor, and every table, chair, and ottoman in the room had been pressed into service to house either packing crates or as-yet connected bits of technology.
Kara herself was nowhere in evidence.
Ruby decided it best to presume the others had interrupted the setup with news of dinner, and the chaos was to be remedied with haste. She could withhold judgment until she was invited in for a proper inspection. But she still took her time looking around. This was a room in her house, set up by her employees, in order to watch over her building in hopes of solving her problem. She wasn't about to let this project run roughshod over this house the way it had her party room back at the Tower; that equipment hadn't given her much say, but she was hoping to avoid a second full-scale war room.
She didn't begrudge Kara a break for dinner, but she would perhaps be sending the others in here to help her get the place in order afterward whether they liked it or not.
By the time Ruby made it back out to her patio, the preparations for dinner were well underway.
A small faction of the household staff was in attendance, setting platters and pouring drinks at the large table on the patio they'd managed to set for nine without the assembled guests seeming to have noticed.
A butler made his way through the group offering a negroni spagliato to anyone who cared for one, while the young woman who'd summoned Jaccob to the kitchen earlier went around the table pouring goblets full of water and wine.
"Ma'am," the woman with the wine bottle said to Ruby, gesturing to the fully set table as the chef approached from the kitchen with baskets of bread. Ruby nodded and headed to her seat at the head of the table.
The others caught on to their hostess's cue quickly, joining her at the table with Mike to her right and leaving the seat to her left open for Jaccob, who was still focused on grilling. The butler who'd been passing around the cocktails returned to the house, emerging a minute later with a platter he took out to the pergola to wait for the steak.
"You're letting Dad cook the steaks, just not carry them?" Mike asked Ruby, as he picked up the nearest breadbasket and offered a fresh roll to Katy.
"I said I'd trust him with my grill, not my dishes," Ruby joked.
"Okay, that's fair," Mike said.
Having handed off the steaks to the staff, Jaccob joined the others at the table, bending down to kiss Ruby's temple before taking his seat. It was scarcely another minute before the chef, along with her assistant and the two butlers who'd been looking after the group all afternoon, emerged from the kitchen, each carrying a pair of plates to the table.
"For tax purposes," Ruby said, as the staff began setting plates onto their chargers, "this is a business dinner. So I'd like to hear an update as to the state of things in the media room. Miss Sparx?"
"You, um ... looked in there, huh?"
Ruby just nodded, sipping her wine.
"It's a mess," Kara said, "but I'm actually almost done with the setup. Once I'm sure I've run all the cables correctly and the screens are all showing what they're supposed to, I'll get everyone else to come help, and we'll get those cables bundled and put away. I promise the floor won't look like that much longer."
"That's all I needed to hear."
"The plan is to get that handled tonight."
"I appreciate that. And the array," Ruby asked, "is it switched back on?"
"Not yet," Kara replied. "The setup's done. It's all wired and ready. Jaccob did most of that work before we ever left to come here. But if the point is to be able to see and control everything back at the Tower in case the bad guys come back, then I don't want to risk switching on anything that might trigger a repeat performance until we're sure we've got all our bases covered here."
