Brown-Eyed Girl (Travis Family #4)(25)

“Avery!” Hollis appeared in a pink chiffon dress with a slim-fitting silhouette, the skirt a swirl of pale pink ostrich feathers. Her husband, David, a lean, attractive man with salt-and-pepper hair, accompanied her. Pressing an air kiss near my cheek, Hollis enthused, “We’re going to have such fun tonight! My, don’t you look gorgeous!” Glancing up at her husband, she prompted, “Sugar, tell Avery what you just said when you saw her.”

He obliged without hesitation. “I said, ‘That redheaded gal in the blue dress is proof that God’s a man.’”

I smiled. “Thank you for inviting me. What an incredible house this is.”

“I’ll show you the new addition,” Hollis told me. “All glass and granite. It took forever to get it right, but David supported me every step of the way.” She stroked her husband’s arm and beamed at him.

“Hollis loves to entertain more than anyone you’ll ever meet,” David Warner said. “She raises money for all kinds of charities. A woman like this deserves any kind of house she wants.”

“Sugar,” Hollis murmured, “Avery’s the one who did that wedding for Judy and Ray’s daughter. I’m going to introduce her to Ryan tonight, so she can help push things along with him and Bethany.”

David looked at me with new interest. “Glad to hear it. That was some shindig, the Kendrick wedding. Lotta fun. Wouldn’t mind doing something like that for Bethany.”

Wondering exactly what Hollis had meant by the phrase push things along, I asked, “Has there been an official proposal yet?”

“No, Ryan’s trying to figure out a special way to pop the question. I told him you’d be here tonight to give him some ideas.”

“Whatever I can do to help.”

“We couldn’t have asked for a nicer young man for Bethany,” Hollis said. “Ryan’s an architect. Smart as a whip. His family, the Chases, are close kin to the Travises. Ryan’s mama died young – so unfortunate – but his uncle Churchill looked after the family and made sure the kids got educations. And when Churchill passed on, the Chases were included in his will.” Hollis gave me a significant glance as she continued. “Ryan could live off the interest of his trust fund and never work a day in his life.” She grasped my wrist with a clatter of multiple cocktail rings. “David, I’m going to tour Avery around the house. You can do without me for a few minutes, can’t you?”

“I’ll try,” her husband said, and she winked at him before pulling me away.

Hollis chatted with the ease of an accomplished hostess as she guided me through the house toward the modern addition. She stopped to show me some of the auction paintings displayed throughout the house, each lot numbered and accompanied by information about the artist. Along the way, Hollis texted Ryan to meet us in what she called “the skyroom.”

“He’s going to slip away from Bethany for a few minutes,” Hollis explained, “so he can talk to you without her. He wants the proposal to be a surprise, of course.”

“If he’d rather come to our Montrose studio,” I said, “we could discuss it there. That might be easier and more private —”

“No, it’s better to take care of it tonight,” Hollis said. “Otherwise Ryan will drag his feet. You know how men are.”

I smiled noncommittally, hoping that Hollis wasn’t trying to push Ryan into proposing. “Have he and Bethany been dating for a while?” I asked as we entered a small glass-sided elevator.

“Two or three months. When you meet the right one, you just know. David proposed to me just a couple of weeks after we met – and look at us now, twenty-five years later.”

As the elevator ascended to the third floor, I had a perfect view of the tent in the back. It was connected to the house by a carpet runner of fresh flowers arranged in geometric swirls.

“Here’s my skyroom,” Hollis said with pride, showing me a spectacular gallery with steel-framed glass walls and a segmented glass ceiling. Sculptures perched on Lucite pedestals at various places in the room. The floor itself was made of clear glass with few visible supports. A tiled outdoor swimming pool glittered three stories directly below. “Isn’t it fabulous? Come, I’ll show you one of my favorite sculptures.”

I hesitated, staring uneasily at the glass floor. Although I had never thought of myself as having a fear of heights, I didn’t like the looks of it. The glass didn’t look nearly substantial enough to support my weight.

“Oh, it’s safe as could be,” Hollis said as she saw my expression. “You get used to it right away.” Her heels clinked like cocktail ice as she walked into the gallery. “This is the closest you’ll ever get to walking on air.”

Since I’d never had any desire to walk on air, that assurance wasn’t exactly motivating. I reached the edge of the glass and my feet stopped, toes curling in my pumps. Every cell in my body warned that walking onto that expanse of clear glass would result in sudden and ignominious death.

Steeling myself not to glance at the sparkling swimming pool below, I ventured out onto the slick surface.

“What do you think?” I heard Hollis ask.

“Amazing,” I managed to reply. I was tingling all over, not in a happy, excited way, but in an epic-freak-out way. Perspiration collected beneath my bra.