old classmates call me Parker? Doesn’t that sound more...more...”
“Like someone Mallory would marry,” she finished for him.
“More adult.” He frowned at her as if he wanted to argue with the way she’d said it. “Does PC sound too much like a childish nickname?”
Too much like who you were? Not like who you want to be. “It’s you, PC.” She smiled. “Parker Chaney. Politically Correct. Personal Computer expert. It’s even your company name,” she added.
“It seemed right at the time.” He shrugged.
“You could encourage everyone at the reunion to call you Chaney, like they did throughout the Times article.”
“They called me PC,” he reminded her.
“Just in the first paragraph,” she said, quoting, “‘Even the name Parker Chaney’s friends and close associates call him is synonymous with the industry his company dominates. Personal Computers. No one who owns or touches one has been untouched by PC, Inc. The company’s faster, smarter and better innovations barrage the technological market on an almost daily basis.’”
“You memorized it?” His sky-blue eyes lit.
“I read it enough times to remember it,” she said, lifting one shoulder.
His crooked grin matched the way hers felt. “I’m not an especially thoughtful friend, am I?” He reached across the table to cover her hand with his. Bracing herself for the normal electrical charge she got at his touch, she was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t happen. She’d managed to numb herself, she thought triumphantly. Or maybe the message that there was no longer any hope had gotten through to her brain and her body was shutting down her reactions to him in acceptance.
He looked dazed, as startled as she’d ever seen him. She squirmed self-consciously. Maybe her body hadn’t reacted, but had her expression given something away?
He lifted his hand, gingerly rubbing his palm, then laced his fingers together and rested his hands carefully on his side of the table.
“Whatever is happening with you, whatever you’re doing, you’ve always been a three-in-the-morning friend,” she told him. “That means a lot to me.”
He was scowling again. “And what, exactly, is a three-in-the-morning friend?”
“Don’t you remember my dad talking about that when we were young?” Since his own father had taken off when Parker was small, he’d hung around with her and her dad a lot.
Parker shook his head.
“It isn’t necessarily the people you see every day, or the person you think you’d call,” she explained. “It’s someone you wouldn’t hesitate to contact anytime—day or night—if you needed help. Even at three in the morning. For any kind of help. You’ve always been that kind of friend for me, PC. I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”
“You make it sound...past tense.” He looked downright uneasy with the thought. “That isn’t going to—”
“I was thinking about it the other day...after you asked me to help you,” she interrupted. “With Mallory?”
His eyes were the color of a cloudy day now.
“If... when,” she corrected, “you marry Mallory, it will change.” She stopped him with a raised hand as he opened his mouth to protest. “We’ll still be friends. I know I’ll be able to come to you with almost anything.”
“We’d be family then.” His voice emphasized the words determinedly.
“You’ll be my brother-in-law. Wouldn’t it seem strange to call you for help instead of my sister?”
“You’d be calling both of us.”
“I love Mallory but I could never call her with my problems at three o’clock in the morning,” she said quietly.
“But you guys are close.” He looked guilty.
That wasn’t Cindy’s intent. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I love Mallory dearly, but she’s not a callme-with-your-problems-at-three-in-the-morning type person. But it will be fun having someone I feel so close to as a brother-in-law. What a change of pace!” She managed a short laugh. “A brother-in-law I will actually know.”
“Nothing will change,” he assured her. Or maybe he was reassuring himself. Then he sat up straighter, thumping the list that was still in front of him. “Well, I guess some things better change or all this is a pipe dream.”
She grinned at him, her very best friend as long as she could remember. “I’m not losing a friend, I’m gaining family.” She’d missed having ‘family’ since her parents’ death in a freak weather accident when she was fifteen years old. “Who would have guessed,” she forced a lighthearted tone into her voice, “that I would ever know someone as important as you, let alone be related. I guess it’s kind of unrealistic of me to expect to hear from you more. I do keep track, though,” she added. “I saw the interview on CNN last month.”
“You did?”
She nodded. “You were great.”
“I sounded like a total egghead.” He was still studying her with that bemused and confused look.
“You sounded very impressive, PC,” she said. “You managed to make the interviewer laugh a couple of times. I was proud of you.”
“I was proud of me, too,” he admitted, quieter than he’d been. “I am getting better at that sort of thing.”
“Do you have any choice with all the practice you’re getting?”
“Nah, I guess not.”
Cindy got irritated with herself. She was sounding as if she were the charter member of his Admiration Society again. She stiffened her spine and returned to their original subject. “You’ll never be my brother-in-law if you don’t marry Mallory.” She somehow managed to keep the bittersweet pain out of her voice as she pointed to the list. “We’d better get busy with the stuff you aren’t so good at.”
His smile faded and he turned his attention to the second item. “Clothes?”
“We’ll go through your closet in a little while,” Cindy suggested.
Parker pointed to the next item and scowled. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
Cindy pulled the list over and added Habit of Scowling to the bottom of it. “You need a decent haircut, PC. You need something with a little style. We’ll get you an appointment with someone really good. I know a stylist downtown who’d be perfect... has great taste and a good eye,” she raved enthusiastically.
Parker looked skeptical. “The guy does your hair?”
Cindy knew him too well to think he was insulting her; he must be trying to figure out how she knew him. “He bought my last house,” she explained.
“A definite sign of great taste.” Parker grinned and moved on, showing exactly how unimportant he thought his hairstyle was, despite his initial response.
“We should check into getting you contacts,” she said as his finger tapped at the next word: Glasses. It had a question mark beside it. “Or if you don’t want contacts, surely your eye doctor has more fashionable frames than those.”
“What’s wrong with these?”
“Nothing if you don’t mind looking like you bought cheap magnifying eyeglasses at the discount store.”
Parker looked up at her, flushing, then down at the nail he’d been flicking against the list.
“You don’t, PC,” Cindy protested. “Tell me you didn’t buy those glasses off a display rack in some drugstore.”
“They