That specific combination of bone structure and bearing that comes from knowing who you are and expecting to be treated accordingly. She wore a sapphire dress and a string of pearls and an expression that rearranged itself from polite expectation to genuine delete. In the two seconds it took her to take in Andre. Oh, Patricia said it was one syllable. It contained multitudes.
Clare's father. James was slower to look up. He was a big man who had gone compact with age. A former Atlanta city planner who now consulted for development projects and had the posture of a man who had never once in his life doubted that he was right. He looked at Andre with a careful assessment of someone who had been briefed that a man would be coming tonight and had already formed several preliminary conclusions.
Grandma Lucille didn't look up immediately. She was finishing a comment to Clare's Aunt Patricia, a different Patricia. A coincidence the family had apparently ceased to find interesting, and she completed her sentence before turning her attention to the new arrivals, which Andre respected deeply. And then there was Clare's cousin, Dre, who had indeed decided to come despite the cleanse, and who was looking at Andre with the undisguised appraisal of a woman who was going to pull Clare into a bathroom before the end of the night and have opinions. And finally across the table beside Dedre with a glass of sparkling water and an expression of careful pleasantness, Ryan.
He was Andre noticed immediately exactly the kind of man you'd cast as a leading man if you were casting from a catalog. Tall, well-dressed in the way that suggested the clothes were custom without being showy. Pleasant face, the kind of face that photographed well and read as trustworthy from across a room. He was looking at Clare with an expression that wasn't possessive or cold or wounded. It was something quieter than any of those and somehow more complicated.
He looked like a man who had spent a long time being reasonable about something that hurt. Andre had not expected to feel sympathy for him. He filed that information away. Baby Clare said, her voice moving smoothly into a register of warmth and ease that he suspected cost her something. Come meet my family.
He put his hand at the small of her back, just rested it there. Light, she didn't. If anything, he felt the opposite. A very small, very quiet release of something she'd been holding. "Mr.
And Mrs. Morgan," he said. "Moving forward and extending his hand first to James, who shook it with the firm grip of a man conducting an evaluation, and then to Patricia, whose handshake became a two-handed clasp that communicated everything her one- syllable O had begun. I've heard a lot about you. Thank you for including me tonight.
We're so glad you could make it," Patricia said with the conviction of a woman who had been glad about very few things as much as she was glad about this. Clare told us, "You're a contractor residential. I run my own firm. " He pulled out Clare's chair before the server could and act so natural he almost didn't notice doing it. Clare noticed. She sat down without comment, but something in her posture changed again.
Not relaxing. Exactly. More like adjusting to something unexpected. How long have you two been together? Grandma Lucille asked.