Table for Seven by Whitney Gaskell

the couch when he came back from the marina and had managed to oversleep.
    “Why did I ever agree to go to this thing?” he muttered as he headed to the bathroom. The last thing he wanted to do was spend a Saturday night eating dinner at somebody’s house with a bunch of people he didn’t know, save for Will and Fran.
    It was all Fran’s fault, he decided. He’d never been able to say no to her. She was a force of nature. They really should ship her off to the Middle East, he thought ruefully. She’d have the Israelis and Palestinians squared away in no time.
    Twenty-five minutes later, he was showered, shaved, and dressed in a crisply ironed white shirt tucked into his favoritefaded jeans. He stopped at the liquor store down the street from his waterfront condo, purchased two bottles of Taittinger champagne and drove fifteen minutes inland to the address he’d scribbled on the back of a receipt. Mark and Jaime lived in a looming white house with a carefully manicured front lawn and a huge silver Lexus SUV parked ostentatiously in the tile-paved driveway.
    Coop sighed. It was going to be a long night.
    He climbed out of his white pickup and headed to the front door without bothering to lock the truck. The neighborhood didn’t strike him as a hotbed of crime. He made his way up the walk to the front door—which was flanked with two tall black urns, each containing a leafy palm tree—and rang the bell. A moment later, he heard the clacking of high heels against hard floors and then the door was opened by an attractive woman with a thin, gym-toned body and stick-straight blond hair whom he’d met briefly at the Parrishes’ New Year’s Eve party.
    “Hi,” she said. She smiled, displaying professionally bleached teeth, and held out a hand. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m Jaime, by the way.”
    “I remember. Nice to see you again.” Coop juggled the champagne bottles so that he could shake her hand, which was thin and cold. Then, he held up the bottles. “These are for you.”
    “Thank you,” Jaime said, looking with delight at the bottles. “What a treat.”
    “An apology for my lateness,” Coop said.
    Jaime shook her head. “No need for apologies. In fact, you beat my husband home. Come on into the living room, everyone’s in there. What can I get you to drink?”
    “Do you have whiskey?” Coop asked as he followed Jaimeacross the foyer. He took advantage of his position to admire the curve of her bottom. If she was logging time at the gym it was definitely paying off, he thought. It was too bad she had a husband. Coop had never been interested in the drama of extramarital entanglements.
    “Yes, of course. How would you like it?” Jaime asked. She led him into a large living room tastefully decorated in shades of cream and beige. There was a small knot of people gathered there, including Fran and Will.
    “Straight up,” Coop said. “I’m easy like that.”
    He grinned again, although out of respect for Jaime’s marital status, he was careful not to use his most dazzling smile, which had on many occasions caused women to tear off their clothes and throw themselves at him.
    “Just give me one minute,” Jaime said and headed over to a bar just off the living room.
    Fran looked up. “Coop!” she called out and bounded over to him. Her long curly hair was loose around her shoulders and she held a wineglass in one hand. “I was starting to think you’d ditched us!”
    “Would I do that?” he asked, kissing her cheek.
    “Of course you would,” she said. “You’re thoroughly unreliable, and you know it.”
    “Hey, guy,” Will said, slapping his shoulder. “Good to see you.”
    “You, too,” Coop said, grinning at his friend.
    “Coop, do you remember Leland?” Fran asked, gesturing to an elderly man who was sitting in a cream jacquard arm chair. It was impossible to tell his age. He could be a hard-living seventy-five or a ninety-year-old with excellent genes. Either way, he