Got Your Number

Mrs. Jackson Ryder request the honor of your presence as their daughter, Angora Michele, is united in marriage to Dr. Trenton Robert Coughlin...
    Leave it to Angora to snag a doctor. A little late, considering she was approaching thirty-two, but Roxann assumed the man was just getting his career underway. By now Angora would be the perfectly schooled society wife. She'd been born to it, the upper-class life. Unlike Aunt Dee, who'd had to finesse her way into the Baton Rouge Junior League, Angora was groomed from toddlerhood to look and behave like a white-gloved debutante. When they were in college together, though, even the sweater-wearing tennis players preferred the girls who put out, so Angora and her lily-white virtue had gone ignored. The debs who wised up were engaged by graduation, but Angora had clung to her virginity.
    Roxann shook her head. The girl could never please her parents, no matter how hard she tried. Born pretty, and made beautiful through braces, jaw surgery, and rhinoplasty—all before the age of fourteen—she'd had the self-esteem of a leper. True, Angora wasn't the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but she wasn't a bad person. Infuriatingly feminine and a bit of a fibber, but not a bad person.
    Their parents, Roxann's father and Angora's mother, hated each other. Well, maybe hate was too strong a word for brother and sister, but they certainly maintained a resilient aversion to one another. Walt Beadleman thought his sister had gotten above her raising, and Dee thought her brother was a clodhopper. (During a rare visit when Roxann had overheard her aunt say as much to a neighbor, she'd evened the score by peeing in Dee's bottle of Chanel No. 5.)
    Proximity and class distinction had effectively separated the girls until they were seniors in high school. Roxann had been working part-time in an upscale dress shop, and in marched Dee followed by Angora, shopping for a graduation dress. Dee had proceeded to trot Roxann from rack to dressing room for two hours before buying a dress worth what Roxann earned as a shop girl for an entire year. In between fittings, however, she discovered that she and Angora had both applied to Notre Dame. She'd been praying for a scholarship; Angora had confided she was dreading the entrance exam. After that, Angora dropped by the dress shop often to chat—she'd been a prim little thing, and Roxann had felt sorry for her, caught under Donkey Dung Dee's thumb.
    They'd both made it into Notre Dame, and signed up to room together, against Dee's wishes. It was the first and last time that Angora had defied her mother, but with good results. The girls had become fast friends—Angora was a neophyte in all things wicked, and Roxann had been happy to tutor. But when Angora had been busted for low grades, her parents had pinned the blame on Roxann (even though she herself was a straight-A student), and whisked their little princess into a chaperoned sorority house.
    Subsequently, the girls' paths had crossed only when necessary, although she sensed that Angora missed their late-night pajama powwows consulting the Magic 8 Ball as much as she. After graduating with a liberal arts degree, Angora had returned to Baton Rouge to work for a stuffy art museum. Roxann hadn't seen her in seven—no, nine years.
    Oh, well, she was sure her cousin would be happy with Dr. Trenton. If not, Dee would be happy enough for both of them to have a titled man in the family.
    She turned her attention to more pleasurable reading—the university newsletters. Occasionally, Dr. Nell Oney, the ethics professor who'd mentored her and suggested she become involved with Rescue, wrote a feature column. And sometimes Carl Seger's name was mentioned within the pages since he was active in coordinating alumni activities. Roxann rolled down Goldie's windows and scoured the newsletters while loitering in the United States Postal Service parking lot.
    Homecoming week was just around the corner, with lots of activities planned to raise money for a new student counseling center—a brick sale, a bike-a-thon, and a bachelor auction. Her heart skipped a beat when she spotted a black-and-white candid of the man who hadn't been far from her thoughts today.
    Dr. Carl Seger, theology professor and coach of the varsity soccer team, will be the guest bachelor auctioned off as part of the Homecoming fund-raising events.
    The man still had all of his glorious salt-and-pepper hair. She rubbed her finger over his handsome