His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him novel · Chapter 29 of 32
Chapter 29: The Banquet
"I've got the black one," I said.
Daddy looked at me over his glasses.
"Not that one."
"You saw the clip."
"The whole state saw the clip." He scratched the hound's ear. "Get a new one. One your daddy can look at."
Reba took me shopping the next Saturday.
She took it as seriously as a pit stop.
She had a list.
She had a route through three stores in Charlotte and a thermos of coffee.
She wore her reading glasses on the beaded chain so she could read price tags and then gasp at them.
I tried on a dozen dresses.
Reba vetoed most of them from a chair outside the fitting room.
"Too sad."
"Too mother-of-the-bride."
"Baby, you look like a lamp."
The twelfth one was deep red, plain at the front and low at the back, and it fit me.
I came out of the fitting room and stood in front of the mirror.
Reba didn't say anything.
She just took off her reading glasses and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.
"That one," she said finally. "Lord help him."
The banquet was in a hotel ballroom in Nashville, the second week of December.
There were chandeliers, round tables and two thousand people in black tie.
Every driver in the sport wore a tuxedo that didn't fit as well as his firesuit.
The old men came in rented tuxes, all three of them.
The hearing aids had a cummerbund on upside down.
The skinny one had a fresh toothpick for the occasion.
The welding cap had brought a pocket handkerchief, and he was using it before the salads came.
Daddy wore a brown suit he'd been married in, let out twice.
The boot lady flew in with her whole front office.
Reba wore sequins and dared anybody to say something.
When Sutton came to the door of my room to walk me down, he stopped in the hall.
He didn't say anything for so long that I started to worry.
"Well?" I said.
"I'm trying to think of something that isn't 'oh no,'" he said.
"Try harder."
"You look like the reason I came out of retirement."
"That's better."
They called him up last, after the dinner, after the videos of the season.
The whole ballroom stood up when he walked to the podium.
He set the trophy down and looked out at all of them for a while.
"I spent nine years calling it keeping the peace," he said. "Mostly I was hiding in a barn."
People laughed.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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