Jack figured that the woman’s ability to upstage virtually anyone was probably stamped into the strands of her DNA. Try as Alice Ebert might, Jack’s mother would never even come close to Mrs. Waylon Duvallon in the magnolia department.Jack noticed, of course, that Daphne had finished the Mozart without mishap—although nobody else seemed to be listening to her play. Her mother’s dramatic entrance had captured everyone’s attention. In fact, it appeared that the entire congregation couldn’t take its eyes off Antoinette Kingsbury Duvallon in her high-fashion attire, gold and diamond jewelry, bouffant black hair, and the unmistakable aura that proclaimed, “Stand back world, here I come, and I’m a lot more important than you are!”“She’s just one of those people who sucks all the air out of the room,” Jack remembered Daphne telling him not long after they got engaged. That was at a time when he was making every effort to be witty and charming—and she was making every effort not to cry over that asshole, Rafe What’s-his-name, who’d popped her cherry in New York, the lucky bastard.Much to his surprise, that Christmas the ice princess had seemed grateful for the attention he’d paid her at her parents’ annual holiday party.
