“That would be the point. Then you can lieâoh wait, I'm talking to Miss Truth. You'll have to learn to lie, but it's for a good cause.”
“You can't lie to Mom...” Not for the first time, Jen was acutely aware of the differences between herself and her sister.
“Trust me, it can be done, but it's a learned skill. And it's worth it: if Mom hates who you're dating, she won't want to see him again. You can just pretend you're happily dating the invisible man and threaten to bring him to family functions every once in a while.”
It made a dangerous kind of sense. “That sounds like something you would do.”
“Well, you did ask me for an idea. For what it's worth, I think it's brilliant.”
“But Cin, how can I be sure that Mom will hate a guy I bring home? You know how unpredictable she is.”
“As unpredictable as a trout rising to a fly,” Cin said wryly. “All you need to find is an uptight, handsome, conservative guy. Someone who comes from money and is hot to make a bunch of it for himself, no matter what he has to do to earn it. Mr. Success At Any Cost. Boston is full of them. It should be easy.”
Jen leaned against the wall of the waitress station, considering this. “You mean the kind of guy any other mother would adore.”
“The very same. You know those ambitious types make her crazy, and corporate America is one of her hot buttons. Maybe you could find a lawyerâthat would really send her to the moon.”
“I don't know...”
“You did it once, little sister. You can do it again.”
Jen winced. “But wouldn't I be using him?”
Cin laughed. “And this kind of a guy wouldn't be using you? It's pretty easily resolved, Jen: just don't put out and in three datesâmaxâhe'll be forgetting to call you.”
“But I don't know any guys like that.”
And Jen didn't want to.
On the other hand, there was the prospect of a date with the guy at the natural food store.
Maybe she just needed the right motivation.
“Come on, Jen, you must have guys ask you out all the time: I mean, you work in a bar and you're cute. Look at it this way: there's no chance of you getting hurt, is there? I mean, you're not going to make an emotional investment with a guy like that, are you?”
“No. Still it seems kind of mean.”
“You got a better idea?” Cin lowered her voice. “You should know that there's a new guy working at the Greenpeace office. I'll bet Mom knows him and, you know, he's got to be just about your age.”
“And?” Jen clutched the phone.
“Be afraid, Jen. Be very afraid.” Another phone rang and Cin cursed under her breath. “Gotta go, sis. Just think about it.”
Jen hung up the phone, seeing the potential of Cin's idea but filled with doubts all the same. After all, she'd missed out on the devil-may-care gene that both her mother and sister seemed to possess.
What was she going to do? Proposition some guy in this place? She'd probably lose her job.
Behind her, Lucy sighed. “No rest for the wicked, that's for sure. Look, of course, they're going to sit in my section.”
Jen glanced up and saw the four guys heading for a front table. They were carousing together, laughing and joking, and three of them were in suits. They were all tall and buff, handsome and privileged, roughly Jen's contemporaries.
“This town is full of them,” Lucy muttered as she grabbed cutlery out of the bin. “God's own gifts certain the rest of us were born to serve them. As if I didn't have eight tables of them last night, demanding this and that pronto.” She sighed again and gave Jen a look. “Just another day in paradise. You gotta be glad that you always get the back section: these flashy boys prefer it up by the window so they can check out the women.”
Which was really all Jen needed to know. “I'll trade sections with you, if you like,” she suggested, as if she didn't really care where she worked. “I'd kind of like a change of scene.”
Actually, she felt like she was channeling her sister. Cin's scheme wasn't the kind of thing that Jen typically did but here she was, doing it.
“They're cheap bastards, all of them,” Lucy confided. The four guys were already looking over and one was snapping his fingers. “No tips to speak of. You sure?”
“Yeah, I'll give it a try.” Jen took the menus from Lucy as the pushy one hooted for attention.
“Hey, how about we pool tips today and split them?” Lucy asked kindly. “I don't want you to get ripped off for giving me a break.”
“Thanks. That'd be great.” Jen turned and marched for the table, hoping that just putting things in motion would be enough.
One of the suits winked at her. Maybe Cin's plan would work out, after all.
The big problem, Jen realized en route to her new section, was that Jen didn't possess her sister's easy charm. Cin's plan seemed to suddenly have serious flaws.
Well, one flaw, really.
It had to be executed by Jen.
* * *
One thing Zach Coxwell could count on was his buddies. They showed up for lunch, dead on time.
There had been a time when the four of them had cut class to sit here, drink beer and watch women. It hadn't been that long ago, at least not to Zach's thinking, but his buddies had been transformed. Instead of students in jeans with haircuts made to last a few weeks too long, they wore Italian suits and shoes with leather soles. Their ties were silk and perfectly knotted: Trevor even wore a white shirt with French cuffs.
Zach, in his old uniform of polo shirt and jeans, felt underdressed. He slung his battered leather jacket over the back of a chair and knew he looked like an unemployed bum in comparison to his pals.
Which in a way, he supposed he was. And his pals were lawyers, because they hadn't dropped out of law school, and they dressed for success.
But what did clothes matter? The fact that they had showed up in their old haunt reassured him.
He needed evidence that some things didn't change. Zach had been killing himself for much of the last year, doing drudge work for no thanks and little benefit. Lunch with his old buddies had seemed like the perfect tonic. It might even motivate him to go back to law school, when he saw how much they enjoyed practicing.
Lunch had taken longer to set up than he'd expected, but hey, they all had day jobs now. As Scott had noted on the phone, needing to be somewhere sixty or eighty hours a week cuts into a guy's leisure time.
The four shook hands after they scored a table by the windows. Zach noted with satisfaction that it was their regular one, the one with the great view of the intersection on Mass. with the stiff cross wind. Skirts got flipped skyward there all the time. Zach settled in with anticipation.
“Scoring the best view?” Scott teased.
“Might as well.” Zach grinned. “It's up to Jason and me now that you and Trevor are married.”
“A guy can still look,” Scott protested.
Jason nudged him aside. “Gimme the view, man. I know Anna's work number if you get out of line.”
“Hey!” Trevor shouted in the general direction of the waitresses before he'd even sat down. He snapped his fingers imperiously. “Let's get some service here.”
Scott tapped his watch, a fancy steel piece of work that must have set him back a pay check or two. “Good point. One hour for lunch and I've blown fifteen just finding a parking spot.”
“You could have walked,” Zach suggested, then was surprised when the other three laughed in unison. He was used to people laughing at his jokes, but that hadn't been one. “It's not that far,” he began but got no further before they laughed again.
“As if.” Trevor rolled his eyes and spoke as if explaining something simple to a slow child. “The whole point of driving a flash car, Zach, is to be seen in it.”
“Maybe it's different if you don't have to make the payments,” Scott said and the three grinned again.
Zach didn't.
A tall waitress showed up beside the table then, with a fistful of menus. She was dark-haired and cute, if a bit serious. “Hi, welcome to Mulligan's,” she said. “I'm...”
âYou're gorgeous,” Jason said, winking at her so boldly that Zach was embarrassed. The waitress looked at Jason as if he was a primitive life form come to torment her.
Jason grinned at her, apparently oblivious to her response.
“Look, we're in a hurry,” Trevor said crisply. “I'll have a San Pellegrino with a slice of lime. Do you have fifteen-minute-or-free lunch specials?”
“Yes, they're right here on the back of the menu...”
“Is one a sandwich?”
“Yes, there's a chicken club sandwich...”
“Great, fine, I'll have that but leave off the bacon and mayonnaise and put it on whole grain bread. Salad instead of fries, vinaigrette dressing on the side.” Trevor checked his watch. “Twelve-sixteen. I'm counting.”
“Same for me,” Scott said, shoving the menu back across the table.
“Hey, we can spare a minute to hear her name,” Jason said smoothly.
“Missed your chance,” the waitress said, unimpressed by Jason's suave charm. Zach stifled a smile. “What will you have? Time's a-wasting, or so I've been told.”
Zach laughed, although this time he laughed alone. The waitress met his gaze, a wary twinkle in the depths of her dark eyes.
Jason sensed competition and moved closer to the waitress. “Hey, don't cut him any slack. He's been in jail this year.”
“Great. A felon in my section,” she said, then pointed her pen at Zach. “You pay cash.”
The other three thought this was funny. Zach didn't smile and neither did the waitress, though she was watching him.
“I'll have the club, too,” Jason said, trying again to draw her eye. “But I'll have the bacon on mine.”
The waitress scribbled then glanced up at Zach.
“What beers do you have on tap?”
She listed about fifteen while Trevor drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Zach picked one from a local microbrewery, flipped over the menu and chose the burger with a salad.
“Thanks a lot, Zach,” Trevor said. “Twelve-nineteen and the order hasn't gone anywhere.”
The waitress gave him a look that spoke volumes.
“I'm not in a rush,” Zach said to her. “So, don't worry about bringing everything at the same time if it will hold them up.” She nodded. He smiled but she was already hurrying away.
“A pint of beer at lunch on a weekday!” Scott nudged Zach. “How long has it been, guys?”
“And in no rush.” Trevor whistled through his teeth. “There's the life of leisure for you.”
“Why couldn't my daddy have left me a trust fund?” Jason asked the universe in general and the three laughed together.
Zach straightened, not finding the reference very funny. It hadn't quite been a year since his father had committed suicide and it would be a long time, he suspected, before he could take a reference to that man in stride. “Actually, I don't have a trust fund...”
“Do the details really matter, Zach?” Scott interrupted him. “You were born on Easy Street and we have to bust our asses to get there. It's that simple.”
Zach didn't know what to say, which was something for the guy known in his own family to have an answer for everything. He felt a definite thread of hostility where there had never been one before and began to wonder whether he really could count on his buddies forever.
Or for much of anything.
“I'd forgotten how slow this place was,” Jason groused. He grinned and shook his head. “Though it's not like we had anywhere to go when we hung out here.”
“What a grubby joint,” Trevor agreed, brushing some crumbs from his seat. “I'd forgotten.”
“Me, too,” Scott agreed. “Who picked this place anyhow?”
“Me,” Zach admitted. “I thought it'd be like old times.”
Scott laughed. “It is that. Gives us a chance to see how far we've come, if nothing else.” He perched on the edge of his seat in his navy pinstripe suit and kept glancing down at the upholstery. “Anna will kill me if I send another suit to the dry cleaners this month.”
“Spending more than your wife on dry cleaning?” Jason teased. “That's a feat.”
“I don't like how she irons my shirts, so I'm already going there to take my shirts in.” Scott was a bit defensive and Jason went for blood.
“What, you got married and didn't get a domestic slave out of the bargain?”
“Don't let Anna hear you say that!” Scott said, then shrugged. “Besides, she says 100% cotton is too much trouble and I don't like to wear synthetics.”
Trevor laughed. “Maxine won't even try to iron mine. She showed me the ironing board when I asked her about it, and they've been going to the cleaners ever since.”
Jason eyed the pair of them. “Where do you take yours? I've yet to find a cleaner who gets it right. It's the attention to detail that really makes it work...”
“So, wait, who does yours?” Scott asked. “Your mommy?” Trevor started to laugh.
“No.” Jason stared between them both, as if daring them to mock him. “I do my own.”
“Let me see the cuffs,” Trevor demanded. Jason slipped one arm out of his suit jacket and let the other two check out his workmanship.
Zach sat back and stared. The guys he'd hung out with would never have been so interested in white dress shirts, let alone how well they were pressed. Obviously, they'd been surreptitiously replaced by aliens and all he had to do to save his buddies was to find the pods.
He glanced under the table. No luck.
Trevor whistled in admiration as he examined Jason's cuffs. “So, what do you charge? I'll send you mine.”
“Dream on,” Jason said. “You can't afford me.”
“What do you mean?” Trevor asked.
“You can dress up corporate practice at a bank, but you can't take it to dinner.” Jason punctuated his comment with a sneer at Trevor's cufflinks. They were costume jewelry, Zach had noticed that right away, but funky enough to be forgiven.