Fool for Love: Fooling Around\Nobody's Fool\Fools Rush In (21 page)

C
LAIRE HAD JUST FINISHED
pouring her coffee when her phone rang. At seven-thirty in the morning, the shrill sound would have been jarring even if she'd gotten a good night's rest. But she hadn't. How could she possibly sleep? She was
engaged.
To
Mark Lavin.

All through the night, her mind had raced like an engine in neutral with the gas pedal floored—lots of noise but no forward motion. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what was causing her mental motor to race. Anger at being made the butt of a practical joke, for one thing. Worry about how to convince her colleagues that a wedding wasn't in her immediate future. Uneasiness about the public nature of the whole situation.

And Mark, her supposed intended. Every time he'd entered her thoughts, her mind had revved to the point of redlining.

He was much better-looking in person than in the photo in
Boston's Best,
which was saying a lot, given how handsome he'd appeared in the photo. In person, his dark eyes sweetened his face. His smile expressed a variety of emotions—emotions Claire could relate to. When he'd told her about Rex Crandall's addiction to beer nuts and they'd both burst into laughter
at exactly the same instant, when they'd both reached for the check and his fingertips had brushed the back of her hand, when he'd gazed into her eyes and she'd felt as if he could see every intimate detail of her life…And he was tall. Most men she met were her height, or sometimes even shorter. Not that a man's height mattered to her.

Not that
anything
about Mark mattered.

She carried her mug to the table by the window in her compact kitchen, then grabbed the receiver from the wall phone. “Hello?”

“Mary Claire.” Her mother's voice crackled with indignation. “When were you planning to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” she asked, settling into her chair and stirring her spoon through the bowl of corn flakes.

“That you're getting married. I'm your mother! Was it supposed to be a secret? Something you were going to spring on me the day of the wedding?”

How had her mother heard? Surely she didn't listen to Boston Kool X-treme radio. “It's not true, Mom,” she said, abandoning her spoon for her mug. She needed caffeine more than carbohydrates. “I'm not getting married.”

“Are you telling me the
Boston Globe
is publishing lies?”

“The
Boston Globe?
” The sip of coffee Claire had managed to swallow threatened to return on her. Setting down her mug, she reached for the newspaper, which she would have been reading right now if her mother hadn't telephoned her. “Where is it in the
Boston Globe?
”

“The Names column, in the Living section,” her
mother told her. Claire tucked the receiver between her ear and her shoulder, freeing both hands to flip through the pages until she reached the column, which covered local gossip and promotional events.

Damn. There was her name, printed in boldface, along with Mark's. The paragraph's headline read “Boston's Best Bachelor Bites the Bullet.” Grimacing, Claire silently read on: “When WBKX's Rex in the Morning announced the engagement of the station's general manager, Mark Lavin, hundreds of hopeful bachelorettes in the Hub sighed with dismay. So did
Boston's Best,
which had named him one of the five most desirable bachelors in Boston in its Valentine's Day issue. A magazine spokesman said Lavin denied he was engaged, but he was later spotted canoodling with his lovely bride-to-be, Claire O'Connor of the city's Landmarks Commission office, at the Kinsale Pub. Best wishes to the happy couple, and condolences to all those grieving bachelorettes.”

“Canoodling?” she blurted out.

“If you want to canoodle, there's nothing I can do about it,” her mother scolded. “You're twenty-eight years old and you live on your own. You can canoodle to your heart's content. But getting engaged, Mary Claire? I haven't even met this young man! I've never even
heard
of him.”

That was the second time her mother had used her full name. Not a good sign. “
I
only met the young man yesterday,” she told her mother. “I'm not engaged to him. I can't believe the
Globe
wrote about us.” She sighed. “We weren't canoodling, either.”

“Call it whatever you want.”

“We were discussing how to make this silly rumor about our marriage go away.”
And we touched hands that one time, going for the check, and maybe I spent a little too much time—like most of the night—wondering what it would be like if Mark touched my cheek, or my knee, or any other part of my anatomy.
Feeling her cheeks burn with a blush, Claire shoved that thought away.

“Why doesn't he want to marry you?” her mother asked.

Leave it to her to twist things around. “He doesn't
not
want to marry me, Mom, but—”

“So he
does
want to marry you?”

“No!” She shoved the newspaper away and reached for her mug again. Her cereal was inedible, the flakes soggy beyond salvation. “He doesn't want to marry me. I don't want to marry him.”

“Why not? What's wrong with him?”

“Nothing. We don't even know each other, Mom.”

“You could get to know each other. It could work. Stranger things have happened.”

“Mom—”

“You're twenty-eight years old,” her mother repeated. “It's time to stop canoodling and settle down. Your sisters are married. You should be married, too.”

“I'm not going to get married just because Liz and Frannie are married.”

“You should get married because it's wrong for you to be all alone, a beautiful girl like you, with so much to offer. This boyfriend of yours, Mark Lavin, it sounds like he's got a very good job.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

Her mother ignored her. “Solid, respectable, he probably makes a good living. I'd prefer a church wedding, if I have anything to say in the matter.”

Claire wondered if
she
had anything to say in the matter. It was
her
wedding, after all. Correction: her
non
-wedding. “Mom, listen to me. I'm not marrying Mark.”

“And I'm asking why not,” her mother repeated. “If it's in the
Globe
—”

Claire rolled her eyes. “How about if he told you? If Mark himself told you we weren't getting married, would you believe him?”

“Now, that's an idea. Why don't you bring him around? I'm roasting a chicken for dinner. I could roast two. If Frannie and Liz are available, with their families…Megan hates chicken, but I can always fix her a hot dog. That's all she's eating these days—hot dogs. I don't know how healthy it is. Liz says she sometimes eats a hot dog for breakfast, can you imagine? It's better than sweets, I suppose. The pediatrician says—”

Claire gave up on waiting for her mother to pause for a breath. “Mom,” she interrupted in a near shout, “I'm not coming for dinner. Don't invite Frannie and Liz. And Megan. Don't invite anybody! I was just going to have Mark give you a call—”

“I want to meet him,” her mother insisted. “I want to see with my own eyes just what's going on between the two of you.”

“
Nothing's
going on between the two of us!”

“And I want to see that with my own eyes.”

“We're not coming for dinner.”

“Then you'll come after dinner,” her mother resolved. “I'll roast just the one chicken. Come around eight.”

“I don't know if he's free tonight,” said Claire, now just wanting to get her mother off her back.

“You're engaged to him and you don't know if he's free?”

“I'm
not
—” Claire cut herself off. Like so many conversations with her mother, this one was heading over a cliff and straight to hell. “If you don't hear from me,” she said, “we'll be at your house at eight. If he can't make it, I'll let you know.”

“Oh, he can make it,” her mother said with blithe certainty. “The least he can do is come and meet his fiancée's mother.”

Claire managed a good-bye and hung up the phone. Then she returned to the table and reread the item in the Names column. She cursed soundly. So much for her and Mark's plan that they could ignore this thing and it would go away.

It was definitely not going away.

 

F
OR SOME REASON
, Mark was actually looking forward to meeting Claire O'Connor's mother.

Well, not exactly looking forward to it. But given the way the rest of his day had gone, a trip to West Roxbury to visit the O'Connor matriarch might wind up being the high point of the past twenty-four hours.

His “engagement” was still news. The
Boston Globe
had mentioned it in its Living section that morning—hard to miss, with his name and Claire's printed in boldface. The
Globe
had described them as “canoodling.” Jeez. Tomorrow's
Herald
would
probably include an item about them “billing and cooing.” What century was it, anyway?

Because of the
Globe
piece, Claire's phone call hadn't been unexpected. She'd sounded worried. Unlike him, she wasn't used to appearing in the newspaper. He'd made appearances in the
Globe
's Names column more than a few times since being named general manager at WBKX, usually in conjunction with a concert or promotion the station was sponsoring.

“I'm still not opposed to issuing a press release,” he'd told her.

“That's not the biggest problem,” she'd said. The biggest problem, apparently, was her mother, who refused to believe Claire wasn't engaged to Mark. “She said she wants to hear this from you—in person,” Claire had explained.

He could have said no. He could have said the whole idea was ridiculous, which it was. But when he'd closed his eyes he'd pictured Claire, tall and willowy, with her rippling red hair and her kittenish mouth, and the lovely sound of her laughter, and those long, long legs of hers, and he'd said, “Sure, no problem.”

Claire had suggested that they meet at her mother's house, but he'd insisted on picking her up at her apartment. They'd need time to prepare, to work out an effective strategy before they faced Mrs. O'Connor. Besides, he welcomed any excuse to drive someone else in his new car. Claire would probably enjoy taking a spin in the Benz-mobile.

After Claire's phone call, his day had gone downhill. Many more people had seen the blurb in the
Globe
than had heard Rex's April Fool's Day prank yesterday—which said less about Rex's ratings than about the
Globe
's enormous circulation. His phone hadn't stopped ringing, even after he'd asked Ellie to screen his calls. He'd wasted thirty precious minutes on the line with an editor from
Boston's Best
magazine, doing his damnedest to convince her that the whole thing was a gag and that he hadn't misrepresented himself to the magazine when they were putting together their Valentine's Day edition. He spent another half hour crafting a retraction for Rex to read on the air, if Claire would agree to such a maneuver. Personally, he'd like more than a public retraction from Rex. He'd like Rex to buy him a case of top-tier single-malt Scotch whisky—and a case of herbal tea for Claire, if that was her drink of choice. He'd like Rex to donate a hundred hours of effort to a charity of Mark's and Claire's choosing. Actually, he'd like Rex's balls on a silver platter, doused in Tabasco sauce.

He'd hoped to head to the gym after work for a pick-up basketball game—to let off some steam—then take a quick shower, grab a bite at the club's snack bar, and then drive down to the South End to pick up Claire. But just as he was shutting off his computer, Sherry Altamont pounded on his office door. If Ellie hadn't already left for the day, he might have been spared this intrusion, but without Ellie guarding his door, Sherry got through. Mark had met her a month ago at a shindig to raise money for a literacy program, and they'd hit it off. She was pretty, she was smart and the couple of dates they'd gone on had been enjoyable.

Sherry had stormed inside and sliced through him like a machete. “How could you be engaged to this woman? You were dating
me!
” she'd shrieked. “What kind of two-timing scum are you?”

“Is there more than one kind?” he'd asked.

“I thought we had a relationship!”

“We went out a few times,” he'd said, not sure that qualified as a relationship.

“And I have to
read
in the
newspaper
—” she'd relied on emphasis to add drama to her tirade “—that you're
engaged
to
another woman!
”

“According to the newspaper, all we were doing was canoodling.”

“You're scum!” she'd howled. “Two-timing scum!” Then she'd whacked him on the head with her purse, which, fortunately, was stylishly small and hadn't inflicted too much damage.

By the time she'd departed, he'd lost interest in the pick-up game. He'd lost interest in dinner, too, but he knew he ought to eat something so his stomach wouldn't growl in Mrs. O'Connor's presence. He wound up ordering take-out Thai and eating it at his desk—and chugging gallons of water from the cooler, because he'd forgotten to tell the chef to go light on the chili.

Convincing Claire's mother that he wasn't going to become her son-in-law ought to be easier than dealing with Sherry Altamont—or with Thai Haven's
Gai Pad Prik.
He popped an antacid, detoured to the men's room to tidy his hair, which had been mussed by Sherry's pocketbook assault, and took the elevator down to the basement garage.