His Pretend Fiancee

“I only own what I can fit into my car.”

“That works. I’m fully furnished.”

Somehow that sounded like a double entendre but since he’d let her slip of the tongue slide, she didn’t comment on his.

“So, I guess that’s it,” he added. “I’ll see you when you get there tomorrow.”

“I’ll have to pack my stuff and load the car so it probably won’t be until the evening.”

“Whatever. I’ll be there,” he assured.

He got up from the arm of the chair and headed for the door himself.

But before he reached it, he paused near enough to Josie for her to smell the scent of his aftershave. Near enough to bend and, with a warm brush of his breath against her ear, say, “Want to seal our engagement with a kiss?”

Josie gave him a withering look that made him laugh this time.

“Just kidding,” he assured as he straightened and went the rest of the way to the door.

But with one hand on the knob he smiled at her yet again and said, “Thanks for this. You don’t know what a relief it is to think that I’ll be free of my mother’s matchmaking.”

“It’s a relief to me to have somewhere to go with Pip,” she admitted.

Although that wasn’t completely true.

Because while it was a relief to know she finally had a place to live peacefully with her dog, she was still worried about who she’d be living with in that place.

And as Michael Dunnigan finally left she had to wonder if she hadn’t just exchanged one set of problems for another.

Chapter Two

“How was the date? Didn’t you just love her?”

“Hello to you, too, Ma,” Michael said in order to avoid answering his mother’s questions when he arrived at her home at ten o’clock Sunday morning. She lived only blocks away from his brownstone in Brooklyn.

His mother was standing at the stove in her kitchen. As she did every Sunday morning, the five-foot-two compact powerhouse of a woman was making pancakes. She had on a purple velour sweat suit, elaborate makeup, and her head was still swathed from the night before in the toilet paper turban that preserved the bouffant, flipped-at-the-ends hairdo sported by every woman who went to the neighborhood salon.

“Will you take that stuff off your head?” Michael added after he’d leaned over to kiss his mother’s cheek.

Elsa Dunnigan slid golden brown pancakes from the griddle, ladled more batter onto the hot surface, and then obliged her son by unwrapping her black hair. With the exception of being slightly flat in the back it remained an undisturbed helmet.

“The date, Mikey. I want to hear about the date.”

Michael picked up the already poured glass of orange juice at his spot at the red-and-silver kitchen table and took a drink, noting as he did that there were only two place settings. Unless Michael was working, Sunday breakfast was the one meal each week that he, his mother and his younger sister always tried to have together. So again he ignored his mother’s query in favor of one of his own.

“Cindy isn’t eating with us?”

“She had to go to a bridal shower brunch in the city,” Elsa said as if the entire subject of her other child was inconsequential. But as she took a platter filled with bacon and sausages from where it was being kept warm in the oven and brought that, a dish of pancakes and another plate of fried eggs to the table, she said, “And if you don’t answer me right now I’m going to call Dr. Miranda myself and tell her you had such a fabulous time with her last night that you want to see her again tonight.”

Michael knew his mother would do just that so he stopped hedging as they both sat at the table. “The date was good and bad—the bad being the date itself and the good being that it made me realize something and take a big step.”

He’d planned this out on the way home from Josie Tate’s apartment the previous night so he knew exactly how he was going to explain the sudden turn of events.

“I don’t understand,” his mother said. “You didn’t like Dr. Miranda?”

“No, Ma.”

Elsa Dunnigan frowned at him so fiercely it made her eyes squint and nearly disappear in the lines around them.

“She’s a nice girl,” his mother insisted. “A professional woman with a thriving medical practice. She wants to get married. She wants babies. She’ll make a good wife. She can’t help it if she has sinus problems and has to blow her nose every five minutes. And those ears could be covered if she’d just let her hair grow over them. I could set her up with Cissy—now that I’ve finally smoothed the waters after you never called her back, either. Cissy could do Dr. Miranda’s hair so no one would ever see those Dumbo ears.”

Cissy was Elsa’s beautician. She wore her hair even bigger and more rock-solid than any of her clients. Michael had spent the whole blind date with her wondering how she could not notice that the style was outdated by at least twenty years. And when he coupled the hair with the nearly Geisha-like makeup, the gum popping, the honking laugh, the dagger fingernails she’d used in lieu of a fork to pick up strands of spaghetti, and the fact that they’d had absolutely nothing in common, it had not been a date he’d wanted to repeat. So he hadn’t called her again. Much to his mother’s dismay.

But actually, just the thought of that date and the date the night before pushed him to finally tell his mother the story he’d come up with to free himself from any future setups.

“I’m engaged,” he announced.

Elsa made a very unflattering sound in response. Something like “Puh!”

Clearly she didn’t believe him.

“To Dr. Miranda?” she asked facetiously.

“No, not to Miranda. I told you I didn’t like her so you’re out of luck when it comes to free callus scrapings,” Michael informed her.

“Then who are you engaged to? As if I’m buying this load of horse manure.”

“Get out your checkbook because it’s true. I am engaged,” he said, enunciating each word slowly, as if to better get it to sink in.

“To who?” his mother said the same way.

“You don’t know her,” Michael answered calmly. He knew this was risky business. He’d never been an adept liar. And his mother had always been able to see through it when he’d tried. But now he had enough at stake to make him determined to pull it off. “Her name is Josie Tate. She’s the receptionist at that Manhattan Multiples place—remember, it was written up in the newspapers a few months ago? They help women who are pregnant with more than one baby or something. You showed me the article yourself—”

“I remember. My friend Agnes’s daughter went there when she was going to have triplets,” Elsa said, conceding that she knew what he was talking about but still sounding suspicious of his claim to be engaged.

“Well, Josie works there. We met the Friday night before Labor Day.”

“That was the night I arranged a date with my insurance agent’s secretary,” Elsa said to let him know he wasn’t putting anything over on her.

“Yes and Sharon McKinty is one of Josie’s roommates. She took me to a bar that night where Josie was reading poetry—poetry she wrote herself.”

It wasn’t easy to come up with a whole lot of information about his new fiancée because Michael didn’t know much about her. He was just trying to sound knowledgeable with what little he had learned over Labor Day weekend.

“You went out with Sharon McKinty and ended up with someone else?” his mother asked.

As a matter of fact.

“Sharon McKinty met up with an old boyfriend and deserted me. I told you that. But I stuck around to hear more of Josie’s poetry and when she was finished we…well, we hit it off.”