by Penny Reid
“I have a boyfriend,” Melody heard herself say before she realized she was doing it.
Pamela Gage, no fool, raised a single stenciled eyebrow at her daughter. “Since when?”
“Not long. Just a couple weeks. That’s why I didn’t say anything before. I didn’t want to jinx it.” It was shameful how easily the lies came to her—but she wasn’t ashamed enough to take them back. Desperate times, etcetera, etcetera.
“What’s his name? What’s he do? How’d you two meet?”
“His name is Jeremy, and we met at work.”
Her mom rummaged around inside her purse. “Jeremy’s a nice name. Does he do the computer whatsit stuff, too?”
“For, like, the millionth time, it’s called IT, Mom. It stands for Information Technology. And no, he’s a management trainee.”
“Well la-dee-da.” Her mom unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it into her mouth. “You got a picture of Mr. Manager-in-Training?”
Melody shook her head. “I told you, we haven’t been dating very long. We haven’t gotten around to taking any pictures yet.” She had an answer for everything. Who knew she was so good at this fake boyfriend stuff?
“Am I gonna get to meet this executive stud?” her mom asked, popping her gum.
“I don’t know.” Melody bit her lip. “It’s kind of soon to be introducing him to my mother, don’t you think?”
Her mother reached over and squeezed her cheeks like she was a toddler. “Honey, there’s no such thing as too soon to introduce a boy to your mother.”
Dear lord, what had she done?
Melody called Jeremy that evening while her mom was in the bathroom “putting on her face” to go out for dinner.
She was taking her to Jerry’s Deli. Her mother didn’t like spicy food, which, by her definition, encompassed everything from Chipotle to P.F. Chang’s. It made it hard to find a decent restaurant her mother wouldn’t complain about being “too ethnic.” An old-school New York-style deli seemed like a safe bet, though, and her mom would probably get a kick out of all the celebrity photos on the wall.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Melody asked Jeremy when he answered. “Please say nothing.”
“Nothing that can’t be changed.”
“Will you come to dinner with me and my mother?”
There was a pause before he answered, long enough that Melody had time to regret asking. “As your friend or your boyfriend?”
She cast a wary look at the bathroom door. Her mother was tunelessly singing a Billy Joel song as she put on her makeup. “The second one.”
“Okay,” he said gamely. “I’ll make reservations. Seven o’clock?”
“Nothing too trendy. Or too exotic. She likes really boring food.”
“Boring. Got it.”
Melody exhaled a long breath. “Thank you.”
“Melody?”
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.”
Easy for him to say. He didn’t know her mother.
Chapter 16
“Wow,” Melody said when she opened the door the next night. Jeremy had shown up with two bouquets of roses. He was wearing a suit like he usually did at work, but without a tie, and the glimpse his open collar afforded of the dent above his collarbone was oddly distracting, like she’d turned into a heroine in a Regency romance. “You really did not have to go to this much trouble,” she said, tearing her eyes from his unnervingly attractive throat.
“It’s not every day you meet your girlfriend’s mother,” he said with a wink, beaming his super-powered smile at her.
Oh no. This was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. What had she been thinking? He was way too perfect. Her mother was going to want to eat him with a spoon, and Melody was going to die of mortification. Not to mention, she was never going to hear the end of it when she eventually told her mother they’d broken up.
Jeremy tilted his head at her. “Melody?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to let me in?”
“Right! Sorry!” She stepped back, and he leaned over to brush a kiss on her cheek as he moved past her. It surprised her more than it should have. He’d always been a cheek kisser. She’d forgotten, since it had been so long since they’d had any social interactions outside of work.
“Relax,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s going to go great.”
She knew he meant well, but the suggestion had the opposite effect on her.
“Ohmygawd, is this him?” Melody’s mother screeched, coming into the room. She was wearing platform sandals and a bright floral wrap dress which would have been almost tasteful, if not for the truly stupendous amount of cleavage it showed off.
“Hi,” Jeremy said, beaming The Smile at her and holding out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mrs. Gage.”
Melody’s mom glowed as she took his hand in both of hers and shook it enthusiastically. “Oh no, honey, you should call me Pam. And believe me, the pleasure’s all mine.” She grinned at him, clutching his hand way past the point where it started to get weird—because of course she did.
When she finally released him, Jeremy presented her with one of the bouquets. “These are for you, Pam.” He held out the other one to Melody with a smile. “And these are for you.”
As he passed them to her, he kissed her again. On the lips this time.
Melody’s eyes fluttered closed and she leaned into him without consciously choosing to do it. The kiss was light and chaste, but his mouth lingered on hers almost tenderly before he pulled away.
Her eyes flew open again, and Jeremy’s forehead creased, his expression drawn in a silent question: Was that okay?
She forced herself to smile back at him, like kissing was something they did all the time. The whole situation was giving her major flashbacks to the night they first met, which was just…not something she needed to be thinking about right now.
Oh, shit. Lacey. She’d just kissed Lacey’s ex-boyfriend.
After Melody had gotten off the phone with Jeremy yesterday, she’d called Lacey and told her what she’d asked him to do, just to make sure she was okay with it. Lacey had laughed it off and said it was fine, but she might not have been so fine with it if she had known there would be kissing involved.
“Aren’t you two just the cutest!” Melody’s mom squealed, delighted. “Oh, baby, where’s your phone? Let’s get some pictures of you lovebirds together.”
“Mom, no!”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Jeremy said, smirking at her. The next thing Melody knew, they were posing like a couple high school kids heading out to prom while her mother snapped approximately a million pictures.
“A little closer,” her mom ordered. “Jeremy, honey, put your arm around her waist. That’s right, just like that. Now, smile!”
Jeremy wrapped his arms around Melody, pulled her close, and planted his lips on her cheek.
“Perfect!” Pam said. “Hold it just like that!”
Melody gave her mom to the count of three before pulling out of Jeremy’s grasp. “Okay, enough pictures. We’re going to miss our reservation.”
Jeremy’s car was a sleek, pearl gray Jaguar. Melody was surprised—she’d assumed his tastes ran a little flashier and less…mature.
It was more than fancy enough to impress her mother, though. She spent the first five minutes of the drive exclaiming over it and fiddling with the backseat climate controls, to Melody’s chagrin.
After she’d gotten tired of playing with the car, her mother leaned forward between the two front seats. “So, Jeremy, Melody tells me you two met at work.”
Jeremy’s eyes slid over to Melody and he smirked at the lie. “That’s right.”
Melody felt herself blush, and turned her face the passenger-side window.
“And you’re some kind of management trainee? How’d you swing that?”
“Well, actually—”
“Business degree,” Melody supplie
d for him. “They’ve got a whole management program at Sauer Hewson for business school graduates.”
She’d elected not to tell her mom about Jeremy’s family or his net worth. Imagining how much more her mother would be sucking up to him if she knew how rich he was made Melody want to die. Not to mention how much harder she’d take it when Melody eventually told her they weren’t dating anymore.
Jeremy cut another glance at Melody, eyebrows slightly raised. She gave him a pleading look.
“Yeah, I started right out of Cal State,” he told her mother.
“Well, good for you, honey. It’s nice to see a young man who’s not afraid to work hard in order to make something of himself.”
Before her mom could say anything else, Melody reached for the radio and cranked up the volume.
The restaurant Jeremy had picked was absolutely perfect: nice enough to make her mom feel special, but not so nice that she seemed out of place.
“Is that Dustin Hoffman?” her mother stage-whispered as the hostess showed them to their table.
“Don’t stare, Mom.”
Their table was in the far corner, thank god. Nowhere near the guy who may or may not have been Dustin Hoffman. Melody’s mother exclaimed over the menu for a while before settling on the chicken cordon bleu. Melody got the crab cakes and a gin and tonic. And then a second gin and tonic, because dinner with her mother and Jeremy was one mortification after another.
It started with her mom telling Jeremy about the night she went into labor, because sure, who didn’t want to hear about amniotic fluid and placentas over a nice dinner? When Melody tried to gently shut her down, her mother retaliated with a story about the time Melody was four and tried to pee standing up like a boy. Then there was the way her mother always laughed too long and too loud at everything Jeremy said, and how she kept touching his arm when she did it. Not light touching either, but, like, caressing his biceps. Ew.
Jeremy bore it all with a patience that bordered on saintly, but it made Melody want to crawl under the table and die.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as soon as her mom excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
“For what?”
“For my mother. She’s awful, I know. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with it.”
“Melody,” he said, looking at her like she was the one who was crazy, “your mother’s great. I really like her, and I’m having a good time. Why aren’t you?”
“Because she’s just so…her. Everything she says and does is expertly calculated to embarrass me.”
He shook his head, smiling. “She adores you. And…okay, she’s a little enthusiastic, and she’s definitely her own person, but do you have any idea how lucky you are? To have a mother who’s proud of you and doesn’t mind showing it?”
Melody thought about Angelica Sauer, with her rigid smile and proud manners, and felt a flush of shame. “Oh, crap, Jeremy, I didn’t mean—”
He held up a hand, still smiling. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Believe me, I know how family can drive you crazy like no one else on earth. I’m just saying…I like your mother. She reminds me of you.”
“Oh.” Melody looked down at her lap, uncertain whether she was more horrified or flattered.
“You know they play music in the bathrooms in this joint?” her mother announced when she came back to the table. “So classy.” She hummed a few bars of some unrecognizable tune, smiling as she swayed along with whatever song was playing in her head. “You know, when you kids get married—”
“Mom!” Melody said, but her tone was less sharp than it had been.
“What?”
“We’ve been dating for all of two weeks, maybe just—cool it with the marriage talk.”
“All right, baby. I’m sorry.” Her mother leaned over to pat her hand. “I can’t help if I’m a long-range planner.”
Melody’s eyes found Jeremy’s across the table, and the way he smiled at her made her embarrassment melt away.
Her mother kept up a light patter in the car on the way home. Somehow, Melody managed not to mind so much, even when her mother told Jeremy about the time she’d stuck Red Hots up her nose and had to go to the emergency room to have them removed.
“And that’s why I used to call her my little Red Hot,” her mother concluded proudly, as if she’d just told the story of Melody’s first-place state science fair project—which wasn’t a story she’d bothered to trot out this evening, by the way. Probably because it wasn’t embarrassing enough.
Jeremy’s hand settled over Melody’s, squeezing gently. The warmth of his skin traveled all the way up her arm before settling in her chest. She swallowed and looked away, but she didn’t move her hand. They were supposed to be dating; this was just part of the act.
When they got to her apartment, he walked them up to her front door, but begged off her mom’s offer of a nightcap—apparently, her mom was living in a 1980s soap opera where people actually used the word nightcap—with the excuse that he had an early breakfast date with his mother.
“Do you hear that? What a good boy he is!” her mom said. “You better hang onto this one.”
Melody clamped her lips together and cast her eyes to the heavens while her mother gave Jeremy a hug that fell squarely in the valley between overly-familiar and downright creepy.
“It was lovely to meet you, Jeremy. You take good care of my girl, you hear?”
“Don’t you worry, Pam. I plan to do exactly that,” he said with a wink, laying on the charm.
“I’m just gonna go on inside and leave you two alone to say your goodnights,” her mom announced with the least subtle wink in the entire history of facial expressions.
“Thank you,” Melody said to Jeremy once her mother was safely inside. “Seriously. Thank you so much.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, smiling down at her. He’d been smiling almost the whole evening, and she felt warm and toasty from being in close proximity to it for so long. “You’ve saved my ass enough times by now, I’m just happy I could return the favor.”
His eyes flicked over to the window, and he pressed his lips together to stifle a smile. “She’s watching us through the blinds.”
Melody sighed, her head falling forward in embarrassment. “Of course she is.”
“We better put on a good show.”
Melody shook her head. “You don’t have to—”
But he was already tilting her head up, and then he was kissing her. Like, really kissing her. It was gentle and a little tentative at first, but it was definitely not chaste like the last one.
And it just went on. And on. The way you’d kiss someone you really, really liked. And the longer it went on, the less tentative it got, until his tongue was exploring her mouth, and she was kissing him back as much as she was being kissed.
It wasn’t real—the rational part of her brain understood it was all for show. But the part of her brain that wasn’t rational couldn’t manage to focus on anything other than the fact that she was kissing Jeremy—and it felt amazing.
He was an outstanding kisser. She still had that data filed away from three years ago, but now she was getting a firsthand refresher course, and holy shit.
The thing was, it didn’t feel fake. It felt like they were back on the sidewalk outside the Cask ’n Flagon and she was losing herself in him all over again.
She gasped against his mouth, breathless and entirely too swept up, and he broke away. For a long moment, he gazed down at her with eyes that were dark and unreadable. His arms were still wrapped around her, holding her tight, and she was clinging to him, and—oh, hey, one of his hands was on her ass. When had that happened?
She swallowed—hard. “Jeremy.”
He let go abruptly and stepped back. She wavered at the sudden loss of contact, and his hand shot out to steady her. As soon as he was sure she wasn’t going to fall—and wouldn’t that be the perfect capper to this night, if she literally swooned at his feet—he released her aga
in.
“You think she bought it?” he asked, smirking at her.
Melody cleared her throat. “Definitely.”
“Good. Okay. Well, goodnight,” he said, like everything was perfectly normal. Like he hadn’t just kissed the ever-loving shit out of her. Like her stomach wasn’t still doing somersaults because of it.
Then he turned away and headed back to his car.
So—okay. What?
Melody watched him drive away, feeling like she’d been hit by a truck.
Get a grip, she told herself. It was just an act. It had to be. Right?
If it had been real, he wouldn’t have just walked away like that, like nothing had happened. He wouldn’t have smirked at her like that.
“Look at you. Your cheeks are all flushed!” her mother observed when she finally went inside. “I’ll bet the sex is off the charts with that one.”
“Mom,” Melody groaned, praying for the sweet release of death. “I’m begging you.”
Melody was asleep when her phone rang in the morning. She’d been up half the night replaying that goodnight kiss with Jeremy in her head, and slept in later than she’d meant to. Groaning, she rolled over and fumbled for her phone.
Shit. It was Lacey.
She’d kissed Lacey’s ex-boyfriend last night. Like, a lot. Shit.
Melody put the phone to her ear and squeezed her eyes shut. “Hey.”
“How was your date with Jeremy?”
“Uhhh…” She tried to think of something to say that didn’t involve Jeremy’s tongue being down her throat.
“Did your mom love him? He gives great mom. I mean, my mom hated him, but most moms love him.”
“Yeah…she, uh, really liked him.” She should tell Lacey about the kiss, shouldn’t she? Yes—no. Yes. She should definitely tell her.
“I knew she would.”
“You were right.” Although…Lacey was totally on board with the whole fake-date thing, so maybe she wouldn’t care that they’d kissed? It wasn’t like it was real. Maybe she’d expected it. Maybe Melody didn’t have to tell her.