Isn't it Romantic?

by Ronda Thompson

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah, great. Be back in an hour.”

  The sound of the door closing shattered the dam holding Katrine’s emotions at bay. With a choked sob, she flung herself across the sofa. What kind of mother didn’t think about having gravel in the backyard or putting a basketball goal in the drive? Because she’d never had a big backyard when she was a child, a basketball goal, a swing set, a dog, things normal children took for granted, she had forgotten the importance of providing those necessities for her own child.

  Painful memories swam to the surface. When Katrine’s mother abandoned her, she’d been placed in the care of a great aunt and uncle. They weren’t cruel, but only old and barren of any children of their own. The small apartment they lived in wasn’t meant to provide for the needs of a child, nor were they.

  Great Aunt Jean did all that was required of a care-taker. Katrine had clothing, shelter and nourishment. Not once could she remember being held, loved, assured by her elderly guardians. She did remember constantly being told to be quiet because they lived in a retirement complex and noise wouldn’t be tolerated by the other tenants.

  Katrine suffered in silence, absorbing life with an intensity most children weren’t capable of, because they were busy at play. She found school disturbing, subjected to roomfuls of noisy children when her upbringing had stifled Katrine’s own verbal exuberance, But the wonder of learning how to quietly commit to paper her thoughts and feelings she embraced obsessively.

  Later, after her great aunt became ill and Katrine was placed in a foster home, there were swing sets, grass, and the companionship of other children, but by then, another world had claimed her. The world of fantasy. A world where she could be loved, wanted, beautiful—a world where she could become all she wasn’t.

  Flood gates open, Katrine sobbed until the need for tissue sent her in search. Shelly thoughtfully left a box in the top of her desk drawer. Seating herself behind the computer, she lowered her head. The keyboard felt cold against the wetness of her cheeks, unmoved by the pleasure and pain it delivered. For the first time in her life, Katrine resented her writing. She begrudged no one the pleasure of escape into fantasy, but while her readers returned to real life after the story, Katrine had only found a new heroine to become, a different adventure to obsess her.

  “I’ll change,” she vowed, lifting her head. “I’m going to become a mother. A real mother!”

  Wiping the remaining tears from her cheeks, she rose with the intention of fixing her daughter lunch. Not a sandwich or a can of soup. Not a frozen dinner Thelma had prepared, but an honest-to-God home cooked meal. The note pad laying on her desk caused her a moment’s hesitation. The feature. Damn Trey Westmoreland.

  How dare he be right about her neglect of Shelly! He seemed the type who proved annoyingly right about most things. Well, he was wrong about her lack of talent. Trey took her on the most unromantic date in the history of so-called courtship. His intentions were obvious, to make her half of the feature impossible. Katrine wouldn’t fail Shelly, and she wouldn’t allow the enemy to disarm her again.

  “I’ll give you romance, T. West,” she promised. “You’ll choke on it.”

  ———

  Trey choked on the coffee sliding down his throat. Jerry Caldwell gave him a hardy slap on the back, then grinned like a Cheshire.

  “She’s good, isn’t she?”

  “Good at lying.” Trey coughed again while staring at the newspaper clutched in his hands. “This garbage is so sugary sweet it makes my teeth hurt. Why didn’t you let me edit it before you sent it to print?”

  “That garbage,” Jerry stressed, “will make us number two before the week’s out. After reading the sorry excuse of an article you submitted, I could only pray she, at least, wrote true to form.”

  “What’s wrong with my feature?” Trey demanded. “I wrote the truth.”

  Jerry frowned at the article he held, his disappointment obvious. “You gave me one lousy paragraph. ‘She was overdressed, complained about the restaurant, berated the meal, whined about the establishment I took her to for drinks, got me involved in a fight and left with another man.’ Period.”

  “That was pretty much the way it happened, in a nutshell.”

  “I don’t want nutshells. I want details! Exactly what she wore, where you went, how she got you involved in a fight, why she left with another man.”

  The columnist slapped the paper on the edge of Jerry’s desk. “I suppose if I went to bed with her, you’d expect me to give the public details on that, too?”

  His editor’s brow lifted with interest. “Did you?”

  “I’m trying to make a point,” Trey informed him, his expression one of disgust. “I’m a journalist. I write the facts and don’t flower it up with muck. You’ve got your feature. The phones have been ringing all morning. We might make the national news. Don’t tell me how to write my end of the bargain.”

  “Maybe you should study Kat Summer’s style,” Jerry suggested. “You could use a few lessons in creativity.”

  “Is that what this is?” With a crisp snap, Trey opened the paper. “’T West arrived fashionably late, looking handsomely rugged,’ I had on a pair of grease-covered Levis and a leather jacket,” Trey explained. “’His comment regarding my perfume set my heart aflutter,’ she was flapping her arms like a gull and even so, her perfume arrived downstairs long before she did. Oh, this is great. ‘After helping me with my wrap,’ which, by the way, is the same as slinging it in her face, ‘We took an exuberant ride through the streets of our fair city, snuggled close together against the cold night.’“

  He rose, carrying the paper with him while he paced. “We were on my mechanic’s Harley, and she was so scared she didn’t care what she grabbed hold of, which in my opinion, was the best part of the date. ‘T West, not a native of our great state, thoughtfully chose a cozy restaurant boasting true Texas cuisine’, I took her to a truck stop and she barely choked those calf fries down. It was cozy all right, about a hundred degrees even without that silly red cape draped around her.”

  Lost in his own rambling, Trey failed to notice Jerry’s gaping mouth. He continued, unmindful of his own confessions conflicting with the paper’s thoughtful handing over of the key to the city.

  “’After a satisfying dinner, laced with interesting conversation in which T. West expressed a desire to learn what I found most romantic in a man, we ventured into a colorful establishment I can only describe as over the rainbow,’ we were arguing about sex and romance being the same thing,” Trey pointed out. “She knows I only asked her what attracted her so I’d be sure to not do anything she might label as heroic. The ‘establishment’ was out of this world all right. I took her to a biker’s bar—”

  “Westmoreland,” Jerry interrupted, his tone bordering on disbelief. “Are you telling me that with a limo service at your disposal, an unlimited expense account allowing the two of you to dine at the finest restaurants and relax over drinks in the most exclusive night clubs, you took her to a truck stop on a motorcycle and then to a biker’s bar?”

  A guilty flush of heat spread up Trey’s neck. “You gave me the key, you didn’t say I had to use it.”

  “B–But why wouldn’t you?” Jerry stammered. “Why make this harder than it has to be?”

  “Why make it easy for her?” Trey countered. “Most of the readers out there, hers and ours, don’t spend their evenings doing the town in style. Let her find the romance in reality, that was the deal.”

  “It was supposed to work the other way, also.” Jerry scratched his head thoughtfully. “You were supposed to find the realism in romance. It seems one-sided to let you make all the date choices. I’ll call and give her the option of choosing the setting for half the dates, that’s fair.”

  “Fair?” Trey grumbled. “Since when does Jerry Caldwell care about fairness?”

  “Since I’m interested to see how you’ll avoid finding anything romantic about a candle-lit restaurant or whatev
er she chooses for her dates. I should chew you out for this little piece of sabotage, but in all honesty, it gives the feature an intriguing twist. Exactly what sort of manly joust were you involved with?”

  “I mud wrestled a midget,” Trey answered flatly.

  “And the age-old tradition of honoring a knight with her favor?”

  “She threw her shoes at me.”

  Jerry crumpled into a chair, engaging in a fit of deep belly laughter. “This is what I want, Westmoreland. Her interpretation, then yours intermingled. Damn, I wish we’d have formatted it that way on this one.”

  “I thought I was to gradually fall under the spell of romance,” Trey reminded, his disgusted tone proof he didn’t like the bargain at all.

  “You are.” Jerry sobered. “But it should be very subtle at first. In the next feature, you might admit to finding at least one thing romantic about your date. Each article after should depict a decline in skepticism. I want my readers to believe in your surrender. I need our female following back, understand?”

  “Yeah, I get it. You want me to sell my beliefs for the sake of ratings. Pretend this relationship represents something more than monetary gain and seduce our readers into feeling as if they’ve been given a satisfactory conclusion to the end of a fairy tale.”

  The editor sighed. “I don’t know why you can’t just sit back and enjoy this, Westmoreland. Why do have to make everything so difficult?”

  “Life is difficult,” Trey countered. “Katrine Summerville uses her talent to white wash it. She makes women forget the truly attractive attributes in a man such as; hard-working, dependable, committed to providing a secure future for his wife and family, and brain washes them into wanting unpredictable, spontaneous, dangerous—”

  “Hold it,” Jerry interrupted. “I think you’ve forgotten we’re talking fiction. Or are we? Does your attitude toward Katrine Summerville have anything to do with your ex-wife?”

  Mention of the past doused Trey’s temper like pouring baking soda over a fire. “Of course not,” he lied. “I just can’t get too thrilled about being led around on a leash for the sake of ratings. I should have refused to do the feature.”

  Caldwell studied him a moment, then sighed again. “I don’t understand you, Westmoreland. Hell, I’d like to be in your shoes. If I had your pretty-boy looks, I’d use them to get lucky every night. I’d take advantage of this opportunity and romance Katrine Summerville right out of her clothes. I’d see just how hot she is. I’d—”

  “You’d end up in the hospital with a disease penicillin can’t cure,” Trey interrupted. “Be glad your mug resembles a bulldog, Jerry. With that attitude, you’ll live longer.”

  “Don’t play the saint with me,” Jerry grumbled, opening a desk drawer. “I haven’t forgotten how this whole business started. You aren’t so level headed when it comes to a certain gorgeous romance author, are you?”

  “No,” Trey admitted. “That woman brings out the worst in me.” He almost told Jerry about the real Katrine Summerville. The one who wore silly, red reading glasses on the end of her nose and Big Bird house slippers.

  It was crazy, but he hadn’t been joking when he’d said she looked beautiful that day. In truth, he’d been more attracted to her than when she’d been dressed to the teeth.

  “I suppose you have a point about being cautious,” Jerry said, studying his reflection in a hand-held mirror. The editor patted the extra skin under his jaws as if the action would eliminate the problem. “Only a man very secure in his masculinity would slip between the sheets with Kat Summers. If you have qualms about relating your personal life to the world, she wouldn’t. You might not read about a steamy night between the two of you in the feature, but mark my words, someday you’d open one of her novels and there you’d be. Held up for inspection. Your sexual prowess judged by millions of women.” Jerry shuddered. “Talk about measuring up.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Trey argued. “She wouldn’t dare. I mean, I could sue her for something like that, couldn’t I?”

  Jerry shrugged. “I doubt she’d be foolish enough to use your full name but, ‘Trey’ … that’s a sort of hero sounding name. If she used your first name, mentioned dark hair, blue eyes and dimples, well, considering it’s more than common knowledge the two of you are acquainted—”

  The sound of Jerry’s office door slamming cut him off. The editor smiled at his reflection. “Chew on that worry bone for a while, Westmoreland.” He laughed softly. “I’ll teach you to call me a bulldog.”

  Chapter 8

  “Mom, you really don’t have to go skating with us,” Shelly insisted as her mother dug around the bottom of her closet for a lost sweater. “Don’t you need to write or something?”

  Katrine glanced up, scrambling toward the open door on hands and knees. “That was the deal, remember? I can’t just let you run around with a man I don’t know all that well. You’re the one who had a fit when I said you couldn’t go. This is the compromise we agreed on.”

  “I know,” Shelly grumbled. “But I thought you’d change your mind at the last minute and stay home. Trey doesn’t know you’re coming.”

  “He doesn’t?” Katrine asked, surprised. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  Shelly shrugged, plucking the fuzz balls off her sweater. “I kept thinking whatever’s wrong with you would wear off.”

  “Motherhood doesn’t just wear off,” Katrine informed her daughter stiffly. “Run along and put on a shirt under that sweater. I imagine the rink will be cold.”

  “But Mom, he’ll be here any minute.”

  “No arguments,” Katrine warned. “Pull that hair back out of your face, too. You don’t want it in your way.”

  An exasperated sigh followed as Shelly rose from the bed. “Funny,” she said under her breath. “I remember a time when I knew what I wanted, and you minded your own business.”

  “What?”

  “I said, the black sweater you’re looking for is actually hanging up.”

  “Oh.” Katrine struggled to her feet. She quickly snatched the sweater from its precarious position, then emerged from the closet. Once in the bright light of day, Katrine noticed the lint clinging to her black stirrup pants and groaned. Couldn’t she do anything right? She’d done laundry by the tons before Mrs. Thelma Camp showed up five years ago to do it. Her pants must have come from the load she accidentally washed with a purse-size box of tissue.

  “Where’s the blasted tape?” she mumbled, pulling the sweater over her head. Her hair crackled with static. The doorbell rang.

  “You’ll have to get it!” Shelly shouted. “I’m not dressed again, yet.”

  “He was late for our date, but he’s right on time for Shelly,” she grumbled. “’She complained about the restaurant, complained about the place I took her for drinks.’ He made me sound like a whiner!”

  The bell rang again.

  “Mom!”

  “I’m going!”

  Taking the stairs two at a time, Katrine reached the front door. She paused to smooth her hair before fumbling for the knob. The bell persisted as the brass knob shocked the heck out of her. “Ouch!” she yelped.

  “Hey, are you all right in there?”

  She hesitantly touched the knob. Again, it shocked her. “Just come in,” Katrine snapped. “It’s not locked.”

  The door swung open. Trey stepped inside. He looked remarkably clean, indecently comfortable, and extremely annoyed.

  “Why isn’t it locked?”

  Katrine raised her eyes from an unconscious survey of his attire to glare back at him. “Because I checked the mail thirty minutes ago and forgot when I came back inside.”

  “Ever heard of crime? Any weirdo off the street could walk right in here.”

  “Obviously,” Katrine countered flatly. “Shelly should be down in a minute. Don’t get too comfortable and shut the door.”

  “Bossy today, aren’t we?” Trey mumbled, but did as he’d been instructed. His writing partner wal
ked to an antique secretarial and began rummaging through the drawers. His gaze roamed her slender frame. He smiled at the shredded pieces of white clinging to her slacks. The oversized sweater hung below her hips. He wondered what she’d look like wearing nothing but the sweater. All legs. “What’s your problem?” he asked casually.

  “Motherhood,” Shelly answered from the stairs.

  The announcement received a dirty look from Katrine and an interested one from Trey.

  “She’s going with us,” Shelly further complained, moving toward the coat closet next to Trey. She turned an expression half-irritated, half-pleading on him. “Tell her you’re not a pervert and maybe she’ll stay home.”

  “That does present a problem,” Trey offered on Shelly’s behalf, despite the part of him that wanted Katrine to come along. He knew which part responded to Katrine Summerville. The irrational, immoral part all men possessed. “I’m in the Jag.” he finished when she paused in her digging to stare at him expectantly. “It’s a two seater, remember?”

  Her blush assured him she did. Nevertheless, Katrine appeared undaunted. She returned to her scavenging. “I’ll call a cab,” she decided. “My treat.”

  “Gosh, that’s exciting,” Trey said.

  Shelly giggled.

  “Give me a minute and I’ll call.”

  “Allow me,” Trey offered. “I owe a guy a favor. You wouldn’t mind autographing your latest book for a devoted fan, would you?”

  “Anything for a fan. Shelly, show Trey where the phone is in the kitchen.”

  Shelly took his hand. As they passed Katrine, a clean natural scent tickled Trey’s senses. She stood bent over, going for the lint below her knees and providing him with a glimpse of her nice derriere. He tried not to laugh at her hair. Full of electricity, the fine strands stretched toward him as he moved past.

  “What have you done to my mother?” Shelly whispered frantically after they entered the kitchen.

  “Nothing,” Trey said perhaps too defensively, considering what he’d been thinking he’d like to do to her two seconds earlier.