“You’re willing to do that?” she asked, surprised. She’d been afraid that she’d ruined everything.
“Yes. I’m willing to do whatever you ask—as long as you don’t ask me to walk away. Not from the best person I’ve found in a very, very long time.”
She took a long breath, feeling like someone who had come perilously close to falling over the brink—and then stepped back.
“I need to explain something to you,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” he told her. “You don’t have to explain anything.”
“Yes, I do,” she countered.
He heard the almost desperate note in her voice and that made him change direction. “Okay then, I’m listening. But I really do have to leave soon, so I’m going to be making your breakfast while I’m listening.”
Mikki laughed, shaking her head. “You really are something else.”
“And I hope to prove that to you—slowly,” Jeff added, mindful of what he’d just promised her a few minutes ago. “Go ahead,” he urged as he began to whip up a ham-and-cheese omelet along with a serving of French toast.
She wasn’t proud of what she was about to share, but he needed to understand why she was so leery of having a relationship. She knew she’d already touched on this, but he had to be made to understand the full extent of how much this had affected her.
“When I was a kid, I thought everybody’s parents argued all the time because mine did. But despite the arguments—and there were some knock-down, drag-out ones—we were a family and I thought we’d always stay that way. But we didn’t.”
Afraid of seeing pity in his eyes, she stared at the napkin holder in the center of the kitchen table.
“My parents got divorced before I was twelve. My mother fell wildly in love with Albert. They were married before her divorce papers were dry. I didn’t realize it then, but that was the start of a pattern.
“My mother would fall head over heels for some ‘absolutely wonderful guy,’ and they’d get married, but before too long, Mr. Wonderful would stop being wonderful and just become another albatross around her neck. An albatross she’d shed the moment she found her next Mr. Wonderful.”
She’d mentioned some of this before, but he hadn’t realized the extent of it, or how much it had traumatized her, Jeff thought. “How many times has your mother been married?”
“Four,” Mikki answered, then corrected herself. “Five if you count the annulment.”
He put the diced bits of ham and cheese into the egg mixture, whisking everything together. “Annulment?”
She nodded. “Harvey,” she said. “I’m not sure about the circumstances. I was in medical school at the time. All I know was that by the time I received her announcement saying she’d married Harvey Winthrop, Mother was already getting the union annulled.” Mikki sighed. “From that point on, I learned not to ask any questions,” she confessed. “It was a lot less stressful that way.”
She paused, allowing the import of her words to sink in. “What I’m saying is that my mother taught me by her example that nothing ever lasts, no matter how fantastic it might seem at the outset.”
The omelet was ready. He slid it onto a plate, then placed it on the table in front of her. He set the slice of French toast he’d prepared at the same time right next to it.
Clearing off the counter, Jeff picked his words carefully, not wanting to scare her or make her think that he was making light of what she had gone through. “From what you just told me, I can see why you’d feel so leery about entering any sort of a relationship. But I’d like the opportunity to prove to you—slowly,” he underscored, “that it doesn’t have to be that way.
“But right now,” he went on, drying his hands on one of the kitchen towels, “I’ve got to go and start preparations for that fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. That’s fifty years,” he emphasized, his eyes meeting hers. “With the same person.” Having made her breakfast and having said what he’d come to say, Jeff paused to kiss her quickly. “It happens more often than you think.”
When she rose from the table, he looked at her. “Where are you going?”
She gestured in the general direction of the front door. “I thought I’d see you out.”
“Eat the omelet,” he told her. “It tastes better warm than cold.” He winked at her. “I’ll call you.”
Mikki sank back down in the chair. After a minute, she began to eat the omelet and French toast he had made for her. While she ate, she wondered if she had just managed to ruin the best thing that had happened to her—or if she had just carried out a preemptive strike, saving herself from experiencing devastating heartache in the near future.
* * *
Jeff didn’t call.
Not that afternoon and not that evening. When he didn’t call the next morning, she tried to tell herself that he was busy. Busy with the restaurant, busy with the party, both before and after, and busy with life in general.
And since it was now Monday, her own routine began all over again, a routine that kept her almost too busy to breathe. And almost too busy to think.
Almost.
Every time her phone rang, whether the landline or her cell, she expected it to be Jeff on the other end.
And when it wasn’t, she upbraided herself for thinking—hoping—that it was.
Obviously she’d been right to put the brakes on, Mikki thought, struggling to keep the hurt at bay. She would have felt that much worse if this happened in the future, after she’d invested a lot of time in Jeff. Time and emotions.
Right, like you didn’t do any of that already, she mocked herself.
* * *
When her phone rang as she walked in her front door at the end of the next day, Mikki flew across the room and grabbed the landline receiver with both hands, simultaneously praying that the person on the other end was Jeff.
But it wasn’t.
It was her mother. She’d been in such a hurry to answer the phone, she hadn’t bothered to look at the caller ID. She was slipping again, but then, she supposed she could be forgiven. She was still dealing with the fact that when Sophia Sabatino had come in for her second postsurgical exam, her daughter, Tina, had come with her.
Mikki had expected to see Jeff.
It was over, she thought. Over before it actually began.
Her mother’s voice jarred her back to the present.
“Sweetheart, I wanted to you be the first to know,” her mother gushed in that familiar voice she knew all too well. “I’m getting married.”
Mikki pressed her lips together to suppress the sigh that had instantly risen in response to her mother’s news. She was supposed to feign happiness, then ask about the groom-to-be and wish her mother well. But she just couldn’t do that. Not again.
So instead of dutifully playing her part, Mikki sank down on the sectional and braced herself. “Why?”
Instead of being annoyed by the challenge the way Mikki had expected her to be, Veronica giggled.
“Well, it’s not because I have to, not in that way,” she heard her mother laugh, “if that’s what you’re asking me.”
Her mother was well past childbearing age no matter how many times she fudged the date on her birth certificate. They both knew that.
“No, Mother, I’m asking why are you going through all this again?”
“Why, because I love Randolph, that’s why,” her mother answered, sounding surprised that she was even being asked such a question. “It’s what people do when they’re in love, darling. They get married.”
Mikki closed her eyes, searching for strength. “Mother, you have been in love with enough men to form a small army—and each of those men has turned out not to be the soul mate that you thought they were.”
Undaunted, her mother said, “I know that, but Randolph—”
This ti
me, she wasn’t going to back away. This time she was determined to talk some sense into her mother. She needed to stop this insane cycle of fall in love, marry, divorce, repeat.
“—is probably going to wind up disappointing you, too,” Mikki pointed out.
“What would make you say such a thing?” her mother asked, sounding shocked and appalled.
Mikki dug in. Her mother’s recurring pattern of behavior was what was responsible for destroying her optimism. She needed to make her mother change. “Because I’m tired of watching you be disappointed time after time.”
Her mother was quiet for a moment and Mikki thought that, finally confronted with the truth, maybe her mother had just hung up on her.
But then she heard her mother’s voice. “That’s very sweet of you, dear,” she said patiently. “But I think you’re missing the point.”
This was where the double-talk came in. This was where her mother started building castles in the sky.
She felt as if she was banging her head against a brick wall.
“And what is the point, Mother?” she asked.
“That’s really very simple, dear,” her mother said, talking to her as if Mikki were just becoming an adult. “The point is that if I don’t go out and seize the moment, if I don’t believe that this next union will be the right one and the man that I’m exchanging vows with is going to be the one destined to be by my side for the rest of my life, well, then I might as well just give up on life entirely.
“You have to understand that things don’t happen if you sit the game out on the sidelines, Michelle. Things only happen if you have enough courage to go out there and fight for your happiness. Really fight for it. If you don’t try, you don’t win. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Michelle?”
Yes. You’re spouting every single cliché out there, Mikki thought, feeling like she was engaged in a losing battle.
But she also remembered reading somewhere that clichés only existed because, at the bottom, they were rooted in the truth.
Besides, maybe her mother was right. Maybe this man was going to turn out to be the right one for her. Who was she to say no?
“Yes, Mother,” Mikki answered. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“Exactly!” her mother exclaimed. “You do understand! So you’ll come to the wedding?”
“I’ll come to the wedding,” Mikki promised.
“Wonderful!” her mother cried. “I can’t wait for you to meet Randolph—your new stepfather.”
Oh, Lord, Mikki thought, closing her eyes as she searched for strength.
Chapter Eighteen
Mikki felt as if she couldn’t find a place for herself. Tension resulting from the last few days, especially after she’d weathered the disappointment of not having Jeff accompanying his mother for her second postsurgical exam, was beginning to tie her up in knots.
With all that going on, who would have thought that her mother could actually say something sensible?
Maybe she should be looking out her window, waiting for the arrival of the four horsemen, Mikki thought, because obviously the end of the world was coming.
She was happy for her mother, happy that her mother felt that she had finally found the right man. Chances of that proving true were slim, but if Veronica could still believe in miracles, why shouldn’t she?
But meanwhile, her own life suddenly looked as if it was in complete disarray and she had no idea how to fix it, or even if it was fixable.
Maybe she should call Jeff.
Or maybe she shouldn’t, because the two of them just weren’t meant to be.
When the phone rang again a little more than five minutes later, she looked at the landline accusingly. “Give me a break, Mother,” she muttered under her breath.
It rang again and she knew her mother wouldn’t stop calling until she answered.
Crossing back to the landline, she yanked the receiver from its cradle.
“I said I’ll come.” It was an effort not to snap the words out. After all, what she was going through really wasn’t her mother’s fault. This was all her own doing.
“I haven’t asked yet,” the deep voice on the other end said, “but good to know.”
The receiver almost slid out of her hand. Was she getting a do-over? “Jeff?”
“I take it that response when you picked up the phone wasn’t meant for me.”
Relief at hearing his voice temporarily made her mind go blank. It took Mikki a second to pull herself together and answer him. “I thought you were my mother, calling back.”
“Oh, if you’re expecting her call, I’ll just hang up,” Jeff offered.
“No!” she cried. If he hung up, he might never call back again. And then she realized how desperate that plea had to have sounded to him. Embarrassment all but saturated her. “No,” she repeated in what she hoped was a far more subdued voice.
She heard him laugh softly, and a warmth bathed over her.
“If you don’t want to talk to your mother that much, you can always take the phone off the hook,” he told her. “Although I wouldn’t advise it, because she’ll probably catch up to you sooner than later, and in my experience, it’s best to deal with things head-on, even if you’d rather avoid them.”
Was that a veiled message about her approach to things?
Stop it, stop reading into things. Just be happy he called.
“I don’t want to talk about my mother,” Mikki told him.
“All right,” Jeff responded gamely, “we can talk about something else.”
It sounded as if he was leaving the choice of subject up to her. She didn’t want to say anything that might wind up pushing her back to square one, so she asked about the first thing she could think of, even though she was afraid that she might accidentally bring up a sore subject.
At this point, she was totally unsure of herself—but not saying anything was even worse, so she began slowly. “How did the party go?”
“Party?” He’d been all but counting the minutes until he felt he could safely call her again. For the last few days—for the first time since he’d started in this field—it was all he could do to keep things going at work. What for him had always been a labor of love had been strictly labor since he had left her house on Sunday. His mind kept wandering back to thoughts of Mikki at the most inopportune times, causing him to lose track of things.
Work had taken a complete back seat in his thoughts. Consequently, he drew a total blank at her question.
“The fiftieth-anniversary party at your restaurant on Sunday,” Mikki prompted. Had it gone badly for some reason? Had she raised a subject he would have rather left alone? She felt as if she was verbally all thumbs.
“Oh, that.” How could he have forgotten the Strausses’ anniversary celebration? Pulling it off had been a huge deal, and he had outdone himself. “That went well. Very well,” he told her, adding, “The couple was totally surprised.”
Now it was her turn to be confused. “They didn’t know they’d been married fifty years?”
He laughed, and the sound went straight to her stomach, causing it to really tighten this time. She’d forgotten how much she really loved the sound of his laugh. Just hearing it was immensely comforting.
“No, they knew,” he told her. “But what they didn’t know was that their kids were throwing them a big party. The Strausses thought they were just being taken out for dinner.”
She could picture the couple entering the large banquet room and the surprise on their faces when they saw that everyone they loved was in that room, celebrating them. That was a family scene she had longed for her whole life.
“Sounds nice,” she told him, a wistful note in her voice.
“It was.” Jeff paused for a moment, as if debating whether or not to say the next thing. He didn’t want to risk scarin
g Mikki off, but keeping away from her like this was really getting to him. He decided to go for it. “Mikki, could I come over?”
Her heart practically did a backflip. She hadn’t ruined it. He wanted to see her.
Almost afraid that this was too good to be true, she asked, “You mean tonight?”
“Yes—unless you want to go slower,” he qualified.
Mikki had wanted to see him even before her mother’s phone call had gotten her thinking that she had made a huge mistake. She had behaved in a manner that she had always detested—she’d been cowardly. Her fear of giving her heart away and having it broken could have very well cost her the experience of a lifetime: love.
When Jeff had called just now, she had been debating calling him—and praying that he wouldn’t just hang up.
Having him ask to come over was an answer to a prayer.
“No, no, tonight’s fine,” Mikki told him, hoping she didn’t sound too eager. She didn’t know if that would make him step back.
Just then the doorbell rang.
Why now, she thought. Of all the times she didn’t want to see someone...
Determined to tell whoever was there to either go away, or that she’d get back to them, Mikki made her way across the room.
“Hold on, there’s someone at the door,” she told Jeff. Reaching the door, she closed one eye and looked through the peephole with the other.
“I know,” Jeff said. He completed his sentence just as she opened the door. “It’s me.”
She knew she’d been the one to put up the boundaries, the one who had honestly thought she’d wanted to go slow, but right at this moment, none of that mattered or held true.
Rather than hang back or maintain decorum, or even express surprise at seeing him on her doorstep, Mikki skipped right over that and went straight to throwing her arms around his neck.
An Engagement for Two Page 16