Sleeping with Her Enemy

by Jenny Holiday

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t hear Kat tell you her actual unit number when she buzzed you up, so I thought I’d wait for you here.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  He held the elevator door for her and gestured down the hallway. “Actually, that’s only partially true. I had an ulterior motive for wanting to get you alone before we go in.”

  Amy’s heart did a little jig.

  “I needed to warn you about my mother.”

  Oh.

  “She can be very…intense. She gets fixated on things. And right now, you’re the object of her fixation.”

  “Me?” Amy was genuinely shocked.

  “Yeah. She’s spun this whole narrative where you’re the angel from heaven who saved Kat and her baby.”

  Amy grinned. “Well, if the shoe fits…”

  He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m just out here doing my duty. Consider yourself warned.”

  Dax pushed open the door to Kat’s condo, and a small Asian woman came hurtling toward them and… Oh my God, Dax’s mother was actually crying.

  “You must be Amy!”

  “Mrs. Harris, so lovely to meet you.” Amy held out her hand to shake, but the woman bypassed it and somehow managed to insert herself between Amy’s arms so she had no choice but to hug her.

  “No Mrs. Harris! I’m Yee-Lin, but everyone just calls me Lin.” She grabbed Amy’s upper arms with a strength that was astonishing considering her size, and pulled back to look into her eyes. “Unless you want to call me Mom, like these two. Because from now on, you are officially a member of the family.”

  Then, as quickly as she’d flown at Amy, she dropped her arms, giving a big, fortifying sniff before introducing her to Dax’s father, Alistair.

  If Lin was a miniature hurricane, Alistair was the eye of the storm, silent and brooding, letting everything unfold around him as if he were watching a play on stage. He nodded at her, shook her hand formally, and then disappeared into the small kitchen.

  “My husband cooks beef stroganoff for dinner every Sunday,” Lin said. “Usually at our house, but of course this is a special day.”

  “Is that Amy?” Kat called from somewhere deeper in the condo.

  “It is,” Dax answered, ushering Amy into the living room, where Kat was lying on the couch looking like she was recovering from a car accident.

  “Hi!” she said, her chipper voice in marked contrast with her disheveled appearance. Then she made an exaggerated pointing motion with her thumb to the bassinet next to the couch. Amy walked over and peeped in.

  “Oh!” she whispered, inexplicably overcome with emotion at the sight of Kat’s sleeping daughter. “She’s beautiful.” She hadn’t really gotten a good look when she was delivering the baby because she’d been so caught up in the fear and adrenaline of the situation. The tiny girl had her mother’s dark hair, and she was sleeping with her little fists clenched next to her cheeks.

  “Isn’t she?” Dax said, coming to stand next to Amy. “We’ve pretty much spent the day staring at her.”

  As if she could feel the attention, Gloria started grunting and squirming. Then she opened her eyes—green like her uncle’s, instead of the usual baby blue—locked them on Amy, and gave a shriek that could have peeled the paint off the walls.

  “Ha!” Kat said, twisting to pick up the girl. “You ought to be more polite to your namesake.”

  “About that,” Amy said. “I’m totally flattered, of course, but you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Already done,” Kat said, jiggling the baby and making funny faces at her. “She’s named after you and Gloria Steinem. Two strong, badass women.”

  She hiked up her shirt and before Amy could reply, Dax interrupted. “Hey, hey! Give me some warning before you do that!”

  “You’ve seen boobs, brother.”

  “Yes, but not yours, and I intend to keep it that way.” He turned to Amy. “Come with me to help fix drinks?”

  “Yes!” She was grateful for the distraction, not so much because boobs made her nervous, but that being called a strong badass and being linked with Gloria Steinem did. It felt like a lot to live up to. Plus all the banter-y family togetherness was making her feel like she was in a sitcom.

  “Nice,” he said, eyeing and then uncorking the gamay noir she’d brought. He poured two glasses and set them on the kitchen island. “You want a glass of wine, Dad?”

  “Nope,” came the reply from the other side of the island, where Dax’s father stood at the stove, stirring something that smelled delicious. “I’ve got a beer, thanks.”

  “Would your mother want a glass?” Amy asked, eyeing a third wineglass Dax hadn’t filled.

  “Not of that fine vintage,” he said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a box of wine. “Only the worst for my mom.” Wagging his eyebrows, he used the spigot to fill the glass with a bright pink liquid.

  Amy grinned and reached for the glass. “I can take it to her.”

  “Not yet,” he said, grabbing it back, turning to the freezer, and plunking an ice cube in. “Voilà.” He made a face.

  She made one in sympathy.

  “At least we’re not at their house. They don’t have air-conditioning, and when it’s hot out like today, she mixes it with 7-Up.”

  “About ten minutes till dinner’s ready,” Dax’s father called, talking to no one in particular.

  “Dax! Where’s my drink?” came Lin’s voice from the living room. “You know I like to get my buzz on before stroganoff.”

  Amy followed a grinning Dax into the living room. “Madame,” he said, performing an exaggerated courtly bow over his mother and kissing her hand before handing her the pink wine. She accepted it but swatted him with her free hand.

  There was such affection in their eyes—both of them—it nearly took Amy’s breath away.

  She didn’t have time to examine the thought any further because Lin turned to her. “Dax says you’re not his girlfriend.”

  “Mother.” There was warning in Dax’s voice.

  “That’s right. We’re just friends.”

  “They went paddleboarding together yesterday,” Kat said, though Amy wasn’t sure what her point was.

  Lin nodded. “So if you’re not Dax’s girlfriend, maybe you can tell me what the hell is wrong with him.”

  Amy almost choked on a sip of her wine.

  “Mother,” came Dax’s strangled reply.

  Lin ignored her son. “Now, I know I’m biased, but it seems to me that he’s not bad-looking. Am I wrong?”

  Amy glanced around. Dax had his head in his hands, and Kat was grinning.

  “Ah, no, you’re not wrong.”

  “And we all know he’s smart and successful and, apparently, obscenely rich. So what’s the problem?”

  “Mother, please. You’re talking to the angel—to use your term—who delivered your granddaughter. Can you cut her some slack?”

  “Go get me a refill.” Lin held out her empty glass. “Extra ice this time.” Then she turned to Amy, clearly not willing to let up until she had her questions answered.

  “Okay, well,” Amy began, watching Dax retreat to do his mother’s bidding. “I don’t think that there’s any inherent problem with Dax.” Except that he’s kind of a jerk. But she didn’t say that part. “It’s more that he’s not looking for a serious relationship.”

  “Which I’ve been telling you and telling you, Mother,” he said, reappearing with another glass of wine. “I don’t have time for a relationship. I’m too busy with the company.”

  “So how am I supposed to have grandchildren if you won’t have a serious relationship? It’s been fifteen years since Allison, and—”

  “Mother!” Kat said sharply. Apparently, his sister, though she had been riding his ass about Amy in private, was the only member of his family with any boundaries whatsoever.

  “Supper’s ready!” Dax’s father called.

  Dax leaped to his feet. Saved by stroganoff.

>   …

  Goddamn, his mother was on fire tonight. She was always like that to a certain extent, but having Amy for an audience was inspiring her to perform extra hard. By the time they were ten minutes into dinner, she’d already informed Amy that she was too skinny and recommended a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine to help her “put some meat on her bones” because “a woman needed some hips for childbearing.” He’d given up trying to rein her in, turning instead to drowning himself in the excellent wine Amy had brought.

  “Leave her alone, Lin.” The single sentence from his typically mute father startled Dax—and his mother and sister, too, judging by the way everyone’s eyes swung to the man. For a moment silence—blessed silence—descended. Even the baby, who was being passed between Kat and his mother, had gone quiet.

  “This stroganoff is delicious, Mr. Harris,” Amy said, glancing at his father’s plate, which contained only a ham sandwich.

  “Can’t stand the stuff myself. Is there anything more disgusting than beef with sour cream? But Lin loves it,” he said, hoisting his sandwich and taking a big bite.

  “Alistair’s family owned a restaurant,” Lin said, and Dax sent a silent prayer of thanks heavenward that his father had managed to shift the discussion. This was another of his mother’s favorite topics, but a more benign one. “I’m not sure if I fell in love with him or the beef stroganoff. I’d never had such a thing. Any forays outside of the traditional Chinese food my parents cooked were the typical North American garbage that I encountered—pizza, fast food. But stroganoff!” She slurped up a noodle and smacked her lips. “That was really something.”

  “Was it a Russian restaurant?” Amy asked. He could see her trying to make sense of his father’s very British name and the trace of an accent he retained, his family having immigrated when he was a teenager.

  “Nope, it was one of those old-school generic ‘family’ restaurants,” his father said. “My parents bought it from an older couple who were retiring. They kept the head cook, who was Russian. Hence the stroganoff. It was a funny place. We also had spaghetti and, of course, my parents introduced fish and chips and bangers and mash. When I started dating Lin, they added chop suey to the menu.”

  “Oh, that’s kind of…sweet,” Amy said.

  “And racist!” Kat chirped cheerfully. Then she shot Dax a “can you believe this?” face. He knew she was referencing the fact that their father had just spoken in a complete paragraph. It was almost unheard of.

  “They didn’t mean it that way,” his mother said. “They were trying to welcome me to the family.”

  “It didn’t matter anyway,” his father said, smiling at his wife. “Once you had the stroganoff, I don’t think you ever had anything else on that menu.” He turned to Amy. “When my parents retired and we took over the restaurant, we overhauled the menu, but Lin wouldn’t let me touch the stroganoff.”

  His parents beamed at each other. That was the thing—his father was so silent and his mother so talkative, they were almost like a nursery rhyme. Like the conversational equivalent of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. If you went by what they said, you had to wonder how they ever fell in love, much less kept the spark alive. But then there would be these moments where they’d look at each other, and you kind of felt like you should leave the room. Which was gross, but also reassuring.

  “My father hates stroganoff, but he makes it for my mother—and us—every Sunday,” Kat said, smiling affectionately at their father.

  “It’s true,” Dax confirmed. “We’ve been having these Sunday family dinners our whole lives, and I don’t think we’ve ever had anything else.”

  “That’s right,” his mother said, nodding decisively.

  He could tell Amy was tickled by the whole thing. “What if a holiday like Christmas falls on a Sunday?” she asked.

  “Then we have turkey stroganoff,” his mother said, as if the answer was obvious.

  “And I have a turkey sandwich,” his father said.

  “Well, I think it’s great,” Amy said. “Is the restaurant still open?”

  “We’re in the process of selling it to some of the employees,” his mother said. “Since neither of these two ungrateful children wanted it.”

  “What do you do?” Amy asked Kat.

  Kat barked a laugh. “Isn’t it funny that you’ve seen a baby come out of my vagina, but we don’t actually know each other?”

  “Kat!” his mother scolded.

  “I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I do intellectual property, patent-type stuff. Mostly in the tech sector. But of course, I’m on maternity leave now.”

  “That’s kind of cool that you and Dax work, broadly, in the same field.”

  “It was actually perfect,” Dax’s father said. Apparently Amy had somehow unleashed a heretofore unheard-of talkative streak in their father. “Dax was always taking things apart to see how they worked, and Kat was always reading the directions and bossing him around. I think they both ended up exactly where they were supposed to.”

  Kat aimed another undisguised look of astonishment at Dax.

  “Is Kat short for something?” Amy asked. “Katherine?”

  “Nope, just Kat,” his sister answered.

  “And what about Dax?” Amy turned to him. “I’ve always wondered what kind of name that was. It sounds like a Viking or something.”

  “You’ll have to talk to my mother about that,” he said, wondering if she, like he, was remembering the time not so long ago when she’d insulted his name.

  “I just made it up. Names with more than one syllable are a waste of breath,” she said, as if she was explaining something that should be obvious. “Inefficient.”

  “She actually asked me if we could just number the kids instead of name them,” his father offered. Dax turned to his father, disbelieving. He’d never heard that before. “It’s true,” said his father, standing up and starting to clear the plates. “I’ll go get the cake.”

  Amy laughed. “So Gloria is a big breach of the rules.” She turned to Kat. “If a feminist icon was the aim, you could have gone with Greer, maybe.”

  “I like this one,” his mother said, turning to him and pounding the table. “You bring her to dinner next week, too.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude on family dinner,” Amy said.

  “Well, if you were Dax’s girlfriend, you’d be family.”

  “Mother,” Dax said, though he knew it was useless.

  “Amy,” Kat said, coming to his rescue, which was a little surprising. He had half expected her to trot out the whole Allison story, and he didn’t need Amy knowing about that. “I hear you’re a real estate expert. I want to move out of this condo. I’m not in a huge hurry, but I want Gloria to have a yard by the time she can walk. Any advice?”

  “Oh, for sure. Do you want to stay around here?”

  “This is going to sound crazy—I’m probably just hormonal—but I think I’d like to move closer to my parents, who are in Scarborough.”

  “What about Port Union?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a little neighborhood on the lake in the far eastern corner of Scarborough. It’s one of the last affordable pockets of houses in the city. If you want, I can take you on a little orientation tour once you get back on your feet.”

  “Do you have your real estate license?” his father asked, having returned with one of his signature cakes—this one was lemon chiffon, Kat’s favorite.

  “Nope. At my company, I oversee large development projects, so I know a lot about the economics of land and real estate. It’s different work than selling residential real estate. But lots of people ask me for advice on buying and selling houses, and I follow the Toronto residential market as a hobby. I have a friend who’s a Realtor, and I refer lots of people to her. Half the time I do all the legwork of looking for a place, so she gives my people breaks on commission. I can put you in touch when you’re ready, Kat.”

 
“She delivers babies, and she works real estate magic,” Kat said, waving her arms around theatrically. “And she’s also really, really pretty. She’s like the perfect person.”

  At that moment, looking at Amy, who had managed to charm all the weirdos in his family in different ways, Dax could not disagree.

  Which was a problem. A big, big problem. The last thing he needed was his family getting all attached to a girl who was most definitely not his girlfriend.

  Chapter Ten

  Dax managed to avoid Amy until Friday of the next week. When he walked into the kitchen at the office, she was bent over, rummaging through the refrigerator.

  Of course she was. Because why would he just run into her doing something normal, like walking down the hall or waiting for the elevator?

  No, Perfect Amy had to be aiming her Perfect Ass, encased in some kind of shiny, silklike deep purple fabric, at him. He squirmed, contemplating whether he should just flee like the coward he was.

  But he was too late. When she emitted a huff of frustration and righted herself, it should have been a relief. But she turned, hands on hips, and she was wearing a purple minidress. And the red, red lips.

  Which transformed from pursed to an enormous smile when she caught sight of him. “Hey! Long time, no see!”

  “Problem?” he asked.

  “Yes!” The pout returned. It was worse than the smile. “Someone stole my lunch! I brought it yesterday, but ended up on a last-minute business lunch, so I was going to eat it today.” She turned back to the still-open fridge, as if she could manifest the missing lunch. “And now it’s gone.”

  “Rosemann has a bunch of temps in this week. They’re working on some huge pitch.”

  “More likely it was one of the Boy Geniuses, working late last night.”

  “No employee of mine would steal from you!” he protested. “They’re all in love with you.” He grinned. “Actually, maybe they would.” He mimed opening a yogurt container. “Oh, Amy’s disgusting unflavored Greek yogurt! Swoon.”

  She shot him a skeptical look, and he realized too late that knowing what kind of yogurt she ate made him sound a little more…intense than he would have liked. “Well, you can have half my stale peanut butter sandwich.”