Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

  Thom shakes his head. “It’s even harder for me to believe that my mother actually insisted on taking them to FAO Schwartz this afternoon to pick out anything they want for Christmas.”

  “She has no idea what she’s in for,” Annie says worriedly. “Trixie wants a life-sized stuffed jungle animal.”

  Thom chuckles. “I just had a vision of my mother’s chauffeur driving uptown with a giraffe’s head sticking through the moon roof.”

  “Don’t laugh . . . that’s probably exactly what’s going to happen.”

  “I guess it’ll be baptism by fire for Grandmother Brannock, hmm?”

  “She isn’t officially their grandmother . . . yet,” Annie reminds him.

  “No . . . she has at least six months to learn the ropes,” he says, before heading back into the newborn nursery to return little John Wade Jr. to his mama.

  Six months.

  Annie smiles contentedly, leaning against the wall to wait for Thom.

  Their wedding, of course, will be in June, the month that violets and honeysuckle are in bloom. Thom and Annie are hoping for a simple affair in the yard behind Annie’s Montauk house, which they’ll be keeping, of course, as a summer residence.

  Yes, a simple wedding at home, surrounded by precious loved ones and nature’s beauty . . .

  Although, if Thom’s mother and Merlin get their way, it will be the social event of the season.

  Amazingly, the formidably icy Lillian Brannock has warmed up to Annie and her children over the past few months. For whatever reason, Thom says, she let go of her theory that Annie might be a man-hungry gold digger.

  Annie never told him about her meeting with his mother in the kitchen that day in August, and apparently, Lillian never mentioned it to Thom, either. Nor did she acknowledge it to Annie. When Thom introduced the two women, she acted as though she’d never seen Annie before.

  Rather than being insulted, Annie was relieved.

  Lillian Brannock’s ultimate stamp of approval on the union came just weeks ago, when she gave Thom an heirloom antique engagement ring to present to Annie. It had been in her family since the turn of the century, and as she put it, “I don’t care much for old things, anyway.”

  But Annie didn’t miss the twinkle in the old woman’s eye the first time she saw the ring on her future daughter-in-law’s finger.

  “I told you she’d come around,” Thom says frequently, almost as though he can’t quite believe it himself.

  Materializing from beyond a garland-bedecked door with his overcoat draped over his arm and a blue-ribboned cigar in his hand, he’s the picture of the beaming uncle.

  “I still can’t believe my sister is actually a mother,” he says, as he and Annie step onto the elevator. “And old Wade is one proud papa. He’s back there handing out cigars to everyone who walks by.”

  “You sound a little wistful,” Annie comments, looking up into Thom’s eyes.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t mind being a proud new papa myself someday,” he admits. “I love Milo and Trixie with all my heart . . . you know that. But I wouldn’t mind having a few more, if you wouldn’t.”

  “A few?”

  “One?”

  “Maybe two,” Anne concedes, buttoning her coat as they head through the lobby.

  “Look, it’s already getting dark out.”

  “How late is it?”

  “It’s four.”

  Suddenly, pausing in front of the doors to pull on her gloves, Annie remembers something.

  “Today is the winter solstice,” she tells Thom. “It’s the shortest day of the year.”

  “And the longest night,” he says with a suggestive gleam in his eye. “I wonder if my mother feels like hosting a slumber party for Milo and Trixie.”

  “I wouldn’t push it, Thom,” Annie says with a laugh.

  “Well, I bet Auntie Erika wouldn’t mind a couple of overnight guests.”

  “Even if they come bearing life-sized giraffes?”

  “Why not?” Thom holds the door open for Annie and they step out into the chilly December dusk. “Annie, look! It’s snowing!”

  She gazes up to see white flakes glistening in the glow of the streetlight.

  “Do you think we’ll actually have a white Christmas?” she asks in wonder.

  “That would be a miracle. I don’t remember there being a white Christmas here in I don’t know how many years.”

  “Well, nobody knows better than we do,” Annie says softly, tucking her hand snugly into his, “that miracles happen.”

  Talking of their future, they walk toward home through the swirling snowflakes, leaving two sets of footprints on the white-dusted sidewalk.

  About the Author

  As a metropolitan New York resident, Wendy Markham spends quite a bit of time on eastern Long Island, where an idyllic August trip to Montauk inspired the charming setting for this novel. Oddly, unlike her heroine’s ultra-efficient cell phone, Wendy’s cell phone didn’t receive a signal in Montauk unless she was standing knee deep out in the Atlantic: wonderful on steamy summer afternoons; not so much on brisk autumn-like nights. Although she thoroughly enjoyed writing about Annie’s haunted telephone, the author herself is not a big fan of making phone calls to—nor receiving phone calls from—living, breathing people, much less the dearly departed. Because she has been known to go for days without checking her voice mail, you’ll be better off e-mailing her at corsistaub@aol.com. Don’t forget to check out her website at www.wendymarkham.com.

  More Wendy Markham!

  Please turn this page for a preview of

  Bride Needs Groom

  available in paperback October 2005.

  Chapter 1

  Champagne?”

  Mia Calogera glances up from the open Louis Vuitton carry-on in which she’s been fruitlessly searching for an emery board, thanks to the security officer who grimly confiscated her prized sapphire nail file at check-in.

  “Would you like some?” A smiling female flight attendant is brandishing an open green bottle and a crystal flute.

  All right, probably not crystal. But glass. Definitely glass.

  Glass beats the plastic-ware they use back in coach, as Mia recalls from her less privileged past, and she greatly prefers champagne to weak coffee that isn’t offered until somewhere over Indiana. Or Illinois. Or one of those Midwestern vowel-starting states that Mia has never seen at a closer proximity than twenty-thousand feet. Which is absolutely fine with her, of course.

  “Yes. I’d love some champagne. Thank you.” Mia smiles back at the flight attendant, who compliments her on her simple tulle headpiece as she pours the bubbly.

  “Where did you get it? I’m getting married next summer and I still haven’t found a veil I like.”

  Mia tells her the name of the Madison Avenue bridal salon where she bought everything from her white satin shoes to the corset that enabled her to effortlessly button the low-cut gown’s snug and exquisitely beaded bodice.

  “Oh, I’ve heard of that store. It’s outrageously expensive, right?”

  “Not necessarily.” Not if one is on the verge of inheriting a trust fund worth millions.

  “Oh, well . . . Cheers.” The flight attendant’s modest diamond engagement ring sparkles in the September sunshine streaming in the window as she hands the flute to Mia. “And good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Mia says again, lifting her glass in a toast. “Same to you.”

  Champagne. Perfect! What else would a bride-to-be sip en route to her wedding?

  The flight attendant smiles her way across the aisle to the next passenger, an attractive businessman who’s been shooting curious sidelong glances in Mia’s direction ever since she boarded.

  She’s been tempted to say, “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a bride before?”

  But that would open the door to conversation, and Mia isn’t in the mood to spend the next six hours chatting. She’d much rather rehash the incredible series of events that led to her el
opement. She still hasn’t had much opportunity to absorb it all.

  Leaning back in her seat, Mia sips from her flute, swallows, and makes a face. Okay, so it isn’t Cristal. But the Cristal will be surely flowing tonight in the bridal suite.

  Holding her champagne flute in her right hand, careful not to spill any on her white silk gown, she resumes rummaging in her carry-on with her left: the hand that also happens to have a ragged edge on the fourth manicured fingernail. In other words, her ring finger.

  Mia’s Sicilian grandmother would probably say that’s a bad omen. Nana Mona would undoubtedly tell her granddaughter to get off the plane, jump into a cab back to Manhattan, and forget all about getting married.

  Fortunately, Nana Mona isn’t here.

  Unfortunately, neither is an emery board.

  Mia zips her bag closed, takes another sip of champagne, and looks around the first class cabin for a fellow passenger who might have smuggled a nail file on board.

  Her gaze collides with the businessman’s stare from across the aisle. He reddens and quickly turns away.

  So does Mia, who tries to ignore a pang of regret as she glances out the window at the sun-splashed autumn morning. In the past, she’d have found herself fending off advances from a guy like that. Or encouraging them, if she were in the mood.

  Men have always been drawn to Mia, and vice versa. But those days are over. Her license to flirt is about to be exchanged for a license to wed.

  It isn’t that she doesn’t want to get married, because she does.

  Never mind that she is about to get married, that in fact she has to get married . . .

  She wants to get married. Really.

  It’s just that she can’t help feeling a little sad about all she’s leaving behind.

  All?

  Come on, Mia.

  Well okay, then it’s just that she can’t quite quell the age-old instinct to engage in a little benign flirtation with every red-blooded male that crosses her path.

  But she’s quickly discovered that this wedding gown is to red-blooded men as a cross-shaped garlic necklace is to vampires.

  So it’s probably a good thing she overcame her initial reluctance and opted to wear it on the flight after all. It was Derek’s idea. He’s meeting her at the airport.

  “I’ll be the one in the white tuxedo with the yellow rose buttoniere,” he said, giving her pause.

  Pause because white tuxedos can be tacky, in Mia’s opinion, and yellow roses are bad luck, according to Nana Mona.

  But Mia quickly pushed her doubts aside. If she believed all of Nana’s crazy Sicilian superstitions, she wouldn’t be on this plane in the first place. Fridays, according to Nana, are an unlucky day to begin a voyage. Nana would never consider leaving Astoria on a Friday if she couldn’t be back well before nightfall, much less embarking on a cross-country journey and married life all in one shot.

  But you don’t believe that stuff . . .

  Do you?

  Of course not, Mia retorts to her wishy-washy inner self, lifting her chin stubbornly.

  Yellow roses are not bad luck. And on the right person, a white tuxedo might be downright elegant.

  Derek is most definitely the right person. As in Mr.Right person.

  Didn’t that sidewalk psychic tell Mia years ago that one day she would marry a man whose name started with a D and ended with a K sound?

  “You mean like Dick?” a befuddled teenaged Mia had asked the woman, who nodded.

  At the time, the only Dicks with whom Mia was acquainted were AARP card carriers. In her own generation, boys were called Richard and Richie and Rick, but not Dick. Not in the nickname capacity, anyway.

  “Maybe you’re going to marry a sugar daddy, then,” her friend Lenore suggested on the subway back to Queens.

  “Yeah, and maybe that psychic couldn’t predict the future if it had already happened,” Mia retorted.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” Mia muttered, and forgot all about the prophecy until Derek came into her life.

  Now here she is, going to the chapel . . .

  More specifically, the Chapel of Luv.

  The unorthodox spelling probably shouldn’t bother her. And it doesn’t. Not really. It’s just that . . .

  Well, she can’t help wondering whether this whole thing wouldn’t feel a lot more official if she were going to the Chapel of Love.

  But Derek made all the arrangements, and she trusts him implicitly. As implicitly as one can trust a future husband whom one has never met.

  Yes, Mia trusts Derek, and she trusts her instincts.

  This is the right choice.

  Never mind that it’s her only choice.

  She’s goin’ to the chapel and she’s gonna get mah-hah-harried . . .

  Yes, and just in the nick of time, Mia thinks, smoothing the folds of her long white silk skirt before fastening her seatbelt across her lap.

  “Here you go, Mr. Chickalini,” the pretty blonde gate attendant drawls, stapling something to his ticket and handing it across the counter. “We’re boarding now. In fact, you might want to hurry on over. Takeoff is in a few minutes.”

  “Too bad,” Dom tells her, flashing a flirtatious smile. “If I weren’t about to leave town for the weekend I’d ask you for your phone number.”

  She giggles, her cheeks tinting pink. “Really? Well, if I weren’t happily married, I’d definitely give it to you.”

  Married? She isn’t even wearing a ring. Dom checked, out of habit, when he rushed up to the counter, running late as usual.

  “Oh, well,” he says now. “Can’t win ’em all.” With an arm swinging, finger-snapping “Darn!” gesture, he strides away from the counter, toward the statuesque, uniformed redhead waiting beside the open jetway. She, too, is married, he notes, following a perfunctory glance at her left hand.

  After checking his ticket, tearing off the stub, and handing it back to him, she says, “Have a nice flight, Mr. . . . Chickeno, is it?”

  It isn’t, but Dom nods, accustomed to the butchered pronunciation of his surname. The redhead pronounces the first syllable sheik and invokes poultry with the remainder; the blonde at the counter’s southern accent made it even more unintelligible.

  Oh, well. Attractive women can get away with quite a bit, as far as Dom is concerned. Even attractive married women.

  Striding along the jetway with his carry-on over his shoulder, he contemplates the fact that the world—at least, his little corner of it—is primarily populated by married women. And married men.

  Married couples. They’re everywhere lately, touting wedded bliss as though they’re part of some pro-bono campaign for the World Organization of Happily Ever After. How can everyone Dom ever knew be living happily ever after? His older sisters, Nina and Rosalie; his brother, Pete; his best friend, Maggie; his cousins, his neighbors, his college fraternity brothers. Even his kid brother Ralphie just got engaged.

  Dom’s summer Saturday nights were mainly spent at weddings, engagement parties, bachelor parties, even a couples shower, at which Dom was the only solo attendee. He’d have brought a date, but he was afraid the bridal theme might give an unattached woman ideas.

  Hell, mere dinner and a movie tend to give unattached women ideas these days.

  It’s no wonder that Dom himself is getting ideas. Against his will, of course.

  Well, he’s going to put a stop to that. Nothing like a decadent weekend in Vegas to remind a red-blooded guy that footloose and fancy-free is the way to go.

  Footloose and fancy-free has always been Dom’s specialty.

  That’s why this new advertising sales position for the MAN cable network is going to be perfect for him. Being an agency executive was far too constrictive. All that time stuck behind a desk, at the client’s beck and call . . .

  It’s a wonder Dom not only lasted as long as he did, but managed an accelerated climb up the corporate ladder. Maggie likes to remind him that only his charm got him up the ranks in account m
anagement, and she’s right.

  Dom’s fairly sure that’s how he snagged this gloriously high-paying, flexible job at MAN. It certainly didn’t hurt that the ad sales director who hired him happens to be a woman. A newly divorced woman who must be partial to dark-haired, dark-eyed men like Dom.

  How else could he have beaten all those better qualified, Ivy-League educated, more polished candidates?

  The old Chickalini charm. Yes, sir. That’s the name of the game in Dom’s world, and there’s nothing wrong with getting by on that and good looks. No matter what eye-rolling Maggie and his sisters say.

  At the door of the plane, Dom comes to a halt as two male flight attendants attempt to wrestle a double baby stroller into submission.

  “Press that latch,” one is saying.

  “No, first we have to turn it upside down,” the other retorts.

  “Not until after you press the latch.”

  “Are you sure?”

  When neither pressing the latch nor turning the stroller upside down proves effective in collapsing it, both men glance up at Dom.

  “Don’t look at me,” he says with a shrug. “I have no idea how to fold that thing.”

  Nor is he in any rush to board a flight that contains at least two babies.

  Not that Dom has anything against babies.

  His world isn’t just teeming with married couples; it’s crawling with children. He relishes being Uncle Dom, whose pockets are filled with bubble gum and quarters to pull out of tiny ears.

  But this morning, he isn’t Uncle Dom.

  He’s a businessman en route to a convention in Sin City after a late night of revelry, and he wouldn’t mind a little peace and quiet along the way.

  “Try pressing the latch again,” one flight attendant urges the other, who obliges.

  Naturally, nothing happens.

  “Let’s leave it here,” the latch-happy attendant whispers conspiratorially.

  “What about the passenger?”

  “What about her? She can buy another one in Vegas.”