One Mom Too Many

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  About the Author

  Books by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Do you have a Matchmaking Mother from Hell? Take our test and find out... if you dare.

  1) Your mother always wanted you to grow up to be: a. A model, or in any other profession where you would make a decent salary.

  b. A nun.

  c. A wife—anybody’s wife!

  2) Your mom’s perfect son-in-law would be: a. A lawyer, or in any other profession where he would make a decent salary.

  b. A foreign delegate who would make it home once every five years.

  c. Anybody except the drop-dead-gorgeous guy who just happens to be the son of her worst enemy.

  3) You would spend your honeymoon: a. On a tropical island in the Pacific.

  b. In a run-down shack in the Ozarks.

  c. Trying to keep your mother from killing your mother-in-law!

  If you chose A most often: You have it made. Your mother seems to actually want what’s best for you. But then again, maybe she’s just planning for her retirement.

  If you chose B most often: Look at the bright side—at least your mom isn’t a matchmaker.

  If you chose C most often: Run for the hills. But don’t be surprised to find your mother hot on your trail, with a stream of eligible (but undesirable) bachelors behind her.

  Dear Reader,

  Spring is the season for love! LOVE & LAUGHTER celebrates with another month of romantic comedies that tickle the funny bone and reveal more than a few truths about falling in lovel

  Our Matchmaking Moms (from Hell) miniseries continues with One Mom Too Many by always popular and talented Vicki Lewis Thompson. This delightful tale has two moms with marriage on their minds — for their kids. Little do they suspect they have done their work too well....

  We also welcome another new author, Bonnie Tucker, to LOVE & LAUGHTER. In Hannah’s Hunks the heroine, Hannah, Is a caterer who can’t find her way around a kitchen, but cooks up a mess of trouble when she runs into undercover agent Chance McCoy. He’s investigating everyone in the small, serene town of Sugar Land, most especially the beautiful caterer who can’t cook and seems to be running an undercover operation of her own.

  Have a few laughs on us!

  Malle Vallik

  Associate Senior Editor

  ONE MOM TOO MANY

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  TORONTO • NEW • YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  “My recent trip to Ireland inspired me to write the story of Maureen and Bridget, the battling Irish moms,” says Vicki Lewis Thompson. “I also got to experience Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road. Ten minutes away from the rental car office, I shredded a tire (tyre) on the left-hand curb. A soft-spoken man cheerfully fixed it and I continued on my white-knuckled way. But the curbs weren’t always available for gauging my position, and I’m a teensy bit afraid that while driving through the narrow streets of Tralee, I might have nudged an Irishman’s foot. His backward leap was a subtle indication that I had. I would have gone back to check on him, but I was quickly caught up in a roundabout, and shot off in a new direction. However, it is with great pride that I tell you that when I returned the car, the left-hand mirror was still attached!”

  Books by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  HARLEQUIN LOVE & LAUGHTER

  5 — STUCK WITH YOU

  HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

  555 — THE TRAILBLAZER

  559 — THE DRIFTER

  563 — THE LAWMAN

  600 — HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

  624 — MR. VALENTINE

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo. NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  A toast to the lads of Dan Foley’s Bar.

  And many thanks to Ann Farwell Taylor, my stalwart companion during our Excellent Irish Adventure, and to Sue Engel, owner of Singing Swords Irish Wolfhound Kennels, for her invaluable information about this amazing breed. Any mistakes regarding Irish wolfhounds are mine and not Sue’s.

  1

  “JUST SUPPOSE YOUR sperm loses motility,” Maureen O’Malley called to her son from the kitchen where she was tending a pot of Irish stew.

  “What?” Daniel almost dropped the picture frame in his hand as he whirled from his examination of the family photos on the mantel. Surely the noise of Brooklyn traffic outside the apartment window had made him misunderstand his mother. She couldn’t have been talking about his sperm.

  “Motility. How fast the little buggers can swim.” His mother came to the kitchen doorway, a flowered apron over her expansive middle and a ladle in one hand. Other than the shocking shade of red she dyed her hair, she looked like a middle-aged matron out of a Hallmark commercial, but she sure as hell wasn’t talking like one. “Did you know you could lose that, Daniel?”

  He eased a finger around the back of his collar. The room was way too warm all of a sudden. “Look, Mom, I don’t think—”

  “Happens with age, it does.” She pointed the ladle at him. “I read it in Prevention magazine. If you don’t watch out, it could happen to you, Mr. I-don’t-want-to-get-married-yet.”

  Daniel clenched his jaw. Ever since his father died his mother had been on this kick, and he’d about had it. In his more sympathetic moments, he understood her need to enlarge the family that suddenly seemed too small, and he’d vowed months ago to remain patient even as he refused to fall in with her timetable. Patience was getting harder to come by.

  Discussing his sperm count was a new tactic, and he definitely didn’t want her going any farther down that road. He took refuge in the first thing at hand. He held up the picture frame. “What’s up with this, Mom?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “It needed changing. How come you have this on the mantel when nothing’s in it but the picture stuck in there by the frame company?”

  His mother looked uncomfortable and her Irish brogue grew more prominent. “Reminded me of Bridget Hogan, is all. So I bought it.”

  “Bridget? Wasn’t she your bitter enemy?”

  “Well, she was, indeed. But before that, she was my best friend. Never had another. That woman in the frame is the spitting image of her.”

  “Is she, now?” Daniel held the picture up and looked more closely at the model in the photograph. Ringlets of soft auburn hair fell gracefully around delicate shoulders. Kissable red lips framed even white teeth, and the sparkle in the woman’s green gaze gave new meaning to the clichéd words of the old song “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” For if she wasn’t Irish, she could certainly pass.

  Daniel was touched by his mother’s impulse to buy the frame just because of the picture in it. Probably just another example of how lonely she’d become in her widowhood. He walked over and positioned the photograph exactly as she’d had it before, right next to the one of him after he’d graduated from the New York City Police Academy.

  His mother came over t
o study the two adjacent pictures. “You look good with that model.”

  “Of course I do. She’s a professional beauty. She’d make any guy look good.”

  His mother swatted his arm. “ ’Twas not what I meant. I meant you two would make a nice couple.”

  Daniel blew out his breath in exasperation. “Could we agree not to talk about that anymore tonight? I just turned thirty-three, for God’s sake. Dad didn’t marry you until he was thirty-five.”

  “And you see what happened. We were only blessed once.”

  Daniel put an arm around her shoulders, hoping to kid her out of her preoccupation. “What’s the matter, aren’t you happy with the one you’ve got?”

  “I think you’re lovely, and well you know it. But I’d thought to have a nursery full of babes.” She sighed. “I realize now your dear, departed father probably had slow sperm.”

  Daniel snorted. Slow sperm was obviously Maureen O’Malley’s current health-news preoccupation. Last week it had been the carcinogens from aluminum cooking pots.

  “Laugh all you like. ’Tis a fact of life, and time is running out for you. Just remember that a man with no wife and children is like a boot with no laces.”

  He gave her a quick hug. “Exactly. Free to be loose and comfortable.”

  She pulled away and glared at him. “Daniel Patrick O‘Malley, I did not raise you to toy with the hearts of young girls. ’Tis past time for you to pick out some lucky lass and ask her to be your wife. Surely there’s someone you fancy.”

  This was one stubborn woman, Daniel thought wearily. He’d gained new respect for his father’s patience in dealing with her all those years. “Well, come to think of it, there is someone,” he said, guiding her back toward the kitchen.

  “I knew you’d been holding out on me! Who is she? The one you took to the Policemen’s Ball? No, wait. I’ll wager ’tis the one you met at that New Year’s Eve party.”

  “Nope.” He grinned at her, quite sure his answer was a safe one. “That girl in the picture frame. She’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK, St. Paddy? Shall I call Maureen O’Malley or not?” Rose Kingsford lifted the cloth muzzle of her Irish wolfhound, a stuffed animal version of the dog she hoped someday to own. St. Paddy, created slightly smaller than a live wolfhound, stared back at her with soulful brown eyes. “Can’t resist a mystery, can you, pup? Okay, I’ll call her. It’s safe enough to do that, I think.”

  The stuffed animal draped over her shoulder, Rose went in search of her portable phone. She longed for a real dog, but as long as she lived in a New York City high-rise, keeping an animal the size of a wolfhound seemed criminally selfish.

  But Rose didn’t intend to spend the rest of her life in an apartment. An apartment was no place for a big dog or a growing child, and she intended to have both. At one point she’d thought a husband would be part of the mix, but she’d finally abandoned that dream. Most men focused so exclusively on her looks that she’d never trust them to stick around when gray hair and wrinkles showed up.

  Aside from that, she’d dated fun-loving men with no maturity, and serious types with no gift for play. A combination of mature self-confidence and playfulness seemed nonexistent, and after the way her parents’ marriage had turned out, she’d decided to settle for just having a child. She’d always longed for the creative role of parenting a son or daughter, and she was afraid of becoming too set in her solitary ways if she didn’t act soon.

  If necessary she’d go to a sperm bank, but she’d rather ask a willing donor she’d met and screened herself — someone with no interest in a commitment, someone with intelligence and reasonably good looks, someone with no life-threatening genetic flaws. So far, no good candidate had presented himself, but Rose had trusted in her instincts for most of her thirty years. When the right man came along, she’d know.

  She located the phone on her drafting table under a stack of Sunday comic pages from all over the country. “Guard my stuff, Paddy.” she instructed, plopping the dog on her stool as she picked up the phone and returned to the living room.

  After switching on a lamp against the twilight, Rose pulled up the antenna on the phone and dialed the number. Then she stretched out on her chintz sofa and propped her long legs over the back cushions. Probably some creative sales scheme, she thought as the phone rang. Balancing the phone between her cheek and her shoulder, she pulled her long red hair into a ponytail and wound it with a scrunchy.

  “Hello?” said a musical, feminine voice.

  Rose sat up straighter. No answering machine at the O‘Malley residence, which was unusual in today’s world. And Maureen O’Malley’s voice, if that was the woman who’d answered, contained the same lilt as Rose’s mother’s. Perhaps Maureen had been born in Ireland. Rose was always on the lookout for material for her fledgling comic strip, her ticket out of the modeling business. “May I speak to Maureen O’Malley, please?” she asked.

  “ ’Tis her you have.”

  Rose warmed to the soft brogue. Maureen sounded even more Irish than Rose’s mother, who had been coached by her English husband to give up some of her native inflections.

  She adjusted the phone against her ear. “This is Rose Kingsford. You contacted the modeling agency about me, I believe.”

  “Oh! I did indeed! So ’tis Rose, then? What a lovely name. An Irish name, for sure. Do you have Irish in your background, then?”

  “On my mother’s side.” Upon hearing the familiar cadence of an Irish-bom woman’s speech, Rose instinctively let down her guard. “My father’s English.” And her mother now referred to him as “that Brit bastard I married.”

  “I knew you must be Irish! I saw that face and said to myself, ‘That’s an Irish lass for sure.’ And I was right.”

  Rose reached for a pen and pad of paper she kept handy on the coffee table. This conversation could yield some homespun expressions she might be able to use in the comic strip. “Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. O’Malley?” She took a guess at the woman’s marital status because she didn’t feel comfortable calling someone from her mother’s generation by her first name.

  “Oh, Rose, there is. There most certainly is. ’Twould do me so much good to lay eyes on you. Some tea, perhaps. I know you’re very busy, but it would mean so much.”

  Rose stopped doodling on the pad as warnings sounded in her head. This was why she guarded her privacy so carefully. Her face and figure might be out there for public consumption, but she remained personally elusive, unreachable. Crazies were everywhere, and more than one of her modeling friends had attracted a stalker. Rose cleared her throat “I am very busy, Mrs. O‘Malley, and I’m afraid that I can’t—”

  “But you see, you’re the exact likeness of my dear friend Bridget, who threw herself off the Cliffs of Moher and drowned herself. I’ve been missing her for thirty-seven years, come this summer.”

  Rose’s mouth dropped open. Her mother’s name was Bridget. And her mother had once told Rose a story about a long-lost friend who had thrown herself in front of a train some thirty-seven years ago. A friend by the name of...Maureen. This had to be more than coincidence. Feeling as if she’d entered some twilight zone, Rose chose her words carefully. “I’ll have to, uh, check my schedule, Mrs. O’Malley. Could I get back to you on this in, say, twenty-four hours?”

  “Oh, ’twould be grand, Rose. I’ll be waiting for your call, I will.”

  “Right. Goodbye, now.” Rose pushed the disconnect button on her phone, got the dial tone back and punched in her mother’s number. Her mother’s machine came on, and Bridget Kingsford’s intonations were very similar to Maureen O’Malley’s. Rose knew her mother was probably home and screening her calls. “Put the kettle on, Mom,” she instructed. “I’m on my way.”

  BRIDGET HOGAN KINGSFORD’S third-floor apartment looked out on Central Park. The apartment and a generous monthly allowance had been part of the settlement from Cecil Kingsford when he’d dumped his wife of twenty-five y
ears for a younger, better-educated, smoother skinned trophy wife. The divorce had presented Rose with a harsh example of what could happen when a man married a woman primarily for her beauty.

  Rose used her key and called out a greeting as she opened the door to the apartment. The muffled, muted response told her to look for her mother in the bedroom. She walked into the Victorian room of lace and flowers and found her mother, dressed in a pale blue jogging suit, lying on the floor with her feet propped vertically against the pink-striped wall. Her face was covered with a hardening lime-green mask.

  “Well, if it isn’t Freddy Krueger,” Rose said, plopping to the floor next to her.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” her mother said, barely moving her lips.

  “I have some news that just might crack that thing right off your face. How much longer before you can wash it off?”

  Bridget picked up the egg timer from the floor beside her and looked at it. “Eight minutes.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.” Rose pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll go nuke a couple of Lean Cuisines and put on some tea.”

  Ten minutes later when Bridget appeared in the kitchen with her face scrubbed clean and her short auburn hair brushed softly around her face. Rose thought she looked at least twenty years younger than her actual age of fifty-six. Cecil Kingsford was a fool for sure.

  “So what’s this news?” her mother said as she got out Wedgwood cups and saucers for the tea.

  Rose scraped the second Lean Cuisine onto a plate and carried both servings to the linen-covered table in the small dining area just beyond the kitchen. “You might want to come and sit down first.”