ACCIDENTALLY YOURS
Bettye Griffin
Copyright 2012 by Bettye-Lynn Griffin Underwood
Electronic Edition published by Bunderful Books
This book was originally published
in 2001 under the title
Prelude to a Kiss
This book is not available in print.
Accidentally Yours
Why do Vivian St. James’s dates always end up needing medical attention? And why is handsome ER doctor Zack Warner always around to treat them, in or out of the ER? Get the 911—er, the 411, in Bettye Griffin's laugh-out-loud romantic comedy, Accidentally Yours!
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Accidentally Yours, a novel by Bettye Griffin
A Note to the Reader
Also by Bettye Griffin
About The Author
Excerpt, Secrets & Sins by Bettye Griffin
Dedication
In memory of Arnella Hunter Walker (1954-1990),
an angel whose time on earth was all too brief
Acknowledgments
Bernard Underwood, Eva Mae (“Bettye”) Griffin, my favorite people on Earth.
James G. Griffin, Gordon E. Griffin, and Peter A. Griffin, my favorite people in Heaven.
Sean D. Young of Young Creations, for her cover design.
The Almighty, from whom all blessings flow.
ACCIDENTALLY YOURS
Chapter 1
The Date from Hades
The only thing she intended to serve was what could fit on his plate.
Vivian had high hopes for what might happen between her and Thomas Joseph. They had met the previous weekend on a setup with her friends Beverly and Michael White. The four of them had gone to dinner, and she and Thomas hit it off to the point where she was disappointed to learn he was going to Texas on business the following Wednesday and would be gone for a week and a half. She’d invited him over for dinner at her apartment, but it was important he understand there were no ulterior motives. Well, actually there was one. She didn’t want him to forget her while he was gone.
“It was really nice of you to invite me over, Vivian,” Thomas said.
“I thought you might enjoy a home-cooked meal, since you’ll be eating out a lot while you’re in Texas. It’ll have to be an early night, though.”
“That’s fine. I’ve got a morning flight. Can I help you out?”
“No, but you can keep me company.”
The tiny kitchen was really too small to hold two people, but Thomas stood in the doorway. She felt his eyes on her as she turned on the burner and poured some peanut oil into the wok. She then opened the refrigerator and removed the package of pork strips from the top shelf, the healthy, pinkish-white color attesting to the pork’s freshness. The look on his face told her he liked what he saw. Maybe there was a nice compliment forthcoming…
Or so she thought.
“You know,” he said, “it’s really best to keep your meats on the bottom shelf of your fridge. That’ll keep the juice from dripping down onto other foods and contaminating them. Juice from rare meat is just as dangerous as rare meat itself.”
“Gee, I never thought of that. I always thought meat should be kept on the top shelf where it’s supposed to be coldest.”
“Actually, the bottom is where it’s the coldest. It’s closer to the motor.”
“You’re kidding! I didn’t know that.” Vivian mentally filed this new information in the remote area of her brain where she stored useful facts. Thomas knew what he was talking about. He was a professor of microbiology at New York University, which was certainly a first for her. She could just hear her mother bragging to everybody in New London, Connecticut, that her daughter was dating a microbiologist. At dinner last week with Bev and Michael, he’d amused them all with a story about being reported to the police when a patron at an upscale Greenwich Village restaurant saw him crouching in a men’s room stall. He’d actually been testing for bacteria, but when he explained that to the officer the reply was a caustic, “Yeah, right I arrested another one like you three days ago.” Only an endorsement on his behalf from the maître d’ saved him from being issued a summons.
Vivian turned on the faucet and, leaving it running, sprinkled a few drops of water into the wok. It sizzled but quickly died out, indicating the oil wasn’t hot enough for cooking. She put the stopper in the sink and poured in a quick stream of dishwashing liquid, which quickly formed soapy pockets around the pot and spoon she’d used to make rice earlier, as well as around the plastic cutting board she’d used to cut strips of onion, and red, green, and yellow pepper. By the time the sink filled up, the wok was ready, so she dumped the meat in first, keeping it moving with a long-handled flat spoon.
Once she started, the process went very quickly. She removed the meat, added the vegetables, the rice, and then the meat again, mixing the ingredients with stir-fry sauce. “Voila!” she said proudly, tilting the wok and inviting him to look at her culinary creation.
“Smells great. Makes me reluctant to spend a week in some river town in South Texas. I’ll probably live on Stouffer’s microwaveable dinners.”
“Nowhere to eat there, huh?”
“Nowhere I’d want to go. Just little coffee shops, maybe a diner. I actually eat out very little unless I’m able to inspect the kitchen.”
“Do people actually let you do that?” she asked as she moved the wok to a cold burner. She was beginning to feel a bit uneasy, considering that maybe his offer to help was borne of a desire to inspect her kitchen.
“If they don’t have anything to hide, they do. But if I think they might kick up a fuss, I just order fried chicken. It’s a good bet that at least it’ll be thoroughly cooked.”
That’s what he’d had Saturday night, she remembered.
“Much safer than hamburger. Did you know that meat is often ground together, even when it comes from different distributors? That means if there’s a breakout of E. coli anywhere in the United States you’re at risk, since the meat used in a single hamburger can come from literally hundreds of cows. There’s no such thing as a local outbreak.”
“Wow,” Vivian said with more interest than she felt. She’d heard all about the danger of eating any meats rare, but she preferred her burgers and steaks well-done anyway.
“Anyway, being invited to work on this study is a wonderful opportunity for me. I’ll manage, even though the restaurant situation leaves something to be desired. It’s a town, not a city, and there’s only one hotel, one of those midrange places. That concerns me, too. I’ve found that the more expensive the room, the fewer bacteria it has.”
“I guess that’s true. I’ve always been suspicious of those bedspreads. I mean, how often do you suppose they really clean them?” Without waiting for an answer, she took two plates from the cupboard and handed one to him. “I’m going to let you fix your own plate. There’s plenty; take as much as you want. It’ll just take a minute for the egg rolls to heat up in the microwave.” She busied herself by adding empty bowl and spoons to the dishwater.
“You know, you really shouldn’t leave dishes soaking like that. Warm
water and food is the perfect setting for food-borne germs like Salmonella or Campylobacter to breed.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. It seems to make them easier to wash after dinner.”
“You’d be surprised how quickly food particles come off, probably just in the time it takes to fill up the sink.”
While she appreciated the information, at the same time she was feeling the tiniest twinges of irritation. This was supposed to be a fun and light-hearted evening, but it was turning into a lecture on how to avoid germs.
They took their plates and glasses and sat at the table opposite the kitchen. The ordinary thirty-six-inch round butcher block, for which she’d forsaken standard dinette chairs in favor of a pair of more exotic fan-back wicker chairs, had an especially cozy look to it now that she’d put a crocheted overlay on top of the tablecloth and had lit candles.
“Where’s your bathroom?” Thomas asked as he put his plate on the table, instantly killing the mood she’d worked so hard to create.
“Right around the corner.” She knew he wanted to wash his hands; someone in his position would never sit down to a meal without doing that. Hell, she was surprised he’d fixed his plate already. She felt perfectly wholesome herself, having washed her hands thoroughly just before starting to cook. Still, he could have done that in the kitchen. There was a container of liquid soap—fortunately it was antibacterial—clearly visible in the corner by the sink, as well as a roll of paper towels on a holder. Now she found herself worrying whether or not he would think her bathroom was clean enough. Of course, she’d given it a thorough wipe-down with a sponge wet with a mixture of water and lemon-scented Mr. Clean while she was preparing the apartment for entertaining, but she didn’t have time to mop the floor. It was, after all, a Tuesday night, and she’d worked all day. She remembered what he said about the bathroom in the restaurant and wondered if he carried a bacteriometer or something in his hip pocket.
She sipped her wine and took a few bites, unable to sit there and merely breathe in the appealing aroma of the meat and onions while she waited for him to return. It seemed like he was gone a long time. How long did it take him to wash his hands, anyway? Was he scrubbing under his fingernails? How dirty could his fingernails be, given his obvious tendency toward fastidiousness? Howard Hughes probably hadn’t been this obsessed about germs.
Finally, he returned and began to eat. “Delicious,” he said after swallowing. “Did you make the egg rolls, too?”
“No, those came from the deli at the supermarket. I just heated them up. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“You know,” he said as he swallowed, “in your bathroom I couldn’t help noticing that you keep your toothbrush in the built-in rack on the wall.”
“That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what it’s for.”
“It would, except that the rack is awfully close to the toilet I did an experiment once where I put three sterile petri dishes around the bathroom and then flushed the toilet. Afterward, I tested and there were bacteria in each dish—even the ones three and four feet away! It has to do with an aerosol cloud…”
At that point Vivian gave up any thoughts that this could be the beginning of anything memorable and just vowed to get through dinner. If he called when he returned from his trip she just wouldn’t answer the phone. Thank heaven for caller ID, she thought as she took a long gulp of wine.
By the time he left she had learned all kinds of tidbits, most of them unappetizing. She tried not to gag when he told her that most people’s toilets are cleaner than their kitchen drains; that sponges, dishcloths, and dishtowels are havens for staphylococcus and enterococcus; that doorknobs are rarely cleaned and are usually filthy; and that the cleanest stalls in public rest rooms are often the ones at the far ends, possibly because they are the least used. Then he actually had the nerve to ask why she wasn’t eating. The man didn’t have a clue.
When he finally kissed her good night and left, she imagined the first thing he would do when he got to his car would be to wash out his mouth with alcohol-based mouthwash to protect himself, since he’d also graciously pointed out—during dinner, no less—that a dog’s mouth is likely to have fewer germs than that of another human. The whole episode made her want to gag.
Chapter 2
Another Auld Lang Syne
Vivian didn’t understand it. Why were she and Glenda sitting in her apartment, dateless, in front of the television on New Year’s Eve? And not just any New Year’s Eve, but the most important one they would ever see, the dawn of a new millennium. So what if all the date specialists, or whatever those people were called, said that the Twenty-First Century wouldn’t officially begin until January first of Two Thousand One. The calendar was about to flip from Nineteen Ninety-Nine to Two Thousand. She and Glenda should be out partying like it was, well, Nineteen Ninety-Nine, not sitting in front of the TV on this big night. They were young, reasonably attractive, had good jobs, used breath mints regularly, and watched their weight.
She bowed her head, knowing she wasn’t being totally honest. It was true that they looked good and their breath was fresh. They had well-paying positions at the same chemical manufacturer—Glenda ran the payroll department and she was an administrator in human resources. Her fibbing was in regard to their weight and ages. It was true they were watching their waistlines, but in her case, hers was getting easier to see with each passing week. The loaded pizza with sauce-filled crust they were munching on certainly wasn’t doing anything to combat calories. Both of them had picked up about ten or fifteen pounds over the last year. Weight had never stuck like that before. It probably had something to do with getting older. At this point they could only be called young if the person doing the calling was over sixty. They were both thirty-four…and thirty-five was just around the corner, especially for Glenda, whose birthday was January twenty-third.
“Maybe we’re too old,” Vivian said, thinking out loud. Now she knew how Demi Moore must feel. One minute she’s the twelve-million-dollar woman, and the next she hasn’t made a picture in three years, and there’s a younger, equally pretty brunette on the scene. It can happen quicker than you can say ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones.’
“What?” Glenda’s voice was muffled because she had a mouthful of pizza.
Vivian responded by picking up the remote control and clicking off the television.
“What’d you do that for? They’re about to show the good part.”
“It’s cable, Glenda. You’ve seen it a million times before.” She made her voice sound flat and dunce-like, imitating the line from the Eighties comedy Night Shift she knew her friend was waiting for. “‘Barney Rubble. What an actor.’ This is important,” she added, speaking normally.
“All right. What is it?”
She paused for dramatic effect. “This is the year we’re going to meet our Mr. Rights.”
Glenda made a face. “Puh-leeze. I’ve known you for what, four years? Both of us were looking even before then, and nothing’s changed. Personally, I’d be happy to just have a date next New Year’s. Nothing against you, of course, but I’d like to see the new year with a fella. Someone I can share that special kiss at midnight with.”
“I know,” Vivian said with a sigh. “I feel the same way. But I want more than New Year’s. I want forever.
“Face it Viv. If it’s not fated, it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Well, maybe fate needs a helping hand.”
“So what do you plan to do about it?”
“Prospective husbands aren’t going to come ringing our doorbells. We have to get out and find them. And I do mean ‘get out.’ We’re going to travel.”
“Travel how?”
“There are organizations all over the country that sponsor social events. We’re going to go. Whether it’s a winter ski trip, a summer cruise, those music festivals they have every year in New Orleans and the Caribbean…we’re going.”
“Are you crazy? That’ll cost a fortune!”
“We both got bonuses last week. The company made a bundle last year with those new products they introduced. We’ve never gotten so much.”
“Especially you,” Glenda pointed out “Remember, I’m just a lowly payroll supervisor. You’re the big-shot human resources administrator, giving people their walking papers.”
“I know how much you make, Glenda. Don’t put on a poor mouth with me.” Glenda had been with the company considerably longer, and because of her seniority her salary was actually slightly higher than Vivian’s. It was only because Vivian’s position had a higher profile that she had been awarded a larger bonus.
“And I was going to invest mine.”
“You always invest yours. Spend it this time.” She shook her head. Sometimes her friend could be tighter than Mariah Carey’s dresses. “It’s not like you don’t put away anything from your regular paychecks.”
“What about you? Are you going to be able to afford to do all this traveling plus that safari you’re going on? Your bonus wasn’t that big.”
“Most of the money for my safari is coming from my putting off buying a new car. You know I’ve always wanted to take this trip.” When Vivian and her childhood friend Lauren Williams booked the trip she had invited Glenda to join them, but her friend didn’t find the idea of sleeping under the stars appealing. “Take me to the nearest Holiday Inn,” she had said with a wave of dismissal.
“It won’t cost us anything to go to the open house tomorrow,” Glenda said now.
“Yes, but everything else will have a price tag, so find a money market with a nice rate to park it in. You’ll need a good return. Chances are you’ll spend every penny of it, and then some.”
“I’ll say. What you’re proposing will take all of this year’s bonus plus last year’s, too.” Glenda took another bite of pizza. “This better not backfire,” she said after she swallowed. “If I spend all that money traveling to New Orleans and the Caribbean, only to meet my soul mate and find out he lives in Texas or California someplace, I’m telling you now, I’m gonna be hot.”
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