Let's Get Mommy Married

by Marie Ferrarella

  He would have flown out the door without touching the ground if she hadn’t collared him. Grabbing Danny, Rosemary held him in place. He looked up at her questioningly.

  “No, you will not tell Chris. We’ll just show up. If he’s standing outside, waiting for her, we might say hi. Maybe,” she emphasized with a warning. “If we don’t see him, we’ll assume he’s inside with his date. We don’t go looking for him, understood?” That would be all she’d need, to have Danny parading up and down the aisles, looking for Chris. Looking like his mother’s procurer.

  Danny nodded smartly. “Understood.” He even saluted her.

  Rosemary raised a brow, though she didn’t bother hiding the tiny smile that arose. “Don’t get wise, Danny.”

  He looked at her, all innocence. “If I do, it’s just because I’ve got such a wise mom.”

  She rolled her eyes, then shooed him out the front door. “Go play with your dog—you’re covering me in syrup and she might want to lick it off.” As he herded Rocky toward the front door, Rosemary glanced at her watch. “If we’re going to go, dinner’s going to have to be earlier,” she warned. Which meant she’d better get started on it soon.

  He grinned, one hand on the dog’s collar to keep her from running out without him. “No problem. I’m hungry now.”

  The door banged in his wake as he ran off to do some serious playing. He left behind one very mystified mother.

  Ronald Coleman? A Tale of Two Cities? Danny? Maybe she should have checked his fingerprints. This just wasn’t like her son.

  You’d think, Rosemary upbraided herself, that she was the one going on this date with Chris instead of Mary Smith. Butterflies were breeding within her stomach and her palms felt damp.

  She was so damn nervous about the woman not showing up.

  And yet….

  And yet, again, a tiny part of her didn’t want the woman to show up at all.

  Fine matchmaker she was, hoping one of her matches would fall through. Rosemary shook her head as if to clear it. She had to get a grip.

  She wanted this to work, she reminded herself as she parked the car in the small, crowded lot in front of the theater. She wanted Chris to be matched with someone and be happy about it. All she wanted him for was to be a friend. She wanted him to be someone for Danny to talk to, nothing more.

  She saw him immediately. The word “more” throbbed in her brain like a recording that had gotten stuck in a groove.

  He was standing outside the theater, casually looking around. His thumbs were hooked onto the front loops of his jeans, with his long, artistic fingers extended down, along his tapering hips and flat belly. That same flat belly she had seen sans clothing…

  “Mom, you’re squeezing my shoulder too hard,” Danny protested.

  “Sorry.” She pulled her hand away. But not her eyes. They were fixed on Chris.

  Chris exuded sexuality just by standing and breathing. Chris Maverick looked like an ad, she thought, for everything delectable and desirable.

  He was a hot fudge sundae and she was on a diet, she thought firmly.

  “There he is, Mom,” Danny announced the way one of Columbus’s sailors might have cried “Land ho!” after endless days at sea.

  She lowered her head slightly and hissed by his ear “Shh, I said-”

  Danny pulled his head back and looked at her. “That if he was standing outside the movies, we could go up and say hi.”

  Why was it that his memory was so selective? “I said maybe.”

  But Danny’s memory refused to be jogged. He curled his hand around his mother’s. “Please, Mom? He looks so lonely.”

  No, that was one thing he didn’t look. Not lonely. He looks so damn sexy, my bones are turning into sawdust.

  And one look around told her that she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. She saw several women walking into the theater together. Every single one of them gave Chris the once-over, sizing him up and finding him definitely not wanting.

  If anyone was wanting, she thought, it was her.

  But wanting and having were two very different things in her book.

  Remember, you turn into a hopeless bore, a klutz, on dates. You want him to think of you that way?

  It was better that he just thought of her as Danny’s harried mother.

  Rosemary wanted to usher Danny in without Chris noticing, but he was standing so close to the box office, it was impossible.

  Even as she approached the entrance, Chris turned his eyes in their direction. The smile that bloomed a moment later was positively lethal.

  “Hi!” Danny called. Uncoupling himself from his mother, he rushed up to Chris. Rosemary had no choice but to join them.

  “Hi.” Chris ruffled Danny’s hair, but his eyes were on Rosemary. They made her feel warm. And welcome. And just the least bit disoriented. “No babysitting assignment?”

  She looked at him, confused.

  “You said you had to sit Teri’s twins tonight, remember?”

  “Oh.” She’d forgotten about that excuse. “Teri changed her mind. She and her husband are staying in.” Her voice sounded tinny to her ear. “Another awkward moment.”

  Chris had one arm around Danny’s shoulder. Danny looked as pleased as if he had just come first in a race. “Not for me.”

  She chewed on her lower lip, then, aware of it, she stopped. At this rate she’d get chapped lips. Saving them for something? a little voice asked.

  “Danny wanted to come.”

  “I see.”

  If that wasn’t amusement in his eyes, she’d wash her front walk with a toothbrush. She had to make him believe her.

  “No, really,” she insisted. “He knows I’m crazy about Ronald Coleman and he thought that he should see a movie with Coleman in it.”

  God, did that sound lame, or what? It had sounded all right when Danny had said it. Out of her mouth, it came out as the world’s poorest excuse. He probably thought she was lying.

  God, even she thought she was lying, and she knew better.

  Rosemary cleared her throat and looked around. There was a large enough turnout for the old classic. But none of the women approaching the entrance was carrying a flower of any kind, much less a white one. She had struck out again.

  “I take it that she hasn’t shown up yet.”

  He shook his head, exchanging a glance with Danny. “No.”

  To Rosemary’s surprise, Danny maneuvered out from under Chris’s arm. He pulled her wrist down and looked at her watch.

  “Gee, it’s almost seven now. We’d better go in.” He looked from Chris to his mother. “We don’t want to miss the movie.”

  The boy was not about to get an Academy Award tonight, she thought. “No, we don’t.” Rosemary placed her arm around Danny’s shoulder and began to usher him toward the box office.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  “I might as well join you.” He gave a last perfunctory look around the quad. “It looks as if Mary Smith isn’t coming again.”

  Well, he certainly didn’t look upset about it. Not half as upset as she was. For him. For herself, Rosemary had to admit, it was an entirely different matter.

  Although it shouldn’t be. After all, her reputation was on the line. Chris wasn’t the type to spread the word that she had set up a date—no, two dates—for him that hadn’t materialized, but still, she was taking all this very personally.

  Rosemary hesitated a moment. “You don’t want to wait any longer?”

  “No.” He let a couple get ahead of him in line. They were next. “I really hate people who are late.”

  She could understand that. It was one of her pet peeves. “Yeah, me, too.” She saw him opening his wallet. Chris took out a twenty and placed it in front of the cashier.

  “Three please.”

  She fumbled for her own wallet inside the cavern she liked to refer to as her purse. Damn, where was it? “No, you shouldn’t have to pay—”

  He already had the tickets and was accepting
his change. “I want to.” He handed Danny a ticket, and then gave one to Rosemary. “I was going to pay for Mary.” His gaze slid from Danny to her. “Why shouldn’t I pay for my friends?”

  Put that way, she couldn’t find it in her heart to refuse. “All right, but I owe you another dinner for this.”

  He placed an arm around her shoulders and ushered her and Danny inside the theater. “Sounds good to me. Pot roast again?”

  One thing she loved to do was cook and she didn’t care to repeat herself with guests if she could help it. “I was thinking more in terms of lasagna.”

  His blue eyes lit up like a small boy’s. He wasn’t much of a cook himself and he always enjoyed eating good food. “Even better.”

  He looked at her and she could feel the air sizzling between them, even in the darkened theater. Thank God this wasn’t a date or she’d probably turn into a blithering idiot.

  There was an easy comfort about being friends.

  The movie was wonderful, but that was a given. She’d seen it a total of six times now and loved it more each time she saw it. The company had been equally as wonderful. Several times during the movie Chris had leaned over to her, around Danny who sat between them, and shared a feeling he had about a scene.

  She was hard-pressed to remember when she had enjoyed herself more. Except, perhaps, for last Sunday. And when he’d come over for dinner…

  Danny’s head had begun nodding somewhere around eight-thirty. He was worn out, no doubt, by his efforts to get her to come here in the first place. A black-and-white movie that crackled with age as well as rich dialogue just didn’t hold his interest.

  She was secretly grateful to him for goading her into coming.

  Danny walked next to her groggily, holding her hand as they left the theater. Chris was holding his other hand to ensure that he didn’t stumble. Once outside, they stopped for a moment and sat on one of the benches that hugged the perimeter of the quad.

  She looked at Chris as Danny leaned against her shoulder, nodding out. “Did I mention I was sorry?”

  “A great deal in the past week.”

  She shook her head. He was being incredibly nice about this. Someone else would have had her head off by now, venting his embarrassment by proxy.

  “I meant about this. About her not showing again.” She felt her own anger rising. “I’m going to write to her and give her a piece of my mind. Twice is inexcusable.”

  “Hey, it turned out all right.” He smiled at her and she felt her anger diminishing. “I got to see A Tale of Two Cities again.” He winked. “‘’Tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before.’”

  Rosemary was duly impressed. “That sounds just like him.”

  Chris looked pleased at the compliment. “I practiced a lot in the bathroom as a kid.” He didn’t often admit that to people. But then, Rosemary wasn’t just people.

  Chris Maverick really was unusual, she thought. “I can’t picture anyone in our generation practicing Ronald Coleman’s voice.”

  “I did.” He settled back on the bench, his mouth curving as he remembered. “I did a lot of different voices.”

  He didn’t have to do any imitations to sound good. “You have a nice one of your own.”

  He laughed just a tad self-consciously. “Thanks.”

  There were all sorts of things she found herself wanting to know. “So why did you practice voices?”

  That was all part of a make-believe world he had occupied. There hadn’t been many children to play with where he had grown up. He’d had to be creative. “I thought I was going to be an actor or something like that.”

  She could just see his face splashed across some magazine cover. Hollywood’s newest heartthrob. “What made you change your mind and pick radio?”

  “I grew up,” he said simply. “And I like the anonymity.”

  She thought of Teri’s comment. “Don’t get much of that, I imagine, with your face plastered on the sides of buses.”

  He shrugged. “I deal with it. It’ll pass. They’ll be advertising someone else soon enough. And it’s not as if I get mobbed, the way I would if I were a successful actor.” A june bug buzzed by and he waved it away from Danny. The boy seemed oblivious to the loud noise as he dozed. “I can go to the movies,” he continued significantly, “and enjoy myself without having someone jump up and ask for a piece of my shirt.”

  She laughed. “I can see that happening anyway. You’re too good looking for your own good.”

  Or mine, she added silently.

  But she was pleased she could talk to him this way. Honestly. It felt comfortable. Right. Just two friends, she thought with relief.

  Slightly embarrassed, the way he was whenever his looks came into the conversation, he shrugged away her comment. When he’d been in elementary school, they had referred to him as “Pretty Boy” and he hadn’t liked it.

  “I always thought my mouth was too soft.”

  It hadn’t felt soft the other night. It had felt firm and wonderful and delicious. And it looked great. “Your mouth is just right.”

  A smile quirked his lips as a glint entered his eyes. “Really?”

  Oops, she’d said the wrong thing again, she thought, even though she’d meant it in exactly the way it had come out. What she hadn’t meant was to say it aloud. There was a time for honesty and a time for retreat. She didn’t want to spoil the evening by making Chris think that she was coming on to him.

  Turning her head, she slanted a look at her son. His head was still resting against her shoulder, but sinking fast. Time to go. She shifted, attempting to rise without throwing Danny off balance.

  “I think I’d better get Danny home. He’s asleep on his feet.”

  Chris took hold of Danny’s shoulders and brought him to his feet. He looked into the sleepy face. “You okay, Danny?”

  “Mumph.” The boy barely nodded.

  Still holding him up, Chris looked at Rosemary. “Where’s your car?”

  “Over there, at the end of the lot.” Though he wouldn’t be able to see it, she pointed to it in the darkness.

  “Okay.” He lifted Danny into his arms. “Lead the way.”

  She turned, keeping just one step ahead of them. “This is getting to be a habit, you know. You carrying Danny for me.”

  His voice, low so as not to wake Danny, seemed to drift on the spring night air in small, warm waves. “I can think of worse habits.”

  The problem was, she thought, so could she.

  9

  She had no sooner pulled into her driveway and turned off the engine than she saw Chris walking toward her. He’d arrived just ahead of her and had left his car parked in his driveway. By the time she had unbuckled Danny and gotten out of the car, Chris was at the passenger side.

  “I’ll take him in,” he told her as she opened Danny’s door

  This time there wasn’t even an inclination to protest. It was nice having him around to help. Smiling, Rosemary stepped back and gave Chris clear access to Danny. “I had a hunch that you might.”

  She left him to pick up her son as she went to unlock the front door. Swinging it open, Rosemary walked in ahead of them. One glance toward the family room told her that Rocky was sleeping peacefully, one paw dipped into her bowl.

  Rosemary closed the front door and followed Chris up the stairs. Everything within her was humming.

  Chris waited until she joined him at the landing. “Same procedure as last time?”

  That had a nice sound to it, she thought. A comfortable sound. She moved past him into Danny’s bedroom and pulled back the covers. It was a cool night. She’d cover him with a blanket instead of just a sheet, she decided.

  Rosemary nodded in reply to his question. “Shoes and socks, nothing else.” She remembered what she had said to Danny earlier this evening. “He might as well be dressed for taking the dog out when he gets up.”

  Chris laid the boy down. Rosemary took care of one sock and sneaker while Chris took off the o
ther. Very gently, she laid the blanket across Danny’s body. He never stirred. Finished, she stood back for a minute, watching Danny as he slept.

  She was positively radiant, Chris thought. Motherhood looked very good on her. He found that quality infinitely appealing. And sexy.

  “You know,” she confided, “it doesn’t get much better than this, looking down at your own child, watching him sleep. Knowing he’s warm and safe.”

  A smile quirked Chris’s mouth as he placed his hands on her shoulders, peering down at Danny. “Oh, I can think of a few things that might be right up there along with it.”

  Rosemary froze as she felt his hands move along her shoulders. Not because she didn’t want them there, but because she did. She had a sinking feeling that she was just inches away from making a fool of herself in front of him.

  They were still the same two people involved, but she had meant what she’d said to Teri. Something seemed to happen when the parameters were altered. When she thought of a man in terms other than a friend. She was headed straight for disaster.

  Blowing out a breath, Rosemary eased toward the door. And away from Chris.

  She moved onto a safe topic as she walked down the stairs. “You don’t have to worry about me making another attempt to set you up with Mary Smith. I think she really missed the boat.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Chris turned Rosemary around to face him.

  “It hasn’t sailed yet.” His eyes washed over her, softly whispering along her skin. “In my experience, a solo cruise is a very lonely proposition.”

  Talk about temptation being right in front of her. Now she had no buffer, no Mary Smith to run interference for her. There was no one to rescue her from making a horrible mistake. Without Mary Smith, she had no client to set him up with. She’d lost her excuse and couldn’t refuse going out with him because it wasn’t ethical. Chris wasn’t really a client, so there was nothing unethical about it.

  The nice, easy feeling she’d experienced minutes earlier had dissolved.

  Desperate, Rosemary hung on to the conversation like a drowning man to a life preserver. “I mean, according to her profile, the woman was just like me. I wouldn’t have stood someone up once, let alone twice.” She concentrated on being indignant for him instead of attracted to him. “I would have found a way to get in contact with you.”