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Old Boyfriends
Rexanne Becnel
Mills & Boon Silhouette
Road Trip for Three?They were three girlfriends whose love lives had seen better days, and they were driving to a reunion in New Orleans, the town they'd left behind.MJ, a gorgeous younger woman whose older husband died in the bed of…well, let's just say he died in a compromising position; Bitsey, an overweight housewife who can't believe that's all there is; and Cat, a twice-divorced designer whose pristine present is small compensation for her past.The trophy wife, prom queen and trashy girl had a vision: the men of their present didn't hold a candle to the boys in their past.
Praise for Rexanne Becnel
“Ms. Becnel creates the most intriguing characters and infuses them with fiery personalities and quick minds.”
—Literary Times on The Bride of Rosecliff
“…Becnel skillfully blends romance and adventure with a deft hand.”
—Publishers Weekly on When Lightning Strikes
“There’s magic in Rexanne Becnel’s ability to conjure a story.”
—Baton Rouge Advocate on Where Magic Dwells
“Becnel gives us true insight into the human spirit.”
—Romantic Times on The Matchmaker
“Rexanne’s stories stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.”
—Literary Times on Heart of the Storm
Rexanne Becnel
Rexanne Becnel, the author of nineteen novels and two novellas, swears she could not be a writer if it weren’t for New Orleans’s many coffeehouses. She does all her work longhand, with a mug of coffee at her side. She is a charter member of the Southern Louisiana Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and founded the New Orleans Popular Fiction Conference.
Rexanne’s novels regularly appear on bestseller lists such as USA TODAY, Amazon.com, Waldenbooks, Ingrams and Barnes and Noble. She has been nominated for and received awards from Romantic Times, Waldenbooks, The Holt Committee, the Atlanta Journal/Atlanta Constitution and the National Readers Choice Awards.
Old Boyfriends
Rexanne Becnel
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
You’d think an author with eighteen books under her belt wouldn’t be so excited about the publication of her nineteenth!
Wrong!
Old Boyfriends marks the beginning of a new direction for me: from historical romance to what I fondly call “girlfriend” books. Little did I know when I started writing about Cat and Bitsey and MJ that a new publishing outlet was being created for that exact sort of book. I am so happy to be a part of NEXT and their wonderful lineup of books and authors. Writing about women my age with my concerns and my fears and hopes has rejuvenated my creative side. Maybe too much. You see, I write in a coffeehouse and I know some of the other patrons wonder about me. I sit at my corner table, pen in hand, and grin and frown and mumble to myself. Sometimes I even shed a tear or two. But I’m too happy with what I’m doing to care if they think I’m crazy.
Writing Old Boyfriends was sometimes hard and sometimes effortless, but always fulfilling. I hope you find reading it equally satisfying.
Best wishes,
Rexanne
For my friends on Jackson Avenue
who keep me sane and focused.
Contents
CHAPTER 1: Death and Dieting
CHAPTER 2: Not Without My Daughter
CHAPTER 3: Getting the Hell Back to Dodge
CHAPTER 4: Men and Whine
CHAPTER 5: Baby You Can Drive My Car
CHAPTER 6: The Heat Is On
CHAPTER 7: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
CHAPTER 8: Are You In or Are You Out?
CHAPTER 9: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
CHAPTER 10: On the Brink
CHAPTER 11: Bed Head & Boob Jobs
CHAPTER 12: Walking to New Orleans
CHAPTER 13: Home Again
CHAPTER 1
Death and Dieting
Cat
M y friend M.J.’s husband died on a Friday, lying on the table during a therapeutic massage. A massive heart attack, that’s how the newspaper reported it. But that’s only because his son and the PR firm for their restaurant chain made sure that’s what they reported.
The truth? Viagra and the too-capable ministrations of a pseudowoman, pseudomasseuse wearing a black oriental wig, a red thong and fishnet hose are what did in Frank Hollander. The table was actually a round bed covered with black satin sheets, with an honest-to-God mirror on the ceiling. The House of the Rising Sun serves a very good hot and sour soup downstairs, but the therapy going on upstairs isn’t the sort that the chairman of this year’s United Way Fund Drive could afford to be associated with.
Needless to say, the funeral was huge. The mayor spoke, the bishop said the mass, and the choir from St. Joseph’s Special School, a major beneficiary of the United Way, sang good old Frank into the ground. As pure as those kids’ souls were, even they couldn’t have sung Frank into heaven.
Afterward, M.J.’s stepchildren entertained the mourners at her home, where everyone came up to the widow and said all the things they were supposed to:
“If I can do anything, Mary Jo, just call. Promise me you’ll call.”
“Your husband was a great man, Mrs. Hollander. We’ll all miss him.”
Blah, blah, blah. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. But Bitsey had given me my marching orders and I knew my role. I was there to support M.J., not to air my opinion about her sleazy bastard of a husband and his gang of no-good kids.
Thank God for Bitsey—and I’m not using the Lord’s name casually when I say that. Thank you, God, for giving me Bitsey. She’s like the voice of reason in my life, the perfect mother image for someone sorely deprived of that in her biological parent.
M.J., Bitsey and me. Three girls raised in the South, but trapped in California.
Well, I think that maybe I was the only one who felt trapped in the vast, arid beigeness of southern California. But then, I felt trapped wherever I was. I was slowly figuring that out.
That Tuesday, however, at M.J.’s palatial home with the air-conditioning running double time, and Frank Jr.’s Pacific Rim fusion restaurant catering the after-funeral festivities, we were all feeling trapped. Sushi at a funeral is beyond unreal.
Bitsey had explained to M.J. that she had to stay downstairs until the last guests left. She was the hostess, and it was only right. But yes, she could anesthetize herself if she wanted to. Everybody else was.
So M.J., in her perfect size-six black Giselle dress and her Jimmy Choo slingbacks, sat in Frank Sr.’s favorite fake leopard-skin chair and tossed back five vodka martinis in less than two hours.
M.J. drank, Bitsey ate, and I fumed and wanted to get the hell out of there. That awful, morbid couple of hours sums up pretty well how the three of us react to any stress thrown our way. And God knows there’s enough of it. When Bitsey hurts, she eats. Even when she was on Phen-Fen, and now Meridia, if she’s hurting—especially if her husband, Jack, pulls some stunt—she eats. Considering that Jack Albertson can be a coldhearted bastard, and unlike Frank, doesn’t bother to hide it, it’s no wonder she’s packed close to two hundred pounds onto her five-foot-four frame. The more she eats, the fatter she gets, and the more remote and critical he gets. Which, of course, makes her eat even more.
But I digress, which I do a lot. According to my sometimes therapist, that’s a typical coping mechanism: catalog everybody else’s flaws and you’ll be too busy to examine your own. M.J. drinks, Bitsey eats, and I run. New job. New man. New apartment.
Today, however, I had vowed to hang in there, bite my tongue and generally struggle against every impulse I had.
“So sorry, Mrs. Hollander.” A slick-looking man with a classic comb-over bent down a little to give M.J. his condolences. His eyes were on her boobs, which are original issue, contrary to what most people think. He handed her his card. “If I can help you in any way.”
After he wandered away, Bitsey took the card from M.J.’s vodka-numbed hand. “A lawyer,” Bitsey muttered, glaring at his retreating back. “How positively gauche to hand the bereaved widow a business card at her husband’s funeral. Is there even one person in this entire state who was taught a modicum of manners?”
“She’s going to need a lawyer,” I whispered over M.J.’s head, hoping the vodka had deadened her hearing. “Frank Jr. isn’t going to let her get away with one thin dime of his daddy’s money. Her clothes, yes. Her jewelry, maybe. In a weak moment he might even let her keep the Jag. But the house? The money?” I shook my head. “No way.”
“Shh,” Bitsey hissed. “Not now.”
M.J. turned her big, fogged-over blue eyes on Bitsey. “I need to use the little girls’ room.”
“Okay, honey.” Bitsey patted M.J.’s knee. “Do you need help?”
Somehow we guided M.J. through the crowd without it being too obvious that her feet weren’t moving. Good thing she’s only about a hundred pounds. The girl is as strong as an ox, thanks to Pilates three days a week, cross-training two days and ballet the other two. But she doesn’t weigh anything.
Instead of the powder room, we took M.J. to the master suite where we surprised Frank Jr.’s wife, Wendy, scoping out the place. The bimbo didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed that we’d caught her in the act of mentally arranging her furniture in M.J.’s bedroom.
But when I spied the delicate ceramic bunny rabbit she held in her greedy, sharp-nailed clutches, I saw red. Bloodletting red. Bitsey had made that rabbit in the ceramics class where she, M.J. and I first met. She’d given it to M.J., and a cat figurine to me. I glared at Wendy until the bitch put the bunny down and flounced away.
Bitsey gave me a scandalized look. “Please tell me she wasn’t doing what I think she was doing.”
I rolled my eyes, hoping M.J. was too far gone to have noticed her stepdaughter-in-law’s avarice. But as M.J. kicked off her shoes and staggered to the “hers” bathroom she muttered, “Wendy wants my house. Frank Jr., too. She’s always saying how a big house like this needs kids in it.”
M.J. paused in the doorway and, holding on to the frame, looked over her shoulder at us. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She was gorgeous even when she was drunk, miserable and crying. If she wasn’t such a lamb, I’d hate her. “Like I didn’t try to have children,” she went on. “I always wanted children, and we tried everything. But…” She sniffled. “I just couldn’t get pregnant. She always lords that over me, you know. We’re the same age, but she’s got three kids and I don’t have any.” M.J. went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Bitsey looked at me. Her eyes brimmed with sorrow, but her mouth was pursed in outrage. “And now Wendy wants her house?” She fished the lawyer’s card out of her pocket.
I snatched the card and tore it in half, then tossed it in a garbage basket. “No. Not that lawyer. If he’s here at Frank’s funeral it’s because he’s a friend or business acquaintance. Some kind of way he’s connected to Frank Sr., and therefore Frank Jr. When M.J. gets a lawyer, we have to make sure it’s someone who doesn’t have any ties to the Hollander clan.”
“You’re right. You’re right,” Bitsey conceded. “You have a very suspicious mind, Cat. But sometimes that’s good.”
“A girl’s got to watch out for herself.”
Bitsey gave me a warm, soft hug. “And for her friends.”
M.J. went alone to the reading of the will. We found that out later. I would have canceled my appointments to be with her if she’d asked. Bitsey would have gone, too, not that she would have spoken up against a room half full of lawyers—all men—and the other half full of relatives—all bloodsuckers. But at least M.J. would have had one person on her side.
M.J. went alone, though, and when I called her that afternoon to see if she wanted to have dinner, all I got was the answering service. Even the housekeeper was gone. That’s when I knew something was wrong. Ever since the funeral, M.J. hadn’t left the house except for her exercise classes. I called Bitsey.
“Maybe she’s taking a nap,” she said. Bitsey is big on naps.
“Or drunk.”
“Or drunk,” Bitsey agreed. “We should go over there.”
“What about Jack? Isn’t it his dinnertime?” I tried to keep any hint of scorn out of my voice; I’m not sure I succeeded. The thing is, Jack Albertson is an overbearing jerk. Bitsey is the perfect wife, but nothing she does is ever good enough to suit him. She’s Julia Child and Heloise rolled into one: perfect meals served in a perfectly kept house. I helped her decorate it, but she keeps it up herself. Even their kids are perfect, good grades, no car wrecks or illegitimate babies—no thanks to Jack. But does he appreciate any of Bitsey’s good qualities? Not hardly. In his book she’s too fat, too permissive, a spendthrift and a brainless twit. Oh yeah, and did I mention? He thinks she’s too fat.
Sometimes I hate the jerk. But then, I’m beginning to think that maybe I hate all men.
“Jack’s working late tonight,” she said. “His division is entertaining a group of businessmen from South Korea and they’re pulling out all the stops to impress them.”
What I heard in her determined explanation was, “He’s nothing like Frank Hollander, so just turn off that suspicious little mind of yours.” For her sake I did.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll meet you at M.J.’s in, say, twenty minutes. We’ll take her out to dinner.”
Twenty minutes later nobody answered the door, so we went around to the back. The gate was locked, but through the iron fence and tall border of variegated ginger and papyrus plants we could see M.J. lying on a chaise longue on the far side of the pool. She was asleep. At least, I hoped she was asleep.
When we were hoarse from trying to rouse her, I swore. “That’s it. I’m going over the fence.”
It would have been easier if I was twenty years younger or ten pounds lighter, or both. I had on high-heeled mules, ivory silk cigarette pants and a sleeveless black turtleneck. Very chic and severe, as befits an interior designer to the quasi rich and famous of Bakersfield, California. But it was lousy rock-climbing garb, and by the time I tumbled into a bed of pothos and aluminum plants, the whole outfit was ruined. “Hells bells. I think I broke something.”
“No you didn’t. Open the gate,” Bitsey demanded. So much for being motherly.
We hurried over to M.J.; for once Bitsey moved faster than me.
“Please, God,” Bitsey pleaded. “Don’t let her be dead.”
“Don’t say that. She’s not dead,” I muttered. “Dead drunk, but not dead.”
I was right, but barely. The last bit of margarita in the pitcher next to M.J. would definitely have finished her off. She was breathing but not responsive beyond a few indecipherable mutters.
“We should take her to the hospital,” Bitsey said as we wheeled her inside on the chaise longue.
“She’s just drunk. Look how big that pitcher is. She drank almost all of it.”
