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Mike, Mike and Me
Wendy Markham
Mills & Boon Silhouette
Once upon a time in the 1980s, a girl named Beau was torn between two Mikes: did she prefer her high-school sweetheart or the sexy stranger she'd picked up in an airport bar? One she eventually married, the other she left behind (and forgot all about, or tried to, anyway).But which Mike did she choose? This delightful tale by the bestselling author of Slightly Single and Slightly Settled alternates between the story of Beau's summer of Mikes and the outcome fifteen years later…without giving away which Mike ended up where–in Beau's marriage bed or in her memory.In "The present" chapters, the former swinging single lives in the 'burbs with a childbirth-traumatized body, an increasingly distant husband and a sad sack maid who isn't much for cleaning. When out of the blue the Mike-not-taken sends her a flirty e-mail, she suddenly finds herself back to square one, trying to decide which man is the Mike of her dreams.
CRITICAL PRAISE FOR SLIGHTLY SETTLED
“Readers who followed Tracey’s struggles in Slightly Single, and those meeting her for the first time, will sympathize with this singleton’s post-breakup attempts to move on in this fun, lighthearted romp with a lovable heroine.”
—Booklist
“Tracey is insecure and has many neuroses, but this makes her realistic…. And like many women, Tracey needs to figure out when to listen to her friends and when to listen to herself.”
—Romantic Times
CRITICAL PRAISE FOR SLIGHTLY SINGLE
“…an undeniably fun journey for the reader.”
—Booklist
“Bridget Jonesy…Tracey Spadolini smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life.”
—Publishers Weekly
WENDY MARKHAM
is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than fifty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genres—among them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the notorious snow belt. By third grade, her heart was set on becoming a published author; a few years later, a school trip to Manhattan convinced her that she had to live there someday. At twenty-one, she moved alone to New York City and worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Her previous Red Dress Ink title, Slightly Single, was one of Waldenbooks’ Best Books of 2002. Very happily married with two children, Wendy writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.
Mike, Mike & Me
Wendy Markham
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Dedicated with love and friendship to the Siegel family,
Joan, Richard, Rory and Nicholas, and to
the three guys I adore: Mark, Morgan and Brody.
With special gratitude to the brilliant David Staub
of Network Expert Software Systems.
Contents
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
Chapter twenty-three
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty-seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter thirty
Chapter thirty-one
Chapter thirty-two
Chapter thirty-three
Chapter thirty-four
Chapter thirty-five
Chapter thirty-six
Chapter thirty-seven
Chapter thirty-eight
Chapter thirty-nine
Chapter forty
Chapter forty-one
Chapter forty-two
Chapter forty-three
Chapter forty-four
Chapter forty-five
Chapter forty-six
Chapter forty-seven
one
The present
So in case you’ve been wondering, I married Mike after all.
Which Mike, you might ask?
And rightly so.
For a while there, it was a toss-up. But when I finally made my choice, I honestly believed it was the right one—that I’d chosen the right Mike.
Only recently have I begun to question that…and everything else in my life. Only recently have I been thinking back to that summer when I found myself torn between the guy I’d always loved and the guy I’d just met.
That they shared both a name and my heart is one of life’s great ironies, don’t you think?
Then again, maybe not. According to the United States Social Security Administration, Michael was the most popular boys’ name in America between 1964 and 1998. Odds are, if you’re a heterosexual female who was born between those years—as I am—you’re going to date a couple of Mikes in your life. As I did.
Meanwhile, if you’re a heterosexual male who was born in those years, you’re going to date a couple of Lisas. That was the most popular girls’ name the year I was born.
I’m not Lisa.
Remember that song? All about how she wasn’t Lisa, her name was Julie. It was a big hit when I was a kid. I remember singing it at slumber parties with my best friends—two of whom were named Lisa.
But I’m not Lisa. I’m not Julie, either.
My real name is Barbra. Spelled without the extra “a,” like Barbra Streisand’s. That’s not why mine is spelled that way; I was born back in the mid-sixties, before my mother ever heard of Barbra Streisand.
My father—who if his own name weren’t Bob probably wouldn’t be able to spell that—filled out the birth certificate while my mother was sleeping off the drugs they used to give women to spare them the horrific childbirth experience.
That, of course, was back in the Bad Old Days when they didn’t realize that the fetus was being drugged as well—otherwise known as the Good Old Days, when nobody was the wiser and nobody was feeling any pain.
I always figured that when it was time for me to give birth, I’d want those same drugs.
Am I a wimp? you might ask.
Um, yeah. I’ve never been good with pain—I’m the first to admit it. I stub my toe; I scream. I get a sliver; I cry. I see blood; I faint.
By the time I got pregnant, I had heard enough gory details from my friends to know that it would be in everyone’s best interest if I were knocked out before I reached the stage where it was a toss-up whether to call in the obstetrician or an exorcist.
I envisioned drifting off to a medically induced la-la land, waking up feeling refreshed, and having somebody hand me a pretty, pink newborn, even if my husband spelled its name wrong while I was out.
Alas, that wasn’t to be.
For one thing, we knew that our firstborn son would be named after my husband, who is conveniently familiar with the spelling of Mike.
For another, when—about five minutes into my first pregnancy—I asked my doctor about drugs, he recommended a childbirth class where I would learn to use breathing and imagery to control the pain. Call me jaded, but I didn’t see then and I don’t see now how huffing and counting and focusing on a flickering candle or, God help me, a favorite stuffed animal, can possibly make you forget the nine pounds of wriggling human forcing its way out of you the same way it got into you nine months—and nine pounds—ago.
As the scientific theory goes, what goes in must come out. Eventually. Somehow. And the coming-out part is never as much fun as the going-in part.
Whose scientific theory is that? you might ask.
It’s mine. And you should trust me, because I’m an expert.
If you’ve ever eaten all your Halloween candy before the calendar page turned to November—or if you’ve ever done too many shots of tequila on your birthday—then you’re an expert, too.
But if you can’t relate to childbirth or vomiting up a pound of chocolate or a pint of hard liquor, think about this: back when Mike and I were first married, he and my father carried our new couch up two flights of stairs to our one-bedroom apartment in Queens. When we moved a few years later, the movers we hired couldn’t get the couch out. No matter which way they turned it, they couldn’t make it fit through the doorway. They finally told me that the only way to get it out was to remove one of the legs.
