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But that still didn’t keep him from feeling guilty for perpetrating this sham on her.
He just didn’t know what else to do to get her to back off.
“Tomorrow,” he conceded. “I’ll see if you can meet Josie tomorrow.”
Elsa sat back in her chair, looking pleased. “Good. Tomorrow night for dinner,” she said with as much finality as if Michael had agreed to it.
“I don’t know about a whole meal. Why don’t I just bring her by for a few minutes the first time?”
It was as if Elsa hadn’t heard him. “Dinner here at seven,” she dictated. “I’ll even get wine.”
His mother got up and went to the drawer beside the sink where she took out a tablet and a pen and began to make a list that Michael had no doubt was for groceries she would go to the store and buy before the day was over in spite of everything he’d said about checking with Josie first.
But he knew better than to waste any more effort on trying to slow the runaway train that was his mother. And as he stood and started to clear the table all he could think was, You don’t have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, Josie Tate….
He just hoped she really was as easygoing as he’d said she was, as easygoing as she’d seemed.
Because it was the only way she was likely to get through this.
It was seven o’clock Sunday evening before Josie was completely loaded up and ready to go. The trunk and rear seat of her small vintage sedan were crammed full of her clothes and belongings, and Pip was sitting regally in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, patiently awaiting his ride while she said goodbye to Sharon.
“You’re sure about this?” asked the only one of her three roommates she was close to.
“Hey, I spent a whole weekend with this guy on your say-so that he wasn’t a psycho,” Josie joked. “Are you telling me now that he is?”
“No. For the two years I’ve worked for his mother’s insurance carrier, I’ve been listening to the woman brag about him and he’s anything but a psycho. He’s a decorated firefighter and I think the Boy Scouts gave him some kind of award, too. If I hadn’t met up with T.J. that night and he hadn’t apologized, I might have given Michael Dunnigan a go-round myself. But just because he’s not a psycho doesn’t mean you should be moving into his place and pretending to be engaged to him.”
“Remember, don’t blow this if you talk to his mother,” Josie warned, wondering if she should have been quite so honest with her friend.
“Believe me, his mother does all the talking,” Sharon assured her. “But still, actually moving in with him? And acting as if the two of you are getting married? That’s pretty weird.”
“It’ll be okay. Besides, old sourpuss Bartholomew didn’t give me any other choice. He’s even up there at his window now, making sure I’m leaving,” she added with a poke of her chin at the building behind her friend.
“Maybe we could have hidden Pip,” Sharon suggested.
Josie laughed at that. “Where? How?”
Sharon shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. This whole thing just doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s more fair than getting you guys all evicted because of Pip and me. Don’t worry about it. Now that I have somewhere to go, it isn’t a big deal.”
“Yes, it is a big deal when it means you’re going to have to play at being engaged to accomplish it. When you’re going to pull the wool over the eyes of Michael Dunnigan’s mother, of all people. Everything with that woman is a big deal. She’s a steamroller in panty hose. You might start out only pretending to be engaged, but before Elsa Dunnigan is through, you’re liable to find yourself married with ten kids. And if she finds out this is just a scam? I don’t even want to think what she might do.” Sharon ended with wide eyes to emphasize the terror of just considering that possibility.
But Josie just laughed again. “Come on. She can’t be that bad.”
“She can and she is. I wouldn’t want her for even a pretend mother-in-law. That night that I went out with Michael I kept looking at him, thinking that he might be gorgeous but I wouldn’t go near him for anything but a one-nighter because nothing is worth putting up with that woman more than I have to at the office.”
“If she’s that horrible why did you agree to go out with her son in the first place?” Josie challenged.
“I was mad at T.J. and I wanted to teach him a lesson. But I’m telling you, Josie, I thought my mother was a pain in the neck, but Elsa Dunnigan has her beat by a mile.”
“I won’t be living with his mother,” Josie pointed out.
“No, you’ll be trying to live platonically with a guy who’s already swept you off your feet and into his bed. On top of the whole mother thing. It’s like double jeopardy.”
“What happened between Michael and me over Labor Day is history. I only slept with him because… Well, it was just a bad weekend for me. The anniversary of my parents’ death is always dicey. But what happened before won’t happen again.”
“I know you needed comfort and solace and forgetfulness that weekend, but still, Michael Dunnigan is some pretty powerful stuff. I don’t know if you can just blame that three-day marathon on being bummed out. Or trust that not being bummed out will make you immune.”
“Determination not to repeat that marathon is what will make me immune. And it will help that we’ll be going our separate ways. He’ll be completely out of the house every other day. Believe me, nothing is going to happen between us again.”
Sharon didn’t look convinced. Or sound it when she said, “Whatever you say.”
“I say it’ll be just fine,” Josie said with conviction.
And by then she honestly believed it would be. She’d thought long and hard about this situation since the man in question had left the previous night. And, in spite of his appeal, there were two very large roadblocks to her ever wanting to get seriously involved with him. And neither of them had anything to do with his mother.
In the first place, Josie had no intention of changing her own unencumbered lifestyle.
And in the second place, Michael’s job was the cure for even contemplating any kind of involvement with him whatsoever.
No matter how attractive he was, how sexy, how funny or fun or intelligent or charming or well put-together, Josie had one steadfast rule—she was absolutely not going to let herself get involved with a guy in a high-risk profession. She knew firsthand the devastation that could be wreaked if the worst occurred in life, and although she realized that anyone could have any kind of freakish accident at any time, being connected to someone who courted danger through their work was more risky than she could bear. Which meant that Michael Dunnigan was one very off-limits man.
“I should get going,” she told Sharon. “I still have to unpack all this stuff when I get there.”
Sharon nodded her resignation. “You’ll call me this week?” her friend said.
“I will. Maybe we can meet for lunch one day.”
“Good. And you know, if this doesn’t work out, you can always find Pip a nice home and come back.”
“It’ll be fine,” Josie repeated.
“Or, if the temptation gets to be too much, you could stay there on the nights Michael works but leave Pip there and spend the night here with us on Michael’s days off.”
“There’s an idea,” Josie said, thinking that might actually be something she would do if the attraction to Michael started to get the best of her. Certainly she would do that before she would repeat Labor Day weekend.
She and Sharon hugged then.
“I’m going to miss you, though,” Sharon said, sounding on the verge of tears. “I hate that you won’t be here to make me your famous chai tea when I come home stressed.”
“I can probably talk you through making it yourself in an emergency,” Josie joked again, this time somewhat feebly.
Their hug ended and Sharon leaned over to the window beside Pip. “’Bye, puppy,” she said to the large animal. “Be a good boy and don’t get your mom into any more trouble.”
Pip had turned his head toward her when she’d first spoken to him and he gave the window one lick as if it were Sharon’s face. Then he went back to staring straight ahead.
“Damn Bartholomew,” Sharon muttered as she straightened. Then, to Josie, she said, “Drive safely.”
“I will.”
Josie headed around the front of the car to the driver’s side. “I’ll talk to you this week,” she called as she got in behind the wheel.
Sharon moved back from the curb, waving as Josie pulled out into the street.
“Here we go, big dog, another of life’s adventures,” she announced to Pip as she drove away.
At least that’s what she hoped the feeling she was having was—excitement for a new experience, a new adventure. Better that than feeling excited over getting to see Michael Dunnigan again.
Josie looked at all of life as an adventure. She liked to keep things free and easy. She liked to try new and different foods. She liked to meet new people. She liked to pick up on the spur of the moment and go somewhere without having anything planned, without knowing where she was going or what she was going to do or when she would come back. She liked to change jobs. To have new experiences. All of that excited her. Thrilled her. The same way it had excited and thrilled her parents.
But anything dangerous, anything life-threatening—that was something else again. And that was where she was different from her parents.
But then she’d lived through the consequences of their thrill-seeking. And they hadn’t.
When Sharon had introduced her to Michael Dunnigan that Friday night before Labor Day, Sharon hadn’t told her he was a firefighter. If she had, Josie would likely not have said more than a brief hello to him—that’s how adamant she was about steering clear of anyone who was into anything high-risk.
But as it was, Josie hadn’t learned what Michael did for a living until late in their weekend together. And the moment she’d discovered it, their encounter had turned temporary in her mind. Because if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that she didn’t want any permanent connection to anyone who did things that could be life-threatening.
Attachment issues—that’s what a psychologist she’d once dated had said about her—that she had attachment issues.
But Josie liked to think of it as independence. She was proud of how self-sufficient she was. She certainly didn’t see anything wrong with maintaining that independence and self-sufficiency.
And if she was particularly adamant about steering clear of anyone who put themselves, their entire life, on the line every day? She considered that a lesson life had taught her at a young age.
“So you and I are only going to be friends, Michael Dunnigan,” she said out loud, as if that would make it an irrefutable fact.
Pip went from angling his blunt black nose up at the small gap she’d left in the window so he could enjoy the smells along the way, to looking at her as if he wasn’t buying that for a minute.
“I mean it,” she said decisively to convince him. “Friends. Roommates. That’s it.”
And if she already knew that wasn’t going to be an easy thing to pull off because the man had hardly been out of her thoughts at all in the two weeks since they’d parted ways?
Well, she liked a challenge, too.
Maybe not quite as much as she liked Michael Dunnigan, but still…
“I should probably be grateful if he has a dragon lady for a mother,” she said to Pip. “Maybe it’ll help cool me off to him.”
But dragon lady or no dragon lady, Josie really was bent on being nothing but friends and roommates with Michael Dunnigan. No matter what it took.
Because even if she wasn’t determined to remain unattached to any one person, even if she wasn’t fiercely protective of her independence, any man whose job put her in a position where, on the turn of a dime, she might be abandoned again the way her parents’ deaths had abandoned her, was not the man for her. No matter what.
And since the closer she got to Michael’s house, the closer she got to Michael, the more butterflies took wing in her stomach and the more eager she felt, she thought that maybe it would be a good thing if his mother really was a dragon lady.
Because she just might need all the help she could get to turn herself off to Michael Dunnigan.
It was dusk by the time Josie arrived at Michael’s brownstone. Luckily she found a parking spot right across the street so she didn’t have to double park to unload her car.
But once she’d maneuvered the sedan between the truck and the station wagon at the curb and turned off the engine, she didn’t rush out of the vehicle. Instead she sat there and studied the place she remembered from the last time she’d been here.
Ten steps edged by a black wrought-iron railing led up to the double-door entrance of the stately two-story brown brick building. The entrance was sheltered by an arched overhang decorated with pilasters that ran along either side and ended at two ornate brackets that connected each pilaster to the frieze.
There were twin carriage lamps on the pilasters and another inside the uppermost curve of the arch. All of them were lit to welcome her and more light shone through the ovals of beveled glass in the center of each dark walnut door.
To the right of the entrance was a large bay window that Josie remembered well. Both the front door and the window were in the living room. She and Michael hadn’t been able to contain themselves long enough to get to his bedroom the first time they’d made love so they’d ended up barely getting through the door and onto the floor just below that bay window.
The memory flooded through Josie’s mind unexpectedly and caught her off guard. The memory of tearing each other’s clothes off while mouths clung together. Of urgent, exploring hands. Of bodies colliding in hungry need…
Not a good thing to think about, she knew, and she worked to block the memory, the images, the recollection of sensations and feelings and things that made her crave reliving it all.
Then Pip offered a distraction by whining to let her know he wanted out of the car now that it was no longer moving.
Josie took a deep breath, sighed and said, “Okay. I guess you’re right. We’re home. For better or worse.”
She attached Pip’s leash to the metal loop on his harness but left him sitting there as she got out of her side of the car. Then she went around to the passenger door to let Pip out that way.
With his blunt nose to the ground, Josie led the bull mastiff across the street that ran in front of the row of nearly identical homes. As if he’d been there before, Pip promptly climbed the ten steps to Michael’s brownstone.
Michael must have been watching for them because before Josie could ring the bell, the door opened and there he was.
“Oh. Hi,” she said a bit dimly.
Even though he hadn’t dressed up for her arrival he was freshly shaved. The heady smell of clean mountain-air-scented aftershave drifted to her nostrils as she took in the sight of him in a plain white T-shirt that was tight enough to hug his chest, shoulders and biceps and the sweatpants that let her know there were muscular thighs hidden inside them.
In fact, not only couldn’t she keep from taking in the sight, one look at him made her heart skip a beat and she thought that it might have been better if he had dressed up. Maybe slacks and a shirt would have hidden more and given her a break. But as it was, his clothes seemed like a scant barrier between her and that body she remembered all too well.
“Welcome to your new home,” he said in response to her greeting, stepping aside to allow her and the dog inside.
But Josie hesitated.
Somehow she hadn’t thought that being there again, with him, would bring so much to the surface. But suddenly she was having difficulty not thinking about Labor Day weekend. About repeating it…
Roommates, she reminded herself. Nothing but roommates…
Roommates who usually provided their own annoyances. Like stinky tennis shoes. Cupboard doors left open. Drinking out of the milk carton. Dirty dishes in the sink. The toilet seat left up.
Those were all things that made roommates unappealing. So maybe if every time she started to notice what she shouldn’t be noticing about Michael, she thought about the grossest, most disgusting thing a roommate had ever done, it would turn her off to even him…
Toenail clippings on the coffee table—that had been the worst. So that was what she would think about.
Toenail clippings. Toenail clippings. Toenail clippings…
It helped. At least enough to get her through the front door.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked as she belatedly stepped inside.
He was smiling a confused sort of smile and there were two creases between his full eyebrows that let her know he’d seen her hesitancy.
