His Pretend Fiancee

Josie didn’t have time for a rebuttal because there was a loud pounding on her door just then.

She crossed back to it and opened it, too lost in her own thoughts to ask who it was first. But even so she was surprised to find Mr. Bartholomew standing outside in the stairwell. Still looking furious.

“Here,” he said, shoving a sheet of paper at her. “I called my lawyer—”

“At midnight on a Saturday night?”

“If I can’t sleep, neither can anyone else!” the paunchy man in the undershirt snarled. “My lawyer says to put in writing that you’ve broken the lease and either you get out or I can evict you, your dog, and the rest of the occupants of this apartment. So there it is. You’re gone tomorrow or else. Legally.”

Josie had no idea if he was bluffing or not but the landlord turned tail and stormed up the stairs, leaving her with a handwritten paper saying just what he’d told her it said.

So much for trying to cajole him into letting her stay a little longer.

She closed the door but remained facing it for a while, staring at it and considering her options.

She could get rid of Pip.

But she loved the big bull mastiff and she wasn’t going to do that.

She could gamble that Mr. Bartholomew couldn’t really evict her the next day and that maybe she could find a place for them before he actually could throw them out.

But if she was wrong he could very well kick out her three roommates, too, and that wasn’t fair. Besides the fact that she honestly could end up on the street because if the landlord did evict her suddenly she doubted a hotel or the YWCA could let her in with a dog.

Or she could take Michael Dunnigan up on his offer.

She could move into his brownstone, live rent free, and pretend to be his fiancée.

Actually, it didn’t seem as if she did have any options.

“Do you absolutely, positively guarantee that this will be a purely platonic arrangement?” she heard herself say before she’d even turned around to face Michael Dunnigan again.

“I absolutely, positively guarantee it. You’ll never even see me without a shirt on.”

Josie closed her eyes as if that might keep her from seeing the image that came into her head at just the mention of him bare-chested. The image of him in the kitchen between lovemaking sessions over Labor Day, eating out of a carton, nothing on but a pair of boxer shorts, his V-shaped torso a work of art…

“I don’t even want to see you without shoes and socks,” she said almost as if she were in pain.

“Okay. Not even without shoes and socks,” he agreed.

Josie opened her eyes and took a deep breath, sighing it out resolutely. “All right,” she said softly. “I guess we can give it a try since I don’t have anywhere else to go. But just for the record, I’m not happy about lying to your mother.”

“I’m not happy about it, either. But she won’t listen to me when I explain why I can’t get married and have kids right now.”

Funny, but after their Labor Day weekend together, Josie had had the impression that he simply hadn’t wanted to be tied down. But something in what he’d just said made her think there was more to it than that.

Of course she’d said basically the same thing to him and she had reasons that ran deeper, too.

But it was too late to get into all of that now so she let it lay and finally turned away from the door.

“I guess we have a deal then,” she said, looking at that oh-so-handsome face and hoping they really could abide by their pact.

He smiled again, a thousand-watt grin that made her doubt her own willpower already. “So, will you marry me?” he said, joking.

Josie rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll make it look like I will, anyway.”

“Good enough.”

“I guess I’ll have to move in tomorrow,” she said with a nod back at the door where Mr. Bartholomew had just appeared and disappeared. “How are you going to explain to your mother that you went out with her podiatrist on Saturday night and have a live-in fiancée on Sunday?”

“I’ll make up something. She’ll be so thrilled she won’t pay attention to too many details.”

“So when do you want me?” Poor choice of words. “I mean, what time do you want me to move in?”

“Anytime. Do you need a truck or something for furniture?”

“I only own what I can fit into my car.”

“That works. I’m fully furnished.”

Somehow that sounded like a double entendre but since he’d let her slip of the tongue slide, she didn’t comment on his.

“So, I guess that’s it,” he added. “I’ll see you when you get there tomorrow.”

“I’ll have to pack my stuff and load the car so it probably won’t be until the evening.”

“Whatever. I’ll be there,” he assured.

He got up from the arm of the chair and headed for the door himself.

But before he reached it, he paused near enough to Josie for her to smell the scent of his aftershave. Near enough to bend and, with a warm brush of his breath against her ear, say, “Want to seal our engagement with a kiss?”

Josie gave him a withering look that made him laugh this time.

“Just kidding,” he assured as he straightened and went the rest of the way to the door.

But with one hand on the knob he smiled at her yet again and said, “Thanks for this. You don’t know what a relief it is to think that I’ll be free of my mother’s matchmaking.”

“It’s a relief to me to have somewhere to go with Pip,” she admitted.

Although that wasn’t completely true.

Because while it was a relief to know she finally had a place to live peacefully with her dog, she was still worried about who she’d be living with in that place.

And as Michael Dunnigan finally left she had to wonder if she hadn’t just exchanged one set of problems for another.

Chapter Two

“How was the date? Didn’t you just love her?”

“Hello to you, too, Ma,” Michael said in order to avoid answering his mother’s questions when he arrived at her home at ten o’clock Sunday morning. She lived only blocks away from his brownstone in Brooklyn.

His mother was standing at the stove in her kitchen. As she did every Sunday morning, the five-foot-two compact powerhouse of a woman was making pancakes. She had on a purple velour sweat suit, elaborate makeup, and her head was still swathed from the night before in the toilet paper turban that preserved the bouffant, flipped-at-the-ends hairdo sported by every woman who went to the neighborhood salon.

“Will you take that stuff off your head?” Michael added after he’d leaned over to kiss his mother’s cheek.

Elsa Dunnigan slid golden brown pancakes from the griddle, ladled more batter onto the hot surface, and then obliged her son by unwrapping her black hair. With the exception of being slightly flat in the back it remained an undisturbed helmet.

“The date, Mikey. I want to hear about the date.”

Michael picked up the already poured glass of orange juice at his spot at the red-and-silver kitchen table and took a drink, noting as he did that there were only two place settings. Unless Michael was working, Sunday breakfast was the one meal each week that he, his mother and his younger sister always tried to have together. So again he ignored his mother’s query in favor of one of his own.

“Cindy isn’t eating with us?”

“She had to go to a bridal shower brunch in the city,” Elsa said as if the entire subject of her other child was inconsequential. But as she took a platter filled with bacon and sausages from where it was being kept warm in the oven and brought that, a dish of pancakes and another plate of fried eggs to the table, she said, “And if you don’t answer me right now I’m going to call Dr. Miranda myself and tell her you had such a fabulous time with her last night that you want to see her again tonight.”

Michael knew his mother would do just that so he stopped hedging as they both sat at the table. “The date was good and bad—the bad being the date itself and the good being that it made me realize something and take a big step.”

He’d planned this out on the way home from Josie Tate’s apartment the previous night so he knew exactly how he was going to explain the sudden turn of events.

“I don’t understand,” his mother said. “You didn’t like Dr. Miranda?”

“No, Ma.”

Elsa Dunnigan frowned at him so fiercely it made her eyes squint and nearly disappear in the lines around them.

“She’s a nice girl,” his mother insisted. “A professional woman with a thriving medical practice. She wants to get married. She wants babies. She’ll make a good wife. She can’t help it if she has sinus problems and has to blow her nose every five minutes. And those ears could be covered if she’d just let her hair grow over them. I could set her up with Cissy—now that I’ve finally smoothed the waters after you never called her back, either. Cissy could do Dr. Miranda’s hair so no one would ever see those Dumbo ears.”

Cissy was Elsa’s beautician. She wore her hair even bigger and more rock-solid than any of her clients. Michael had spent the whole blind date with her wondering how she could not notice that the style was outdated by at least twenty years. And when he coupled the hair with the nearly Geisha-like makeup, the gum popping, the honking laugh, the dagger fingernails she’d used in lieu of a fork to pick up strands of spaghetti, and the fact that they’d had absolutely nothing in common, it had not been a date he’d wanted to repeat. So he hadn’t called her again. Much to his mother’s dismay.

But actually, just the thought of that date and the date the night before pushed him to finally tell his mother the story he’d come up with to free himself from any future setups.

“I’m engaged,” he announced.

Elsa made a very unflattering sound in response. Something like “Puh!”

Clearly she didn’t believe him.

“To Dr. Miranda?” she asked facetiously.

“No, not to Miranda. I told you I didn’t like her so you’re out of luck when it comes to free callus scrapings,” Michael informed her.

“Then who are you engaged to? As if I’m buying this load of horse manure.”

“Get out your checkbook because it’s true. I am engaged,” he said, enunciating each word slowly, as if to better get it to sink in.

“To who?” his mother said the same way.

“You don’t know her,” Michael answered calmly. He knew this was risky business. He’d never been an adept liar. And his mother had always been able to see through it when he’d tried. But now he had enough at stake to make him determined to pull it off. “Her name is Josie Tate. She’s the receptionist at that Manhattan Multiples place—remember, it was written up in the newspapers a few months ago? They help women who are pregnant with more than one baby or something. You showed me the article yourself—”

“I remember. My friend Agnes’s daughter went there when she was going to have triplets,” Elsa said, conceding that she knew what he was talking about but still sounding suspicious of his claim to be engaged.

“Well, Josie works there. We met the Friday night before Labor Day.”

“That was the night I arranged a date with my insurance agent’s secretary,” Elsa said to let him know he wasn’t putting anything over on her.

“Yes and Sharon McKinty is one of Josie’s roommates. She took me to a bar that night where Josie was reading poetry—poetry she wrote herself.”

It wasn’t easy to come up with a whole lot of information about his new fiancée because Michael didn’t know much about her. He was just trying to sound knowledgeable with what little he had learned over Labor Day weekend.

“You went out with Sharon McKinty and ended up with someone else?” his mother asked.

As a matter of fact.

“Sharon McKinty met up with an old boyfriend and deserted me. I told you that. But I stuck around to hear more of Josie’s poetry and when she was finished we…well, we hit it off.”

That was all true. Although to say that he and Josie Tate had hit it off was something of an under-statement.

“You told me Sharon dumped you,” his mother confirmed. “But you didn’t tell me you’d met someone else.” More suspicion.

“I wanted to keep this one to myself,” he said, as if Josie had just been too good to share when in fact meeting somebody in a bar and spending three days in bed with them was hardly a story to tell your mother. Even if it had been the best three days he’d ever spent. With anyone.

But despite Michael’s best attempt to make keeping Josie a secret sound romantic, his mother said, “Why did you want to keep it to yourself? Is there something wrong with her? Won’t I like her?”

“I wanted to keep her to myself because she’s just very special.”

That was no lie. Josie Tate did seem special. Special enough that after their weekend together he’d thought that to see her again could be too great a test of the vow he’d made to himself.

Michael had only told his mother once why he was resistant to her greatest desire—that he find a wife and have a family. Elsa had discounted it as silly and promptly disregarded it, but his reasons were strong nevertheless.

As a volunteer firefighter, his father had been killed in a burning building when Michael was only twelve. Being left without a dad had been tougher on him than he’d ever let his mother know. And then, when the World Trade Center bombings had happened and so many of his brother firefighters had been lost, when he’d seen so many wives, so many children, left behind, Michael had decided that if he was going to do this job he loved, he was not going to chance leaving behind a wife or a child.

Whether his mother liked it or not.

And the pure power of his attraction to Josie that weekend had seemed like something to avoid if he was serious about it. Which he was.

“So how is this girl special enough that you met her two weeks ago and left my podiatrist last night to get engaged to her without even telling me you knew her?” Elsa demanded.

“How is Josie special?” he repeated, thinking about it as he finished his third pancake. “Well, she’s great-looking, for one thing.”

“What does she look like?”

“She has the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen. Light brown with blond streaks that make it seem kind of sunny. She wears it short—about to her chin—and it’s smooth and soft and sleek. And she has this way of brushing it behind her ears that’s…I don’t know…just so damn cute.”

“What color eyes does she have?” his mother demanded, as if this were a test.

But if it was, it was a test he could pass because he knew very well what Josie looked like. He’d pictured her in his mind’s eye a million times in the past two weeks.

“She has blue eyes. So blue—so bright blue—that they’re almost electric. Plus her skin is like cream. And she has a tiny nose—but not too tiny, just right, really. And she has good teeth—white and straight—and lips that are this natural pink that doesn’t even need lipstick. She has a great smile. And she’s thin but not too thin and—”

“So it’s all about looks?” his mother cut in, pulling him from the image of Josie Tate that he’d been slightly carried away by.

“No, it’s not all about looks,” he said. “I’m just describing her to you because that’s what you asked me. She’s also sweet and smart—she writes poetry that just blows you away. She’s funny. She has a great sense of humor. She doesn’t make big deals out of small stuff. She’s free and open and easygoing. She has a terrific outlook on life—” And maybe, even though he didn’t know a single thing about where she came from or what her goals were or anything about her family or her romantic history or where she saw herself in five years, he did know slightly more about her than he’d thought.

“It sounds like she just bowled you over,” Elsa finished for him, beginning to sound more open to this whole thing.

“She did bowl me over,” Michael agreed, realizing there was some truth to that, too. Even if he didn’t really want to admit it.

“Anyway,” he added, getting back to his preplanned speech, “We’ve spent some time together since Labor Day but I wanted to keep it—to keep her—to myself. So I didn’t tell you about it. I went on the rest of those dates you set up to see if I still might find someone I liked better. But last night I was sitting across from your podiatrist wondering why I was wasting my time. Thinking that Josie is who I want to be with. The only person I want to be with. And that I needed to do something about it no matter how short a time we’ve known each other.”

That was a mixture of lies and truth. He hadn’t seen anything of Josie Tate since Labor Day weekend—that was a lie. But he had compared every other woman since then to her. And even with the little he knew about her, every other woman had still come up short, so that part was true. No, it hadn’t convinced him to propose for real. But sitting across from the podiatrist, not enjoying himself in the slightest, had made him think about Josie Tate. It had inspired the idea to solve both her housing problem and his mother problem by suggesting the fake engagement.

“So you left my podiatrist and went and asked this other girl to marry you?” his mother said.

“I didn’t just leave your podiatrist. I took her home. But then I went to Josie’s place and… Well, we’re engaged and she’s moving in today.”

Elsa’s eyebrows arched at that. “Two weeks is all you’ve known this girl and you’re engaged and she’s moving in with you?”

“That’s right.”

His mother pushed her nearly empty plate away and seemed to mull that over before she said, “You’re serious? You’re getting married?”

“Not anytime soon,” Michael was quick to say. Maybe too quick. “I mean, we’ve fallen head over heels but we did just meet. We want to take some time to really get to know each other before we actually get married. A long engagement—that’s what she wants, that’s what I want.”

“I don’t think you should count on that. If this girl works every day with mothers-to-be and new babies, she’s bound to start wanting a baby of her own.”

There was a note of optimism in his mother’s tone that let him know she was not only coming to believe him but that she was beginning to warm to the idea of his whirlwind romance.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it,” Michael said. “For now, we both just want to settle in together and honestly get to know each other.”

“And she’s a good girl? Not some fly-by-night who’s taking advantage of you or will disappear with your credit card and your furniture while you’re at work?”

“Sharon McKinty introduced us and you arranged the date with her,” Michael pointed out.

“Did Sharon vouch for her?”

“Sharon vouched for us both—she told Josie that I’m a stand-up guy from a good family with a mother who has big hair—”

“I don’t have big hair. I have a lot of hair.” Elsa defended herself from his teasing.

“Uh-huh,” Michael said sarcastically before he continued. “And Sharon told me that Josie is the best roommate she’s ever had, that she’s the kind of person who takes in stray animals, donates blood, volunteers at the soup kitchen, brings coffee to the homeless guy on the corner every morning, and would give her last dime away if she thought somebody needed it more than she did. I don’t think I have to worry about her running off with my furniture or my credit card.”

“And you love her and she loves you?”

That one made him very uncomfortable. “We got engaged last night, didn’t we?” he said as if that was answer enough.

Apparently it was because his mother said, “It must have been love at first sight.”

Certainly it had been attraction at first sight. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Josie that night at the bar. In fact, he’d been almost mesmerized by her. But that wasn’t important now. Now they were only going to be roommates and friends—that was something he needed not to forget.

“When do I get to meet her?” his mother asked then, finally sounding convinced and happy about the fact that Michael had found someone.

“Maybe in a day or two. Let’s let her get moved in and—”

“Tomorrow,” Elsa decreed. “We’ll have dinner. I’ll cook.”

“I’d need to check with Josie. I don’t want you giving her the bum’s rush, Ma. She’ll be around a long time.”

“I have to meet the girl who’s going to be my daughter-in-law, don’t I?”

“You will. Believe me, you will.”

“Tomorrow. See if we can meet tomorrow,” Elsa insisted forcefully.

Michael took a deep breath and sighed it out with resignation. His mother was nothing if not persistent. And pushy. Which was why, he reminded himself, he’d felt the need to concoct this plan in the first place.

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.