MOST PEOPLE would have been annoyed to find themselves stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic during morning rush hour on the Fitzgerald Expressway. But Mark Lavin wasn’t most people.
For him, being stuck in traffic meant being stuck in his SLK Roadster, which was not exactly a hardship. Six weeks old, the car still smelled new. The seat cradled his back, the steering wheel curved sweetly against his palms, and even though the engine had been built for zipping around hairpin turns at high speeds, it tolerated gridlock with grace.
Until this car, he’d always owned old clunkers. But he was past thirty now, he had a big title and a salary to match—and then he’d gotten that recognition from Boston’s Best magazine. A silly honor, but definitely worth celebrating. So he’d ventured into a Mercedes-Benz showroom and found true love in the form of a pewter-silver metallic dream machine with charcoal-leather interior, a retractable roof, a six-speed manual transmission and power everything. He’d earned this car, it was his, and if he had to be crawling along the expressway at two miles an hour, surrounded by thousands of other morning commuters, well, there were far worse ways to do it than in a Benz.
Besides, he could actually do his job while he stared through the windshield at the glowing red rows of brake lights ahead of him. His stereo was tuned to WBKX, “Boston Kool X-treme,” and his quadraphonic door-mounted speakers were pumping Rex in the Morning’s drive-time show.
Mark was Rex’s boss. And it hadn’t always been smooth sailing. One year ago, on April Fool’s Day, he’d nearly fired Rex because the deejay had issued a news report on a devastating earthquake in Los Angeles. No earthquake had occurred; the news story had been Rex’s idea of an April Fool’s Day prank. But it had ignited panic all over Boston. People had tied up the city’s phone lines trying to reach friends and relatives in southern California. The mayor had issued a statement proclaiming the news report a hoax, and Mark had received a phone call from City Hall asking him to shut his shock jock up.
Mark had ultimately let Rex keep his job. The guy ranked number one in his time slot—mostly because his show veered so close to the line of tastelessness. The earthquake report, complete with damage estimates and casualty figures, had crossed that line, however. Mark had reamed Rex out, suspended him without pay for a week and warned him never, ever to pull a stunt like that again.
Now it was one year later, another April Fool’s Day. The sky was a springtime mix of sun and clouds, the traffic crept toward downtown Boston, and Rex was playing Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” A good choice, Mark decided, trying to let the ergonomic splendor of his car soothe his anxiety over what might pop out of Rex’s mouth in the remaining two hours of his show.
He reached the Mass Pike exit just as Zevon issued his last musical howl. “That was Celine Dion,” Rex announced, “doing her cover of ‘Dirty Water.’ In her version, of course, Leonardo diCaprio dies. I don’t know about you, but it makes me tear up a little.” He sniffled dramatically.
Mark rolled his eyes. As long as Rex’s jokes continued in that vein—no false alarms about natural disasters—Mark would be happy.
“And now for the news,” Rex announced in his trademark baritone. Mark sat a little straighter and tightened his hands around the steering wheel, bracing himself. “In this morning’s top story, the mayor of Runyon Poke, Vermont, has issued a proclamation declaring cows within its borders sacred. ‘If they can worship cows in India, I don’t see why we can’t worship them here in Runyon Poke,’ Mayor Crouton was quoted as saying. Runyon Poke boasts a population of two hundred thirty-seven, not counting the cows. Its chief export is cottage cheese.”
Mark let out a long breath.
“Down in Washington,” Rex continued, “both houses of Congress have passed a bill requiring all newly elected senators and representatives to wear propeller beanies for their first three months in office. ‘People take Congress much too seriously,’ the Speaker of the House said in defense of the bill. ‘We want to introduce a little levity.’ The President is expected to sign the bill into law.”
Mark smiled.
“Closer to home, Boston’s mayor has declared a moratorium on snow. ‘I know we get snow in April sometimes,’ the mayor explained, ‘but we don’t want it. Enough is enough. Snow will be illegal until next November fifteenth.”’
Mark chuckled.
“Time to pay some bills, and then I’ll be back with more music and noise,” Rex said, segueing into an advertisement for a muffler repair company.
Okay. Mark wasn’t going to have to fire Rex this year. He exited the expressway and cruised down the street to the garage under the skyscraper that housed WBKX’s broadcast studio. At the bottom of the ramp, he inserted his card into the slot at the entry gate and entered the gloom of the garage. Even though the station’s broadcast antenna was positioned at the top of the building, the reception was lousy amid all the concrete. His car filled with hissing static and he turned the radio off.
Once he was parked, he lifted his leather bomber jacket from the seat next to him, tossed it over his shoulder and headed for the elevator, humming “Werewolves of London.” He couldn’t hit Zevon’s high-note howls, but he didn’t care. Rex had kept things under control this year, and Mark was feeling great.
As soon as he entered WBKX’s headquarters on the thirtieth floor, he was surrounded by Rex in the Morning again. Ceiling speakers in the reception area broadcast the station’s programming nonstop. He smiled at the receptionist and ambled down the hall to the studio from which Rex was broadcasting. The jingle of a national hamburger chain chased “Werewolves” from his mind. That jingle represented big bucks to the station. Mark’s smile expanded.
Rex’s voice returned when Mark was just steps from the door. “This news just in. Get out your hankies, ladies, because it’s going to make you weep.”
Mark paused in the hallway and held his breath.
“It was just two and a half months ago, on Valentine’s Day, that Boston Best magazine named Mark Lavin, our general manager here at WBKX, one of the five most desirable bachelors in Boston. Tragedy struck this morning when Lavin announced his engagement to comely Claire O’Connor. How’s that for a word, folks? Comely. Think about it.” He paused, leaving five seconds—an eternity in radio time—of dead air. “So cross Mark off your lists, ladies. But don’t forget, I’m still available. Give me a call here at the station if you want to explore the meaning of the word comely with me. And say good-bye and good luck to my boss, Mark Lavin, because Claire O’Connor is from this day forward the only comely he’ll be experiencing.”
Mark swore under his breath. That was not funny. Not funny at all.
He yanked open the control booth door and glared through the soundproof glass that separated Rex from his producer. Rex’s long mop of salt-and-pepper hair was partly restrained by his headset, and he kept his beard trimmed so it wouldn’t interfere with the microphone, but he still gave the appearance of someone who’d hit adolescence in the late 1960s and never outgrown either that decade or that life stage. “Weather update,” he intoned into the mike. “No snow forecast for today. Looks like the mayor’s word is law in this town. In honor of my boss’s engagement, let’s spin a tune about the joys of marriage.” “Wedding Bell Blues” spilled through the speakers into the control booth. Eyeing Mark through the glass, Rex grinned and signaled with a thumbs-up.
Mark signaled back with a thumbs-down. “What the hell is he doing?” he asked Rex’s producer, Gary, who sat at the controls, feeding Rex whatever he needed, from commercials to sound effects to questions and cues. “What was that crap about my being engaged?”
“April Fool’s Day,” Gary answered calmly. He was as mellow as Rex was hyper. “You’re supposed to laugh.”
“I’m not laughing. Tell him.” Mark gestured toward the microphone through which Gary communicated with Rex in the broadcast booth.
“Mark says he’s not laughing,” Gary reported into the mike. Rex shrugged, his grin unflagging.
“Ask him who this person is—this woman he’s announced to all of Boston that I’m marrying. I’ve never even heard of her!”
“He wants to know who his fiancée is,” Gary relayed to Rex. Rex winked, then swiveled around on his stool and busied himself with the CD racks along the back wall.
Mark gritted his teeth to keep from cursing. “Tell him his ass is toast,” he finally said.
Gary leaned toward his mike and said, “Mark would like to drink a toast to you.” Mark whacked Gary’s arm, but Gary was too busy laughing to care. And Rex was smart enough to keep his back to the window until Mark stormed out of the control booth.
CLAIRE HAD her coat off before she reached her office. A typical April day—not quite warm, not quite cold, almost sunny but the meteorologists were forecasting a chance of sprinkles. She’d dressed for every possibility, in a sweater set, lightweight wool slacks and her trench coat with its removable lining zipped in. She’d been too hot while riding the T, too cold while strolling across the plaza to City Hall. This must be what menopause was like: springtime in Boston.
“Hey, Claire!” Denise greeted her as she passed through the reception area. “Congratulations!”
Claire smiled vaguely. She had no idea what Denise was congratulating her for, but she’d been raised to acknowledge kind words with a smile. Inside her own tiny office, she flipped the light switch, turned on her computer and hooked her coat over a limb of the coat tree in the corner. Her computer issued a predictable chorus of buzzes and clicks as it warmed up.
“Claire?” Steve LaPina, one of the department’s staff engineers, peered into her office. His mouth spread into a huge grin as he spotted her behind her desk, on the verge of settling into her chair. “Get over here, you little sneak!”
“What?” She and Steve were certainly friendly enough to call each other names, but a little sneak? Claire was the least sneaky person she knew. And she was five-eight, hardly little. But Steve’s smile was infectious and his arms were spread wide. She circled her desk and accepted his hug. “What’s this all about?”
“What’s this all about?” he echoed, then laughed. “It’s no secret anymore! Wonderful news! I’m so happy for you!”
Before she could ask him what wonderful news he was so happy about, he released her, gave her chin an affectionate nudge with his knuckles, murmured, “You comely thing, you!” and strolled away, an extra bounce in his step.
Frowning, she returned to her desk and sank into her chair. Her computer monitor displayed the usual array of icons. Her desk calendar lay open to April 1, with a notation about a demolition hearing scheduled for one-thirty that afternoon. Her pens and pencils stood neatly in her beloved Red Sox mug, her framed posters of Faneuil Hall and the Old North Church hung on the wall opposite her…Everything was exactly as she’d left it yesterday. She hadn’t won the lottery, hadn’t received a promotion, hadn’t changed her hairstyle.
So why had Steve and Denise congratulated her?
She swiveled in her chair to reach her radio on the shelf behind her desk, and tuned the dial to WGBH, the public radio station. She needed the soothing strains of classical music to help her clear her thoughts. A Corelli concerto filled her office; she closed her eyes and let the music wash over her.
“Claire!”
She opened her eyes to find her doorway filled with a bouquet of silver helium balloons with “Congratulations!” printed on their shiny surfaces. The balloons entered the room and then she saw who was carrying them: Meryl, Beryl and JoAnn from Human Resources, all of them grinning so brightly she had to shut her eyes again. Too much silver. Too much joy.
The three women swept into her office, chattering excitedly, pressing the knotted strings of the balloons into her hand. Meryl mentioned something about a shower. Beryl cooed that her mother must be so thrilled. JoAnn issued a lovesick sigh and admitted to being terribly jealous. Then they swept out of her office, leaving her alone, clinging to the balloons.
What? she thought, panic creeping up her spine into her skull and down into her stomach, churning both her thoughts and the remnants of her breakfast. What was going on?
Maybe she was suffering from amnesia. Maybe she was dreaming this entire morning. Maybe she’d slipped through a wormhole and wound up in an alternate universe. Why was everyone congratulating her?
“Claire!” yet another well-wisher bellowed through her open door. This visitor was Maggie, one of her closest friends at the Landmarks Commission. “Oh, look at those balloons! Aren’t they cute?”
Claire gaped at the balloons, still in a queasy state of disbelief edged with panic. “What am I supposed to do with them?” she asked. “If I let go, they’ll fly up to the ceiling.”
“Tie them onto something,” Maggie said helpfully. She eased the strings out of Claire’s clenched fist and knotted them around the arm of her desk chair. “Where’d you get them?”
“The trio from Human Resources gave them to me,” Claire said, shaking her head and lowering her voice. “Maggie, you’ve got to help me. I have no idea why everyone is congratulating me.”
Maggie finished securing the balloons, then straightened up and stared at Claire. A bit shorter than Claire, a bit older and blessedly grounded, Maggie looked bemused. “You haven’t even made a formal announcement, and you’ve already forgotten?”
“Forgotten what? I don’t know what I’ve forgotten!” Claire realized she was babbling and pressed her lips together. She also closed her door. She didn’t want Denise or anyone else outside her office to eavesdrop and conclude that she was demented.
“Your wedding engagement?” Maggie suggested, studying Claire’s face as she enunciated each syllable. “Does that ring a bell?”
Her wedding engagement? “What are you talking about? I’m not engaged!”
“It was on the radio, Claire.”
“My wedding engagement? On the radio?” Pain throbbed inside her skull. “What wedding engagement? And why in the world would it be on the radio?”
“Your fiancé,” Maggie said, still speaking slowly, as if to an imbecile. “Mark Lavin? The head honcho of a radio station? Does any of this sound familiar?”
“No.” Claire dropped into her chair. Her elbow jostled the strings, and the balloons bobbed and rustled above her head.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, he’s quite a catch.”
“It doesn’t.” Claire gave her a hard look. “How would you happen to know he’s a catch? Do you know him? Do I know him?”
“You’re engaged to him, remember?”
“I’m not—” Claire sighed. She’d already denied her engagement several times. Either the radio was wrong or she’d lost her mind.
“You haven’t introduced me to him yet,” Maggie continued. “But I know he’s a catch thanks to the article in Boston’s Best a couple of months ago.”
“What article?” Claire asked warily. Her hands gripped the edge of her desk. She felt like one of the helium balloons—if she let go, she might just float away, completely out of this world, which she was no longer sure she recognized.
“Boston’s most desirable bachelors,” Maggie explained with forced patience. “They chose five, and he was one of them. Definitely the studliest of the bunch, too. I wonder if there’s a copy of the magazine anywhere. It was the Valentine’s Day issue.”
A Valentine’s Day magazine. A radio announcement. None of this made sense. Why would Claire O’Connor, of all people, be engaged to some studly Boston bachelor? Especially one who ran a radio station?
“Oh, my God,” she said as her memory stirred back to life.
“What? It’s beginning to ring a bell now?”
“Oh yeah,” Claire muttered. Her gaze drifted to the calendar open on her desk. April 1st. April Fool’s Day, and alarms were clanging inside her brain.
MARK WASN’T SURE what pissed him off the most: Rex’s attitude, his annoying practical joke or the idea of getting married. It wasn’t as if he was militantly opposed to the concept of marriage. His parents were happily married and he assumed that eventually he would be happily married, too. But he’d just been named one of the city’s hottest bachelors by Boston’s Best, and he wanted to savor that status for a while. Although he’d been surprised that the magazine had chosen him, along with a successful fund manager at Fidelity, a celebrity chef at a fusion restaurant in the South End, an orthopedic surgeon at Mass General and a young Boston University professor, he’d appreciated his place on that short list. He’d appreciated even more the attention it brought, the fame and glory. Boston’s Best had run a full-page photo of him sitting on a park bench in the Public Garden, a smaller shot of him at his desk, surrounded by stacks of CDs, and a five-paragraph profile making him sound pretty damned special. He knew better than to believe his own hype…but the hype was fun. He’d relished the sudden increase in flirting that came his way, and the good-natured jabs from envious colleagues and friends. He’d been pleased by the publicity the profile had brought to WBKX. And thinking of himself as one cool Boston dude? Yeah, he’d loved it.
And now Rex was marrying him off. The bastard!
Mountains of work awaited his attention, but he couldn’t concentrate. Instead, he lifted his phone and punched in his secretary’s extension. “Ellie?” he said when he heard her voice. “Do me a favor. Find out everything you can about Claire O’Connor.”
“Your fiancée?”
He heard laughter in her voice, but he ignored the taunt. “Find out who the hell she is.”
“You’re marrying her and you don’t know who she is?”
“Just do it,” he snapped, then slammed down his phone.
“THERE YOU GO,” Maggie said, waltzing into Claire’s office an hour later with a magazine in her hand, her index finger wedged between the pages. She slapped the magazine onto Claire’s desk and flipped it open to the page she’d been marking with her finger. “There’s your fiancé.”
Claire stared. She’d been doing a lot of that since she’d settled at her desk—more specifically staring into space, contemplating why Rex Crandall had chosen her to make fun of and trying to figure out what to do about it. She’d be happy to ignore the bogus wedding announcement, but that was impossible when colleagues kept poking their heads into her office to shout their congratulations and question her about the time and place of the nuptials. How many other people had heard Rex’s radio show? How many hundreds of thousands of Boston-area listeners believed she was engaged to this Mark Lavin person, whoever the hell he was?
She directed her gaze to the photo of Mark Lavin, which occupied a full, glossy page of Boston’s Best. Oh, God—he was gorgeous. Thick, dark hair tumbled in waves around a face of angles and edges. His eyes were deep-set and the color of espresso, his nose long and narrow and his smile wickedly seductive. He wore a leather jacket with the collar turned up, faded jeans and sneakers—the kind of outfit rich people wore when they wanted to prove that despite their wealth they were really Average Joes.
He was no Average Joe, though. For one thing, he’d been declared one of the top five bachelors in the city, and for another…he was gorgeous.
The facing page contained a smaller photo of him, seated at a desk heaped with CD jewel cases. He wore a blue shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up; a colorful tie hung loose below his throat. His hair was as tousled in the indoor photo as in the outdoor one. It wasn’t exactly long, but it was long enough. Long enough for a woman to lose her fingers in its thick waves.
She wasn’t that woman, though. She wasn’t the type to lose her fingers in the hair of a breathtakingly handsome bachelor she didn’t even know, even if she was supposedly engaged to him.
“You can see why everyone’s congratulating you,” Maggie remarked, ogling the larger photo of Mark Lavin. “This is a guy a lot of women would like to marry.”
“How do you know that?” Claire retorted. “Maybe he’s obnoxious. Maybe he picks his nose in public and tortures puppies for fun.”
“Look at those eyes,” Maggie argued, gesturing toward the photo. “Do they look like the eyes of a man who tortures puppies?”
No. They looked like the eyes of a man who enjoyed sex. Claire felt her cheeks heat as that unbidden thought drifted through her mind.
Her phone rang. She prayed the call wasn’t another congratulations—although she’d have just as much difficulty getting through a conversation about any other subject. Sighing, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Claire Connor?” The voice was male and unfamiliar.
“I’m Claire O’Connor, if that’s who you’re trying to reach.”
“Right. Sorry.” He hesitated, then said, “This is Mark Lavin. Your fiancé.”
Claire sent Maggie a frantic look and mouthed, It’s him. Maggie jabbed her finger at the magazine photo with a wide-eyed questioning look and Claire nodded. Her gaze remained on the picture, as she tried to connect it to the dark, gravelly voice on the other end of the line.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“Rough morning?”
An unexpected smile teased her lips. Shifting in her chair, she jostled the strings tied to the arm, causing the balloons to bob above her head. “It’s been awful.”
“That bad?”
“I’ve got friends angry with me for failing to tell them you and I were seeing each other. I’ve got other friends grilling me about where we’ve registered for our wedding presents. And I’ve got—” her elbow jostled the balloon strings again “—balloons.”
“Balloons.”
“Yes.”
“This thing has obviously gotten out of control,” he said grimly. For some reason, his solemn tone made Claire want to laugh. After a moment, he added, “We should probably get together and come up with a strategy to shut down this rumor. How about if I stop by your office so we can work something out?”
“No,” Claire said quickly. “No, don’t come here.” Good God, if he came to her office, everyone would make a huge fuss. Meryl, Beryl and JoAnn might bring even more balloons.
“I’d ask you to come here…”
“No.” If she went to Mark Lavin’s office, she might run into Rex Crandall, and she didn’t trust herself not to punch him in the nose.
“Can we meet somewhere, then?”
She eyed her calendar. There, right below the bright red April 1 was her note about the demolition hearing. “I’ve got a meeting at one-thirty. It could drag on for hours.” And the odds were good that people at the meeting would have heard she was betrothed. Her gaze drifted from her calendar back to the magazine, to Mark Lavin’s dark, mesmerizing eyes.
“Five-thirty,” he suggested. “We can meet at the Kinsale. That’s right near your office. You’re in City Hall, right?”
She supposed she ought to be flattered that he’d made an effort to find out where his alleged bride-to-be worked. Of course, she knew more about him than he knew about her, thanks to the article in Boston’s Best. She knew that he was the general manager of WBKX, he was thirty-two, he’d grown up in western Massachusetts but now lived in Somerville, he’d graduated from Wesleyan University and earned a master’s degree at Emerson—and he loved being single. In case there was any doubt, the last line of the article quoted him as saying, “I love being single.”
“Claire?”
She gave herself a shake. “Yes. The Kinsale at five-thirty.”
“And we’ll figure this mess out,” he promised. “We’ll come up with a way to set the record straight.”
“And we’ll hire a hit man to take care of Rex Crandall.”
He laughed. “That, too.”