Chapter Ten

Inside her cottage the walls felt as if they were closing in. This was going to be a long three months.

Shane gave her a sheepish grin. “You feeling as awkward as I am?”

“Yup.”

“How’s Romano’s pizza?”

“The best.”

“They make a grandma pie?”

“Yes. It’s, uh, my favorite.”

“Okay, to celebrate moving-in day, let me get us a pizza.” He pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and tapped his fingers on the screen. She wished she had something to do with her hands, too.

“Um.” She didn’t want to start this arrangement off by doing dinners together. She wanted to draw a line between them from the get-go.

He looked up from his screen. “What toppings do you like?”

“What?”

“Pepperoni? Peppers and onions?”

“Oh,” she said. “Um, plain.”

He tapped his screen some more, then slipped the phone into his back pocket. “They should be here in twenty minutes. I put some beer in the fridge. Hope that’s okay.”

She looked at the refrigerator as if she’d never seen it before. “Sure.”

“Want one?”

He walked past her and went into the kitchen as if he lived here. Oh God. Not even an hour in and she was so filled with regret she might explode. She followed him into the kitchen, like a guest. He pulled a beer from the fridge shelf and looked up at her.

“I don’t really like beer.” She stepped around him and peered into the cavern of the appliance. He had taken over a full shelf with his food supplies, all crowded in a haphazard fashion.

“I, uh, see you’ve added some other items in here.”

“Yeah,” he said as he twisted off the cap of his beer. “That okay?”

She turned to face him. “Can I ask you why you have four bottles of ranch dressing?”

He gave her a grin. “You know how it is. You go in the food store, and you can’t remember if you have dressing at home, so you buy another one.”

“That doesn’t happen if you keep a list. I make lists.”

“Uh-huh.”

She reached for the half-empty bottle of white zinfandel.

“Ah,” he said. “Pink wine.”

“It’s not pink.”

He snapped his fingers. “Right. You don’t like pink.”

Well, he retains information. That would be good for when they needed to recall details about each other for the big fat lie they were involved in.

He took a swig of his beer, and she couldn’t help lingering her gaze on the strong muscles of his neck, his thick forearm as he held the bottle up to his mouth, the bulge of his triceps. When had she formulated an addendum in her resolve to hate men? Apparently, now she’d decided she could notice them.

Kit went to the cabinet, withdrew a wineglass, and poured herself a measure. They needed to come up with some rules about space. She could not spend the next three months in the same spot in this house with this appealing fireman. She tried to have her mind chant that he had a girlfriend, as she’d promised herself she’d do. But it didn’t want to.

He was looking at her in a way that threatened to turn her inside out, and she quickly lowered her head to study the fascinating floor tiles. “I don’t mean to be difficult. About the, um, stuff in the fridge.”

“You’re not. Hey, this is your place, and all of a sudden you’ve got company. I get it.”

She lifted her gaze to meet his and could not look away. Her ridiculous insides did a shimmy. She sipped her wine.

“Um, you have any paper plates?”

“Yes.” She went to a cabinet and opened the door. “And I’ll get some napkins. And we’ll need the pizza cutter,” she said without looking away from her task.

“I’m pretty sure pizza comes already sliced up.”

She flashed him a look. “I know that. But sometimes I like to cut a slice in half.”

Shane shrugged, and she ignored the look on his face. “Okay. Where is it?”

She pointed without looking. “In that drawer.”

He went to the drawer and slowly and respectfully pulled it open.

She watched him peruse the contents of the drawer. Everything was lined up in perfect order the way she liked it, but right now her fastidiousness seemed silly.

“Wow,” he mumbled under his breath. “This could be a surgeon’s tray of kitchen gadgets.”

“It’s just more efficient, that’s all.”

Shane tilted his head and chuckled. “Measuring spoons in size order. Knives with all handles facing the same way, twisty ties in a little cup.” He withdrew the pizza cutter and held it up to her. “Efficient.”

“Are you picking on my junk drawer?”

“That’s a junk drawer?” He laughed.

She cracked a smile. “I like order.”

“So I see.”

The doorbell sounded, and he went to retrieve their order from Romano’s. A couple of minutes later, he came back into the kitchen with a boisterous announcement of “Dinnertime!”

He put the box onto the kitchen table and flipped open the lid. Half the pizza was plain, and the other half was covered in slimy-looking, wilted green peppers and translucent strips of onions, too reminiscent of the fateful chili dog she’d wolfed and then tossed into a trash can.

“Bleh,” she said.

“Oh, come on.” He lifted a slice into his hands.

Her fingers curled at her sides. Did this guy believe in using utensils, or did he have to just touch everything?

He nudged a slice with his fingertip. Did he plan to manhandle the entire pie? Her stomach flopped. What was next? Would he start licking all the slices?

“You don’t like peppers and onions?”

“Not on pizza.”

“Try it.”

She handed him a paper plate. Please don’t stand there eating over the box. “No, thanks.”

She picked a plain slice he hadn’t yet touched and slipped it onto a plate sans spatula. When in Rome. But she didn’t take a bite of the pizza. Instead, she took a nice big gulp of her white zinfandel.

“Okay,” he said after a swallow. “So Saturday is our first time to show your family how we’re a couple. Am I right? Isn’t that what I heard your cousin Cokie say?”

“Her name’s Co-Co, short for Cordelia.”

He shook his head. “How are you even talking to her?”

Kit snickered. “I have to tolerate her. In my family we all make nice-nice. My mother and her sister, Co-Co’s mom, are so close, and I don’t want to be the cause of any divisiveness between them. So for my mother’s sake, I’m keeping the peace. Just getting through it.” She couldn’t believe how pathetic she sounded saying it out loud. “I realize it sounds lame.”

“Okay, here’s what we do, then. We do our very best to be convincing so you get through the wedding festivities.” Shane looked at his watch. “And I’m supposed to FaceTime with Dana in a few minutes. I’ll tell her the story so it’ll be all on the up and up. She’ll be fine.”

“Oh lordy, what are you going to say to her?”

He shrugged. “Just the simple truth. One hand washing the other. I’m pretty sure she’ll be cool about it.”

“This is a disaster.”

Shane tossed another piece of pizza crust on his paper plate. He wiped his mouth and hands with a napkin. “It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. I’m just helping in a tricky situation. If I tell Dana the circumstances, she’ll understand.”

Suddenly she wondered why he was so sure his girlfriend wouldn’t be bothered by his pretending to be involved with her. Would he tell this girlfriend there was nothing to be worried about because Kit was so undesirable? Why was she feeling off-put by this? What did she care? She was losing her mind.

Her cell phone sounded, and when she slipped it from her pocket, she groaned. “My mother,” she said to the ceiling.

“Game time.” He pushed up from the chair. “I’m going to make that call to Dana.”

Kit put her phone to her ear and with her other hand opened the refrigerator door. She pulled the wine bottle out by its neck.

Regina Baxter didn’t wait for a greeting but instead charged right in. “Kitrina, I’m going to pull your hair.”

“Nice, Ma. Good to hear from you.”

“Why do I have to hear big news about my only daughter from my sister? What’s the matter with you? I’m your mother. You only get one mother, Kitrina. You have news, I’m first. You don’t hide things from me.”

“Ma, listen…” Kit poured another glass of the wine. “You’ve been on a cruise.” She took a sip. “So I wasn’t going to call you ship-to-shore for the status of my dating life. And it’s not that big a deal.”

“No? What do you call living with a man?”

Kit plopped down onto the wooden chair. “Okay, yes, he moved in…”

“What’s his name? My sister said he’s a fireman, and she thinks he’s Irish.”

“His name is Shane Dugan, and it’s true he’s a fireman, and yes, I’m pretty sure he’s Irish.”

“You’re pretty sure? How well do you know this man that’s living with you? And is there a ring coming? No daughter of mine is just going to live with a man with no plan for the future.”

She downed the rest of her wine. “He’s nice. That’s what I know about him, okay? He’s nice.”

“I guess we’ll see for ourselves at Dee Dee’s dinner party.”

Kit considered switching to hard liquor. She was sure there was a bottle of some dark-brown, poison-tasting stuff in the cabinet leftover from Christmas. She was instantly reminded of the horror of this past holiday season when Co-Co and Brian discovered they were meant to be. She had bought the liquor to help drown the memory of it but hadn’t been able to choke down more than a single sip of a substance that to her unsophisticated palate was no tastier than cough syrup.

Shane came back into the room and went into the fridge for another beer. She pointed to the phone at her ear and rolled her eyes. He offered a crooked grin.

“How’d you meet him anyway? Did you go online like I told you to do? My friend Mitzi met a millionaire on a dating site. They’re very happy. He bought her a convertible, if you can stand it. I think I might try it.”

“No, Ma. I, uh, didn’t meet him online.” She watched for Shane’s reaction, expecting another of his pleasant smirky smiles, but he seemed distracted. He sat at the kitchen table, peeling the label off his beer bottle.

“How did you meet this fireman, then? Were you on fire?”

She slid her gaze over to Shane. They’d have to come up with an ironclad story on how they met, and they needed some kind of cheat sheet or something with regard to personal details. This was going to be work, especially with her bloodhound of a mother.

This was the craziest thing she’d ever prepared to do. She didn’t do crazy things. She was the sensible one, the reliable one, the good daughter, the kinder cousin. In one mad moment she’d shot all those attributes to kingdom come.

“I’ll answer all your questions on Saturday, okay? But for now, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” her mother said. “I have so much to do anyway. I taped my soaps and have to catch up before I see your Aunt Dee Dee. She likes to ruin it for me if she’s seen it before I do. And there’s big doings on The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“Mom, Mom….” When her mother went off on a soap opera tangent, it was tough reeling her in. One time she’d held up the line at the deli when she was talking soap opera with the lady slicing her no-salt turkey breast. “We’ll catch up some more tomorrow, okay?”

“But you haven’t told me about the car situation. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, that the debacle with the dead tree happened while I was away.”

She filled her mother in on the tree and the car, leaving out the part where she had no money to rent a new vehicle, hence the new pretend boyfriend.

“And that awful man next door to you actually helped you get it all squared away?”

“Yes, Mother, and Hop’s not awful. He’s all bark and no bite.”

Her mother inhaled deeply through her nose. “I don’t know why you befriended him.”

As much as she loved her mother, Kit had to admit she tended to judge people by their covers. God love her, Mom’s first meeting with Hop had been when Kit had first moved into the cottage. He’d stood outside with the moving van, giving orders to the two guys carrying her things into her new house. He’d just taken it upon himself to supervise the operation, which, in truth, had been pushy. All Kit had known at the time was her neighbor was an older man who went by the name of Hop. When Mom was moving too slowly across the driveway, carrying a punch bowl, a house-warming gift Kit knew she’d never use, the two movers couldn’t get around her with her headboard. Hop had called out a “Move it, sister.” That was all it had taken for Regina Baxter to dislike the guy. “Of all the nerve.”

Mom switched gears. “I can’t wait to meet your man.” The words came out in a singsong that rose in pitch with each word. Ever since Mom noticed that Oprah, her idol, tended to talk like that when she was excited, she had adopted the habit. “I’m so happy for you.” More singsong.

When the call was over, Kit turned to Shane. His green eyes lacked their usual glint, and they appeared darker, almost olive toned. Maybe he was realizing himself what a crazy prospect this was. Maybe his girlfriend wasn’t as understanding about this lunacy as he had hoped. Maybe he was backing out, and then what would she do? She couldn’t give him his money back even if she wanted to. She’d already put in the paperwork for a two-year lease of a sweet little Chevy. There was no saying never mind to car dealers.

She had to find out what Shane was thinking. “Well, it’s official,” she said. “My mother can’t wait to meet you.”

“We’d better get our story straight then, huh?”

“Shane.” His name felt foreign to her lips. “Did you Skype with Dana?”

“Yes, but just for a minute. She was in a hurry. Shocker.”

She didn’t know what he meant by the sarcasm, but a strange twist was going on in her stomach. Was Dana going to tell him to pull the plug on this lie?

“Did you talk with her about our, uh, arrangement?”

He held her gaze. “There wasn’t time.”

An awkward pause hung in the air, and after two glasses of wine, she felt a little fuzzy brained and unable to fill the void with any quips to coax that jovial expression back to Shane’s face. She liked the easy smile he usually proffered. Instead, she just stared at him.

Finally, he locked gazes with her. “I think Dana might be seeing another guy.”