AFTER WAKING UP to a text from my mother confirming that the Loving Lucian cast interviews would run in the second hour of the Today show, I wasn’t a bit surprised when my cell phone started ringing the instant I arrived at the office.
I didn’t have to look at the display to know that it was Marietta again. Sheesh, I got the message. I’m recording the show.
Now was not the time to deal with an excited mother, not when I could see Patsy giving me the stink-eye from her hall monitor post.
“Welcome back,” I said to Patsy after the call went to voice mail. “How are you feeling?”
With a determined set to her pointy chin, the tawny-haired legal assistant with the gray roots glared at the computer monitor in front of her. “I’ll live.”
The angry swelling of her jaw line gave me fair warning to tread lightly in her vicinity. Unfortunately, the phone in my tote bag chose that moment to start chirping again like a hungry bird.
Patsy slanted her glare in its direction like she wanted to wring its little neck.
I reached into my tote to silence it and then spotted Rox’s name as the caller ID. “What’s up?” I asked, rushing into the break room so that if she were calling to tell me that she was in labor, I wouldn’t scream in Patsy’s ear and become the next neck to be wrung. “Is it time?”
“No. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this kid doesn’t ever want to come out.”
Dropping my tote on the table in the center of the room, I pulled out a chair. “Patience is a virtue.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m fresh out. But never mind that. Tell me that you’re near a TV ‘cause I just turned on the Today show and—”
“My mother’s on. I know.”
“She’s on, too?”
“What do you mean, too?”
“Chris is on. This very minute, teaching the co-hosts how to make chicken parmesan.”
I knew that my ex-husband had recently released a cookbook. No doubt to cash in on his celebrity chef status after rocketing to fame on a cooking channel. “Good for him,” I said, trying not to sound as bitter as the coffee dregs simmering at the bottom of the carafe ten feet away.
“Uh-huh. That scored a negative nine on the sincerity meter, but considering he was such a jerk, I think you’re being generous.”
“How’s he doing?” I winced, hating myself for caring.
“You should turn on a TV there and see for yourself. He’s making love to the camera like someone crowned him Prince Charming of the kitchen.”
Of course he was.
“Eww, I have to warn you, though. These chicks are fawning over Chris so much that you’ll probably spit up in your coffee.”
There was a flat screen mounted in the conference room across the hall, but after almost two years of watching my ex’s charmed life from a distance, my dumped ass felt no compunction to see it in high definition. “My grandmother’s recording it. I can watch later.”
“Just as well. They’re talking about his cookbook now, so it sounds like they’re wrapping up.”
That was also what we should do so that Patsy didn’t come in and catch me on the phone instead of making coffee.
And then Rox uttered a breathy “Oh, my.”
I waited, expecting some sort of blow-by-blow account of what she was watching. “What?”
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
“What?!”
“Your ex just made a little announcement,” Rox said, making it sound like I wouldn’t be happy to hear it.
“How little?”
“Uh … actually, pretty major.”
Chris already had the book out that he’d been hyping, he’d had the TV deal for over a year, and he and his supermodel girlfriend had become social media darlings since getting together over the holidays. How much more fairy dust needed to rain down on the prince who couldn’t see his happily-ever-after happening with me?
“Honey,” Rox said with an ache in her voice. “He’s engaged.”
* * *
Almost ten hours later, I sat cross-legged on my grandmother’s living room floor and stared transfixed at my ex-husband’s beaming face as he announced the news of his engagement to golden-haired, Danish beauty Raina Lassen.
“Look at the act he’s putting on,” Gram muttered from her recliner. “That bozo’s never looked that happy in his life.”
Certainly not in his life with me.
I paused on the moment when the camera got a tight shot of Chris’s jubilant face as he waved to the bride-to-be to join him onstage. “It’s no act.” And why should it be? Chris now had the “more” he’d admitted he wanted the night he walked out of our marriage.
“I get what the turkey sees in her,” Gram said when I played the rest of the segment. “Look at her. She’s gorgeous. But what does she get out of that relationship beyond a temperamental chef to do all the cooking?”
I backed up to the part when Raina stepped out to join him wearing zebra-striped leggings, no doubt in a size that mere mortals past the age of puberty shouldn’t be allowed to fit into. “I don’t think she eats much.” Beyond that I didn’t want to know.
“Maybe not, but I see a little belly.”
All I could see was impossibly long, shapely legs. “Doubtful. She’s a swimsuit model.”
“Not over the next six months, she’s not.”
“What?” While I froze the image where the camera zoomed in on Raina, a pair of pink fuzzy slippers appeared at my right.
“Yes, sirree. That girl’s gonna be eating for two.” My grandmother stabbed an arthritic finger in the direction of the flat screen where Raina was running a graceful hand over an unmistakable baby bump. “’Cause there’s a bun in that oven.”
I shuddered, the air vacating my lungs as if I’d been sucker-punched by the guy who had insisted that he never wanted to have children.
“You okay, honey?” Gram asked.
“Sure.” I was just surprised is all. Because my ex had been a much better liar than I’d given him credit for.
I pressed play to demonstrate how okay I was. Which might have been a good plan if Chris hadn’t kissed the future Mrs. Scolari’s cheek with such crushing tenderness that it made my eye sockets burn.
“He makes nice with the cameras rolling, but a tiger doesn’t change his stripes. And that one there showed himself to be a real selfish bastard. For the sake of the little one, though, I hope they make it work.”
For the sake of the baby that I had once wanted with that bastard, I sure hoped that my grandmother was right.
* * *
After several hours of fielding calls from well-intended friends and family members, including a ticked-off mother whose interview got cut for time, it came as a relief to hunker down the next morning with a copy machine that didn’t want to talk about my feelings.
Some of the ladies working on the third floor who had known me most of my life gave me sympathetic smiles when we passed in the hallway, so the news about my ex had obviously made the rounds.
As Donna had reminded me when she called last night, soon this would be yesterday’s news and it would all blow over. Marietta’s movie would come out and she would once again be the Digby that everyone in Port Merritt wanted to talk about. In the meantime, I just needed to act like Chris’s latest media foray was of no consequence to me, which it wasn’t.
Not really.
Of course, it would be much easier to talk myself into that little lie if I hadn’t just stepped into Duke’s for lunch and seen all heads turn to me.
Good grief.
“Is there something going on here that I should know?” I asked my great-uncle as I entered his kitchen.
The tall man flipping a greasy hamburger patty knitted his bushy silver eyebrows. “Not anymore there’s not.”
I cringed. “Want to fill me in?”
Scowling through the cut-out window over the grill at the approaching grandmotherly waitress giving him a dirty look, Duke vented a breath. “Unlike some people, I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who started it,” Lucille Kressey protested, coming to a stop in her squeaky orthopedic shoes to tack an order ticket to the aluminum wheel in front of her longtime boss. She looked around the wheel at me. “And Miriam sure didn’t mean any harm.”
Huh?
The only Miriam I knew was a Duke’s regular and one of Lucille’s favorite gossip wranglers. “Why do I need to know that?”
Lucille’s light blue eyes widened with alarm. “Uh … Steve didn’t tell you?”
My heart sunk to the pit of my churning stomach. “What have you done?”