Whose Wife Is It, Anyway

44 Pages·2016·0.18 MB·English

by  Mittman Stevi

Harlequin NEXT Online Read
Whose Wife Is It, Anyway?
by Stevi Mittman
Decorator Teddi Bayer has a knack for getting into trouble wherever she goes. And it appears an
industry conference in Atlantic City is going to be no exception. Although Teddi thinks sharing a suite
with her tag-along mother for three days is going to be the most unbearable part of the experience, the
trip quickly goes from bad to worse when she stumbles upon a possible kidnapping!
Can Detective Dreamboat bail her out this time?
Chapter One
Many adventures start out with the heroine stepping out of a limousine. You
know—short black skirt, one long leg in a silk stocking, a stiletto heel touching
the pavement. I wish I was in one of those adventures instead of this one.
Oh, I had the limo, courtesy of my mother. But then, I also had my mother.
Frankly, if I’d had anything sharper than my Treo’s stylus with me, this
adventure would be taking place at some police precinct halfway between Long
Island and Atlantic City, right around the spot I realized it was either her or me.
One of us wasn’t going to make it to the first annual “Using the Web to Increase
Your Decorating Business” convention.
I don’t know what I was thinking allowing her to come along anyway. Maybe by
some miracle of latitude or weather conditions, we’d suddenly get along.
Not.
More likely, it was my father’s offer to pay for the conference, upgrade my rack
room to a suite, hire a limo to get us to the hotel and treat us to dinner and a
show on his credit cards while he stayed home to watch my children. Maybe it
was the way he begged. Still, I can’t claim I didn’t know what I was getting into.
After all, Dad was willing to foot the bill for all of that for a weekend without
Mom wasn’t he?
You’re right. I was too gullible, too naive. I wanted to believe it when she
You’re right. I was too gullible, too naive. I wanted to believe it when she
promised she’d disappear to a spa every day while I got to escape my kids, my
ex and my bills for three days of seminars for people more at home with a paint
roller than a keyboard. I admit it.
But the moment we climbed inside and the driver shut that limo door, I could tell
it was a mistake.
Bobbie, my business partner and best friend, warned me. Drew, my…uh…my…
Oh, alright, alright! My boyfriend—wow that sounds juvenile coming from a
nearly forty year-old—warned me. Even my kids warned me.
Did I listen? Or did I think I could handle the woman, think it would be nice to
have someone across the dinner table, think this would be the time we found
“common ground.” Okay, yes, I admit it. Trite as it sounds, I thought this could
be the time we bonded.
Little did I know that even Industrial Strength Super Glue wouldn’t have done
the trick.
Somehow we managed to survive the packing, barely, Mom telling me what not
to wear like an ad for the TV show. But then, in the limo, when she actually
asked the driver whether any of the rich men he chauffeurs might be interested in
me, reality set in. This would be the longest three days of my life. Asking wasn’t
bad enough. She then tried to slip him my phone number, telling him to find
someone who was good looking, rich, and kind to mothers-in-law.
I reminded her that Drew was in the picture, but she made some crack about
deleting that picture, burning the card, throwing out the camera, and she started
putting her order in with the poor driver.
“I’m not in the market for a husband,” I assured him, which reminded me of an
e-mail joke about a woman going shopping at the New Husband Store, where
you can buy husbands, but only if you obey their very stringent shopping rules:
you can only shop at the store once and you can only go up to the next floor by
forgoing the opportunity to return to a lower floor.
On the first floor there is a sign that says These men have jobs. The woman is
intrigued, but she continues to the second floor, where the sign reads: These men
have jobs and love kids. Thinking that while that’s nice, she wants more, she
continues upward. The sign on the third floor reads: These men have jobs, love
kids, and are extremely good looking. "Wow," she thinks, but feels compelled to
keep going. She goes to the fourth floor, which reads: These men have jobs, love
kids, are drop-dead gorgeous and help with housework. She can hardly stand it,
but still she goes to the fifth floor, where the sign reads: These men have jobs,
love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with housework, and have a strong
romantic streak.
She is so tempted she almost stays, but in the end she goes up to the sixth floor,
where the sign reads: Floor 6—You are visitor #31,456,012 to this floor. There
are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are
impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.
Right across from the Husband Store there is a Wife Store. Same rules. Different
signs. The first floor has wives that love sex. The second floor has wives that
love sex and have money. The third through sixth floors have never been visited.
My mother howled when I related it to her, and the limo driver nodded his head
vehemently, like this joke was profound. She told him we’d settle for one of the
men on the second floor.
Finally we pull up to the hotel, where she makes a big show of getting out of the
limo. It’s not easy to make a show in Atlantic City, where the hotels are
overwhelming and even the doormen are dressed to the nines. At least the Town
Car suits the hotel, which is one of the fanciest ones on the strip. The doorman
grabs our bags while Mom loudly informs him that her daughter is a very
successful decorator and staying in hotels that look like they were built to
impress a queen is nothing out of the ordinary for me.
She’s right. I stayed at a Motel 6 last year that was just like this.
Except for the doorman, the lobby, the rooms, the amenities and the location.
Chapter Two
I head directly for the conference registration table, suggesting that Mom check
into the hotel. She ignores me, sticking to me like she’s been Gorilla-Glued as I
take my place in line behind a man who is fiddling with Jaguar keys and
bouncing in his Geox loafers. He has on a casually elegant golf shirt with a high
end logo, freshly pressed chinos and an alligator belt with a monogrammed
end logo, freshly pressed chinos and an alligator belt with a monogrammed
silver buckle. On his wrist is a Patek Philippe watch that makes my mother’s jaw
drop. She elbows me in the side. When I don’t respond, she makes small talk
with him herself.
“You’re not a decorator, are you?” she inquires, trying to hide any trace of a
Long Island accent which tends to bring to mind people of Joey Butafucco’s ilk.
“I only ask because everyone knows that they’re all gay.”
The man looks at me, clearly amused, and I smile feebly and shrug my shoulders
as if I don’t know who this woman is either.
I wish.
“Oh, not the women, of course,” my mother says when she catches him
assessing me. “They’re straight. Not that I can speak for all of them, but my
daughter is.” She gestures toward me with her chin. So much for pretending I
don’t know her.
“Would you mind holding this for me a moment?” my mother asks. I go to reach
for the spa brochure she’s picked up and suddenly found too heavy. Rather than
hand it to me, she hands it to the gentleman. As he reaches for it, I see her study
the third finger of his left hand.
He sees it, too.
“Do you still want me to hold this?” he asks, chuckling as he takes it. He’s
clearly enjoying my mother’s antics a good deal more than I. Of course, if it was
someone else’s mother I’d probably be wishing for a Poise pad right now instead
of a hole in the floor into which I could crawl.
“Are you Catholic?” my mother asks him. “Or is divorce a possibility?”
Mortified doesn’t half cover my situation but the man laughs, perhaps a little too
heartily and tells her that he’s Jewish.
My mother touches his arm intimately. “Of course you are,” she says. “I could
tell by the watch.”
She continues to flirt with him on my behalf while I die a little more with each
second that watch ticks off.
second that watch ticks off.
The line moves up and the man handing out the welcome packets behind the
desk—who is handsome, well-groomed and just a little too polished to be
straight—hands my mother’s new friend his folder without asking the man’s
name. Then he looks at me, expectantly. I make some little joke about how I’m
disappointed that he doesn’t know my name, too, but he just grimaces and waits.
“Teddi Bayer,” I supply, and he fishes out a folder and hands it to me. I turn and
stumble over my mother, who is breathing down my neck. She, in turn, bumps
into the man she’s hoping will divorce the wife he already has to marry me. He
knocks into a flower arrangement the size of a small country, causing pollen dust
to sprinkle down on anyone in the vicinity. Several people sneeze. When I do,
my folder slips from my grasp and the contents spill out on the prettily tiled
floor.
My next husband bends down gallantly to help pick up the pieces while my
mother, teetering precariously in higher heels than she usually wears, loses her
balance and almost falls over him. He reaches out to steady her and leads her to
a chair. While he’s securing her, I pick up his folder, mine, my mother’s
brochure, several stargazer lilies whose stems have been broken in the mayhem,
the handles to my luggage as well as my mother’s. I stumble toward the throne
he’s ensconced her in looking like a sherpa following with the mule.
Only I’m the mule.
Once we are both convinced that she is fine, I hand him his packet and leave her
flirting with him while I head for the hotel registration to check us in.
Waiting in yet another line I glance back over my shoulder to check again on
Mom and catch a look that passes between her knight in shining armor and the
guy handing out the registration packets. It’s electric. Anticipatory.
I can’t help but wonder if his wife knows about his affair.
Chapter Three
As promised, my father has upgraded our room to a suite. It’s perfect in every
way except that my mother is occupying the bed next to mine. Unless, she
reminds me, I find someone with promise, in which case she is happy to spend
reminds me, I find someone with promise, in which case she is happy to spend
the night in the casino. There are probably weirder things than your mother
wishing you’d shack up with someone you just met, but at the moment I can’t
think of any.
She calls my father and complains about the flight, the limo ride and the hotel. I
take my cell into the bathroom, call Drew and complain about her. To his credit,
he doesn’t use the words I told you so, but his laughter says it loud and clear.
When I emerge she has ordered two diet cokes from room service, which costs
more than a case of them at home. Actually, more than two cases.
We spend a few minutes hanging clothes that would otherwise wrinkle. Okay—
that are already wrinkled in my case. I’m hoping the wrinkles will simply hang
out because I can’t remember the last time I ironed anything besides my kids’
costumes for school plays—and that only when they wouldn’t hang out in the
bathroom after running a hot shower. My mother insists this is not something to
brag about—this from a woman who hasn’t ironed since the day she gave birth
to a son (my older brother David) and my father hired live-in help for her as a
reward.
I offer to put the rest of her belongings into drawers and her toiletries in the
bathroom and suggest that she go check out the hotel. She can see what’s
playing in their theater, scope out the casino and find the nearest spa. I’m sure
she’ll want to rest instead, but she surprises me. After reminding me I’m not
getting any younger and I’d better make the most of the few days I have left
before I fall over the hill and roll toward old age and spinsterhood, she leaves me
in peace. Or in pieces.
I throw my stuff in the lower drawers and carefully put her fancy underwear and
ecru knit tops in the upper drawers before climbing up on the king-size bed with
my conference packet, ready to make a plan.
Every seminar sounds the same to me, and choosing which ones to attend is no
easy task. Mastering Dreamweaver, Mastering FrontPage, Mastering
WebBuilding. Where’s something useful, like Web Building for Dummies?
There are lots of promotional materials stuffed into the folder’s pockets.
Cleverly suited to interior designers, they are printed on tape measures, small
paint palettes, mini calculators. There’s a DVD, and I haul out my laptop, fire it
up and pop the disk in the drive.
Blue isn’t one of my favorite colors, but the room that comes up on the screen is
a knockout—the palest turquoise wall soothes as it excites and the taupe
Chesterfield couch that sits in front of it makes for a kind of zen serenity.
There’s a deep turquoise raku floor vase next to the couch, with pale green reeds
that soar toward the ceiling. A black coffee table with clean lines has several
candles glowing at one end. At the other end is what looks like a pistol. If you
don’t have this room, just shoot yourself? If you’re not this good a decorator,
you might as well just do yourself in?
I take a screen capture because I think that this room is exactly what one of my
clients is looking for, and while I wouldn’t copy it exactly, I could at least ask if
this is what she has in mind.
The camera pans to the side chair, a modern club chair in suede with those
enormous rolled arms that make you feel safe and cosseted. In the chair is a
woman, bound and gagged. Across the screen come the words:
SINGLE SEATER SOFA: $2200.
CUSTOM CHESTERFIELD SOFA: $6800.
WILLIAM MORRIS VASE: $32000.
GETTING YOUR WIFE BACK ALIVE: PRICELESS.
WE’LL BE IN TOUCH.
Chapter Four
Downstairs, the buzz from the conference is spilling out the doors of the
ballroom where a Welcome Reception is in full swing. A woman, whose job it is
to guard the door apparently, pats the card hanging from a beaded chain around
her neck, which I take to mean I need my ID badge to gain entry. Her badge is
covered with little pins that signify awards she’s won, conferences she’s
attended, etcetera.
Mine, which I fish out of the bottom of the Louis Vuitton purse my mother
insisted on loaning me, is completely unadorned.
I smile apologetically and explain that I’m a “conference virgin,” as I pin the
card to my new navy suit—which I thought would be perfectly appropriate—and
now I realize is not. I look like a representative of the hotel coming in to check
on the bar supplies. Serves me right for not listening to Bobbie, who kept telling
me casual elegant, casual elegant. I look like corporate uptight.
The woman raises an eyebrow at my tag—maybe offended by my reference to
being a virgin, or to the suit—and reluctantly waves me in.
“Listen,” I try to ask her, “have you watched the DVD that came with your
welcome packet?” But she is already talking to the person behind me in line and
I’ve been dismissed.
I unbutton the top two buttons of my blouse, hoping for a more casual look and
push the sleeves of my jacket up my arm as far as they will go for the same
reason.
“You, too?” a woman with a tag that reads Debra’s Divine Designs ask me as
she fans herself. She’s got twenty years on me, easily, or so I want to believe. “I
hear black cohash helps, but I’m thinking real hash would do me a lot more
good. Might not stop the damn hot flashes, but I sure wouldn’t care,” she says
with a laugh.
I don’t bother telling her that I’m way too young for “power surges” as some of
my clients refer to them—because I’m afraid she won’t believe me. Instead I ask
her about the DVD as we take our place in line for the cash bar.
“Mine had a kid’s room on it,” she tells me. “Strictly Pottery Barn. But my
roomie’s had a County French media room that was to die for.”
To die for? I ask if either of them had anything strange on them.
“Like what?” she asks.
“Something…I don’t know, mildly threatening?” I try.
Debra looks at my tag suspiciously. Okay, I’ll admit Teddi Bayer is a funny
name, but it’s usually a conversation starter, not ender.
“Mine had a woman who was tied up—”
“Oh,” she says with a laugh. “You’re new, aren’t you? It must have been Jack
Murphy’s room. Last year he did a bondage bedroom. Ostrich feathers,
handcuffs, a leather collar and mask. Very kinky.”
From the amused look on her face, I suppose my eyes are bugging out. “I didn’t
realize Brian had hired someone to replace his wife already,” she says, and asks
where he is, looking around. “Did Brenda not even come this time?”
“Brian?” I reply. While I talk I can’t help staring at a woman draped in
shimmering cloth and painted entirely in gold. She is wearing a lampshade on
her head and handing out cards to everyone in the line.
Debra seems to be putting things together. She seems pleased with herself, as if
she’s guessed right. “So then.…Peter finally convinced Brian to get rid of her.
Took him long enough. And then he hires a woman to replace her in the
business. Again, probably Peter’s idea—after all, a woman wouldn’t be
competition, right?” She asks again where Brian is and I have to admit I have no
idea who or what she’s talking about.
She taps the ID card on my chest. “If you don’t know Brian Baylor, wanna
explain why you’re wearing his name tag?”
Chapter Five
I tip my badge so that I can read it and find that I am Brian Baylor. And I figure
that somewhere in the mass of people milling around in the ballroom, Brian
Baylor is walking around with Teddi Bayer on his chest. I ask Debra’s Divine
Designs what Brian looks like and she describes the man from registration. We
must have switched packets when they fell on the floor.
Okay, I must have switched the packets after I all but fell over him.
I head for the doorway where I find both my mother and Brian Baylor.
“I figured you had my badge,” he says, and I see my mother glance toward the
ceiling. I think they call that a “tell” at the tables—some move that gives you
away. “They must have gotten switched when we collided,” he says
diplomatically. “We should—”
“Kismet,” my mother says. “You two were meant to—” she makes a gesture
with her hands I don’t even want to describe, never mind interpret— “mingle.”
with her hands I don’t even want to describe, never mind interpret— “mingle.”
“You remember your promise?” I ask her under my breath.
“What promise, dear?”
I glance at Brian Baylor and grab my mother by the elbow, attempting some
privacy. “The one about my not even knowing you were here?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You didn’t believe that, did you?”
Several people cover their mouths to hide grins. A couple of people cough rather
than laugh out loud.
“Go find a spa,” I say through gritted teeth.
“And why don’t you and I go grab a drink?” Brian asks. “Then we can go
upstairs and—”
“Because you’re married?” This is followed by “Ouch,” as my mother pinches
the inside of my upper arm. “Because I don’t even know you?”
“I was just going to say we could go upstairs and exchange folders,” he says,
amused, while I’m having a sudden flash of the video I saw—that I now realize
was probably meant for him.
“I would love a drink,” I say, returning his smile. A little piece of me, the one
that was rejected by my ex-husband, can’t help wondering if this very rich, very
handsome man is genuinely interested in me. Not that I’m interested back but the
flattery is very welcome. Of course, I could be so out of practice I’m misreading
the signals. I mean, the man isn’t just married, but, if Debra’s Divine Designs is
right, he’s got something on the side with Peter, the guy from the registration
table.
So what does he need me for?
Mom, insisting she just wants to wet her whistle before finding a spa, reminds us
that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The same goes for Atlantic City,
I’m sure,” she adds, taking a seat in the booth behind ours.
Brian makes a comment about my mother being a handful. I cut to the chase.