Page 59 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Greg didn’t appear reassured by this. “I feel like she should be paid a lot more. For all the hours she’s putting in, she should be getting like fifty hours of overtime every week. Won’t she need to get a real job?”

That made me laugh. The one—and only one—thing that made Brett Marcowitz acceptable as a life partner was his bank account. “Eventually, maybe, but I don’t think you need to worry about her. Her fiancé is a chiropractor.”

“That Brett guy everyone keeps talking about?” he asked before shaking his head and moving on. “Never mind. Thanks again for all your help. I feel a lot better knowing Grandpa’s being looked after. It’d be easier if he’d let me stay with him in the house, but…”

“You’re not from around here?”

We’d reached my car by this time, but Greg didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave. I got the feeling it was because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“No. I’m from Seattle. I’m only here because…” He shrugged. “It’s a long story. I stayed in a haunted Airbnb for a bit, but now I’m living with Maisey.”

“A haunted Airbnb?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Well, now I kind ofhaveto.” I grinned to show I meant no harm, though I had serious plans to pry that tale out of him later. “Look, if you don’t know many people in town, did you want to grab a bite or something? Not”—I was quick to add—“that I’m hitting on you. But my boyfriend’s probably cooking something with a lot of vegetables for dinner tonight. If I bring you home to eat half of it, he won’t notice that I refuse to touch mine.”

He eyed me speculatively. “What kind of vegetables?”

“Green ones.” I shuddered. “Trust me—you’d be doing me a big favor if you came along and distracted him long enough for me to hide them in the fish tank.”

***

I regretted my friendly overture before I even stopped the car.

“Oh geez.” I pulled into my driveway with a feeling of deep foreboding and even deeper panic. Shifting quickly into reverse, I tried to zip out before anyone noticed me, but it was too late. Lincoln appeared in the doorway next to a woman wearing a fully lined mink coat despite the fact that it was eighty-five degrees outside.

“You didn’t tell me this would be afancydinner,” Greg said. There was enough laughter underscoring his voice for me to recognize defeat on all fronts. “Who’s that?”

“Althea Sharpe.” I cranked the parking brake and resigned myself to my fate. “My mother. She’s a big-time lounge singer in these parts, so if you want to get on her good side, pretend you’ve heard of her. Otherwise, there’s a good chance she’ll put on a show in the living room to prove it.”

“I haven’t seen a good show in a long time…” The laughter was still in his voice as he appraised me out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t realize you were famous.”

“I’m not famous.” I bit back the urge to tell him not to google me, to warn him that the decades-old images of me granulating newspapers across the country weren’t exactly flattering. In my experience, that only encouraged people to dive deeper. “But I’m not kidding about the likelihood of a sing-along. Lincoln’s been learning some of her favorites on the piano so he can accompany her. Once the two of them get started, there’s no turning back. I apologize in advance if you get roped into playing the triangle. Or the bongos.”

Sighing, I stepped out of the Fiat. My only remaining hope was that the two of them hadn’t been hitting the cocktailstoohard. My mom pretty much ran on a steady drip of dry martinis, but Lincoln could usually keep her in check.

My boyfriend’s surprise at finding a rugged, well-built man climbing out of my passenger seat was evident in the way his brows flew up to his hairline but not another muscle on his body quivered. My mother’s surprise was, well, nonexistent. She’d have only beensurprised if Ihadn’trolled up to my own home on an evening she wasn’t expected without a built-in audience to appreciate her. One of her favorite maxims—other than the one about suffering to be beautiful—was to always travel with an entourage.

“Mateo, my baby.” She opened her arms to enfold me in her too-hot, too-musty embrace. Not even the gallon of Chanel No. 5 she seemed to have doused herself with was enough to cover the scent of sixty-year-old mink falling apart at the seams. “Thank goodness you’re home. Lincoln and I were just about to get started without you.”

She turned next to Greg, her hand outstretched in a way I recognized as a request for a papal kiss. I was in the middle of deciding how best to inform Greg about what was expected of him when he gripped her hand and pressed it warmly between his own.

“I can’t tell you what an honor this is, Ms. Sharpe. My mom had all your albums. I grew up to the sound of you singing the blues.”

I blinked, surprised by his fervor, but my mother accepted it as her due. “I hope you didn’t listen to ‘Bonjour, Baby’ as much as the rest. I never did care for the way the producers overemphasized my vibrato.”

“It was exactly the right amount of vibrato,” he assured her before moving on to Lincoln. There, more restrained but still warm, he said, “I’m Greg McLachlan. Sorry to burst in on you like this, but Mateo’s helping out with my grandfather. He said you wouldn’t mind the extra company for dinner.”

“McLachlan… McLachlan… That makes you Arthur’s grandson, right?” Lincoln’s brows bounced back a fraction. I was glad to see it. He wasn’t a jealous man—not in the way most people got jealous—but it wouldn’t do me any good to push him too far right now. Our anniversary was just around the corner, and we were both feeling the pressure.

Lincoln, because he loved anniversaries. Me, because I’d never had a relationship last this long before. We were breaking new ground together, and as recent events had proved, the going was rough.

“Does that mean you’re part of the book club?” Lincoln asked.

“Something like that,” Greg agreed.

My mother couldn’t stand being upstaged for long, so she wound her arm through Greg’s and began tugging him through the door. “I have no use for books, but my little Mateo has always been a reader. I gave him a thesaurus for his fifth birthday… Do you remember that, darling? He carried that thing around like it was a doll foryears. He was so good with words that they wanted to move him up two grades but I wouldn’t let them. ‘Not my baby,’ I said. ‘He needs as normal a childhood as possible after the life he’s had.’”