Operation Get Rid of Mom's New Boyfriend (12 page)

“
Well, see, he’s my dad,”
Kennedy cut her off. “And he’s a little shy. He and my mom have
been divorced for quite some time and he’s never even dated. I
mean, in all honesty, he’s never even found any other woman
attractive…that was until he looked up and saw you.”

“
What? Who me?” The woman
put her hand on her chest, which appeared to be well endowed thanks
to the little tube top she was wearing. She was obviously
flattered.

“
Yeah. I mean he froze like
a deer in headlights when he saw you. But he’d never actually come
over here to talk to you. He doesn’t even know that I’m over here
talking to you. I told him I was going to see the gorilla exhibit.”
Well, Kennedy had only partially lied.

“
So what do you suggest I
do?” the obviously eager, single woman asked Kennedy.

“
I don’t know,” Kennedy
shrugged. “How about going over and asking him for the time, just
to strike up a conversation. You know what I mean?”

The woman looked at Bo; she
then looked at her friend for approval. Her friend gave an
indifferent shrug as if she didn’t care one way or the other. “Oh,
little mama, I know exactly what you mean.” The woman straightened
out her denim mini skirt, and before Kennedy could say another
word, Miss Thing was switching on her way toward Bo.

Bo didn’t notice the woman
coming his way. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the doors to the
gorilla exhibit not once. That was until something caught his eye.
He saw a little girl sitting behind a tree peeking around it. He
noticed that this little girl was wearing a white tee shirt and her
hair was in two ponytails with hot pink ribbons in it, just like
Joy had been wearing.

He wanted to be certain
that it was her, so he waited for her to peek her head around the
tree again so that he could get a better look this time. In a few
seconds, the little girl peeked around the corner again. It looked
like Joy, but she didn’t appear to be the least bit afraid. A lost
little girl would have surely been afraid. In fact, this child was
happily licking on a vanilla ice cream cone. If he recalled
correctly, a vanilla ice cream cone is exactly what Joy had been
eating prior to going into the gorilla exhibit.

Bo stood up and sighed. He
then shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He didn’t know what
the girls were up to, but he was about to find out.

“
Sir, do you have the
time?” a woman interrupted Bo just as he was about to head toward
the tree.

“
Excuse me?” he asked,
halfway paying attention to the gorgeous, young woman.

“
Do you have the time?” the
woman repeated.

By now, Sammi and Daryn
were exiting the gorilla display, which was Joy’s cue to
frantically go running over to them. She took two huge last licks
from the cone, dropped it on the ground, and ran over to her mother
and sister. Kennedy headed in the same direction.

All the while, Bo was
oblivious to the entire, well planned out scene that was taking
place. “It’s 2:17,” Bo told the woman.

“
Oh, thank you, sir,” the
woman said, batting her eyes. “I’m supposed to be meeting one of my
girlfriends that I came here with outside of the gorilla display at
2:30. I came with a girlfriend because I don’t have a
boyfriend.”

Bo raised his eyebrows at
the woman.

“
Oh, no. It’s not what you
think. Not a girlfriend-girlfriend that a nice, handsome guy like
you might have. Speaking of which, do you have a girlfriend?” The
woman put her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. “Oh, forgive me
for being so frank. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m supposed to meet
a friend of mine that’s a girl, only silly me, I forgot that I
didn’t have my watch on,” the woman babbled on, placing her hand on
Bo’s shoulder. “Luckily, the gorillas are our last pit stop. If you
ask me,” the woman said, moving in closer to Bo to speak in a
whisper, “there’s not a darn thing exciting about the boring ol’
zoo. I mean, what’s so fun about watching a bunch of animals eat,
sleep, and lick themselves?” The woman began to laugh a loud and
annoying laugh, catching everyone’s attention within earshot,
including Sammi’s and the girls’.

Sammi had to admit that she
became a little jealous when she looked up and saw the good time Bo
appeared to be having with the woman. Right now, though, she could
only concern herself with her daughter’s well-being.

“
Joy, are you okay?” Sammi
asked, pulling her daughter against her to hug her. At the same
time, she couldn’t help but allow her eyes to wander back over to
Bo and the woman touching him.

“
Yes, Mommy,” Joy said
dramatically. That crash drama lesson Daryn had given her was
really paying off. Sammi sure did seem to find the entire act
believable. “I stopped to look at the baby gorilla. I guess Kennedy
and Daryn didn’t notice that I had stopped, so they kept on going
and left me.” To add a cherry on top of her performance, Joy
squeezed out some tears. “I started looking all over for them, but
I couldn’t find them anywhere inside, so I came out and just hid
behind a tree so that a stranger wouldn’t see me wandering alone
and try to snatch me.” For the finale, Joy cried out, “Oh, Mommy!”
and fell weak into her mother’s arms. “I was so scared!”

Joy buried her face against
Sammi and pretended to weep from fear. All the while, she was
peeking over at Kennedy and Daryn grinning and holding up the
“ay-okay” sign with her thumb behind her mother’s back. Her sisters
smiled and winked back at her.

“
Well, it’s all right now,”
Sammi comforted her youngest daughter. “It’s all right,
baby.”

Just then, Bo walked over
after managing to shake off the desperate acting, flirty, young
woman. “I see she’s turned up and isn’t lost anymore.” Bo shot Joy
a look of disbelief as she peeled herself away from her mother and
wiped her forced tears.

“
No thanks to you,” Sammi
snapped. “She’s been right out here scared to death the entire
time. If you hadn’t been engaging with your lady friend over there,
you might have noticed.” She nodded in the direction of where the
young lady now stood with her friend. “Or perhaps I should have
gone with my first motherly instincts and not let you talk me into
allowing them to go off by themselves in the first place. Bo Hart,
this is all your fault!”

“
What Lady friend are you
talking about?” Then it dawned on Bo as he looked back over toward
the young woman who winked at him and blew him a kiss. He shook his
head. Things didn’t look good for him. He turned to face Sammi.
“Wait, Sammi. It’s not what it looked like,” Bo started to
explain.

“
Take us home, Bo,” Sammi
insisted. She didn’t want to hear anything this playboy Casanova
had to say. “I’ve found my daughter and now I’m ready to go. You
can come back and hang out with your little girlfriend over there
all you want, but not until after you take us home
first.”

“
Girlfriend?” Bo lifted his
arms and then allowed them to drop down to his side. “What
girlfriend?”

“
So you mean to tell me
that person,” she pointed roughly at the woman, “that person- who
is obviously a friend as buddy-buddy as you two were- isn’t a girl?
Is that what you want me to believe?”

A disbelieving look that Bo
erased with a half “I can’t believe this is happening” smile
appeared on his face. “I can’t believe this,” he said to no one in
particular, vocalizing the expression on his face.

“
I can’t either!” Sammi was
getting more frustrated, not to mention jealous, by the
minute.

“
Mommy, I want to go home,”
Joy sniffed, sprinkling the finishing touches on her
act.

Bo looked down at Joy and
then back up at Sammi. “But, Sam,” Bo said, holding out his hand
sympathetically, “are you going to fall for that little three ring
circus your daughters just put on?”

“
It’s Sammi,” she demanded,
removing one arm from around Joy and then throwing it on her hip.
“My name is Sammi, not Sam. As a matter of fact-, it’s Samantha for
you. Now I’m ready to go.”

“
But, Sam, Sammi…I mean
Samantha…you don’t understand,” Bo tried to explain. “The entire
time Joy was-” Bo pointed to the tree, but Sammi cut him
off.

“
I do understand. I
understand that if I let you talk long enough, you’re going to try
to accuse my daughters of faking this entire incident.” Sammi
looked Bo up and down with disgust. “It‘s just like a man to get
caught doing something he has no business doing and try to shift
the blame elsewhere.” Sammi looked at her daughters. “And to three
innocent children nonetheless.”

Each girl, as if on cue,
made an innocent face.

“
Innocent?” Bo spat. “If
they are innocent, then so was OJ Simpson.”

“
Mommy, who’s OJ Simpson?”
Joy asked, but Sammi was too steamed up, ready to make her next
comment to Bo to answer her youngest daughter.

“
I could say the same about
you and Tootsie over there. What ever the two of you were up to
didn’t look so innocent.” Sammi nodded in the direction of where
the woman was still standing with her girlfriend by her side. The
two women, like a couple other zoo visitors, were witnessing the
argument taking place. “Like I said, you’ve been caught; now don’t
try to shift the blame.”

“
Getting caught…shift
blame…Sammi, please,” Bo stammered. “I don’t know what you think
you saw, but I have no idea who that woman was. For all I know,
it’s part of your daughters’ little scam here; like a decoy or
something. To distract me.”

Sammi tightened her lips.
“Well, I guess it didn’t take much to distract you, now did
it?”

“
Sammi…” His words trailed
off because he really didn’t know what else to say. But what he did
know is that there was something fishy about this whole little girl
lost thing. Something told him that he was the bait that had caught
the fish, and that the girls were the fishermen, just reeling the
situation in; hook, line and sinker. “Girls, are you really going
to stand here and pretend as if you’re all innocent? Tell your
mother the truth; that Joy wasn’t really lost,” Bo urged the girls
with pleading eyes.

Sammi got up in Bo’s face.
“How dare you to accuse them of such a thing! My daughters would
never scare me half to death like that on purpose.”

“
I don’t think they
intended to scare you half to death,” Bo said to Sammi and then
gave each girl a look as he said, “but I do think they intended to
scare me away…or try to make me look bad so that you would make me
go away.” He looked back at Sammi. “Since the hot sauce and salt
thing didn’t do the trick, they decided to put another plan in
motion. This whole little girl lost thing is a scam.” He looked
Sammi in the eyes. “Can’t you see that, Sammi-Samantha?”

Sammi paused for a second
before she began to shake her head. She was so angry that Bo was
standing there telling what she thought to be lies about her girls.
“Look, Bo. I made a mistake.” Sammi’s bottom lip began to quiver.
“I’m not ready for this yet. I thought I was, but clearly I’m
not.”

“
Ready for what, Sammi?” Bo
wanted Sammi to make herself clear.

“
Fort this. For us. For a
relationship,” Sammi explained.

“
But, honey, you are
ready.” He looked at Kennedy, Daryn and Joy, “It’s your girls who
aren‘t r-”

“
Bo!”
Sammi put her hand up to stop him from speaking. “That’s enough.
Please.” Sammi took a deep breath and regained her composure. “For
the last and final time,
we’re
ready to go. Now if you don’t
mind, will you please drive me and my girls home…now?”

Sammi walked off,
practically dragging poor Joy. Kennedy and Daryn followed close
behind. Bo stood there for a minute, not wanting to believe what
was happening. He didn’t want to believe that three smart and
pretty girls who looked like little angels could actually be the
devil in disguise.

Just as he proceeded to
follow behind the girls, Joy looked back at him. A mischievous grin
came across her lips right before she stuck her tongue out at
Bo.

It was then that Bo
realized he’d been terribly wrong about the girls. They weren’t the
devil in disguise. They didn’t need a disguise.

Bo took a deep breath and
then walked off, but not before the woman who’d asked for the time
put her hand to her ear as if it were a phone and shouted out to
Bo, “Call me!”

Chapter Fifteen

Eavesdroppers

The girls sat on the floor
with their hands cupped to their ears and pressed against their
mother’s bedroom door. They were outside of their mother’s bedroom
door listening to Sammi relay the entire scene at the zoo to Rachel
on her cell phone. The girls could hear Rachel’s side of the
conversation too because Sammi had her on speaker phone while she
used her free hands to straighten up her room. They could just
barely their mother’s best friend’s reply over all movements and
the rustling of things.

“
It was just awful,
Rachel,” the girls heard Sammi say. “I was scared to death. And you
should have seen Joy when we found her. She was even more afraid
than I was. Then to top it all off, not only was Bo caught like a
deer in headlights while staring at Little Miss Young Thing’s…you
know…”