Tempting Fate (44 page)

“This whole thing sounds crazy,” she whispered.

“Yes, it does.  I have no choice.  But you do.  I'm just asking you to consider it.  I can't imagine why it would be, but if it is something that you're interested in, call me.  Soon.  I don't have much time to waste.”

Silently, Maggie lifted from the stairs, pausing just a second to look down at the business card in her hand and then back at Jonah before turning toward the tenement door and closing it behind her.

There was absolutely no way she was going to call, Jonah thought as he headed toward the limousine.  He was sure of it, in fact.  Desperation made people do crazy things, but Maggie Bonelli didn't look either. 

He, on the other hand, had made a complete idiot of himself in front of this extraordinary woman. 

As he climbed into the back seat of the limo, he glanced up to the top floor of the tenement and caught a glimpse of Maggie peeking out from behind the curtains. 

This was crazy.  Just as Maggie stated.  But for some strange reason, Jonah didn't feel crazy or insane.  Finding Maggie Bonelli was the answer to his prayers.

# # #

Chapter Three

The organza curtains floated back into place against the window as the Jonah's black limousine drove down her street. 

Not just Jonah, Maggie reminded herself.  Sir Jonah.  The man was an in-the-flesh English Knight for cripes sake! 

With the back of her hand, Maggie wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and pushed off her work shoes.  The immediate relief she felt as her foot hit the cooler vinyl floor had her moaning with satisfaction.

“It's about time.  I thought you'd stay out on the porch forever.”  Startled, Maggie swung around to find her mother, Rhonda, standing at the doorway to the living room, wearing nothing but her full slip.  She pointed toward the window.  “Did I just see you get out of that black limo?”

Maggie steadied her rampant heartbeat by placing her hand over her chest.  “What are you doing home?” 

“I asked you first, young lady.  So don't you bother playing secretive with me.”

Maggie heaved an impatient sigh.  “I'm serious, Mom.  You're never home from work before me.  Are you sick?”

Rhonda pushed her hair away from her face with both hands.  Her gray roots were showing, but Maggie knew her mother's routine beauty ritual would take care of that in a day or two at the most. 

“It's this heat.  Blew out the air conditioner at the office.  When the temperature inside reached ninety, they had to let us all go home.  I think Evan was afraid one of us would fake heat exhaustion and sue.  As if he couldn't do to part with a few pennies.”

Relieved it wasn't anything serious, Maggie picked up a paperback on the end table and began fanning herself with it.  “It doesn't feel much better here.”

“It's not so bad in the bedrooms with the doors open.  I put your fan on, too, so there is a nice cross breeze blowing the heat out.  I just put my feet up and turned on the T.V. when I heard you talking to someone outside.”

Maggie arched an eyebrow and eyed her mother suspiciously.  “You heard me talking over the fan and T.V.?”

“I turned both off so I could hear,” Rhonda confessed.  “Not that it helped much.  The kids next door are making a ruckus.”

“They're just playing in the sprinkler.”

“I might go down and join them,” her mother said with a quick laugh.  “Why don't you put your feet up?  I'll pour you a glass of lemonade and you can tell me all about this man you were with on the sidewalk.  You know Mrs. Bennigan probably saw you and will probably have rumors all over the end of church services this Sunday.”

Maggie collapsed on the sofa, rolling her eyes.  The old pine coffee table creaked as she plunked her feet up on top of it.  Today seemed longer than most days and the unusual afternoon only added to it.  It wasn't every day a man like Sir Jonah Wallace waltzed into a girl's life and proposed marriage.

“Later, I'm starved.  Is there anymore chicken left?”

“Oh, honey.”  Rhonda's shoulders sagged as she dropped the cold glass of lemonade into Maggie's hand and made a disgusted face.  “Don't tell me you're going to eat that chicken and chocolate sauce concoction again.”

Maggie took the cool glass to her forehead and ran it across her hot skin, grinning.  “I'm adding olives to it this time.”

Rhonda cocked her head to one side and hesitated before opening the fridge.  She pulled out the plate of leftover chicken and dropped it on the counter next to the avocado breadbox. 

“Now are you going to tell me about this man or am I going to have to hold the chocolate sauce hostage?”

“You wouldn't dare!”

Her mother arched a thinly lined eyebrow.  “You know I would.”

Maggie threw her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes, the day suddenly crashing in on her.  How could she possibly explain this and have it make sense?  It didn't even make sense to her.

“He came into the coffee shop and asked to use the telephone.”

“I should think a man with enough money to afford a limo would carry the best cell phone money could buy.  Please don't tell me you've fallen for a chauffeur.”

Maggie lifted her head and glared at her mother.  “It's a perfectly respectable job, but no, I haven't fallen for anyone.  And he needed to call his driver.”

Rhonda's eyebrow tilted again.  Maggie had never known a time when her mother wasn't weary of men.  She’d always wondered if her mother would have been this way if her father hadn't abandoned them before Maggie was born.

“We had a cup of coffee while he waited for his driver to pick him up.  We talked and he offered me a ride home.”

Rhonda's lips pursed into a suspicious grin.

Maggie blew out a frustrated breath.  “The bus stop was hot, my feet were killing me, so I said yes to an air conditioned ride.  Shoot me for my stupidity.” 

She could only imagine what her mother's reaction would be when she heard the rest of the story. 

Rhonda stood beside Maggie, resting her hip against the back of the sofa.  “And that's it?”

“I knew you wouldn't let this go.”  She sprang from the sofa, padded to the kitchen and began slicing pieces of cold leftover chicken, placing them on bleached white bread.

“You talked for a long time.  What did he want?”

“To thank me.”

“It doesn't take fifteen minutes to thank a person.”

Maggie took a bite of her sandwich, wondering if food would ever taste like this after the baby was born.  Between bites, she glanced back at her mother only to discover her standing with her fists propped on her hips, waiting for a reply. 

She'd never known her mother to let anything go.  If it took the whole evening, Rhonda would pry every minute detail of her encounter with Jonah Wallace out just like she had when Maggie told her she was pregnant.  Not wishing the same onslaught of questions, she gave it up.

“He asked me to marry him,” she said, feeling silly for actually feeling a little flattered after the disastrous scene with Keith when she'd told him she was expecting his baby. 

Rhonda gasped and her jaw dropped to her chest.  “You're getting married?”

“Of course not!  I said no.” 

In truth, Maggie hadn't given Jonah any kind of an answer and for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why.  The whole idea of her marrying a complete stranger was ridiculous.  She may have messed up her life, but there was still this part of her that held on to the dream of an old fashioned church wedding.  Jonah had called it a business arrangement, but even he'd admitted the idea was crazy.

“Was he good looking?”

“Yes,” she admitted a little too quickly.

“And he has money.”

“So it seems.”

“A good looking, wealthy man asked you to marry him and you said no?”  Rhonda flung her hands in the air and let them fall weightlessly to her side.  “What has gotten into you?  Did you forget that there is going to be a baby arriving in five months?”

“It's kind of hard for me to forget with all the throwing up I've done.”

Rhonda shook her head.  She remained firm, but her tone and expression softened.  “I don't think you understand what this can do for you and the baby, honey.  Have you even thought this through?”

“Would you listen to yourself?  I just met the man.  I can't marry someone I met less than two hours ago.”

Stabbing a finger at her, Rhonda said, “So you get to know him.  Fast.  Besides, I knew your father for three years and look where it got us.”

Maggie shook her head.  “It's not the same thing.  You had a relationship.  You were in love.”  At least that's what her mother had always told her when she asked about her father.

“People have arranged marriages all the time.  Your grandmother, God rest her soul, had an arranged marriage before she came over from Italy.”

“This is different and you know it.  We're not trading land or goats here for me to marry Jonah Wallace.”

Rhonda's eyes widened, becoming full of life and she stopped pacing back and forth in front of Maggie.  “Did you say Jonah Wallace?”

Maggie chewed on the last bite of her sandwich and took a sip of lemonade before answering.  “Yeah, Jonah Wallace.  He works in the office building across the street from the diner.”

“The Jonah Wallace.  Tall.  English.  Rich.  Incredibly handsome.”

She couldn't argue with the handsome part and the English accent had done things to her in some foolish way that reminded her of when she was young and had her crush on Bruce Espinoza.  Her first boyfriend.  Bruce had gone on to finish top of his class at Boston College and marry his high school sweetheart, Lori Nolen, in a wedding that had her parents remortgaging their house.  Last she heard, Lori was pregnant too and Lori and Bruce just moved into a home east of Boston.

Maggie sighed as envy stabbed her.  “Don't tell me you've heard of Jonah Wallace?”

“I can't believe you haven't!  His family is one of the wealthiest families in England.  He has more money than the Queen.”

“How would I know that?”

“You wouldn't, because you never read the Sunday paper,” Rhonda said, rifling through a neat stack of newspapers in the corner of the living room.  “I know I saw an article in The Boston Globe a while back.  Here, here it is.”

She blew out an exasperated breath as Rhonda skimmed through a section of the newspaper, pulled a page out and thrust the page in front of Maggie’s face.  At the top of the page was a picture of Jonah standing at a podium.  He was dressed in a black suit and tie, much like he was wearing today. 

It had only been a short time since Jonah had driven off, but already her memory of him did no justice to the man.  Even in a newsprint-smudged paper, Maggie could see the presence Jonah commanded.  Whatever he'd been speaking about when the snapshot had been taken, he was clearly passionate about.  

She shook her head slightly, dragging her gaze from the picture to the writing beneath.  Skimming the article she learned it had something to do with a fund raising event scheduled in the coming weeks aimed at raising money for a halfway house for street kids.  The new foundation was a parallel to the successful organization Jonah had started in England over ten years earlier.  The article went on to praise Jonah and mentioned how he and another member of the organization were knighted by the Queen for their outstanding work.

Her heart warmed, thinking of the man who'd dragged himself out of the heat into her coffee shop, asking to use the telephone.

“I can't marry a man I don't love,” Maggie said, dropping the newspaper on the end table next to her.

Rhonda took Maggie's hand in both of hers and squeezed it gently.  “Don't be a foolish romantic like your grandmother.”

With the mention of her grandmother, Maggie's heart pinched as it always did.  If her grandmother were alive today, they'd be sitting there talking about the good times to come, sharing excitement over the baby, picking out names and making plans.  Her grandmother wouldn’t be chastising her for making the biggest mistake of her life by getting pregnant before marriage.  She’d be telling her this baby was a gift from God and that the Lord had a reason for wanting this child born, even if Maggie couldn’t see it. 

Maggie choked back a sob.  “I really miss her, Mom.”

“Me, too, honey.”  Rhonda's own voice broke with emotion.  “But you can't think the way she did.  It's just not practical.”

Rhonda sat down on the sofa and gently draped her arm around Maggie's shoulder, giving her a warm embrace.  Normally their roles were reversed and Maggie was the one offering comfort.  Especially after her grandmother's death.  Now she was glad for this brief moment to relinquish control to her mother.

“Life isn't about love and heaven forbid marriage be, Maggie.  It's about getting along.  If you marry a man like Jonah Wallace, you and the baby will want for nothing.”

“It wouldn't be right.”

“Why not?  There's no reason for history to repeat itself.  Believe it or not, I know how you feel.  But this isn't just about what you want anymore.  You have a baby to consider.”

Maggie hated to admit it, but her mother had a point.  The time for waiting for the right man and falling in love before having a family was long past.  All those dreams she’d had of a church wedding, a man who’d vow to love her meant nothing now.  Her baby was on the way without her knight in shining armor.  And here she had her very own surrogate knight stepping in to do the honors.

Of course, Jonah knew nothing about the baby. 

“I'm tired.  I'm going to go lay down.”

To Maggie's great relief, Rhonda didn't press the issue any further.  She didn't know if she had the strength left to sort everything out.

“You need all the rest you can get,” Rhonda said instead.

She kissed her mother on the cheek before easing off the sofa, and pulled herself down the hallway to her bedroom.  Once there, she stripped her clothes and searched for something big and cool to wear.  Her slightly rounded belly was getting larger by the moment, and Maggie suspected that one morning she'd wake up to find nothing in her closet fit her.  

She kept hearing her mother's words in her head.  Life isn't about love and heaven forbid marriage be.  It's about getting along.