With a last dazzling smile, she closed the door and walked up to the apartment entrance where a uniformed doorman tipped his hat and opened the door for her.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
Jonah gave him his considerably less impressive address. The cabbie blew out a breath and shook his head, obviously mystified by Jonah’s stupidity. Reflecting on that kiss as the cab pulled away, Jonah felt pretty stupid, himself. Maybe some things were worth taking a chance for.
NATALIE HAD JUST TAKEN Bobo for his early-morning walk and was putting water in the coffeepot when someone pounded on her door. The dog raced into the foyer, barking with excitement. Natalie hurried after him and looked through the peephole into the hall to make sure it was her mother standing on the other side of the door.
Sure enough, an elongated version of Alice LeBlanc was tapping a copy of the New York Times against her palm. She must have charged down in the elevator immediately after reading about Natalie’s bid because she still wore her pink chenille bathrobe, and her gray-streaked hair looked as if it had been styled with an electric mixer. Her reading glasses were perched on the end of her nose.
Natalie unlocked the door and opened it. “Well, good—”
“What on earth have you done? Are you crazy? Hello, Bobo.” Her mother marched past both daughter and dog and whirled to face them. “Thirty-three thousand dollars? What did you do, clean out your IRA?”
“Yep.” Natalie made a production out of relocking the door to get her racing heart under control before she met her mother’s gaze. Every time she thought of her empty retirement fund she pictured an old age spent at the Salvation Army.
“Are you insane?” Her mother peered over the top of her glasses. “Please tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Natalie lied, knowing the truth would fill her mother with guilt. “I’ve been fantasizing about that guy, just like every other woman in New York, and I couldn’t get through to him, either.”
“Yes, but isn’t this a bit extreme?”
“Extreme situations call for extreme measures. I have more reason to be smitten than the women who only saw him on TV. I interacted with him up close and personal, and I…fell a little bit in love during that episode at the lake, if you must know. I realize love at first sight is considered naive, but when I turned and looked into his eyes for the first time, it was…amazing.” Not amazing enough to spend her retirement money on, but he definitely had a way about him. That mesmerizing gaze of his had made her forget herself for a moment in the cab last night.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Her mother tossed aside the paper and came over to enfold Natalie in her arms while Bobo scampered around them in delight. “Of course I believe in love at first sight, but it usually doesn’t cost thirty-three thousand dollars. What must Jonah think of a woman who would do something like this?”
Natalie hugged her back, grateful that this auction business seemed to be distracting her mother from her grief. That alone was worth the money. “Jonah thinks I’m crazy,” Natalie said.
Her mother held her firmly by the shoulders, exactly the way she’d done when Natalie was eight years old and in big trouble. “That’s not a very good beginning.”
“I know.” As she considered beginnings, Natalie thought about the kiss last night in the cab. Nice as it had been, it probably wasn’t a very good beginning, either. She’d bid on Jonah to get his cooperation to help her mother. Kissing him was liable to distract her from her goal.
“Does he realize you sacrificed your old-age fund to get a date with him?”
Natalie wished her mother would stop bringing up a subject that made her queasy. She responded with a confident smile. “I’m a stockbroker, Mom. With a few well-chosen investments, I can start making the money back in no time. I’ll just use a more aggressive approach for a while.” If only she felt as sure of that as she sounded. She headed for the kitchen. “I need to feed Bobo. Want some coffee?”
Alice followed her. “So if Jonah doesn’t know you threw away your retirement account—”
“I didn’t throw it away.” Natalie poured dog food into Bobo’s bowl and scooped some coffee beans into the hand grinder. “Heart Books staged the auction to benefit literacy, and that’s a very good cause.”
Alice waited for the noise of the grinding to stop. “You don’t have to tell me that, after being married to a literary critic for thirty years.”
“I guess not.” Natalie held her breath, wondering if the reference to her late husband would send Alice into a bout of weeping. It had happened plenty of times before.
“Still, I doubt Heart Books or the literacy movement expected anyone to surrender their nest egg in the name of a good cause,” her mother finished calmly.
Natalie relaxed. Apparently this fascinating new subject of the bachelor auction had claimed her mother’s full attention. “I’d hoped the bidding for Jonah wouldn’t go that high, but Mom, you should have seen those women. They went bonkers for him.”
Alice perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. “And so you went super-bonkers. Does he think you have this kind of money to throw around?”
“Probably.” She started the coffee brewing. “He also knows I live here, and I didn’t bother to explain about Great-Uncle Jerome and all that rent-control stuff.”
“Oh, boy. So he thinks the way everyone else does—that we’re rolling in it.”
“Actually he thinks I’m rolling in it. He doesn’t know you live in this building. And I’d rather have him think I’m rich than to have him know I spent my savings on him. Then he’d really question my sanity. Toast?”
Alice nodded. “Thanks.” She tapped her finger against her mouth and frowned. “So,” she said at last, “you need to get him to fall in love with you, even though he thinks you’re some spoiled rich woman who buys a boy toy when she gets bored.”
“I guess that’s about the size of it.” Or at least the version she wanted her mother to believe.
Her mother smiled. “That should be easy. Just be yourself. You’re not a spoiled rich girl, and that will become obvious the longer he’s with you. And once he’s truly in love with you, you can tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” Natalie was losing sight of what that was, exactly.
“That you have no retirement fund and are, in fact, a financial liability. That should arouse his protective instincts considering he put you in this sorry mess because he’s such an Adonis. So that should be that. Happily ever after.”
“That was more or less my plan.” Except that Jonah didn’t have to fall madly in love with her. He only had to like her enough to go along with her mother’s project.
“You know, this would make a neat plot twist in my novel,” her mother said. “A bachelor auction. I hadn’t even thought of it, but I could probably work it in.”
Natalie concentrated on buttering the toast so her mother wouldn’t notice her smile of triumph. “Maybe so.”
“And
