Popping the Question, page 1
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Cheryl Anne Porter
Praise for Cheryl Anne Porter
About the Author
Copyright
To Nick and Paul and Mark and Jim, four very monosyllabic men—for popping the question to, and bringing into our family, Tara and Sarah and Diane and Dianna, four equally rhyming women … well, almost.
CHAPTER 1
“Will you marry me?”
“God, no.”
“Ah, for the—I give up. What’d I do wrong this time?”
“Everything.” Closeted in the private salon of her shop with the nightmare boy-next-door from her youth who had tormented her from diapers to senior prom, and who was now her inept client, Dianna West engaged in a staring contest of clashing wills with Lenny Daschowitz. No way, she vowed, was he going to make her lose her poise. Because if he did, she feared she would—and much too cheerfully—strangle him.
Lenny stood in front of her, no taller than five-feet-seven and almost as round. Dressed all in black, he bore an unfortunate resemblance to a total eclipse. A stubborn pout claimed his full-moon face. “Oh, I did everything wrong? Like what? I spoke in hieroglyphics or something?”
Dianna ignored that. “You’re supposed to be down on one knee when you propose.”
“Says who?”
“I do.” … you whiny little shit. Though her smile was bright, she offered it through gritted teeth. “And so does tradition. You said you wanted tradition.”
With a flick of his wrist, Lenny waved this away. “Tradition, schmadition. Besides, you just said ‘I do.’ So that’s a ‘yes,’ and we’re done here.”
God, he will never get this right. But if he didn’t, Dianna vowed it wouldn’t be for lack of trying on her part. She pointed to the carpeted floor. “Bended knee, Lenny. Now.”
He grumbled and muttered, but Dianna held to her resolve, punctuating it with an avenging-genie stance … arms folded together, eyes narrowed in warning. Still, she hated how being around Lenny brought out the worst in her. But he’d messed with her so much when they were kids. Stupid things. Throwing water balloons, pushing her down, following her everywhere, taking her lunch money, tattling on her, hitting her, obnoxious things like that. The memories and resentments remained, and they were enough to make her teeth itch just being in the same room with him.
But childhood irritations, she reminded herself, were not the point here. Instead, the points were these: She and Lenny were now grown-ups; she was a successful business owner; and Lenny was an idiot. But a paying idiot. So, she should be nice to him, if for no other reason than that. However, there was a better reason. One word: Mom. That sweet, oblivious, little traitor. This was all her idea. “Now, you help Lenny, honey,” she’d said. “It would be a nice thing to do.” There was no human way to say no to the woman’s gray-haired, apple-cheeked appeal.
Bottom line? If Dianna were mean to Lenny, he would tell his mother. And then that impossible woman would run next door to Dianna’s mother and tattle on her. Next scene? Her mother on the phone to her, dealing out guilt. See? Complete and total hell to pay and for years to come.
Dianna forced her attention back to Lenny. Surprise! Though his bottom lip still poked out sulkily, he was actually complying with her on-bended-knee command. Basking in her victory, Dianna magnanimously offered him encouragement as he awkwardly eased himself down to the carpet. “Careful now. Take it easy.” Going one huge step farther, she gave his icky Lenny-shoulder a congratulatory pat. “Good, Lenny. Like that. So, are you comfortable?”
“Do I look comfortable?” The man’s cranky tone of voice underscored his question, which he went on to answer. “No, I’m not comfortable. It hurts like hell.”
Exasperation ate at the edges of her patience. “Why does it hurt, Lenny? What’s wrong?”
“I had surgery on this knee.”
Dianna’s heart nearly stopped. “Surgery? Why didn’t you say so? Get up, you”—she struggled for control of her tongue—“big silly man, you.” Grabbing his arm, she pulled upward on him. But gravity proved stronger. She could not levitate him one inch. “When did you have surgery? I don’t remember that.”
“Five years ago.”
“Five years ago?” Dianna let go of Lenny with a vengeance. “Lenny, I could just—five years ago?”
“Is there an echo in here or what? I keep hearing ‘five years ago,’ ‘five years ago.’”
Stepping back, fists punched to her waist, Dianna glared at the man and inhaled deeply … slowly … very calmly … held her breath a therapeutic length of time … and then gently exhaled. Relaxation technique, followed by thinking good thoughts. Okay, good thoughts. It’s Friday; it’s springtime in Baltimore, trees are in bloom, the air is sweet; and my time with Lenny won’t last forever because I am not stuck with him for all of eternity in the ninth ring of Dante’s vision of Hell.
Feeling much refreshed now, Dianna forced a helpful note into her voice. “Okay, look, can you get down on your other knee, maybe? I don’t want you to do it if you really can’t. But it is more romantic for the guy to be on bended knee when he pops the question.”
“So I keep paying to hear you say. But if it’s what I gotta do to get you off my back, then I’m gonna do it.” Having said that, Lenny set about switching knees. Overweight and graceless, he rolled about, much like an off-balance sumo wrestler.
Dianna’s eyes widened. Maybe this on-bended-knee thing was a bad idea after all. She made a feint in Lenny’s direction to steady him—but stopped just as suddenly. Holding her in place was the realization that to help Lenny at this point might shame him. And she really didn’t want to do that. Great. Now I’m a nice person, and Lenny really isn’t all that bad; is that it? Maybe. And maybe she didn’t even dislike him all that much. Fine. This left her with no other choice than to stand there and hope for the best.
Alas, hope died a quick, hard death. Lenny fell. Yelping his shock, he landed heavily on all fours … and glared at Dianna. She stood frozen in place, her hands clapped over her mouth. Lenny sent her a look that signaled this was clearly her fault. “What are you doing just standing there? You can’t see I need help getting up, or what?”
“Right.” Dianna jumped into the fray—it was all right now; she had his permission—struggling right along with him and his ungainly bulk. Many moments of teeth-gritting effort followed until she finally—finally!—got him into an acceptable marriage-proposal position. “There. Whew.” She backed away, again planting her hands at her waist and offering encouragement. “Say, you look pretty good down there, Lenny.”
“Ha. Tell me that when I’m at Tamborello’s Ristorante Italiano tonight”—the man’s voice was a grating sneer—“and can’t get back up. I’ll be a living fat joke. Everyone will be laughing, and I’ll have to crawl out on all fours.”
“Oh, stop that, Lenny. We’re trying to get you happily on the road to marriage, remember? So, come on, try it again. Ask me.”
Lenny muttered a particularly pungent curse word that had Dianna widening her eyes. Though impressed with his eloquence, she pressed on with her own point. “Remember, we need heartfelt here. Make me feel it.”
“The only thing I feel is excruciating pain in my good kneecap now.”
Life would be so much better, Dianna decided, if she could just pummel Lenny silly. Without repercussions, of course. Instead, she smiled. “There’s one way to get it to quit hurting, and that’s to actually propose so you can get up.”
Lenny poked out his thick bottom lip. “Who knew it would be this hard?”
“Me, Lenny. I knew it would be this hard because I knew you’d make it hard. Now, ask me to marry you, dammit, and quit stalling around.”
Down on his good knee, looking pained and with his chubby thigh straining against his slacks, curly-haired mama’s boy Lenny Daschowitz simulated holding up a diamond engagement ring. He gazed into Dianna’s eyes and tried again. “Will you marry me?”
“No, Lenny, I will not. I mean, come on—am I the only one here? Have you not heard anything I’ve said? Heart. Love. Feelings. Where are they? This is a big moment, Lenny. The-rest-of-your-life big.”
Dianna paused, rubbing absently at her temple as she stared at Lenny and tried to come up with another way to get through to him. “Look, here’s the thing: Tonight is the only time when you’re in control of the whole ‘getting married’ experience. Once you pop the question, Lenny, it’s out of your hands. Your bride-to-be, her mother, and your mother take over from there. Trust me, the little guy on top of the wedding cake will have more say than you do after tonight. S o you have to play it for all it’s worth.”
“I will. But, jeez, Dianna, you’re busting my balls here.”
Dianna looked deeply, threateningly, into Lenny’s eyes and spoke very slowly. “That can be arranged, my friend, so don’t give me any ideas.” When Lenny’s eyes widened satisfactorily, she pointedly checked her wristwatch. Yes. Nearly three o’clock. Joy that her allotted hour with Lenny was nearly up brought a bright smile to Dianna’s face. “We don’t have much time left. We’ll have to hurry.”
Lenny puckered his mouth into a pout. “Too late. My foot’s gone to sleep, and I’m about to fall over like a beached whale.”
Well, he’d forced that unflattering image onto her consciousness, now hadn’t he? Lenny’s pale body washed up in the surf; a water brigade tossing little Styrofoam cups of sea water on him; the crowd exhorting him to live. No more than he deserved. “Anyway, and before that happens, Lenny, one last try. Heart and soul. Give it all you’ve got.”
“Maybe I could if you’d help me get in the mood. Maybe if you did something romantic. Like French-kiss me.”
“Sure,” Dianna sang cheerfully. “When the headlines read ‘Pigs Fly Out of a Frozen Hell.’ That’s the very same day I’ll French-kiss you, Lenny. Look forward to it.”
This was lost on Lenny. A Little Boy Naughty expression on his face, he brought himself ever nearer the brink of disaster. “Then maybe you could sit on my lap, and we could talk about the first thing that pops up. Get it? Pop up?”
“You’re the one who’s going to get it.” Dianna shook a scolding finger at him. “Do not provoke me into being physical, Lenny. If I have to smack you, I will. And I will still send you a bill. Don’t think I won’t.”
He shrugged as if that were of no consequence to him. “It was worth a try. After all, I’ll be a married man soon. I need to sow my wild oats while I can.”
“Wild oats. Right. You have less than five minutes left, Lenny, and then I have another client coming in.”
Without any warning, Lenny’s entire demeanor changed to pathetic, his heart in his eyes. “It’s no use pretending. I can’t do this, Dianna.”
Daunted by this show of a real, live, human emotion on Lenny’s part, Dianna proceeded with caution. “Sure you can.”
His face reddening, beads of sweat dewing his upper lip, Lenny shook his head. “No, I can’t. I never, you know, sowed oats in my whole life. I don’t know what to do … after the wedding, I mean. Well, I know what to do. I just don’t know how to do it. I mean, how to do it right, so it’s good for—”
“Aaah! Stop! Enough said, I get it, I get it, shut up!” Dianna had her hands clapped over her ears until she felt certain Lenny understood he was not to say one single word more. Only then did she sit down heavily on the padded seat of the white wrought-iron chair that was, luckily, right behind her. “Lenny, look at me. We—you and I—cannot have this conversation. If you don’t know what to do, you get that information like other guys do. And I mean from dirty videos and magazines. You got that?”
His expression very hangdog, very pathetic, Lenny nodded that he did.
“Good.” Crossing her arms atop her knees, Dianna leaned in toward the distraught man. He might be exasperating as hell, but apparently she did care a tiny, little bit about his feelings. “Are you telling me you don’t want to get married, Lenny? Because if that’s true, then why are we putting ourselves through all this?”
She accompanied her words with a sweeping gesture that included her shop and implied her time, the cost, the musician with the violin, the flowers, the rented tux, reservations at Tamborello’s restaurant … everything that she’d arranged to make this night special for Lenny and his intended. “Did you actually read the sign out front? It says POPPING THE QUESTION. See, we help guys like you come up with romantic scenarios so you can ask your girlfriends, in unforgettable ways, to marry you. You knew that when you came in here.”
Like a scolded little boy, though he was thirty years old, Lenny lowered his gaze and picked at his bitten-off fingernails.
Dianna stared in total dismay at the top of the man’s curly-haired head. Yes, he was a mess, and yes, she could sympathize with him. But, on another level, she simply could not believe that it was Lenny Daschowitz, of all people, who might ruin her business’s perfect score. After one year of being open, she and her associates owned a one-hundred-percent track record. Meaning that every client who’d come to them seeking their help had received a yes from his or her—mostly his—sweetheart. Sweet success. And a totally killer advertising campaign, already in the works, would soon debut around that very fact. That, and a lot of publicity. Television. Newspapers. Magazines.
Now, wouldn’t she look foolish and have a lot of explaining to do if that statistic were no longer true by the time the ad spots aired? Okay, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But her business could lose credibility. And that could mean the end of her business. Which, in turn, could be the end of the world because her elderly parents had loaned her their entire life’s savings to get Popping the Question up and running. They believed in her. And she had yet to repay them. So no freakin’ way was Lenny Daschowitz going to be the spoiler for her and her family. No. Just wasn’t going to happen. Lenny would marry Olivia if it was the last thing she, Dianna Joan West, ever did. End of discussion.
Thus resolved, Dianna tucked her hair behind her ears and poked a finger at Lenny’s shoulder. “So talk to me. What are you doing here if you don’t want to get married?”
Lenny sighed heavily. “I have to get married.”
Dianna smacked his arm. “Oh, shut up. You do not. You just said you haven’t ever—”
“And I haven’t,” he whined, rubbing his arm where Dianna had cuffed him. “I didn’t mean like that. I meant Mother said I have to. She said it’s time, and she’s paying for everything. She wants grandchildren.”
Fear seized Dianna. Little Daschowitzes everywhere? No. Please. Then she thought of Lenny’s girlfriend. Sweet, timid Olivia Goldman, who was going to be surprised and swept off her feet—if there was a God—by Lenny tonight. The woman had been waiting years for this moment, and Dianna was determined that it would come to pass. “And what about Olivia? She deserves better than this, don’t you think? She deserves a man who wants her and loves her.”
Looking defeated, with actual tears standing in his eyes, Lenny nodded. “I shouldn’t have said all that because I do love Olivia, and I do want to marry her.”
Here we go. How many times in the past year, in her professional capacity as a proposal planner, Dianna wondered, had she—though only twenty-six herself—turned into counselor and surrogate mother? “All right, Lenny, this is good. If you love her, it will be all right. I mean that. You both deserve happiness.”
His expression remained woeful. “We’re going to live with Mother.”
Alarmed, Dianna clutched at Lenny’s arm and shook it as she spoke. “No. Do you hear me, Lenny? No. Do not do that. Run. Grab up Olivia and skip town. Get your own apartment. Or live in a refrigerator box under a bridge. Anything but with your mother.” Who lives next door to mine, so I’d have to see you and your X-File offspring every time I visit. Yikes. Dianna’s next thought, though, had her releasing his arm and sitting up straight. “Wait. Why aren’t you moving into Olivia’s place?”
“Her lease is up, and the landlord raised the rent. We can’t afford it now. And Mother won’t give me the money for it. Then Olivia’s employer moved his business out of state to the Sun Belt, and she didn’t want to go. So she doesn’t have a job now. And Mother has never let me work.”
“I know. That’s what makes you special, Lenny.” Dianna stared at the man and rubbed absently at her temples. Nutshell conclusion? The wheels were coming off this whole affair. “So … Lenny, your mother. The three of you. Together. Does she at least get along with Olivia? I mean, well enough for them to be in the same room together. You know, like in the winter and without physical violence. That kind of thing.”
Again, Lenny shrugged. “I guess. She’s a nice girl. Olivia, I mean. Not Mother. Well, I guess she was, too, at one time. My poor departed father had to have seen something in her.”
“No doubt.” Dianna knew that story. Lenny’s poor father wasn’t departed in the conventional sense. No, the man had apparently, one sunny day, decided he’d had enough of his wealthy but shrewish and penny-pinching wife. So off to the store he’d gone, never to return. No one was surprised. Dianna stood, assuming a brisk but cheery businesslike manner. “All right, you love Olivia and your mother can’t live forever—Oh, sorry, no offense meant. Anyway, this could still have a happy ending. So let’s do this, Lenny. Take my hand, pretend you have the ring, and ask me to marry you.”
