Bringing Home a Bachelor by Karen Kendall Page A

quite a good-looking boy. Man, I should say…although it sounds ridiculous when I realize that I’ve known him since he was twelve or thirteen years old.” Jocelyn laughed, the sound genteel and controlled. Had her mother ever let loose with a wild donkey laugh? One of genuine amusement?
    “Don’t you think he’s good-looking?” she pressed Mel.
    “Sure, I guess. I hadn’t really noticed.” Oh, God. Please, please, please don’t tell me that my mother watched me put my hand in his pants!
    “Well, he seemed quite taken with you.”
    “No…I’m sure he was just being polite. He’s Mr. Customer Service, Mom. He works here.”
    “He does have lovely manners, doesn’t he?”
    Mel squirmed, thinking of the things she’d just done naked with Pete.
    “Doesn’t he?” Jocelyn was eyeing her strangely.
    “What? Oh. Yes. Great manners.” Maybe he’d send her a thank-you note.
    “I heard that he’s no longer seeing his girlfriend, so he’s single. How about that?”
    Mel shrugged.
    “You should make an effort to talk to him tomorrow at the wedding breakfast, Melinda. Did you avoid salt tonight? Did you bring a skirt in a dark color?”
    “Mom, please…” Mel sat heavily on the bed and dragged her hands down her face.
    “Single men with good career prospects don’t grow on trees, honey. College is a few years behind you, and you don’t belong to many organizations where you might meet—”
    “Stop!”
    “—someone to settle down with. You don’t belong to a gym…”
    Where I could grab guys, pin them to the floor and make them smell my sweaty armpits?
    “…or a church…”
    Where I could trip them on their way down the aisle to the offering plate?
    “…or an online dating service…”
    As if I have the time.
    “Mom,” Melinda begged, “please stop! You’re being hurtful, okay?”
    Her mother sat on the bed with her, of all things, and tried to take her hands in hers. Mel stuffed them in the pockets of the hotel robe and glared at her.
    Jocelyn smoothed her blonde hair back from her face. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you, sweetheart.”
    “Well, you’re making me crazy instead!”
    Her mother’s eyebrows drew together. “Someone has to say these things to you. And since I am your mother, I get the pleasure.”
    “It is a pleasure to you, isn’t it?” Mel’s voice had risen, but she couldn’t help it.
    “That’s not true.”
    “I think it is. You just can’t stand me not being a carbon copy of you. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I want to meet someone who loves me for who I am, not what I look like? Has it ever—”
    Jocelyn’s expression was pitying. “That’s a nice notion, honey, but it’s a fairy tale.”
    “Is it? Let me ask you a question. Are you so insecure in Dad’s love that you can’t let yourself gain a single pound for fear that he might dump you?”
    Her mother froze, shock like ice in her eyes. The color drained from her face and then her nostrils flared. “How dare you say that to me?”
    Mel was shaking now, but she refused to back down. “How dare you say the things to me that you do?”
    Jocelyn stood abruptly, and then walked to the door on her spindly legs. “You’re impossible.”
    “ I’m impossible?”
    “You’re also rude, ungrateful and disrespectful. And if you refuse to change your attitude and your weight, you’ll stay single for the rest of your life.”
    The words knocked the breath from Melinda for a moment. Then a flash of rage ignited her temper, and that triggered her mouth. “Is that right? Well, it may just interest you, then, that I’ve had sex tonight, with the very guy you wanted me to throw myself at! And you know what? He didn’t have any complaints about my body.”
    Her mother didn’t look quite so elegant with her jaw dropped open. Melinda had a moment or two of great satisfaction before Jocelyn snapped it shut again.
    “Of course he didn’t complain,” she said scornfully.