Page 17 of The Love Losers

“Don’t make this into something it isn’t, Anthony,” my mother says with a wave of her hand. “Will you stop pacing?” I pause, watching her. She’s perched on a tufted blue settee in the drawing room of my childhood home, which has the unspeakably dull name Smith House. A few other seating options are clustered around hers, and the fireplace is to the right. On the other side of it is a Christmas tree, the tinsel reflecting the light from the dying fire in the grate. I wonder if my mother put the tree up by herself, a depressing thought, or if she paid someone else to do it, a thought that is perhaps equally depressing.

It occurs to me that Christmas is in a week and a half, and I have no idea what she has planned. It’s like I’ve been doing the backstroke in my head, ignoring the world as I pass it by.

If Rosie’s parents were alive, she’d know what they were doing for Christmas. Hell, she’d probably buy a boozy advent calendar and organize a white elephant gift exchange.

“What are you doing for Christmas, Mother?”

“Why, do you think my stalker would like an invitation?” she asks wryly. “I’d beecstaticto invite them, if only they’d showtheir face. Lord knows, my own children have no interest in what I have to offer them.”

Sighing, I take a seat in the leather armchair next to her. “I should have asked weeks ago. I’ve been distracted.”

“Yes,” she says, giving another wave of her hand. “You’ve been gallivanting about town with half a dozen women, so you haven’t had any time for the woman who gave you life.”

Sighing more deeply, I lean back in my chair. “You’re reminding me of why we’ve spent the last year at odds.”

“Her name was Nina.”

“Still is, I imagine, and I haven’t enjoyed any of this,” I say. “I don’t want this.”

Her expression softens. “I know you don’t.” She pauses for a moment before relenting. “We’re having Christmas dinner here at home at noon. Emma’s coming on Christmas Eve, and with any luck, she’ll agree to stay until New Year’s. I’ve asked Cook to make your favorite dishes.”

Of course she’d planned for my presence. One of the things I both love and hate about my mother is that she always plans for my presence. She may not always understand me, and I sure as hell don’t always understand her, but she’ll never stop trying.

She’s watching me, her expression impatient.

“Thank you,” I say, which is my best guess of what she’s looking for.

“How was your lunch date?” She sounds exasperated that I misinterpreted her silent question.

“Short. It didn’t seem right to sit there and eat after your life was threatened.”

She gives me a shrewd, knowing look. “You didn’t like the woman.”

Maybe she understands me better than I give her credit for.

Leigh is exactly what I’d told Jake I was looking for. Poised and polished. Professional. Completely disinterested in me as anything other than a business opportunity.

But thirty seconds after we placed our lunch order, my phone buzzed with a message from UNKNOWN containing a link to a website threatening my mother.

I’d excused myself and gone outside to call the police.

They’d made it clear they couldn’t do much of anything unless my mother found herself with a knife pressed to her throat on the stroke of midnight in two weeks.

So I’d called Jake. While I don’t know his private investigator friends personally, he’s told me a few stories about them.

Most of those stories were about their complete lack of professionalism, but desperate times and all that.

He’d agreed to bring them over to Smith House.

I’d told Leigh that I needed to leave to attend to a family emergency, so now here I am, attending to it. Leigh probably won’t expect to hear from me for at least several hours, maybe even several days if I’m lucky.

The question of why I want to buy myself time when I’ve found the perfect platonic fake wife is one I’d prefer not to answer. But I suspect it has something to do with Rosie.

I haven’t texted her back yet. I’ve felt the impulse to do so—I feel it now—but I’m in the uncomfortable and unenviable position of having no idea what to say.

My mother takes another gulp of her drink, and I’m struck by how pale she looks.

“Are you…okay, Mom?” I say, using the soft tone my HR manager has tried to coax out of me at work. While I never aim for harsh or critical, I live in the shadow of a dead man, and sometimes I have to be louder and blunter than I’d like in order to even be seen.

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