It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life by Hope Tarr Read Free Book Online

fictional character from Washington Irving’s Halloween classic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but then thought better of it. Why waste her breath? Besides, it was the wrong holiday.
    Apparently the food supplies were holding steady because her mother turned back to her. Casting a significant glance across the room, she leaned closer and confided, “Lenny wants to get back with you. He told your brother Jimmy so just before you came downstairs. And I hear his business has picked up. Rumor has it he’s doing very well for himself now.”
    Mandy set down her plastic fork on the plate’s edge, well and truly finished with her food. Lenny was from the neighborhood, which meant he was Catholic and Polish. They’d both been raised in traditional blue-collar families but beyond being still single and thirty, they had absolutely nothing in common.
    Holding firm, she said, “Great, then he can pay me back the money of mine he lost. And frankly I don’t care if he’s suddenly Donald Trump, because I have absolutely no interest in getting back together with him, not now and not ever.”
    Not only was Lenny physically unappealing with no apparent head for finance, but worst of all, he was a deadbeat. The last time they’d gone out, he’d made a big deal of impressing her parents by taking her to dinner at Tio Peppe, one of the city’s priciest restaurants. He’d ordered the most expensive items on the menu, including a bottle of Dom Perignon, and ended the night with one of the restaurant’s signature flaming desserts. But when the bill arrived, he announced he’d forgotten his wallet. Fortunately she’d had her credit card with her, not that he’d ever paid her back for even his share of the meal. That little encounter had set her dream of home ownership back by several hundred dollars.
    Her mother’s gaze lifted to the velvet painting of the Virgin and Child hanging over the living room couch. “You got somebody better on the string, then?”
    Here we go—again . Mandy paused. Part of her wanted to shout out that yes, yes she did if only to get her mother off her back, but superstition held her back. Ridiculous as it was, she didn’t want to risk jinxing her chances of Josh calling her by mentioning him too soon to her well-meaning but nosy family. Besides, the first questions they’d ask were what he did for a living and who his parents were. If she had to admit he was a bartender and that she didn’t even know his last name, all hell would break loose. And by keeping mum, if he didn’t call, at least she’d be spared rehashing the episode around the dinner table for the next ten years.
    Arms folded across her full bosom, her mother demanded, “Well, do you or don’t you? Which is it?”
    Mandy’s pager went off, saving her from answering. Seeing her mother’s scowl return, she shrugged and said, “It’s the job, Ma.” Actually, she hoped it was Josh. Her pager number was part of her contact information on the card she’d given him.
    Please, let it be him, let it be him, let it be…
    Heart racing, she handed her mother the sagging paper ware. “Gotta go.”
    Before her mother could answer her back, she turned and cut through the living room packed with siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins including Mikey, the family’s official black sheep, nieces and nephews, and assorted neighbors and friends to the stairway.
    Upstairs, she headed for her bedroom—and sweet privacy. Pulling the door closed against the clamor, she felt calm washing over her. It could be years yet before she was able to afford a house of her own, but in the meantime she’d turned her bedroom into a haven, a space she felt good about coming home to at night. She’d spent the past weeks stripping away most of the girlish vestiges of her teen years, including changing the wall color from the Pepto-Bismol pink she’d picked out as a thirteen-year-old to a soft sage green. She’d put on the final coat of paint this morning, her