Significant Others by Marilyn Baron Read Free Book Online Page B

name professionally, so you won’t have to change it back.”
    “What did you ever see in him anyway?” Donny asked, before he excused himself and jumped up to pull out Barbara’s chair so she could go to the ladies’ room to freshen up and call the kids.
    “Be right back, sis,” Donny said. “I want to talk to the kids before the sitter puts them to sleep.”
    I took a sip of my wine. Looking back, I tried to remember what it was I ever saw in Marc Bronstein and realized that I first noticed him because of something he saw in me.
    My identity had always been tied up with being Donny Palladino’s little sister. Few people looked at me in my own right. To most people I was an afterthought. Donny more than tolerated me tagging along with his friends like I was one of the boys. But if I developed a crush on one of the guys on his team, he’d always deliver a stern lecture to the object of my affection and quash any chance of a blossoming romance. I’d nursed some serious crushes over the years, but no one was “good enough for me,” according to Donny, and no one wanted to antagonize Donny Palladino. I always thought Donny was just being overprotective. But maybe I simply wasn’t worth the effort.
    When I first met Marc Bronstein at a college fraternity party, he’d never even heard of Donny Palladino and he didn’t know the difference between a batting average and a blitz, a sacrifice and a sack, a squeeze play and a sweep. And that was fine with me.
    Usually the first thing people noticed about me was my nose and, as my Grandmother Lewis used to say, that I was “big-boned.” My father said my nose gave my face character. Marc also thought that my nose was cute and my butt was perfect.
    I’d spent most of my life around hunky baseball players whose only goal was to make it to the major leagues. An education was just a necessary stop on the route. Marc was sexy, smart and ambitious. He had goals. He was already in law school. And after we met, I developed a goal of my own. To make Marc Bronstein fall in love with me.
    Marc’s definition of getting to first and second had nothing to do with baseball. And I was determined not to let him strike out. When I finally got my diamond, it had nothing to do with the infield. Of course my brother thought I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
    My brother thought he was an expert on marriage even though he got married very late in the game. Women were literally falling at his feet, proposing marriage and making other less traditional propositions, so he’d never felt the need to get tied down.
    But when Donny accompanied a teammate who needed moral support to an attorney’s office while he was being sued for divorce, he sat in on a property settlement session and saw Barbara in action. He described his future wife as a lioness, a fiery avenging angel, protecting a woman’s rights. When she spoke, with such conviction, he imagined her astride a stallion, wielding her sword, dispensing justice in defense of her client. Unfortunately, thanks to Barbara, his friend’s wife took him for everything he had. That meeting signaled the end of his friend’s marriage but the beginning of a new life for Donny. The moment he laid eyes on Barbara, something just clicked. He fell right then and there, and after that he never looked at another woman the same way again.
    I’d never seen anything like it. Donny and Barbara were the proverbial odd couple. He was a hulking, handsome hunk. And she was this diminutive but ferocious lady lawyer, all business. Attractive, yes, but nothing like the brainless, busty, clingy model-types Donny had gone for in the past. They had a happy marriage and three beautiful children, so now he was eager to offer advice. And his advice had always been that Marc Bronstein was the wrong man for me. Turned out big brother was right after all.
    I always thought I’d marry a baseball player or an athlete, and that was the image, the standard I’d