Jaine Austen 7 - Killing Bridezilla Read Online Free PDF Page B

before they sell out.
    Arrivederci!
    Mom
    To: Jausten
    From: DaddyO
    Subject: Steams My Beans
    Hi, Lambchop—
    Have you heard the news? Your mother’s former lover is coming to stay with us. I consider myself a pretty open-minded fellow, but the thought of having her old “amore” stay under my own roof just steams my beans.
    Your mom insists nothing went on between them, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I know those Italian guys and their animal magnetism.
    Oh, well. It’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type—
    Whoops. Gotta go, sweetpea. The mailman’s here and I need to screen the mail for love letters from Italy.
    Love & kisses from,
    Daddy

    KILLING BRIDEZILLA
    33
    To: Jausten
    From: Shoptillyoudrop
    Subject: Did You Ever Hear Anything So Silly?
    Daddy’s impossible. He’s convinced Roberto and I were lovers! For heaven’s sake, Jaine, I met Roberto when I was eighteen years old, back in the years when young women waited to get married before they had “ex-say,” if you get my drift.
    Honestly, Jaine, I think Roberto kissed me once the night before I left to come back home, but it was all so innocent. Now your father is running around acting like we left a trail of blazing mattresses across Italy. Of course, it doesn’t help that Roberto’s wife died last year. Daddy’s convinced he’s coming here to make me his new signora.
    Did you ever hear of anything so silly? I’ll bet by now Roberto’s a fat middle-aged man with a potbelly and no hair.
    XOXO,
    Mom
    To: Jausten
    From: DaddyO
    Subject: Rigatoni Romeo
    Just what I was afraid of. Another letter from your mom’s boyfriend. This time he sent his picture. Typical continental casanova. Tall, dark, and what some people might call handsome. You should’ve seen your mother swoon. You can’t tell me they weren’t a hot ticket back in Italy. If she thinks I’m helping her hang new curtains for that rigatoni romeo, she’s sadly mistaken.

    34
    Laura Levine
    I’m off to the library to return a book. And I just may stop off for a hot fudge sundae on my way home.
    I’m supposed to be watching my cholesterol, but who cares if I clog my arteries? Certainly not your mother. She’s too busy fixing up the guest bedroom for her future husband.
    Lots of love from your poor neglected, Daddy

    Chapter 4
    Isuppose I should be grateful that my parents are leading active lives in their retirement years.
    And I am. But I’d be a lot more grateful if they weren’t such crazymakers.
    When I say “they” I refer, of course, to Daddy.
    He’s the prime crazymaker in our family, with Mom a pale sidekick in their white knuckle escapades.
    Mom is not without her own quirks, however.
    She was the one who insisted on moving three thousand miles away from a perfectly lovely house in Hermosa Beach—all the way to Tampa Vistas, Florida—so she could be close to the Home Shopping Channel. I tried to explain that she wouldn’t get her packages any faster that way, but my explanations fell on deaf ears. Besides, she said, it would be “fun” living in such close proximity to her favorite shopping channel hosts.
    But it’s Daddy who holds the World Champion Crazymaker title. He has single-handedly driven more people to distraction than telemarketing, control top panty hose, and Hare Krishnas combined. I had no doubt that Mom’s relationship with Roberto had been as innocent as a Hallmark special. But I knew it was just a matter 36
    Laura Levine
    of time before Daddy turned this molehill into a Himalayan-sized headache. Sooner or later, somebody’s blood pressure would go soaring. (And by
    “somebody,” of course, I meant me.) But that morning my parents were small potatoes in my supermarket cart of woes, overshadowed by my desperate need to come up with a “fiancé” for Patti’s wedding.
    Which is why, right after breakfast, I started thumbing through the Yellow Pages under “Escort Services.”
    I would’ve had an easy time of it if I’d been in the market for