The Kiss Test Read online

  The Kiss Test

  By Shannon McKelden

  Margo Gentry’s life is perfect. She loves her job as a DJ for Manhattan’s only country music station, and she has a great boyfriend who accepts her need to avoid marriage and tolerates her Elvis obsession—even the velvet Elvis painting in their bedroom.

  But then it all falls apart. The radio station changes formats and fires all the DJs. Margo's boyfriend decides he wants kids and a house in the suburbs and kicks her to the curb. And to top it all off, her Mom is getting married—for the 11th time!—and expects Margo to be there as maid of honor.

  With no job and no place to live, Margo has to bunk on the couch of her best friend, Chris, whose revolving bedroom door has played host to half the women in New York—at least, the ones who pass his “kiss test.” Worse, he’s insisting she attend her mother’s wedding, and he’s personally driving her cross-country to ensure she shows up.

  Forget about surviving the road trip—can their friendship survive The Kiss Test?

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  Dedication

  As always, for my family, Jon, Jessie and JM, who stand by me when the writing gets crazy. I love you all!

  For Gina Bernal, my editor, who worked so hard to make this book better, while making the process so painless for me, I may actually be able to write another book.

  For everyone at Harlequin’s Carina Press, especially Angela James and Malle Vallik, who bring so much enthusiasm to Carina Press that even those of us completely new to the e-publishing industry feel right at home.

  And last, but not least, for the King. Researching The Kiss Test gave me an excuse to listen to almost every song Elvis ever recorded. His talent was amazing and should never be forgotten. Thanks, Elvis, for letting me borrow your song titles to title my chapters!

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One “All Shook Up”

  Chapter Two “Double Trouble”

  Chapter Three “Hard Knocks”

  Chapter Four “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

  Chapter Five “I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell”

  Chapter Six “Hard-Headed Woman”

  Chapter Seven “I Need Somebody To Lean On”

  Chapter Eight “Hound Dog”

  Chapter Nine “How the Web Was Woven”

  Chapter Ten “Heartbreak Hotel”

  Chapter Eleven “Jailhouse Rock”

  Chapter Twelve “A Little Less Conversation”

  Chapter Thirteen “Let’s Be Friends”

  Chapter Fourteen “Cryin’ in the Chapel”

  Chapter Fifteen “How Can You Lose What You Never Had?”

  Chapter Sixteen “One Broken Heart for Sale”

  Chapter Seventeen “Love Me Tender”

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “All Shook Up”

  “Don't Be Cruel” blared from the alarm clock.

  Kevin groaned beside me. He thought it was cruel to have Elvis blasting out at him at three-thirty every morning. He wanted a “normal” alarm. And he had one—set for three hours from now, when it was time for him to get up. This one was all mine.

  As always, Elvis also accompanied me in the shower. I lathered, rinsed and repeated to “Hard-Headed Woman,” which Kevin deemed more than appropriate, since I wouldn’t give up my morning Elvis fix. On weekends, I’d drag Kevin into the shower with me, soaping him down, fittingly, to “Release Me,” and he’d stop protesting my musical choices. At least for a moment.

  Thanks to a timer the coffee pot was full and hot by the time I was dry and dressed. Checks, Kevin’s multicolored cat, waited somewhat impatiently for his breakfast, which today he decided would include chunks of my cream-cheese-slathered New York bagel. He attacked and devoured it like I imagine he’d partake of a mouse meal had there been any in our tenth-floor Manhattan apartment.

  This was my favorite time of day. Well, my whole life was pretty much my favorite. I’d worked hard over the past few years to get everything the way it was. I had a great job as Margo in the Morning, the a.m. DJ for WKUP, Wake Up 107, a country radio station housed in the Empire State Building. We liked to joke that WKUP was for people who were country at heart but afraid of farm animals. I had a great market share, enjoyed near-celebrity status among New York City country music listeners and had the privilege of meeting many of my favorite country artists every week.

  I had a boyfriend who loved sex, remembered to put the toilet seat down and didn’t pressure me to get married—a definite not-gonna-happen in my book. We lived in a terrific apartment—complete with elevator and doorman—on the edge of Chelsea, surrounded by Kevin’s modestly elegant decor and my Elvis collection.

  I loved New York—running in Central Park, Broadway matinees (so I didn’t have to dress up) and meeting friends for drinks at our favorite sports bar. I loved the traffic, the noise, the variety of people. I loved the fact that my mother lived in California.

  I simply loved my life.

  At four-thirty, I dragged on a lightweight sweat jacket, shoved my feet into sneakers and gave the Elvis bobblehead on the hall table a tap. He’d been my good-luck charm since winning him on eBay six months ago. Some people rubbed Buddha’s belly; I whacked Elvis upside the head to watch his pelvic gyrations.

  Though the sky over Manhattan was still dark, the sidewalks were bright with lights from the buildings, as was typical for the pre-crack of dawn in mid-June. It was five long blocks to work, and the brisk walk in the still-chilled air warmed me up. I dodged the other Type A personalities headed for work before most people even thought of opening their eyes, and spent the time going over any exciting news I’d read or heard in the past twenty-four hours, which would serve as fodder for my program. I went for fresh and hip on Margo in the Morning.

  Two blocks from work my cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Margo? Honey, is that you?”

  “Mom? Mom, it’s—” I squinted at my watch as I passed a lighted store front, “It’s 1:35 a.m. in California. What’s wrong?”

  “I know what time it is, Margo. I have a watch.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Then why are you calling so early?”

  “I wanted to catch you before you got to work.”

  “Well, I’m almost there now. What’s going on?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  I froze in the middle of crossing 34th Street.

  I paused to count marriages with my fingers. On both hands. Oops, no, we needed a toe for this one. />
  A cab blared its horn and grazed my calf with its fender, prompting me out of my shock. I stepped onto the curb.

  My mother was getting married. Again.

  Why did this surprise me? This is why I would never get married. My mother had used up her quota of marriages and all of mine.

  “Margo, did you hear me? I’m getting married.”

  “I heard, Mom. Who is it this time?”

  “Now don’t take that tone, dear.” She said it with no recrimination. My mother didn’t get angry. It would have been an insult to her gentle Southern upbringing.

  “Tone? What tone would that be?”

  The tone that says “I can’t believe she can’t live without a man for more than six months?”

  The tone that says “I find it hard to believe she’s found ‘true love’ eleven times?”

  The tone that says “I’m pissed that she’s been married to more men than I’ve ever slept with?”

  “The tone that tells me you’re not happy for me, honey. I’m in love. Be happy for me.”

  She’s always in love, at least until they die, leave her for a younger woman or she gets bored and throws them out. Actually I’m not sure about the last two because I try to avoid the intimate details of my mother’s love life. Five husbands died from natural causes—or lost the will to live married to my mother. However, I’m not fully certain of the reasons behind the five divorces she’s racked up. Other than her divorce from my father, Husband Number One. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. It’s hard being married to a man who disappears off the face of the earth then shows up a year later claiming to have found God, the secret to crop circles and a new eighteen-year-old wife. Maybe that started my mom on this downhill cycle.

  “Oh, sure, Mom. I’m happy for you.” Just like I’d been happy when she married (in no particular order) William, Coleman, Bert, Jim, Ray, Juan, Leonard, Dominic, uh…Oh hell, I hadn’t been happy when she married any of them. Who was I fooling?

  Apparently my mother.

  “Oh good, honey. I want you to come for the wedding.”

  “You’re having a church wedding?” The last four or five had been hasty city-hall affairs. If she was the daughter and I the mother, I’d have been checking for a baby bump.

  I stopped outside the Empire State Building and leaned against the chilled wall. I didn’t want to go up while still on the phone with my mother, as it was entirely possible I’d jump out an eighty-fifth floor window to put myself out of my misery.

  “Of course, dear. Quinn is very religious.”

  Quinn. I didn’t know anyone over the age of twenty named Quinn. Well, well. That would be something my mother hadn’t done before. She hadn’t yet robbed the cradle. There was always a first time.

  “Doesn’t the church have something to say about you having been married so, uh, often?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m sure it will be fine, though.” I could see her waving dismissively at anything that might upset her little dream world. “You’re coming, aren’t you, Margo? It’s going to be on the last Saturday in July. Of course, I’ll need you here a few days early to be fitted for the dress. We can go shopping and do lunch. It’ll be such fun!” She deafened me by clapping her hands directly in front of the speaker.

  “A dress?”

  “Your bridesmaid dress! I want you to be my maid of honor.”

  Wow. That was a new one. “Why?”

  “Because I love you and I want you by my side.”

  This was a complete surprise to me. My mother had never asked me to stand up with her before. She so rarely had a church wedding, it hadn’t come up. Even when she did, she’d had a friend stand up with her or no one at all.

  It was very suspicious.

  “Mom, I probably can’t get the time off.”

  Again, my mother didn’t want to hear what she didn’t want to hear, so she pretended I never said it. “Will you tell your brother, too, dear? I can’t ever seem to get Robert on the phone and he doesn’t have an answering machine.”

  But he does have caller ID, I thought, reminding myself to explain to my brother—yet again—that I am not an only child and that he should be forced to talk to Mom, too.

  “I’m afraid the only way to get his attention is with email, and you know how I am about things like that.”

  “I’ll tell Rob. But, Mom, I don’t think I can—”

  “Margo, I need to go. Quinn just got out of the shower and I’m not comfortable chatting with my daughter while he’s naked.”

  I could have lived the rest of my life without that visual.

  Before going on the air, I emailed my brother. Mom’s getting married again. Not going. How ’bout you?

  ***

  “Tired of fast food? Looking for something different? The Seoul of Korea Restaurant, in the soul of Greenwich Village offers authentic Korean cuisine at a price that’ll leave you enough money for cab fare home. So don’t eat anywhere else, or you’ll be left saying ‘Wow! I could have had Korean!’”

  “Geez, who writes this stuff?” I asked Cleo, my producer, near the end of my shift. I’d had so much fun I’d nearly forgotten my mother’s nuptial addiction. Cleo didn’t answer, as the music segued from the Korean restaurant ad into the next one—I shuffled pages—for a Korean dry cleaner. Geez.

  Peppy Asian music cued the end and I turned to the last ad. “No way!” I said to Cleo, off-mike. “Who transported us to Asia overnight?” The third ad was for a Korean grocery.

  Cleo just shrugged, concentrating on her computer screen so she wouldn’t miss anything exciting. I read the copy, stumbling over unfamiliar Korean delicacies, hoping I wasn’t botching them into obscenities.

  “Holy crap!” I punched up the next song, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems” by Kenny Chesney, and stared through the glass into the radio control room otherwise known—at least between 5:00 and 10:00 a.m. every weekday morning—as Cleo’s Domain. “No more unpronounceable words. High-school Spanish doesn’t help with the pronunciation of Korean edibles.”

  Cleo shrugged again. “I don’t write ’em. I just pass them on.”

  “Then we need to hire an interpreter.”

  Kenny finished his tribute to Mexican vacations and then it was time for the traffic and weather. I pointed at Ben Barnes, who slipped into the studio—followed by a cloud of cheap cologne strong enough to penetrate a chemical suit—just in time for his report. “Go, Benny.”

  After Ben told us how horrible the traffic was in Manhattan (why didn’t we just replay the same traffic report every morning since it never varied?), he moved on to the weather. “Today in New York, we’ll have a high of eighty-seven and muggy. More of the same tomorrow, with a high of ninety. Seoul is expecting a high today of eighty, and tomorrow a high of eighty-three with monsoon rains possible.”

  I gaped at Ben open-mouthed. “I must be losing it. I could have sworn you just did the weather for South Korea.”

  “That’s what they gave me.” He waved the sheet at me, as if to prove his point, even though I couldn’t read it from the other end of our Formica-topped table. “Maybe for our foreign listeners tuning in over the internet?”

  “I guess,” I replied, with an eye roll. “Well, anyone hopping a plane for Korea, pack an umbrella. Anyway, that’s it for me today. Don’t forget to sign on to the WKUP website to win those tickets to next month’s Carrie Underwood concert at the Garden. I’m Margo in the Morning and you’ve—”

  Cleo waved frantically at me from beyond the glass wall. “You have a call,” she said into my headphones.

  Glancing down at the computer monitor, I noted she’d cued up a call from someone named Nancy. No subject line. “Well, I guess I can’t go home quite yet. I’m taking a call from Nancy. Hi, Nancy.” There was a moment of light static on the line before my caller finally spoke.

  “Hi, Margo. I’m Nancy Noble from Today’s Country Magazine.”

  “Hey, my favorite!” I said, meaning it. They put
out a great magazine filled with country music gossip, a lot of which I used on my show, but also had in-depth spreads on other country-related stuff. This month’s issue even included an article about the upcoming anniversary of Elvis’s death and the memorials planned in Memphis. Elvis may not have been a country singer, but he was loved in the South all the same.

  “I’m glad you like it. We have some wonderful news for you, Margo. You’ve been chosen as this year’s Best Country DJ.”

  I blinked and looked up at Cleo. Her heavily-lined face cracked into a huge grin. I looked over at Ben. He, too, smiled broadly, eyes magnified behind his thick lenses.

  “Really?” I squeaked. “Me?”

  “You were nominated by your listeners,” Nancy said. “We award Best Country DJ to someone who’s popular amongst their listeners, provides dedicated service to the country music industry and has spent at least three years at their current station, on-air and in a promotional capacity. You’re the first jock outside the South to win. It’s a pretty big thing.”

  I was at a total loss for words. Or thoughts.

  Me. Margo Gentry. Best Country DJ.

  Wow.

  “Are you there, Margo?” Nancy asked over the phone line.

  “Yeah, I’m just in shock. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You can thank us by coming for an interview next month.”

  “Sure. I’d love to.” I know I told my mother I couldn’t get away for her wedding next month. Maybe the eleventh time I got voted Best Country DJ, I’d be more jaded. But now I felt like jumping out the eighty-fifth floor window—this time, because I was sure I could fly.

  I hastily signed off and moved into Cleo’s Domain to talk to Nancy about the details. When we were done, I hung up and stared at Cleo, still in shock.

  “Good job, girl,” my producer said, pulling cigarettes out of her purse. She fondled the pack between her purple-painted fingertips, crinkling the cellophane. “You deserve it.”