A Baby...Maybe? & How to Hunt a Husband (17 page)

“Not just the marriage kick,” he admitted, “but the grandbabies kick as well.”

It wasn't that Nate didn't like kids.

Someday he might want one…maybe even two.
But not now. After all, he'd just bought a Harley. Harleys didn't come with baby seats. Plus it was hard to be a bad-assed biker if you were carting around a diaper bag.

Okay, so it was hard if you couldn't go more than three blocks without stalling the motorcycle, but it would be worse with a baby, of that he was sure.

“Oh, mine hasn't started in about grandchildren yet,” Shannon was saying. “No, she's just after a husband for me. She's already planning the wedding in June.”

“Oh, so you do have a fiancé?” he asked, slightly disappointed. After all, he'd noticed the ring on her hand, but it wasn't on the right finger. Damn. Here was a woman he would have liked to get to know better.

Not in a marrying, baby-producing way, but in a she's-too-hot sort of way.

He'd love to feel her body pressed against his, his Harley rumbling beneath them as they rode through town. And after the ride… Well he could think of a few other places he'd like to take this woman.

“No, there's no fiancé,” she said. “But that's not going to stop my mother. Why, she's already set the wedding date and is calling around trying to find a priest who will marry us, since Father Murphy said no. Fortunately, all the rest have said no as well, since there's no groom. Priests have rules
about that kind of thing. And my mother wouldn't consider me really married if I wasn't married by a priest in the church, wearing a long white gown with a whole group of her friends watching.”

“You win hands down,” Nate said. “My mother just complains about her lack of grandchildren.” His voice rose and he said,
“And to think of the forty-eight hours I spent laboring with you. The doctors said another baby would kill me, and so you were destined to be my only one. An only child who almost killed his mother.”

“Oh, she brings out death-guilt? That's a hard battle to fight,” Shannon said.

“It gets worse.” Again he altered his voice and said,
“And all those years I slaved away, trying to be the best mother I knew how to be, and all I want from you now is grandchildren before I'm too old to enjoy them. But do you care? No. Every girl I introduce you to you find something wrong with. You're too picky, that's what you are.”

“
Too picky.
My mother says the same thing. She's spent the last month fixing me up with…well, between you and me, I don't think she's been
picky
at all about the men she's hooked me up with. Desperate. That pretty much describes my mother's matchmaking.”

She sighed and took a sip of her drink. “Tonight's date was a prime example. I told her no. No more dates. I have a plan, you see. I want to live a solitary, chick-flick, hairy-legged life. But
she invited me out to dinner with her and my father. At least that was the story. They were at the restaurant, all right, but so was he. His name was Neil. He works with Mom and Dad at the college.”

“Doing what?” Nate prompted.

“A philosophy professor. Mom and Dad had a mysterious lab emergency. Have you ever heard of a lab emergency?”

Nate shook his head.

“Me either. Anyway, they left Neil to entertain me while we finished eating.”

“You don't look overly entertained,” Nate said with a chuckle.

Frustrated. That's how she looked.

Nate could sympathize. His mom had planned her own set-ups these last few months.

“Oh, Nate, you don't know the half of it. Neil spent the rest of the dinner talking about things so deep my head was spinning. It's not that I'm dumb, but he was being pompous on purpose. Then he turned the subject to how Kepler's observations of heavenly bodies impacted our way of viewing the world around us, and added that he'd like a chance to spend more time studying my heavenly body….”

Shannon drained her glass. “Well, I finished my spare ribs faster than anybody should, and I hope Neil was feeling philosophical about my emphatic rejection of his heavenly-body proposal. There was absolutely no way I was
impacting
with him.”

“Most men aren't overly philosophical about rejections,” Nate pointed out.

“Yeah, he didn't seem very pleased. My mom called my cell phone to apologize for their ‘emergency' and to see how the rest of the meal went. I told her that I left right after the entrée because I didn't want to be Neil's dessert. That's when she accused me of being picky, and I said if she didn't watch it, I'd show her how non-picky I could be by picking a man that would fry her butt. I mean a biker, with long greasy hair and tattoos or something. She'd be off my case about marriage quicker than she could light a Bunsen burner.”

“Yeah, rebellion has its place. My mother wants me to grow up and settle down, though maybe not quite as bad as your mother wants you to. Mom keeps pointing out I'm thirty and that it's time to become an adult. But to be honest, I don't recall ever having had a childhood, so I've staged my own mini rebellion. I've decided it's time to do some of the things I've always wanted to do but was too busy with school or establishing a career to try.”

Nate took a sip of his cola and continued. “I thought about tattoos, as a matter of fact, but I didn't think it would go over well with my customers.”

“Customers? What do you do?” Shannon asked.

Nate smiled and replied, “I'm a pharmacist. I can't see my customers being comfortable with me
tattooed. And you? What do you do when you're not out on bad dates?”

“I'm a high-school art teacher.”

“Too bad you weren't a stripper or something. I could take you home and scare my mother out of rushing me into marriage.”

“Yeah,” Shannon said, wistfulness in her voice. “If only I was a stripper and you were a greasy biker, life would be perfect.”

They both paused and, though he didn't know her well, he could see she realized the opportunity they had in front of them at the same moment he did.

Nate weighed the possibility. After all, he didn't need an actual stripper. He just needed his mother to
believe
he'd brought home a stripper.

“I just bought a bike,” Nate said slowly. “A Harley Fatboy.”

“You did?” Shannon asked, something akin to awe in her voice.

Nate nodded. “So if we told your parents I was a biker, it wouldn't actually be a lie.”

He didn't mention the fact that he still questioned his abilities to actually ride the bike.

“And I do take my clothes off every night to put on pajamas, so I guess you could say I strip.”

They both laughed and let the idea grow. “You know, if I took you home disguised as a stripper and told my parents I was in love with you—a woman who takes off her clothes for a living—my
mother might get off my back about babies, at least for a while.”

“Your mother would hate a stripper daughter-in-law as much as my mother would hate a biker son-in-law.”

She grinned. “Oh, it's too perfect. Kismet even. My mother would have to rethink her wedding plans if I brought you in and introduced you as the man in my life. The only man I'd even consider marrying.”

Nate thought his mother was a bit of a pain, but Shannon's mother sounded certifiable. “Um, you didn't really explain why your mother is already planning your wedding, even though there's no groom in sight.”

“Well, it all started when my sister—the
good
daughter—ran out on her wedding with the best man. She changed her name from Mary Kathryn to Kate, and changed her man from Seth to Tony. She also changed careers.”

“From?” he found himself asking, even though he wasn't sure he was following Shannon's explanation.

“From research scientist and professor, to an employee and part-owner of Donetti's Irish Pub and Cooked Sushi Bar.”

“Cooked sushi?” Nate echoed.

Maybe it wasn't just Shannon's mother who was crazy…maybe it was her whole family.

“It's a long story,” she warned.

“I've got all night. And we'll need each other's full stories if we're going to entertain this plan.”

Shannon took a deep breath and started, “Well Mary Kathryn and Seth were best friends who decided to marry because it seemed like the logical thing to do, but they didn't have any passion between them. So on her wedding day, Kate picked up her skirt and hightailed it out of the church before the I-do's were done. She ran off with Tony, the best man. I felt horrible for Seth, but it turns out he fell head over heels for Desi, the wedding planner. So, it was happily ever after for everyone but me and Tony's ex-fiancée, Cara, because my mom suddenly noticed I'm single and made a bet with Cara's mom…”

Nate half listened as Shannon's story unfolded. The rest of his mind was occupied with wondering about how she'd look dressed up as a stripper.

The mental images were tantalizing.

This might be a crazy plan, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

And this mental image of Shannon disguised as a stripper was making Nate feel quite desperate.

“N
ATE
,
is that you?” Judy Calder called out as Nate entered his parents' home the next morning.

Normally Nate would have had to suppress a groan, knowing the course his conversation with his mother would be taking.

It wasn't that he didn't love his mother. Of course he loved her. Loved her a lot. After all, how could you not love a woman who almost died giving birth to you?

But this week the only thing he was suppressing was a grin.

He followed the sound of her voice into the kitchen. “Yeah, Mom, it's me. Where's Dad?”

His father could generally be counted on to run interference on the grandbaby nagging front, not that Nate wanted too much interfering today. He had the plan, after all.

A delightful plan.

A perfect plan.

A mother-proof plan.

A plan guaranteed to buy him some much-needed respite from his mother's pleas.

“Your father was on call and had to run in to the store,” she said.

“I just stopped in to check that little leak you were having under the sink,” Nate said from the doorway.

The kitchen was next to blinding. Bright-yellow walls, brilliant-white cabinets, sparkling surfaces. A floor you could probably actually eat off of.

Judy Calder believed in everything being just-so, whether it was her kitchen or her son's life.

She turned from the counter. In her late fifties, his mom didn't look her age at all. Folks might find his mother young-looking, but no one ever took his father for anything but his age. Paul Calder had been gray-haired since Nate could remember, and he blamed his wife for every one of those gray hairs. But after years of watching how much his father doted on his mom, Nate suspected that both of them owed the color of their hair to genetics, because the two of them were obviously meant for each other.

“Oh, honey, that's so sweet of you to stop and see about the sink. But it's okay. I called a plumber. After all, you know you're not any more mechanical than your father is.”

He opened the small door off the kitchen that led to the laundry room and grabbed his father's toolbox from the corner.

“Not mechanical? Mom, how can you say that? After all, who fixed the dryer just last week?”

“You kicked it, dear.”

“It stopped making the noise right after that.”

His mother didn't understand the fine art of home repair. Nate's opinion was, when something worked, don't fix it, and when something didn't work, try kicking it first. In this case, kicking was all that had been called for.

“Why, it was practically purring when I finished,” he said as he set the toolbox down on the counter and opened it up.

His mom shook her head and kissed his cheek. “And it started squeaking again about ten minutes after you left. I got out the spray lubricant, unscrewed the back of the machine and sprayed all over. It hasn't squeaked since.”

“It was my kick that took care of it.” His mother looked ready to contest the point, so he hastily went on, “But, I won't argue. Just let me have a look at the sink. If I don't think I can handle it, we'll just let the plumber come. But do you know how much they charge for a service call?”

Slowly, his mother backed away and gave him room to open the cabinet doors. Nate rolled up his sleeves and slid down and under the sink.

“Probably not as much as the roofer charged when he had to fix your patch job,” his mom muttered.

“I heard that,” Nate called as he studied the silver U-ish pipe over his head.

“I wanted you to. And speaking of hearing, I
need you to listen. No excuses that you didn't hear me this time. You're coming to dinner Friday night. It's Sunday, so that's five days' notice.”

He wiggled the U-ish-looking pipe. “This seems loose. Hand me the big pipe wrench, okay?”

She handed the wrench to him as she continued, “About dinner on Friday. I'm going to invite Jocelyn and her daughter Kay over.”

“No.”

Too bad he couldn't kick the pipe. He could barely get his torso under the sink. But he gave it a couple good thwacks with the wrench just in case that was all it would take. But the pipe just seemed even looser after that and not fixed at all, so he tried to get the wrench around the big bolt that held the sections together.

“And I'm going to make that pot roast you like,” his mom continued.

“I hate pot roast. I like pork roast and sauerkraut.”

His mother always forgot what his favorite dishes were. He thought it was some passive-aggressive way of getting back at him for not giving her grandchildren yet.

“And I'll make some of my delicious homemade dinner rolls.”

“They're like bricks.”

“And you're going to love Kay—”

“Kay? Couldn't her parents give her a whole
name? “Kay. I could never love a woman who's name was just an initial.”

“—and maybe she'll be the one you finally marry. Then the two of you will give me grandbabies. Lots and lots of grandbabies. I've met Kay. She's built for babies. Wide hips, you know.”

He thought of Shannon. He wouldn't call her hips wide. Not that they were too thin. No, they looked perfectly proportioned to the rest of her body.

His mother would be disappointed.

He grinned—thankful he was hidden under the sink—ready to launch the plan he and narrow-hipped Shannon had devised. “Sorry mom. Kay sounds delightful. But I'm seeing someone.”

“Since when?”

He could hear the suspicion in her voice.

Deciding to stick to the truth when possible, he said, “Last night, at Mick's place. They're friends.”

“You met her in a bar? Nice girls don't go to bars and pick up men,” his mother assured him.

“She didn't pick me up, I picked her up.” Mick had practically had to throw them out so he could close, they sat and talked so long. The plan was simple, they'd use each other as weapons to diffuse their mothers' mutual matrimonial designs.

One bad-assed biker and a stripper to the rescue.

“Well, nice girls don't
let
men pick them up in bars,” his mother humphed.

“This one did.”

He finally got the big pipe wrench to grip the bolt that connected the pipes and turned it.

The pipe fell off with just the first half turn and landed on Nate's nose. “Ow!”

“What did you do to my sink?” his mother yelled.

“Your sink?” he hollered back as he shimmied out from under the cabinet gripping his aching, moist-feeling nose. “Your sink? What about my nose? I think it's sunk into my face.”

“I always thought your nose was too big anyway. It could use some sinking. You have your father's nose, and he never did have an attractive one.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Nate grabbed the towel and held it to his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood. “Can you bleed to death from your nose?”

“No. Now what about my sink? You broke it didn't you? And now the plumber is going to charge me twice as much.”

“Mom, I'm dying and you're worried about your sink and money? That shouldn't be the biggest concern of a devoted mother. My bleeding to death should be.”

She folded her arms across her chest, obviously not feeling overly devoted. “What did you do to my sink?”

“The bolt that held the pipes together was obviously loose, which is probably why it was leaking
and the explanation for the fact it fell off so easily. I'll just tighten it back down and you should be fine.”

“That's what you say. But I remember that time you were going to cut down that tree in the backyard. You broke my chain saw.”

“Mom, I'd cut almost all the way through that branch and was trying to pull it down when that big one over top of it fell instead…you're lucky it crushed the saw, not your son.”

“Well, I was rather partial to that saw,” she said with a mischievous grin. “Let's face it, honey, though I adore you, you're not Bob Vila. Actually, you're not even Tim-the-Toolman Taylor.”

“Gee, your faith in me makes me feel special. And speaking of feeling special, I've got a new girl now, so you can cancel Friday night's dinner with the wide-hipped initial girl.”

Maybe just mentioning a new woman would be enough to get his mother off his case for a while. If it was, they wouldn't have to move on to the second part of their plan.

“No, I won't cancel dinner,” she said. “Though I won't invite Kay. Instead you can bring this bar floozy to meet your mother.”

She lifted the towel and peeked under it at his nose. “I think it stopped bleeding, but you're going to have quite a mark.”

Nate gingerly felt his nose, and though it seemed swollen, it didn't feel as if he'd broken it.

“Wonder how the floozy will feel about your new nose,” his mom added.

“She's not a floozy, exactly. She's a nice girl.”

“Who got picked up in a bar.”

“Mom, our first official date's Friday. You don't take a girl to dinner at your mom's on the first date.”

He grinned. Arguing with his mother was a part of the plan. After all, if he gave in too easily, she'd suspect something. She was a sly one, his mom.

But he was slyer.

Much slyer.

Why, if he hadn't become a pharmacist, he probably could have been a spy he was so wily.

“Maybe you should bring over more first dates. After all, you've never brought one here before, and I still have no grandbabies. Maybe if you bring this girl here now, she'll realize you're serious about this relationship.”

“You said she was a floozy. Why would you want me to be serious about a girl like that? And who said I was serious? It's our first date. We just sat at the bar and drank last night, so that doesn't count. If I bring her here for dinner she'll think I'm—”

“—a nice guy,” his mom interrupted. “She'll think you're a nice guy. Dinner will be at seven. Don't be late.”

She leaned over and glanced under the sink. “Now fix my sink.”

“Oh, I'll fix you…I mean your sink,” he said with a grin.

If he'd become a spy instead of a pharmacist he'd name his missions. He thought of the possibilities as he started to reattach the pipe.

Operation Meddling Mothers.
Yeah, that was perfect.

Operation Meddling Mothers was about to begin.

 

“M
OM
?”

Shannon had already agreed to Sunday dinner with her parents—and no one else—before she met Nate. She had expected to find the ordeal trying. But now, despite her mother's new marry-off-Shannon campaign—or rather because of it—she was looking forward to the evening.

“Oh, Shannon there you are. I have so much news. I've been busy,” her mother said as Shannon walked into the house at promptly four-thirty.

“Me, too,” Shannon said, kissing her mother's cheek.

Her mom patted the chair next to her. Shannon sat as her mother exclaimed in an excited, breathless voice, “I'm sorry that your dinner with Neil didn't work out.”

“Mom, you have to stop setting me up. I'm not interested.”

As if Shannon hadn't even spoken, her mother continued, “I've got you a date for next Saturday night! A nice boy. His name is Shelby.”

“Sorry, Mom, no can do.”

“Now, Shannon, there you go, being difficult again. I know you have name issues and you think I haven't thought about how Shelby and Shannon sound together. But I have. It's not a Shannon Bonnie thing. Oh, I know, I know you're going to say that whenever someone says your names together, other people with think they're being shushed, but really, dear, that's a very narrow view. A man is more than his name.”

“Mom, really it's not his name—”

“And I know that you think this entire wedding thing is just about my bet with that woman, and maybe that's what instigated it, but Shannon, dear, let's face it, you're not getting any younger. It's time you settled down and found happiness. Why, your father has endowed my life with such joy. I want you to find a man as endowed as he is.”

Shannon started choking. “Mom—”

Her mother, obviously unaware of what she'd just said, continued, “And I realize that you like to buck the system. That you hate to do anything I suggest because…well, because you're just a tiny bit difficult, dear.”

Shannon was about to argue, as usual, that she might be difficult but she'd learned from the best. And not only was her mother difficult herself, she was certifiable. But she didn't get to say all that because her mom held up her hand, stopping her before she started.

“Uh-uh-uh. You know you are. All I'm saying
is don't say no to meeting Shelby just because I suggested it. I'm not saying marry him tomorrow—”

“No, you're saying marry him in June.”

“At the end of June,” her mother corrected. “That gives you plenty of time to get to know him. But that's not what I'm worried about. I'd just like you to meet a nice boy. Shelby's a podiatrist. He's—”

“Mom, if you'd take a breath, I'd tell you I can't go out with Shelby because I'm already seeing someone. It's not because of the name issue, though you're right, that would be the pits.”

“See, I knew the name thing would be an issue,” her mother muttered.

“It's not the name thing. It's simply that I've thought about what you said the other day, about me always fighting your wishes, and decided you were right. If you want me to consider marrying, I will. As a matter of fact, I've found a man I really like. We have a date next weekend.”

“Really?” Her mother looked suspicious.

“Really,” Shannon assured her. “Mom, we might not always see eye to eye, but I never lie to you. Yes. I met a man after I ditched Neil. His name is Nathan Calder and I like him.”

That wasn't a lie at all. She did like Nate. Oh, there was a physical attraction. After all, the man gave new meaning to the phrase
tall, dark and handsome.
But it was more than that. He genuinely
seemed like a nice guy. Easy to talk to. Down to earth.