Say You Want Me

Joni squeezed against the counter to allow an EKG cart to pass. “Mama, you know the kind of man G.P. thinks is suitable.” She closed her eyes, picturing the parade of race-car drivers, fighter pilots and bull riders her grandmother had sent her way. There’d even been one bomb demolition expert. Give a man a dangerous job or a reckless attitude and he was prime husband material as far as G.P. was concerned.

“She thinks you need more excitement in your life.”

“Being an emergency department nurse isn’t exciting enough?” Joni looked at the row of crash carts ready for use, the curtained exam rooms and the half-dozen doctors and nurses moving busily among them. One Saturday night around this place made a person long for the mundane and ordinary.

“What’s wrong with a boring man?” she asked. “You married a boring man.” Joni’s father was a tax assessor whose idea of excitement was Friday night at the video store.

“Your father may seem boring to you, but he’s actually very romantic.”

Joni resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Her entire family was addicted to romance, leaving Joni the odd woman out. “Romance is overrated,” she said, not for the first time. Other things were much more important in a relationship: dependability, stability, integrity. Things she hadn’t found in the right combination yet, but she was sure she would, given time to do things her own way.

“Romance is not overrated to your grandmother. And not to you, if you’d only admit it.”

Joni groaned. “I won’t do it, Mama. I won’t marry some adrenaline junkie just to please G.P.”

“You’ll have to discuss that with her when she gets here. I only called to warn you.”

“Thanks, Mama. For the warning, anyway.” She hung up the phone and slumped against the counter. She’d scream, but that tended to upset the patients. So she settled for reaching behind the counter and helping herself to the staff supply of M&M’s. Headache pills were fine for some things, but serious crises called for chocolate.

“Joni, we need a hand over here.”

Soon, both Joni’s hands were occupied giving a breathing treatment to a thirteen-year-old girl who’d had an allergic reaction to peanuts. While she monitored the girl’s vitals and waited for the treatment to take effect, Joni considered her options.

She could leave town. But she only had a week’s accumulated vacation, and she couldn’t afford to travel very far. G.P. would either stay in town until Joni returned or come looking for her.

She could refuse to cooperate. After all, she was a grown woman in the United States of America. The idea of her grandmother choosing a husband for her was ridiculous.

Except that G.P. wrote the book on stubborn. She’d simply smile and keep going her own way, and the next thing Joni knew, she’d be standing at the altar with a motorcycle stunt rider or a professional mountain climber by her side.

She checked the oxygen sensor attached to the girl’s index finger. “You’re doing really good,” she said, patting the child’s shoulder. “Keep breathing.”

If running away and putting her foot down didn’t work, that left one other choice: she had to convince her grandmother that she already had a man in her life. That G.P. didn’t have to hunt up a husband for her granddaughter, because marriage was already imminent.

All she had to do was find a guy to hang out with for the week or so G.P. was in town.

She looked around the room for likely candidates. There was that good-looking new resident…. No, residents worked killer hours. Even if he could get an evening free to take her out, he’d likely fall asleep.

The paramedic from Lone Star Ambulance? She made a face. G.P. would love him. He raced motorcycles when he wasn’t careening through the streets behind the wheel of an ambulance. No thanks.

Her gaze lit on a policeman at the front desk. He was kind of cute, in those motorcycle boots and tight pants…. No! Definitely not a cop. Cops were the worst adrenaline junkies of all. Her friend Connie had married a cop. And since her husband was always involved in an investigation or doing off-duty work, Connie was practically raising their three sons by herself.

There you had it. The reason she didn’t have a man in her life was that all the men she met were too involved in their jobs. She wanted a man who would be there for her and their children—not someone who spent all his time risking his life, even if it was to save mankind.

A plump, curly-haired woman pulled back the curtain and peered into the treatment room. “Mandy, are you okay?”

Mandy, who had been doing just fine until that moment, burst into tears. “Mama!”

The woman rushed forward and gathered the girl in a hug. “I came as soon as the school called.”

Joni stepped back to allow mother and daughter a little more privacy. Five years as a nurse hadn’t inured her to such scenes. What was more special than the bond between mother and child? It was a bond she intended to experience for herself one day, as soon as she found the right man to stand by her side.

She consulted the chart clipped to the corner of the exam room. “Mandy’s going to be fine, Mrs. Wilson. She just needs to stay away from peanuts. The doctor will be in to talk with you in a minute.”

She left the room and returned to the nurse’s station for a refill of M&M’s. That settled it, then. If she couldn’t find a man on the job, she’d have to look farther afield.

She glanced at the wall calendar. She had two weeks. Surely she could find a man in two weeks.

1

TWO DAYS. Joni had two days to find a man—any man—to keep Grandmother Pettigrew off her back. She’d exhausted her list of old boyfriends and available male acquaintances in one week and now had resorted to blind dates. If she didn’t find a man soon, she was going to end up with a Pamela Pettigrew special and the makings of a full-blown family feud.

She pulled into the restaurant parking lot and checked her hair in the rearview mirror. After enduring dates with a man old enough to be her grandfather, another who ended the evening by asking if he could lick her toes, and a third man who claimed to be the offspring of aliens, she was pulling out all the stops for tonight—mascara and eyeliner, vampy red lipstick, and a blue silk minidress that showcased her curves and long legs. She’d curled her hair, painted her nails and spritzed on the expensive French perfume G.P. had given her for Christmas. She had reason to believe this guy might actually be relatively normal, and she wasn’t going to let him slip away.

She studied her reflection in the mirror. Not a bad looking chicklet, if she did say so herself. Maybe a little too serious. She tried a smile. There. Didn’t she look like a woman who could make a man’s dreams come true?

Not that she had any intention of dream fulfillment, but it didn’t hurt to give a man aspirations. Besides, this man had to be the one. She didn’t know how many more blind dates like this she could survive. Her coworker, Marcelle, had sworn her cousin was a nice, ordinary accountant. Thirty years old. Sweet. “Just don’t say anything about his hair,” Marcelle had cautioned. “It’s getting thin and he’s sensitive.”

Hair or no hair, if he didn’t have alien blood or a foot fetish, he was a winner in Joni’s book. She slid out of the car and smoothed her skirt over her hips. She didn’t have any more time to be picky. Even the sleep-deprived residents at the hospital were beginning to look good.

A blast of air-conditioning and the aroma of garlic and oregano greeted her when she opened the door of the restaurant. She blinked in the dim light. She could just make out a wall lined with wine bottles and a leather upholstered bar to her left. Candles flickered in raffia-covered Chianti bottles on tables draped in red linen.

Her stomach gave a nervous shimmy. She’d chosen this place because it was near her apartment and she liked Italian food, but she hadn’t remembered it being so…romantic. What she had in mind was more of a business transaction, not romance.

She hoped her date was already here. What was his name again? Brian?

“May I help you?” The maître d’ materialized out of some dark corner and looked down his nose, straight at her cleavage.

She resisted the urge to tug at her dress. “Um, I’m supposed to meet someone here.” She tried to see past him, into the dining room.

He moved over to block her view. “Perhaps if you describe this person, I can tell you if they’re present or not.”

She frowned. Well, of course she couldn’t describe him. What had Marcelle said? “He’s, uh, he has dark hair and dark eyes. Not too tall. Average.”

The maître d’ raised one eyebrow. She realized she’d just described half the population of San Antonio. She stared right back. She had even less patience with rude people than she did with daredevils. Not to mention that five years of dealing with medical residents had taught her how to handle men who thought they were superior.

The maître d’ turned away. “I’ll see if there’s anyone here who fits that description.”

As soon as he was gone, she moved to the doorway and peered into the dining room. The romantic theme continued here, with grapevines twined around wooden beams and candlelit tables for two. One end of the room had been left empty for a dance floor, a crystal chandelier suspended overhead.

At this early hour, the place was only half full, and it was easy to spot the only person by himself. A dark-haired, broad-shouldered man in a western-cut sports coat sat at a table on the left side of the room. He looked up from the wine list and she sucked in a deep breath. The men in Marcelle’s family must be something else if Marcelle thought this one was ordinary.

He had a strong face, with dark eyes and thick brows, a square jaw and Roman nose. His skin was the weathered bronze of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors. Fine lines radiated from the corners of his eyes and a small scar to the right of his mouth kept him from being too pretty. He had nice lips—the kind that looked as if they knew how to kiss a woman.

She blinked. Where had that come from? This was a blind date. Who said anything about kissing? She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. She had one goal tonight: to convince this man to accompany her to a family barbecue and pose as her boyfriend.

If it took kissing to do that…well, a girl had to make some sacrifices, didn’t she?

CARTER SULLIVAN stared into his glass of wine and listened to the Italian folk songs emanating from the speakers overhead. What was the expression? Wine, women and song. He sighed. Maybe two out of three wasn’t bad…. No, it was bad. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a date. His job didn’t leave a lot of time to meet eligible women.