To Catch A Wife

“Oh, okay.”

“It’s a date.” Lamest idea ever, but if this was how she wanted to play it, then this was how they would play it, because in spite of her objections, he was going to convince her to let him do the right thing. Case closed.

* * *

EMILY PACED BACK and forth across her apartment’s tiny, cluttered living room. In Riverton’s early days, these second-floor spaces above the storefronts on Main Street had mostly been used as offices. This one, above what had long been home to the Riverton Gazette, had at various times been the office of a barrister, a land surveyor and an accountant. About twenty-five years ago, it had been converted into an apartment by removing most of the partitions to create an L-shaped living/dining/office area, separated from the single bedroom by a minuscule galley kitchen and an even smaller bathroom.

Emily had fallen in love with the place the instant she saw it. She was close enough to her family that she was never, ever homesick, and far enough away to feel like the independent career woman she had imagined being.

“What were you thinking?” she asked, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “You should not have texted me to come to the shop without telling me he was there.”

“I’m thinking you should be grateful,” Fred said.

Grateful?

She stopped in front of the hamster cage that sat on a low bookcase next to her desk, and tossed in a peanut. Tadpole pounced on it, grasped it with tiny paws, her black, beady eyes bright with anticipation, and attacked the outer shell with her incisors.

“Why should I be grateful, Fred? I wasn’t expecting to see him, and I sure wasn’t prepared to tell him about the baby.”

“And you were going to be prepared...when exactly?”

He had a point.

“Still, you could have given me a heads-up.”

“Right. And given you a chance to cook up an excuse to avoid seeing him.”

Fred knew her too well.

“So? How’d he take it?”

“Better than I expected.” Jack had been kind of amazing, actually, but he might not be so accepting once the shock wore off and he had time to think things through. “He even said...” No. She wasn’t ready to say that out loud, either.

“He said...?”

Emily watched Tadpole break through one end of the peanut shell and stuff the first nut into her cheek pouch. Life for a hamster was so easy. Eat. Run on your wheel. Sleep. Get up and do it all over again. Boring, but easy.

“Come on, Em. You’re killing me here.”

She sighed, knowing Fred wouldn’t let this go. “He said we should get married right away.”

A moment of stunned silence was followed by stammering. “He... Seriously?”

“Hey! Why so surprised? I’m a total catch.”

Fred laughed. “Of course you are.”

“I am!”

“I’m agreeing with you.”

“No, you’re not. You’re being patronizing.”

“Sorry, Em. I figured he’d be more freaked out, that’s all. Do the typical guy thing and carry on about how you were trying to trap him.”

She had half expected that reaction, too. Now she didn’t know what to think. Since taking the test that morning, she had roller-coastered through every emotion imaginable. This minute, she was a wreck.

With the phone still to her ear, she stepped into the kitchen and filled the electric kettle for tea. “Under that cool-as-a-cucumber exterior, I’m sure he is freaking out, but he didn’t go ballistic.” Which was what she had expected.

“Good. When’s the big day, then?”

She switched on the kettle. “There isn’t going to be a big day. I said no.”

Another moment of silence. “You said no? Em, are you sure? You’ve had a crush on this guy since we were kids.”

Being best friends with Fred for most of her life meant he knew pretty much everything there was to know about her. Sometimes that was a good thing. Other times, like now, it was definitely annoying.

She eyed a package of coffee longingly before shifting her attention to an assortment of teas. Mint, which Annie had once recommended for an upset stomach and was mildly palatable with a spoonful of sugar. Echinacea, for the time she’d come down with a cold last winter. However, all it did was make her tongue tingle. Red rooibos, which was supposed to be good for everything and tasted worse than all the rest put together. Mint it was, she thought, dropping a bag into her favorite coffee mug and returning to the living room to wait for the water to boil.

“I had a crush on Jack when I was fourteen, not since I was fourteen. Either way, that’s no reason to rush into anything.”

Fred made a big production of clearing his throat.

“Don’t you dare say it.” She could read him like a book. “I did not rush into this thing with Jack. It just happened, and now I’m being rushed into motherhood, and I’m not ready for it, so I’m not rushing into marriage.”

Tadpole cracked the remaining shell, crammed in the second nut, one cheek pouch bulging, and sniffed around the cage for more. The little critter’s face, now comically distorted, made her smile.

“Your two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right analogy is all well and good,” Fred said. “But what about your family, Jack’s family? Everyone will have something to say about this.”

Everyone in town would have plenty to say about plain-Jane Emily Finnegan having Jack Evans’s baby. Maybe she should move to Chicago. “Trying to avoid gossip is not a good reason to rush into marriage.”

“Fair enough. I hope you’ve talked to your sisters. I still can’t believe you told them I was the father.”

“Not yet. I need to do that in person.”

“You can’t call them?”

“No way. They’ll want to know who the real father is, and I’m not explaining that over the phone.” With her free hand, she pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on her desk beneath the window overlooking Main Street.

“You can’t run out there this afternoon?”

“No time. I have to get ready for my—” Hmm. She hadn’t meant to let that slip.

“Ready for your...?”

Fred would find out sooner or later. Probably sooner, since it seemed the barbershop was the hub of Riverton’s rumor mill. “Jack and I are going out for dinner.”

Fred let out a long whistle. “A date. Interesting.”