Before You Get To Baby...

Chapter One

“Sex.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, ideally it should be good sex.”

“That’s what you think a guy is looking for most in a relationship?” Mary Frances Parker looked with barely concealed horror at her brother’s best friend. Clearly, Drew Wiseman was not the man she should be going to for tips on what a man looks for in a woman. “Sex? That’s it?”

“Like I said, good sex, not just any sex,” Drew continued, oblivious to her discomfort. “I mean, quantity counts and everything but quality should play a definite role here.”

“That is so totally ridiculous. I wish you could hear yourself.”

“Hey, you’re the one who came ringing my doorbell wanting to know the guy’s perspective without so much as a hello first. I’m just being honest.”

Frannie thought of her brother, due to be married in a month’s time. “So what you’re basically saying here is that Rick was ruled by nothing but hormones when he proposed to Evie? My friend Betsy’s mind and personality had nothing to do with Tom’s proposal? Sheesh. Men are so pathetic. I’m starting to wonder why I want to find one to marry in the first place.”

Her words threw Drew for a loop. Married? Frannie? Why, she was just a kid. Had he known she was in the market he’d have tailored his advice. After all, the idea of Frannie providing what every man looked for in a relationship disturbed him for reasons he didn’t want to explore. “So if we’re so pathetic and all, why aren’t you busy thinking up ways to avoid us? I mean, why would you want to bind yourself to one of us for the rest of your life anyway?”

“God only knows.” Using the tip of her index finger Frannie glumly picked up cookie crumbs from the kitchen table where she’d made herself at home. “I keep thinking they can’t possibly all be as shallow as they appear, and I do want to have a family and children.” She shrugged. “Lord knows, with my brothers, I’ve picked up enough boxer shorts dropped within spitting distance of a clothes hamper and fished enough dirty socks out from under beds to last me a lifetime, but the plain truth of the matter is men are a necessity if you want a family and babies,” she pointed out, sounding almost forlorn.

Drew sat back in his chair. Would he ever understand women? “Next you’re going to tell me your biological clock is ticking. Am I right?” He rolled his eyes in anticipation of her answer. Andrew couldn’t understand it. His friends’ biological alarms seemed to be going off in depressingly large numbers lately. Didn’t anybody get that babies were a pain? They upchucked, and they did disgusting things in their pants. They got up in the middle of the night, for God’s sake, the middle of the night.

“Well, it is,” his best friend’s little sister answered defensively.

“So let it tick, Frannie,” Andrew advised. “I mean, come on, it’s not like you’ve got one foot in the grave.” He shrugged. Drew was five years older than Frannie. He certainly didn’t feel an uncontrollable need to nest. “The world is overpopulated anyway. If you need to hear the pitter-patter of little feet all that bad, get a dog. They’ll drool, throw up and piddle on the carpeting same as any baby.”

Frannie glowered. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“So why’d you ask?”

“Because you’re safe.”

No man liked to hear himself described as safe. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Safe? He wasn’t safe. He was lean and mean. Andrew had done time in the military. Why, he could easily produce a dozen or more guys who’d be happy to testify just how mean he could be. Safe. What was that? He never should have let Frannie in the door. The fact she’d shown up with a plate of her homemade cookies should have been an indication she was up to no good. When would he ever learn that there was no such thing as a free meal, or in this case, free cookie?

And look at this. Frannie’d been there all of ten minutes and sure enough, here he was getting all worked up. Frannie could rile him the way nobody else ever had, or in all likelihood, ever could.

Frannie sighed. “Well, it certainly wasn’t meant as an insult. Look, all I meant was that I can’t ask somebody who’s a potential mate, now can I? They’d run the opposite direction if they thought I was actively looking for a spouse. Why are men so paranoid?”

“We’re not paranoid, we’re realistic. Women are out to get us.” Drew waved an arm out in the air. “Look at Rick. And our buddy Phil. Then let’s not forget Nate Bowman.” He threw up the other hand. “There goes Wednesday bowling, Friday night poker and the occasional drive into Chicago to see the White Sox play. They’re all too busy out picking china patterns. Meanwhile, what am I supposed to do for entertainment, hmm? None of these women stop to think about their guys’ guy relationships, do they? What is it with your sex and this commitment thing you’ve all got? Why can’t you ladies be happy without a picket fence around your tidy Cape Cod and your two-point-three precocious children?”

Drew picked up his beer and took a thirsty slug. He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure Frannie had just insulted him. He knew he shouldn’t ask, but it just showed how wrong she was and how on the edge he liked to live. “And just why am I safe from your machinations I’d like to know?” Not that he wanted to be the target of all that fire power. Of course he didn’t.

“Well, for one thing I couldn’t possibly live with someone who liked country and western.” Frannie bit back a laugh as Drew gaped at her. Then, restlessly, she drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Okay, while it’s true I loathe and despise country, there’s a little more to it than just your pitiable taste in music. A woman looks for something different in a husband than a date,” she explained carefully, thinking as she spoke. Teasing Drew was fun, but if she intended to pick his brain, which she did, he deserved to know she’d thought this thing through. It wasn’t just a whim on her part. Besides, there was no harm in letting him know she’d be off the market before too much longer. Frannie scowled. As if he’d care. Why couldn’t he care? Everything would be so much easier.

Right away, Drew knew Frannie was actually serious about this current craziness. Frannie never thought before she spoke. Whatever entered her brain exited her mouth. Oh, man, he was going to have to talk to her brother Rick about this.

“For a mate, she needs somebody steady, reliable. Someone who’ll take out the trash and be able to find the clothes hamper when he undresses at night. Somebody who’ll walk the floors with her when the baby has colic. Someone who actually replaces the toilet paper—on the holder, not just sets it in the near vicinity—when he finishes off a roll.”

By God, he was insulted. He could do all those things. If he wanted. It was hardly his fault his toilet paper holder had come away from the wall a month or so ago and he’d been too busy to fix it, now was it? What else could he do but set the roll on the floor? Anyone could see that.

Drew couldn’t believe he was even having this conversation. Damn it, nobody ignited his fuse the way Frannie did. Didn’t the woman understand that the easiest way to handle colic was to not have the baby in the first place?

“Somebody you don’t mind sharing your genetic code with, you know? Everybody I know is out there sharing their genetic code. I’m telling you, every close friend I have is either married or will be by the end of the summer. You should see Sue Ellen’s little boy. He’s just too cute. I want one of those, Drew, I really do. The thing is, it took Sue Ellen three years to get pregnant, and she got married right out of college. You know, a man starts losing some of his potency once he hits his mid twenties, I figured I ought to get on the stick and find somebody now.”

“I may be twenty-nine but I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have any trouble at all impregnating anything needing impregnating,” Drew growled. “In fact it’s been my greatest fear. It’s why we men are so darn careful. I never wanted to have to pay the price for thinking with my gonads.”

Frannie ignored him. “I also want somebody who’s intelligent. And I wouldn’t mind decent-looking, either. I’ve given up on Mel Gibson coming to his senses, but surely decent-looking isn’t asking too much.” She grimaced. “Call me shallow, but I don’t want any frog-faced children. Breakfast is too early in the morning to have to face amphibians across the table. I’m on the short side, so in order to compensate, I’m thinking tall, too. No point in the boys being shrimpsters if I can help it. Mom always said it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one, but I don’t really care all that much about money. I don’t mind pulling my fair share and contributing to the family income. But if you extrapolate a little bit here, and the playing field being equal in other ways, I mean between two guys, both being intelligent, decent-looking and now that I think about it, neither one an early balder, it should be as easy to fall for the tall guy as the short one, don’t you think?”

Drew shook his head in despair as he tried to figure out the logic behind that bit of nonsense. Near as he could tell, he’d been insulted. Again. She might be his best friend’s little sister and as cute as a button, but she’d crossed the line. There was not a damn thing wrong with his genetic code. Not a damn thing. He had an engineering degree from Purdue University, didn’t he? You didn’t get that with peas for brain, now did you?

And more than one woman had come on to him during the eleven years since high school. There was a small cadre of females out there who’d rate his looks higher than dog meat, Andrew thought more than a bit defensively even as he rubbed the nose that had been broken a dozen years back when he’d taken a hockey puck in the face. It might be a little crooked, but hey, if a woman expected perfection, she’d have to provide it herself. He knew for a fact Frannie had a scar down one arm from the surgery it had taken to put her arm back together after an attempt to go around the moon on the playground swing set years ago. Man, he’d almost had heart failure that day. He and Rick had been baby-sitting Frannie when she’d tried that little trick. Rick had accused a wailing Frannie of doing it on purpose just to get them in trouble. It hadn’t been the first time. Or the last. And here she was, back at it again, obviously determined to draw him into this latest batch of nuttiness.

But he digressed. He was intelligent and decent-looking. Hadn’t Debi…Dulci…whoever, gotten all rhapsodic over his eyes? Like she’d never seen the color blue before. Drew almost snorted. Go figure. It was a simple factor of genetics. His mother had blue eyes, his father’s eyes were brown, but he obviously carried a recessive gene for blue. Drew had just as obviously gotten it. Simple. No big deal. Try telling that to Deirdre. Yeah, that was it, Deirdre.

At least he had an eye color. Frannie’s license said brown, but that was only because they had to fit her into a category. Her eyes were this oddball color only a woman would have a name for—toffee, toast or maybe café au lait. Drew rolled his eyes. Who thought up these names anyway? he thought with a sneer. And that was just the inside part of her iris. Then there was this darker band around the edge. Dark chocolate bark or something. Whatever.

And furthermore, even though scrupulous honesty would have him admitting that he might have just missed making the six-foot mark, any engineer in the world would tell you that a small margin of error was allowable and you’d still meet specs. At five eleven and three-quarters he was six foot plus or minus a quarter of an inch, so he claimed six feet. Totally within code and definitely un-short.

A growl built up in his throat. “Seems to me you’re asking for an awful lot. What’s the guy going to get in return? Who’s going to marry a little bit like you? A man wants a woman he doesn’t have to worry about losing in the sheets at night. An armful, you know? Something it would take more than a spring zephyr to blow away.”

“I am not that little,” Frannie responded stiffly.

Ah, so she could dish it out, but couldn’t take it.

“And there you go again,” she added. “Is sex all you think about?”

“Me and my half of the world’s population. Yeah, pretty much.”

Frustration rang in Frannie’s voice. “Don’t you want someone who can create a home? Do you ever worry about character, personality, intelligence, humor, for God’s sake? Don’t you want to share a good laugh with a woman you care about?”

“Not when I’m in bed with her,” Drew fervently assured Frannie.

Frannie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, for crying out loud.” She rose and snatched up the plate of cookies she’d brought as a bribe.

“Hey!” Drew protested.

Frannie didn’t relent. “Nothing deeper than surface appeal matters to you,” she said. “You just said so. You couldn’t possibly care that I also bake the best oatmeal cookies in a three-state radius.”

“Food is another basic need, right up there with sex. A man’s got to keep his strength up, after all. And they’re okay,” Drew allowed, not wanting to feed her ego. She gave him enough of a hard time as it was. “Even if they do have raisins in them. It would be too bad if they went to waste.”

“I’ll freeze them. Take them in my lunch.”

“All right, all right. I’m sorry, already. Put the cookies back and we’ll talk. Sheesh. Women are so sensitive.”

“We are not.” Frannie hesitated, then reluctantly sat back down. She kept the cookies in front of her, her arms curled protectively around the plate. “So come on now, Drew, give. Seriously, what’s a guy looking for when he’s ready to settle down?”

Drew squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. The topic had him on edge. “Look, Frannie, every guy is different in what they find attractive in a woman. Just like every woman is different. Didn’t I hear you telling Rick the other day that your friend Annie was wasting her time on some dweeb? That you couldn’t figure out what she saw in the guy?”