The Hand-Picked Bride

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“Personal information,” he added, glancing at her and then down at the paper he had before him on the desk.

Something in his voice put her on notice. “What?”

Ignoring her question, he stared hard at the paper and began. “Uh, let’s see. Are you married?”

She frowned, uneasy and not sure why. “I think you know the answer to that one. My friend Mandy said you’d asked her.”

He looked up. “Mandy runs the pretzel machine?”

She nodded, her silvery eyes watching him steadily.

He smiled quickly and picked up his pen, jotting down a mark. “Okay. We’ll move on, then. Is the little boy—Kevin is his name, isn’t it? Is he your only child?”

She nodded again, and he made another mark on the paper.

“Are you seeing anyone special right now?”

Her frowned deepened and her suspicions grew. “What does that have to do with how well I can handle marzipan?” she asked him.

His smile was suave and reassuring. “Nothing. Nothing at all. These are just questions on a psychological profile. They mean nothing.”

She smelled a rat, but she had to admit, his smile was persuasive and she found herself on the verge of smiling back. “Then why bother with them?” she murmured.

He shrugged disarmingly. “Like I say, it’s a profile. We like to know what kind of people our employees are.” He tapped the desk with the pencil. “You didn’t answer the question. Are you seeing anyone special?” And his gaze held hers as though he would read more in her silver eyes than she would tell him with her lips.

Slowly, reluctantly, she shook her head.

He noted her reply on the paper and moved on, but his eyes were alight with satisfaction. “Okay. Now—would you say you’re the kind of woman who, uh, works best with a lot of people around, with light support and supervision, or on her own?”

She hesitated. This actually sounded like it might be a legitimate question for a profile. “I’d say probably somewhere between the last two,” she said, and he nodded.

“Would you say you’re the kind of woman who likes walks on a moonlight beach, a good game of tennis, or dancing the night away at nightclubs.”

They were swerving into suspicious territory again, but there was something about the sneaky way he was doing it that made her want to laugh.

“I’m the kind of woman who likes to stay home and play with my son,” she told him candidly. “And that’s about it.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “Then how about this. Do you go for men of action, or the strong, silent type?”

Now she knew it was a hoax. How did he even have the nerve? “What?” she said, on the verge of laughter.

He spoke quickly as though he wanted to get his question in before she got up and walked out on him. “Okay, make it multiple choice. Would you prefer a man of action, the strong silent type, a sensitive poet, or the caring, compassionate and deeply loving, father of an eleven-year-old girl?”

She was shaking her head, holding back her laugh.

“Who happens to be very handsome and even funny, when you get him in the right mood,” he added, humor gleaming in his dark eyes.

The jig was up. She knew he wasn’t serious. He was going to ask her out, wasn’t he? And yet, she couldn’t help but be a little flattered by it. After all, he was a very attractive man. Still, she was going to have to set him straight.

“Now you sound like something on the dating game,” she told him, trying to be stern. “Bachelor number one or bachelor number two?” She threw up her hands. “Who cares? I’ll pick none of the above, thank you.” Her gaze met his calmly. “The truth is, I don’t date.”

Somehow he didn’t look convinced. “Never?”

She shook her head. “No, never.”

He leaned forward on the desk and gazed at her earnestly. “But what if you met that great guy with the daughter and you hit it off right away and—”

She frowned and broke into his question. “Listen, am I here for a job or is this all a ploy just to get a date?”

“A date?” He had the gall to look puzzled by her reaction. “Oh, wait. You think I...”

Yes, she did, and she’d decided it was time to put an end to this. Rising, she reached for her bag. “I’m sorry, but I won’t go out with you. And I would advise you to find a new pickup line. This one really stinks.”

He was laughing at her. She could see it in his eyes, but she couldn’t for the life of her see why he would find this amusing.

“I think there must have been a misunderstanding...” he began.

She sighed. It looked as if she was going to have to be explicit. “That’s just the point,” she told him sweetly. “You see, I never planned to go out with you. That’s not why I came.”

He blinked. “Well, that’s good,” he said, his voice almost too hearty. “Because I never planned to ask you.”

“Oh, come on,” she began, but a small hint of unease began to tickle deep inside. After all, nothing up to this point had made much sense, had it?

“Seriously, I didn’t bring you in here to ask you out on a date.”

“And he’d better not,” said a chirpy voice from behind her. “Because that would mean that he would have to stand me up. And I get ugly when I get stood up.”

Jolene hadn’t noticed the door opening, but she whirled to behold a pretty young woman with long black hair and bangs that barely cleared her huge blue eyes leaning in the doorway. Grant rose, coughing delicately into his hand in a way that Jolene later realized could only have been to hide his grin.

“Uh, Jolene Campbell, this is Kim Mancini—my date for this evening.”

“Your...”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, Kim and I have been dating for about three months now. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

“Uh-huh.” Kim nodded her head perkily. “We met at my cousin’s wedding. I fell in the swimming pool and Grant pulled me out by my hair.” She giggled. “Isn’t that romantic?”

“Very,” Jolene agreed with a weak smile.

Grant rose from behind his desk and came around quickly, as though to get between the two women before things got messy. “Well, I guess we’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning,” he said, shaking Jolene’s hand and smiling in a way that said clearly the interview was over. “How would eight do? I’m glad you’ve decided to join us.”

Jolene managed to salvage a smile before she turned to go. When she glanced back as she closed the door, she saw Kim melting into Grant’s arms, and the blush that had begun creeping up her neck a few minutes earlier made a major surge up and over her cheeks. She took a very deep breath and made her escape to the parking lot.

Humiliation? That was too wimpy a word for what she was feeling. She fell into the driver’s seat of her car and let out a silent scream before starting the engine. If only there was a way to rewind life and do it over.

Four

“You can imagine what a fool I felt like,” Jolene sighed as she talked to Mandy later that evening, as the two of them shared hot cocoa on the couch. Kevin was in his bed, sound asleep, the two women were both in pajamas, talking softly in the dim lamplight.

“In fact, the only time in my life when I’ve felt more of a fool,” Jolene went on, “was one time in church when I gave a blistering lecture to some young guy who winked at me. I’d just been named May Queen at school and I was feeling pretty full of myself, I guess. Anyway, this poor sap sat there while I lectured, turning red, and finally managed to mumble to me that he was actually winking at his fiancеe who was sitting in the pew behind me.”

Mandy laughed, propping her feet in their panda slippers up on the coffee table. “Not good.”

“No.” Jolene shook her head, remembering. “Half the congregation heard the whole thing and there was definitely some snickering in the ranks.” She sighed sadly, her silver eyes full of tragedy. “But in many ways, this was worse. I can’t tell you exactly why. It just was.” She groaned and threw back her head. “Do I have to go back there tomorrow? Isn’t there some way I could win the lottery or find out some rich uncle left me all his fortune so I don’t have to go?”

Mandy popped a marshmallow into her mouth and shook her head. “The lottery isn’t until Saturday and you told me you didn’t have any living relatives.”

“That’s just the point, silly,” Jolene muttered, grabbing her cocoa mug and holding it to her as if it were a life preserver. “He wouldn’t have to be living, would he? Hah. Got you there.”

Mandy laughed, but quickly sobered, looking at her friend guiltily. “Well, if you really can’t stand the thought of going back there, I could always...”

Jolene picked up a pillow and threatened her with it. “If you say one more word about going back to that horrible factory job, I’ll bean you with this. I’m a big girl, Mandy.” Dropping the pillow, she lifted her chin in mock heroic fashion. “I can handle humiliation and ridicule. I can handle having Grant think I’m an addle-pated ego maniac. I’m tough and I’m desperate—always a strong combination.”

Mandy stared at her friend for a long moment, then gave a slight shrug. “Jolene, what about contacting Jeff? You know where he is now, and he is Kevin’s father. He ought to provide some support...”

“No.” Jolene said it abruptly, with a tone of finality that should have put an end to the discussion. But seeing the look on Mandy’s face, she relented and tried to explain.

“As far as I’m concerned, Jeff was no more a father to Kevin than...than the milkman could have been. Just handing over some genes doesn’t make a father out of a man. Loving and caring and attention are what do it. And that Kevin never got from Jeff.”

Mandy raised a knowing eyebrow. “Legally he owes you.”

Jolene nodded. “But practically, we’re better off without him.”

There it was, short and sweet. She could see that Mandy didn’t agree, but Mandy didn’t have a child and an ex-husband who had run out on her. Rising, she carried both their mugs out to the kitchen to rinse them, as though the activity would take up her mind and keep out the memories. But it didn’t work. They came anyway.

Short and sweet. That was her entire life. Well, maybe short and not so sweet was more like it. She’d met Jeff in junior college. She was majoring in culinary arts and nutrition and he was majoring in partying 101. Actually he was a drama major, bound for the silver screen someday, or so he said. She should have known better. She did know better. She’d grown up in a working-class family and she knew you had to struggle for the good things in life, that luxuries didn’t fall into your lap just because you wanted them to, that being an actor was pretty pie in the sky, that guys who could act had probably done a lot of practicing at lying. But his dazzling smile, his gorgeous tan, his china blue eyes, all had blinded her and she’d married him.

To this day she couldn’t believe she’d done it. It had all happened so fast. He’d wanted to get intimate and she’d said not without a wedding ring and he’d said, okay, as easy as that and they’d raced off to Las Vegas before she could catch her breath.

“There you go,” she thought to herself now. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, her grandma had always said. Grandma was great for advice. She’d also warned Jolene never to marry a man who wore a thick gold chain around his neck. “You can see right away that he’s vain as a peacock,” she’d said.

“And Grandma was never wrong,” Jolene murmured. Vain as a peacock. That pretty well described Jeff. One good thing was she’d learned her lesson. She would never fall for a pretty boy again.

Jeff was long gone now. All it had taken was the news that Kevin was on the way and he’d already had his bag half packed.

“Don’t you see, Jolene,” he told her earnestly, as though he just couldn’t understand why she didn’t want the best for him just like he did. “If I’m ever going to make it in Hollywood I have to be free to focus all my psychic energy on the goal. If I get distracted by other things, I might lose the race. I can’t afford to let that happen.”

Inevitably, they’d divorced. She’d heard he was up in Alaska doing theater-in-the-round in dinner houses. What that was doing to his psychic energy she could only guess. But she hadn’t seen him since the day he’d left and after all this time, she’d given up hoping he would ever want to have any sort of relationship with Kevin. It was not to be, and by now, she was glad. She had Kevin all to herself and that was the way they liked it.

But Mandy was right about one thing—they did need more money. Much as it embarrassed her to go back and face Grant, that was exactly what she was going to do. Hopefully some good would come of it. Taking in a deep breath, she crossed her fingers for luck.

Jolene walked into the restaurant hiding her unease with a quick, confident step, a bright smile, and Kevin settled jauntily in her arms. She glanced around for Grant, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it was too early for him, she reasoned, feeling a sense of relief that she could put off seeing him.

Michelle was there, looking crisp and efficient and beautifully dressed in a pale teal cashmere suit. She greeted Jolene warmly, introducing her to two maintenance workers, then helping her set up the playpen in the break room. Kevin would be staying in a room right off the kitchen and accessible through an open door.

“I hope this is going to work out,” Jolene said as she realized how thoroughly her attention was going to be divided between her son and her baking. Looking at the top of his downy head, she felt her heart lurch. Was she going to be able to do this?