How To Hook A Husband (And A Baby)

by Carolyn Zane

  “Cross my heart, hope to die.” She nodded solemnly. She held out her pinkie and hooked it with his. “Give me a kiss.”

  Ignoring the cracked green facial mask, Dustin puckered up and planted a noisy smack on her cheek.

  And something melted in the vicinity of Travis’s heart.

  He cleared his throat. “We’ll go pick up some takeout for dinner since you probably won’t get around to cooking,” he told her, glancing dubiously around the biology lab that was her kitchen. “Tacos okay?”

  Dusty jumped up and down for joy.

  “Fine.” Because of the stiff green gunk she wore on her face, she didn’t dare smile with her lips, but her eyes spoke to him of her gratitude.

  Wendy stood in front of her full-length mirror and stared in amazement at her made-over reflection. “Oh…” was all she was able to utter. Moving her eyes slightly, she caught the satisfied looks of approval that Beth and Sue Ellen were exchanging behind her back. She hated to disappoint them, especially after all their hard work, but she’d never felt more foolish in her entire life. “I don’t know…” she began doubtfully. “It’s so…”

  “Radical,” Beth supplied.

  “Alluring,” Sue Ellen put in helpfully.

  Wendy guessed that was one way to look at it. Gone was the straight brown length of rope that had hung for years down her back or rested in a coil on her neck. Now her shoulder-length hair stood out at right angles in layers of wild, curly, honey-streaked, sun-blond-goddess corkscrews. Sue Ellen had used at least half a bottle of hair spray and styling gel to get them to stand straight out at attention that way. For one hysterical moment, Wendy wondered if Sue Ellen had raided Phyllis Diller’s fright wig collection. Good Lord, she was going to have to cut special notches in her door frames just to get from room to room. It was a good thing Travis was remodeling the post office. Perhaps she could request extra-wide doorways.

  No wonder she’d never gone in for the fashion scene. It had taken her the whole dang day just to get dressed. She blinked rapidly. Apparently false eyelashes and contact lenses did not mix. The aquamarine lenses that she’d picked up at the mall’s Hour Optical that morning stared eerily back at her in an otherworldly, almost extraterrestrial kind of way. They matched the streaks of bright blue eye shadow that Sue Ellen had assured her would have the men dropping like flies. False eyelashes like giant desert spiders dangled from her eyelids, and Wendy tentatively batted her eyes in what she hoped was a coquettish maneuver.

  Was all this too much? she wondered, struck by the sudden impression that anyone with eyes this black and blue should be on their way to the hospital. None of the models on the cover of Metropolitan seemed to wear quite this much makeup.

  Nor this little clothing.

  Her gaze traveled lower to the renovation job Beth had done on her postal uniform. What had originally been a regulation shirt and trousers was now nothing more than an indecent pair of hot pants and a scrappy little halter top with the sleeves’ postal patches moved to the front. Even though Beth had left the regulation belt and tie, this getup would never pass muster with the higher-ups. Would it? She knew of women who worked for the postal service that opted not to wear the uniform, or took a fashionable nip and tuck in the unflattering shirt and pants, but this? She glanced over at Beth, who was glowing with approval.

  “That special bra we bought you really makes the most of your curves. Nobody could miss them now,” Beth claimed enthusiastically. The girl waved her hand toward Wendy’s cleavage as it peeped fetchingly through the peek a boo hole she’d fashioned across the front of the daringly cropped top.

  “Oh, yes,” Sue Ellen agreed. “And with your shapely little legs, those hot pants and the new four-inch platforms are perfect.”

  Wendy chewed the inside of her cheek. She guessed—for the time being anyway—it would have to do. In the carefree style of Edward Scissorhands, Beth had joyfully attacked all five of her uniforms. This being the weekend, there was no way she could chicken out and slip back into the Frowzy Zone.

  Tugging on the hot pants, she could remember the woman across the street wearing them when she was a kid. Her mother had kicked up a fuss when she noticed Wendy’s father covertly watching “that brazen hussy” through the blinds. Wendy grinned at the memory. She’d missed out on making this particular fashion statement the first time around. Did she want to hop on the bandwagon this time? She squinted, trying to get the whole picture, the way Sue Ellen and Beth saw it. Unfortunately, all she could see staring back at her was BambiAnn’s twin sister.

  But, she thought, shrugging lightly, as much as she might detest the look, it seemed to work. BambiAnn was never at a loss for men.

  All was fair in love and war, as they said. Maybe she should give this new look a try and see where it got her. Time was running out. She had to get radical if she was going to achieve her goal.

  “You guys really think we’re on the right track with all this…paraphernalia?” she asked, glancing at her friends for reassurance.

  “Honey, you’re going to set this town on its ear,” Sue Ellen told her confidently.

  “Go get ‘em, Killer.” Beth snapped a get-down-mama Z in the air.

  Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Wendy nodded, her corkscrew curls bobbing wildly around her head. “Watch out, New Hope, Texas,” she cried. “Wendy Wilcox is coming to town. And she is gonna kick some butt and take some names.” Smiling broadly, Wendy spun dangerously on her new four-inch heels and enthusiastically high-fived her pals.

  “Hi, Wendy! We got tacos!” Dustin crowed, and charged past his father into her house later that day. “And I brought my Casper lunch pail for us to copy tonight.”

  Travis reached out and touched the shower cap that covered Wendy’s hair. “Love that look,” he said, his voice dripping with teasing sarcasm.

  Wendy slapped his hand away and took the heavily loaded bag fresh from El Taco Taco out from under his arm. “I set the dining room table,” she informed him and Dusty as she led the way. “We’ll eat in there.”

  Ambling after her, Travis grinned at her ratty white chenille robe. Looked like she was wearing a damn bedspread. And what was with the white goop she had plastered all over her face now? It was almost worse than the cracked green stuff.

  Fortunately, the uninhibited Dustin phrased the question that Travis was reticent to ask. “How come you have white junk on your face now?” He hopped up onto the chair between the two adults and set his legs swinging back and forth as he stared up at her with interest.

  Wendy’s hand flew to her face. She’d forgotten she was still wearing Phase II. Hopefully it covered the crimson that surely stained her cheeks. “It’s a cleansing mask, sweetheart. It’s supposed to, uh, ‘clean away all the impurities and leave my skin fresh and younger looking,’ I think. And the shower cap is to hold the conditioner on my hair to make it ‘softer and more luxurious.’ Sue Ellen used to sell Mabel Lee beauty products, till she got fired. She left me a bunch of makeup and hair samples.”

  Loading his plate with Mexican takeout, Travis made one of those masculine sounds deep in his throat that signaled his skepticism. Dropping his paper plate in front of him, he leaned forward on his elbows and scrutinized her face. “I don’t know. To me you look worse than before you started with all this nonsense.” His good-natured grin took the sting out of his words. “I can see why Sue Ellen got fired.”

  “Well,” Wendy admitted, “she did mention something about causing an almost fatal allergic reaction in one of her clients.” She sighed and helped Dusty unwrap his dinner. “And she was so close to earning her golden tiara. With real rhinestones.”

  “Imagine that,” Travis deadpanned.

  “You just wait, bucko,” Wendy snapped and, grabbing a fistful of paper napkins out of the bag, mopped the cleansing mask off her face. “I’m a work in progress. Come Monday, you won’t even recognize me.”

  “Whatever.” Travis grinned around a mouthful of taco.

  3

/>   Wendy could tell, as she pulled her door open on Monday morning, that if she’d had a feather in her hand, she could have knocked Travis over with it. As he stood there on her front stoop, gaping at her, his bugging eyes seemed unable to rove fast enough to keep up with the myriad impressions that flitted through his mind. Wendy couldn’t be sure if the glazed look on his face was approval or shock.

  Deciding to go with approval, she patted her giant, well varnished, honey-streaked, sun-blond-goddess hairdo and strove to look much more confident than she felt. “Ready?” she asked breezily, and clutched at the doorknob in an effort to keep from falling off her new shoes.

  His eyes locked on the peek a boo hole that Beth had cut over her bustline. “Oh, yeah,” he breathed.

  “Okay, hang on just a sec while I go get my purse,” she said. Smiling bravely, she let go of the doorknob and tottered unsteadily toward her living room.

  Travis swallowed the great wad of shock that had gathered in his throat and licked his dry lips. He wasn’t sure which was worse. The new Wendy or the old one. She looked so uncomfortable in her new, outrageous, bimbo garb. Awkward. Gangly. Like a kid who’d gotten into Mommy’s closet to play dress-up. He fought the urge to go into the house after her and tell her to wash her face and get dressed. But he knew that would only hurt her feelings, and she was trying so hard. He had to give her credit for that. What she was doing took a lot of guts.

  He wondered why some women seemed to be able to pull off the look. BambiAnn, for example. Bright blue eye shadow and hair that an emu could nest in looked natural on her. On Wendy, though, it just looked weird. He liked her better with those ugly glasses and sensible shoes. Sagging against Wendy’s door frame, he rubbed the back of his neck. What the hell was he thinking? He’d obviously been listening to his son’s adoring prattle for far too long.

  However, he had to admit he found himself surprised that she had such a nice figure. A lot more breast than he’d originally given her credit for. Not exactly overly voluptuous, the way he liked ‘em, but nice. Slim. Petite. Kind of cute, in a girlish kind of way.

  If she would tone down the blond dirigible that had landed on her head, and kill the centipedes she’d glued to her eyes, she’d probably look pretty good.

  Something more modest in the uniform department might be in order, as well. Not that he was complaining about finally getting a glimpse of the curves she’d managed to effectively hide all those years. He plunged a shaky hand through his hair. But hell, a getup like that was meant for the bedroom. Not the New Hope post office. Giving his head a little shake to clear the image of Wendy out of the bedroom in his mind, he wondered how he should tell her.

  Oh, hell. It was none of his business. He’d stay out of it. She was a bright girl. Let her figure it out for herself.

  Lurching toward him on wobbly legs, Wendy slowly made her way back through her foyer, held up her new, king-size purse and smiled bravely. “All set,” she chirped, and suddenly, without any warning, pitched headlong down the stairs.

  Travis leapt forward, caught her just before she hit the ground and, standing her upright again, balanced her on the stilts she called shoes. Astonishingly enough, her larger-than-life purse had flown, of its own volition, halfway across the yard. Knitting her brows together in consternation, she clutched great handfuls of his shirt to keep from going under once more.

  “I, uh…” she stammered, clinging to his buttons and struggling for balance. “It’s gonna take a while to, uh, get used to these new shoes…” Her knees buckled and she slid halfway down his body before he was able to help her find her footing again. “Sorry,” she squeaked, scaling his chest the way a mountain climber would ascend a sheer cliff.

  “It’s okay. Um, are you gonna be all right in those…shoes?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her slender waist and pulling her up against his chest. Good grief. He wasn’t going to get anything done on the post office if he had to walk around all day with her wrapped around his tool belt. Not that he’d mind, really, he thought, grinning down at her as she valiantly tried to extract her heels from the depths of the front lawn. She had pretty damn good legs. And she was so petite. Delicate. Something about that brought out the protectiveness in him.

  “I, uh, seem to be stuck in the—” Wendy looked up at him with a pained expression “—lawn.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake. Come here,” he said, reaching down and scooping her up into his arms.

  “Ooo,” Wendy squeaked. “You don’t have to—”

  “Listen,” he interrupted as he leaned back, trying to avoid losing an eye to one of her pointy, corkscrew curls. “We can’t stand around all day while you learn to walk. I have to get Dustin to school.”

  “Oh, of course,” she breathed, and tightened her hands around his neck.

  Moving across her lawn, he snagged the handle of her purse with his work boot and, lifting it up to his hand, looped it over his shoulder. With horrendous effort, Travis kept his eyes out of the peek a boo hole that rode at eye level as he made his way over to his pickup.

  It was a good thing he had a king cab. They’d need the extra space for her hair. And for her new purse. He’d never noticed her carrying such a large purse before. It reminded him of the suitcase BambiAnn lugged around. Filled to the brim with cosmetics and other tiresome goop that she was always spritzing and rubbing onto herself.

  Women, Travis grunted to himself as he set Wendy on her feet in his driveway next to the passenger door. Dustin was already strapped into the back seat, his Casper lunch pail resting on his knees.

  Somehow, with Travis’s able assistance, they finally managed to deposit her, sun-blond-goddess corkscrews and all, into the front seat of the impossibly high four-wheeldrive cab. On the count of three, he’d gripped her waist, then, setting her on the running board, supported her thighs as she’d ducked her head and slid into the cab. Travis figured she probably could have made it all right without the thigh support, but he couldn’t seem to resist the urge to feel for himself if her upper legs were really as firm as they looked.

  “Wow, Wendy!” Dustin chortled from the seat behind her, batting playfully at her hair. “Is that what you are going to wear for Tricken Treaten in six more days?”

  “That’s enough, Dustin,” his father admonished as he took his seat behind the wheel and started the engine. Snatching his sunglasses off the visor, he put them on to mask the laughter in his eyes. His sigh was audible.

  It was going to be a long damn day.

  “What in thunder is wrong with your eye?” Travis looked over the edge of his sunglasses at her as they traveled down the freeway toward New Hope’s city center. They’d dropped Dustin off at the Tex Baker grade school, and were now on their way to the post office.

  “I don’t know.” Wendy frowned and blinked crazily. “It feels like I have a chicken in my eye.”

  “Looks like it, too,” Travis muttered.

  “Pardon?” Wendy asked as she peered into the small visor mirror.

  “Nothing,” he said, shrugging amicably.

  Wendy still wasn’t sure what he was thinking about the changes in her look. Why, he hadn’t even mentioned her new hair and uniform.

  Men, she thought huffily as she tried to figure out what was irritating her aquamarine contact lens. What good did it do to get up at four in the morning to get all gussied up, when she could have slept three more hours and gotten the same reaction?

  That wasn’t exactly true, she amended to herself as she dug her eye drops out of her purse. If she’d been wearing her regulation postal shoes, Travis would never have had to carry her to the truck. And, as much as she hated to admit it, the experience had been exhilarating. She’d never been quite that close to such a. virile man before. He smelled so good. Something hot and fluttery knotted low in her stomach. She forced herself to concentrate on her eye problem.

  “Got it,” she said triumphantly, dabbing at her cumbersome lashes with a tissue. “It’s a good thing you’re driving. I think
there should be a warning label on mascara—Don’t Wear This Stuff And Drive.”

  Travis chuckled. “So,” he said, glancing in his side mirror before changing into the lane that led to their exit, “you get anywhere on the list of potential husbands yet?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Wendy nodded and, rummaging around in her new purse, came up with a pad and pencil. “So far I’ve only been able to come up with a few eligible bachelors, so, if you can think of anybody, I’ll add ‘em to my list when we get together after work tonight for our first lesson.”

  Nodding noncommittally, Travis glanced at her pad. “Who have you got?”

  “First of all, there’s Cecil Yates.”

  Travis snorted. “Cecil Yates? That sniveling wimp? Come on, Wendy, you can do better than that. There’s a reason he’s not married. He’s a dork.”

  “He is not,” Wendy retorted hotly. “I’ll have you know he’s one of the wealthiest men in the state. He’s very highly respected in the computer industry.”

  “He’s a weasel,” Travis steadfastly maintained. “Stuckup little prig. Cross him off your list,” he instructed.

  “I will not!” Wendy scooted closer to her door. “In fact, I think I’ll start with him. He always kind of flirts with me when he comes into the post office. I just have to screw up my courage and ask him for a date.”

  Travis snorted again. “Who else?”

  “Conway Brubaker.”

  “Cross him off, too,” Travis demanded in a tightly controlled voice.

  “Why?” Wendy cried in exasperation.

  “Because he is a womanizing wild man. He’ll break your heart.”

  Wendy’s laughter was sharp. “Oh, that’s rich. Look who’s calling the kettle black. Listen up, Travis, I think Conway Brubaker is one of the nicest men in this part of Texas. He comes from a wonderful, large, loving family. I already think the world of his folks. What could be better than that?”