How To Hook A Husband (And A Baby)

by Carolyn Zane

  Travis wished for a canister of oxygen, but ordered a glass of water instead. He clenched his jaw. The way BambiAnn was hanging all over him was driving him crazy. Trying not to let his rotten mood show, he shrugged and pulled back from her annoying ministrations to his neck. Sometimes she just didn’t know when to quit. Like now, for instance, he thought, his irritation growing as he lifted and dropped his shoulders again.

  He could sense Wendy watching them, and felt suddenly conspicuous. He didn’t want BambiAnn to set a bad example for her. This was not the way he wanted her to learn to act on a date. Wendy was a lady with an innate sense of class. She should trust her own intuition, not copy BambiAnn’s ostentatious style.

  Drawing her cheek between her back teeth, Wendy read-and reread—Travis’s signals. Ask Cecil to dance, he was telegraphing with his shoulders. Well. okay. Personally, she felt that the question of dancing was a bit premature-especially since the band had just taken a break and the dance floor had cleared—but vowing to trust Travis, she turned and bestowed the reserved Cecil with a seductive smile.

  “Would you care to dance, Cecil?” she breathed and twittered brainlessly.

  Oh, how she longed to toss off this phony act and just be her regular, boring self. But she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to beat the odds and land a man by her birthday.

  Startled, Cecil reddened and glanced out to the empty dance floor. “Uh, no, thank you,” he demurred.

  Travis, feeling his throat closing again, shrugged violently, urging BambiAnn to give him some air.

  “Travis,” BambiAnn reproached, her girlish voice husky. “You don’t have to be such a…a…” She pouted prettily as she thought. “Big meanie.” Insulted, she scooted away from him and dealt with his rejection by batting her spiky lashes at Cecil.

  Wendy focused all her concentration on reading Travis’s vehement shrugs. Gracious, he certainly was adamant about wanting her to dance with Cecil, she thought, somewhat perplexed. Perhaps he could sense that Cecil needed coaxing. She arranged her lips into a playful pout, like the one Cecil seemed to be admiring so much on BambiAnn. “Are you sure?” She laughed gaily for good measure. “I just love this song,” she cajoled, indicating the soft elevator music that filtered through the speakers while the band took five.

  “Uh, no, thank you.”

  “Oh, come on now, Cecil. It will be fun.” She hoped she sounded convincing, although dancing sans band with the reticent Cecil was quickly losing its appeal. She wished Travis would stop pushing her this way. The pressure was getting to her.

  “No.” Cecil was polite but firm.

  Luckily the waiter arrived to take their dinner order, saving Wendy from having to drag the killjoy Cecil out to the floor. She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the reprieve. This snaring-a-man business was exhausting. Not to mention loathsome.

  Too bad she couldn’t just skip the mating rituals and go straight to marriage. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Although, she had to admit, she was beginning to have her doubts about Cecil. He was nowhere near as much fun as Travis. Not that that mattered, she amended to herself. But, hey, if she had to set up housekeeping with someone, she should at least enjoy his company.

  The waiter jotted down their selections, collected their menus and disappeared back into the smog from whence he’d come.

  Travis snatched several napkins from the dispenser on the table and dabbed at his burning eyes. He’d never experienced an allergic reaction so severe before. His sinuses felt as if they were ready to blast off. Pinching the bridge of his aching nose, he tried to smile at his pouting date.

  Oh, for crying in the night. Wendy grimaced as Travis pinched the bridge of his nose. Couldn’t he give her a moment to recover from Cecil’s embarrassing announcement that he had no desire to dance before he had her throw herself at the poor man?

  Obviously not, she thought disgustedly and, copying BambiAnn’s affected giggle the best she could, inched her chair closer to Cecil’s. Unfortunately, much to her chagrin, Cecil adjusted his seat away from her. Sighing, she watched as Travis vigorously massaged the bridge of his nose, winking and blinking all the while.

  Stoically gripping the arms of her chair, she set out after Cecil. According to Travis, it was time to reach out and adjust Cecil’s collar—laughing gaily while she did it, of course. This was an especially difficult task, considering Cecil wore a crewneck. And darn it, anyway, she thought as Travis continued his infernal signals, just how close did he expect her to sit? The way he was trying to pinch his nose off made it seem like he wouldn’t be happy until she was sitting on poor Cecil’s delicate lap. The very thought was unnerving. The closer she got to Cecil, the farther away she wished she was.

  Travis had said “be aggressive,” but honestly. This was getting ridiculous. Besides, Cecil didn’t seem to be enjoying her advances the way Travis had promised he would. Was this part of the game? Was he playing hard to get? Oh, well. Time was short.

  In four short weeks she would be thirty, and—she thought with determination—engaged to be married.

  Leaning closer still to Cecil, she closed her eyes and blew into his ear.

  The food finally arrived and as the evening progressed, it seemed to Wendy that no matter how close she snuggled up to Cecil, no matter how gaily she laughed, no matter how many questions she pelted the poor man with, no matter how often she blew in his ear, it wasn’t enough for Travis. Honestly, she thought, pretending to listen to some dull thing or another Cecil was saying to BambiAnn, the man was a slave driver.

  The coughing and scratching and winking and shrugging…She was about ready to lose what was left of her mind, trying to keep up with his rapid-fire instructions. If catching a husband took this much effort, Wendy was beginning to think she’d rather stay single.

  Especially if it meant spending the rest of her life with the tedious Cecil.

  He was a crashing bore. Although, Wendy had to admit, it wasn’t entirely his fault. The way Travis kept signaling her to steer the conversation back to him, it was understandable that be would drone endlessly on about himself. At least BambiAnn seemed riveted to his conversation. Amazing. She’d never have taken BambiAnn for the computer groupie type.

  Sighing, Wendy leaned back in her chair, away from Cecil’s bony body. She’d learned one interesting fact about herself tonight. She didn’t like skinny men. If—she thought, watching Cecil natter on at BambiAnn—by the apparently minuscule chance that she and Cecil should end up together, her first project would be fattening him up.

  She preferred her men with a little meat on their bones. Kind of like Travis, she noted, her eyes straying toward where he sat across from her. She admired the way his muscles flexed and bulged beneath his Western-style shirt as he listened to Cecil drone on. Yes, Travis was someone she could get into snuggling up against.

  That is, of course, if he were husband material. Which he wasn’t. Life was so unfair. Guessing that no one would miss her if she went to powder her nose, she excused herself from the table and headed toward the ladies’ room.

  Every blasted man in the place had danced with her. Every blasted man, with the exception of the two she’d come with, Travis thought churlishly as he watched Wendy showing off the dance steps he’d taught her with her latest partner, Conway Brubaker. She’d gotten up over an hour ago-to powder her nose, she’d claimed—and never come back, leaving him here alone with SuperNerd and BambiAnn. Was she trying to make Cecil jealous? Well, it wasn’t working. It was, however, Travis noted disgruntledly as he drummed his fingers impatiently on the tabletop, irritating the hell out of him.

  Why wasn’t Cecil out there fighting for his woman? What the hell was wrong with him? he wondered in disgust as the twerp stared moonily at BambiAnn and blathered endlessly on about himself. Wendy had created a monster with all her outrageous behavior.

  For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had gotten into her tonight, what with the flirting, and questions and breathy laughte
r and the flamboyant caressing of Cecil’s bony body. The way she acted, the twerp had a better build than Stallone. Surely, she couldn’t be serious.

  It was almost as if Wendy was doing her best to emulate BambiAnn. Copying every feeble trick in BambiAnn’s book. And on her, it didn’t look good. Made him want to punch someone. Someone like…Cecil Yates.

  Or Conway Brubaker. Right now, Wendy and Conway were busy putting the stars of Dirty Dancing to shame, with their handsy, grabby, happy, twirly-whirly dancing style. Looked like she might lose her precious chastity out there on the dance floor, the way she was bumping and grinding with old Conway Baryshnikov. Travis took an angry swig of his beer. He had a fancy move or two he’d like to try out on Brubaker’s face.

  After tonight, he would see to it that she scratched both Cecil Yates and Conway Brubaker off her list of suitors. As far as Travis was concerned, neither of them was husband material. Brubaker was a pretty boy, womanizing wild man, whose only redeeming quality was the fact that he could outdance Patrick Swayze. And Yates—Travis trained a bleary, weary eye on the little goober across the table—was a twerp.

  Yeah, he thought, watching the male population of Little Joe’s Café salivate like Pavlov’s dogs over his neighbor, it was time to rethink the “list.” Wendy needed to find a regular guy to date. Some guy who would be a decent father to her kids. Some guy she could relax with. Just be herself with. Some guy who liked her just the way she was. Not some jackass who could only see a pile of wavy blond hair and a pair of killer legs under her new postal hot pants.

  Pulling himself out of his ruminations long enough to refill his glass from the pitcher he was making every effort to kill, he managed to notice that Yates and BambiAnn had left. Together. There they went, he thought as he watched them disappear without so much as a so-long-see-ya-’bye, past the dance floor, around the band, through the sea of humanity and out the front door. BambiAnn looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary. And Yates…well, Yates looked like a million-dollar canary.

  Well, Travis mused, lifting his beer in salute, at least the evening had one bright spot.

  8

  The crisp, cool night air felt wonderful on Wendy’s flushed and overheated cheeks as she walked across her front yard to her porch. Travis had let her out in his driveway and then pulled the truck into his garage. They had picked up Dusty from Faith’s house where the boy had spent the evening, and Travis was probably tucking him in at the moment. She could see the night-light in Dusty’s room from where she stood in front of her house, only a few yards away. A small, tender smile graced her lips. Though they’d lifted him out of his bed in Faith’s spare room and driven him all the way across town, Dusty hadn’t even stirred.

  It was nearly one in the morning, but she didn’t feel a bit tired. She could have danced all night and—if Travis hadn’t reminded her that she had to be at work at 8:00 a.m.—she would have. She couldn’t remember ever having had quite that much fun. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, she wished that Travis would have pulled his sour face out of his glass long enough to ask her to dance. But since neither he nor Cecil had seemed inclined to cut a rug, she’d taken the opportunity to get to know a number of New Hope’s eligible bachelors.

  She took a deep breath of fresh air. If it hadn’t been so late—or early, she mused, glancing at her watch--she would have burst into song. It was wonderful to be alive. The small waterfall that Travis had installed near her front porch the year before burbled pleasantly as she slung her purse onto the stairs and plopped down next to it. There were a billion twinkling stars in the clear, black Texas sky, and leaning on her elbows, Wendy tilted her head back and spent several long moments reveling in their beauty.

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” The sultry question came from Travis as he lowered himself next to her on the steps.

  A riot of gooseflesh broke out on her arms and legs. Wendy slowly pulled her gaze from the heavens and trained it on him. “Because I’m not tired,” she murmured. Her eyes flashed to her feet and she smiled. “My feet, on the other hand, have laid down and died.” Pushing herself to an upright position, she reached down, unbuckled her pumps, and slipped them off her aching feet then began to massage her toes.

  Travis stretched his own booted feet out in front of him and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Yeah. Mine, too.”

  “Yours?” Wendy giggled. “Why do your feet hurt? You didn’t get up once the entire evening.” Unfastening the clip that held her hair at the top of her head, she gave her head a vigorous shake and sent her hair floating around her shoulders.

  His eyes, dark and mysterious in the ethereal light of the moon, caressed her, and without warning he reached up and grasped a handful of her hair, letting it trail through his fingers. As if suddenly realizing where he was and who he was with, he dropped his hand. “Yeah, well, I noticed you didn’t sit down once the entire evening, either,” he remarked.

  Tossing her hair over her shoulder, her dimples appeared. “I had a ball. You know, I think I danced with every man in the place tonight, except for Cecil.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “And you,” she amended.

  Travis harrumphed. “So I noticed.”

  Arching a quizzical brow, Wendy hiked the hem of her black knit skirt a little higher on her thigh and began to unfasten the garters that had held her stockings up. Beth had talked her into these uncomfortable things. Said they drove men wild. She darted a quick glance at Travis. If the glazed look on his face as he watched her roll her stocking down her leg was any indication, Beth had been right. Suddenly, Wendy felt a heady power that she’d never felt before. A feminine power. A sexual power. Her heart picked up speed.

  “Well,” she said, tugging the nylon off and tossing it up on the porch behind her, “if you wanted to dance so badly, you should have said something. Besides, I don’t know what you’re so grumpy about. I’m the one who should be mad.” Reaching under her other thigh, she unfastened the remaining garter. “All those crazy secret signals of yours drove poor Cecil right out the door.” Giggling, she gathered her hem into her hand and moved it out of her way as she began to remove her second stocking.

  Travis cleared his throat. “Uh,” he began, dragging his eyes away from her legs and giving his head a slight shake. “What signals?” His voice sounded strained.

  Sighing, Wendy stopped rolling her nylon at midcalf and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “All the secret signals you made me practice. You know, the winking, the shrugging, the coughing.” She looked expectantly at him. Why was he being so obtuse? She laughed. “Good heavens, the way you were carrying on tonight, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought you were having some sort of fit.” Giggling good-naturedly, she went back to removing her stocking. She could afford to be in a good mood. She might have lost Cecil, but she gained about twenty other admirers.

  None of them screamed husband material, but, hey, more than likely, many of them were just diamonds in the rough. She knew she’d have to kiss a few frogs before she found her prince. Cecil had definitely turned out to be a frog. Flinging the other stocking over her shoulder, she smiled up at Travis. Travis on the other hand, was no frog.

  Land-o’-goshin. He was a handsome devil. Out of all the men she’d danced with that night, not one had made her feel the way Travis could make her feel with a simple look. Although, the look he was giving her now was anything but simple.

  She dropped her eyes, following the movement of his arms as he folded them across his chest, then lifted her gaze back to his face. He was the perfect combination of manly and boyish good looks. His hollow cheeks gave rise to nicely sculpted bones, which melded into a square jaw and chiseled chin. It was the kind of face that would look at home behind a boardroom desk or under the hood of a car.

  Handsome, but not too pretty. With the possible exception of his eyes. He had light gray eyes that could penetrate a woman’s soul. And, his lashes. They were the kind of thick, long, dark eyelashes that Sue Ellen would kill for. Wendy
smiled. She was just glad Sue Ellen hadn’t gotten hold of Travis’s gorgeous hair. Her eyes strayed to his heavy brown hair. It looked black in the moonlight.

  Yes, indeed. Travis was no frog. She sighed with regret. Cecil had left before she’d had the opportunity to test her kissing theory. Not that she particularly wanted to kiss Cecil, but she was dying to find out if it was kissing in general that had her senses exploding with ecstasy, or if it was the man. Specifically—Travis.

  He was looking at her as if she’d gone around the bend.

  “I didn’t send you any signals,” he informed her, resting his chin on his chest and peering through the darkness at her as she trailed her toes in the small waterfall beside her steps.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was all that coughing about?”

  “I was having an allergic reaction to that embalming fluid BambiAnn called perfume.”

  Wendy stared at him, her eyes round. “Is that why you were pinching your nose and shrugging and coughing and—”

  “Gasping for air. Yes.” Travis nodded and returned her wide grin. “You thought I was sending you signals?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Well, for pity’s sake, of course I did. The way you insisted that we practice them and all, I thought you wanted me to use them. All evening.”

  Travis hooted. “So that explains why you were chasing old Cecil around the table in your chair. I wondered why you were so tenacious with him. Like a dog with an old shoe.”

  Dragging her toe through the small pool, Wendy sent a spray of water splashing across Travis’s leg. “I beg your pardon,” she cried, feigning insult. “A dog with an old shoe?”

  “Well…” He laughed. “Yeah. I can’t believe you thought I was cueing you to stick your feet in his lap and run your hands through his hair that way.” His laughter shook her front steps.

  “Weren’t you?” She giggled.