A Baby...Maybe? & How to Hunt a Husband

by Bonnie Tucker

  “Mother, I know I seem dense here, but just who is it that I’m supposed to be marrying?”

  Shannon had often felt like the not-so-bright family member. Her parents and Mary Kathryn all had a ton of initials behind their names. They lived for academia.

  Well, actually, since she’d married Tony, Kate lived for Donetti’s Irish Pub and Cooked Sushi Bar, but that was beside the point. She still had initials behind her name, and Shannon was still just the high-school art teacher.

  Oh, her family never added the just to her job description, at least not out loud, but Shannon knew they thought it. They valued those initials, and though she had a B.A. in education and art, she didn’t have all those extra, more impressive initials. And she taught art, not a serious subject like science.

  Shannon realized her mother was talking again. Something about a wedding.

  Her wedding?

  Who did her mother think she was going to marry?

  “…Seth.”

  Shannon’s attention jumped back into focus. “Mother, you’re not suggesting I marry Seth? You went to his wedding to Desi, after all.”

  “How could I forget. When it was Mary Kathryn’s wedding that wedding planner didn’t worry at all when I pointed out the cake was too small, but at her own wedding? Why, the cake was huge. A veritable mountain of cake. Still I never understood why she had Barbies on the top.”

  Her mother was quiet a moment, obviously pondering why Seth and Desi had had Barbies for their wedding-cake toppers.

  “So what does Seth have to do with anything?” Shannon finally asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any more.

  “I called Seth to see if he knew a nice man you could marry…”

  NATHAN CALDER sat at the bar in O’Halloran’s Bar and Grill. He wasn’t drinking anything harder than cola even though it was Friday and he was off tomorrow. He’d simply come by to show Mick how he’d spent his tax return…on his new Harley.

  Yep, he was a bad-assed, Harley-riding…pharmacist. A bad-assed, Harley-riding pharmacist who’d only just got his motorcycle license and obviously shouldn’t have been awarded it, since he’d stalled the motorcycle three times on the way over to Mick’s.

  He felt like he was this year’s April Fool joke because it was hard to feel tough when you were sitting in the middle of traffic, wearing your new leather jacket…and trying to restart your engine.

  Harder still when you flooded it and had to wheel the motorcycle to the side of the road and wait ten minutes for the gas in the carburetor to evaporate before you could try the engine again.

  Nate sipped his cola, wondering how he was going to get the bike home without repeating the incident.

  He planned to ride the bike to hockey practice this week and let his team “ooh” and “ah” over it, but maybe he should rethink that plan, at least until he’d mastered the art of not stalling.

  Nate caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned. A beautiful woman had taken the seat next to him. A heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. Tall, with reddish hair cut short, but not the least bit mannish. No, this woman was the type who made any man in proximity sit up and take notice.

  The kind of woman who made him forget all about his Harley troubles.

  “Hey, Mick. Could I have the usual?” she called in a husky sort of voice that made every man within hearing distance who hadn’t already noticed her turn her way.

  “Sure, thing, Shannon-me-love,” Mick said in his patently fake Irish brogue.

  “Come on, Mick. Give the lady a break,” Nate ribbed his friend. “You know you grew up right next door to me in Glenwood Hills, not in the green hills of Ireland.”

  Nate shot a grin at the redhead.

  The bartender smiled as he said, “Ah, sure I do, Nate, but Shannon likes the brogue for atmosphere, don’t you my sweet?”

  “Ah, Mick, the Irish apple of my eye, you can be sure I do. Why, if me mum keeps insisting I get married, I may just take you home and make the poor woman’s dreams come true. Why, she’d not only be getting her wedding, but it would include a good Irish boy as well. Ah, she’d never recover from the sheer joy of it all. And I’d be trading the O’Malley last name for O’Hallaran. My initials would stay the same. Yes, you may be the perfect husband material…at least if it wasn’t for the wee fact that you’re a hound when it comes to the women.”

  Mick leaned across the bar and said, “And though I’d rather be kissing a banshee than marrying anyone, I might just make an exception for you, Shannon-me-love.”

  Chuckling, he moved toward the other end of the long bar where a customer was hailing him.

  “He’s something else,” Shannon murmured as she took a sip of whatever it was Mick had given her.

  “Sure is. Why, his first day of high school he convinced the teachers he was an Irish exchange student.”

  Mick’s Shannon grinned as she asked, “You knew him then?”

  “Sure did. We’ve been friends forever. I’m Nathan Calder. Not that he’d ever introduce me to a pretty lady. He likes to keep them all for himself. Selfish, that’s Mick.” He chuckled and added, “Friends call me Nate.”

  “Shannon, Shannon O’Malley.”

  She held her hand out to Nate and they shook.

  If asked, Nate would have testified that there were actual sparks flying off their joined hands. He’d have sworn to it in a court of law. Slightly bemused by the experience, he pulled his hand back as quickly as possible.

  As a professional, Nate had shaken a lot of hands, but none that left him feeling as shaken as Shannon’s did. It wasn’t as if there was anything special about her hand. He quickly glanced at it to make sure.

  Nope. There was nothing special about it at all. Just five fingers on a nicely shaped palm. One small ring. Short, neatly manicured nails.

  What on earth was he doing noticing a woman’s manicure? He must be more flustered than he’d thought about the whole stalling-the-motorcycle thing.

  He tried to pull his scattered wits back together. “Well, Shannon-me-love O’Malley, if Mick stands you up on that offer of marriage, give me a call. My mother would love nothing more than to hear some woman is making an honest man of me.”

  “You’re mother’s on the marriage kick, too?” she asked, sympathy in her voice.

  “Not just the marriage kick,” he admitted, “but the grandbabies kick as well.”

  It wasn’t that Nate didn’t like kids.

  Someday he might want one…maybe even two. But not now. After all, he’d just bought a Harley. Harleys didn’t come with baby seats. Plus it was hard to be a bad-assed biker if you were carting around a diaper bag.

  Okay, so it was hard if you couldn’t go more than three blocks without stalling the motorcycle, but it would be worse with a baby, of that he was sure.

  “Oh, mine hasn’t started in about grandchildren yet,” Shannon was saying. “No, she’s just after a husband for me. She’s already planning the wedding in June.”

  “Oh, so you do have a fiancé?” he asked, slightly disappointed. After all, he’d noticed the ring on her hand, but it wasn’t on the right finger. Damn. Here was a woman he would have liked to get to know better.

  Not in a marrying, baby-producing way, but in a she’s-too-hot sort of way.

  He’d love to feel her body pressed against his, his Harley rumbling beneath them as they rode through town. And after the ride… Well he could think of a few other places he’d like to take this woman.

  “No, there’s no fiancé,” she said. “But that’s not going to stop my mother. Why, she’s already set the wedding date and is calling around trying to find a priest who will marry us, since Father Murphy said no. Fortunately, all the rest have said no as well, since there’s no groom. Priests have rules about that kind of thing. And my mother wouldn’t consider me really married if I wasn’t married by a priest in the church, wearing a long white gown with a whole group of her friends watching.”

  “You win hands down,
” Nate said. “My mother just complains about her lack of grandchildren.” His voice rose and he said, “And to think of the forty-eight hours I spent laboring with you. The doctors said another baby would kill me, and so you were destined to be my only one. An only child who almost killed his mother.”

  “Oh, she brings out death-guilt? That’s a hard battle to fight,” Shannon said.

  “It gets worse.” Again he altered his voice and said, “And all those years I slaved away, trying to be the best mother I knew how to be, and all I want from you now is grandchildren before I’m too old to enjoy them. But do you care? No. Every girl I introduce you to you find something wrong with. You’re too picky, that’s what you are.”

  “Too picky. My mother says the same thing. She’s spent the last month fixing me up with…well, between you and me, I don’t think she’s been picky at all about the men she’s hooked me up with. Desperate. That pretty much describes my mother’s matchmaking.”

  She sighed and took a sip of her drink. “Tonight’s date was a prime example. I told her no. No more dates. I have a plan, you see. I want to live a solitary, chick-flick, hairy-legged life. But she invited me out to dinner with her and my father. At least that was the story. They were at the restaurant, all right, but so was he. His name was Neil. He works with Mom and Dad at the college.”

  “Doing what?” Nate prompted.

  “A philosophy professor. Mom and Dad had a mysterious lab emergency. Have you ever heard of a lab emergency?”

  Nate shook his head.

  “Me either. Anyway, they left Neil to entertain me while we finished eating.”

  “You don’t look overly entertained,” Nate said with a chuckle.

  Frustrated. That’s how she looked.

  Nate could sympathize. His mom had planned her own set-ups these last few months.

  “Oh, Nate, you don’t know the half of it. Neil spent the rest of the dinner talking about things so deep my head was spinning. It’s not that I’m dumb, but he was being pompous on purpose. Then he turned the subject to how Kepler’s observations of heavenly bodies impacted our way of viewing the world around us, and added that he’d like a chance to spend more time studying my heavenly body….”

  Shannon drained her glass. “Well, I finished my spare ribs faster than anybody should, and I hope Neil was feeling philosophical about my emphatic rejection of his heavenly-body proposal. There was absolutely no way I was impacting with him.”

  “Most men aren’t overly philosophical about rejections,” Nate pointed out.

  “Yeah, he didn’t seem very pleased. My mom called my cell phone to apologize for their ‘emergency’ and to see how the rest of the meal went. I told her that I left right after the entrée because I didn’t want to be Neil’s dessert. That’s when she accused me of being picky, and I said if she didn’t watch it, I’d show her how non-picky I could be by picking a man that would fry her butt. I mean a biker, with long greasy hair and tattoos or something. She’d be off my case about marriage quicker than she could light a Bunsen burner.”

  “Yeah, rebellion has its place. My mother wants me to grow up and settle down, though maybe not quite as bad as your mother wants you to. Mom keeps pointing out I’m thirty and that it’s time to become an adult. But to be honest, I don’t recall ever having had a childhood, so I’ve staged my own mini rebellion. I’ve decided it’s time to do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do but was too busy with school or establishing a career to try.”

  Nate took a sip of his cola and continued. “I thought about tattoos, as a matter of fact, but I didn’t think it would go over well with my customers.”

  “Customers? What do you do?” Shannon asked.

  Nate smiled and replied, “I’m a pharmacist. I can’t see my customers being comfortable with me tattooed. And you? What do you do when you’re not out on bad dates?”

  “I’m a high-school art teacher.”

  “Too bad you weren’t a stripper or something. I could take you home and scare my mother out of rushing me into marriage.”

  “Yeah,” Shannon said, wistfulness in her voice. “If only I was a stripper and you were a greasy biker, life would be perfect.”

  They both paused and, though he didn’t know her well, he could see she realized the opportunity they had in front of them at the same moment he did.

  Nate weighed the possibility. After all, he didn’t need an actual stripper. He just needed his mother to believe he’d brought home a stripper.

  “I just bought a bike,” Nate said slowly. “A Harley Fatboy.”

  “You did?” Shannon asked, something akin to awe in her voice.

  Nate nodded. “So if we told your parents I was a biker, it wouldn’t actually be a lie.”

  He didn’t mention the fact that he still questioned his abilities to actually ride the bike.

  “And I do take my clothes off every night to put on pajamas, so I guess you could say I strip.”

  They both laughed and let the idea grow. “You know, if I took you home disguised as a stripper and told my parents I was in love with you—a woman who takes off her clothes for a living—my mother might get off my back about babies, at least for a while.”

  “Your mother would hate a stripper daughter-in-law as much as my mother would hate a biker son-in-law.”

  She grinned. “Oh, it’s too perfect. Kismet even. My mother would have to rethink her wedding plans if I brought you in and introduced you as the man in my life. The only man I’d even consider marrying.”

  Nate thought his mother was a bit of a pain, but Shannon’s mother sounded certifiable. “Um, you didn’t really explain why your mother is already planning your wedding, even though there’s no groom in sight.”

  “Well, it all started when my sister—the good daughter—ran out on her wedding with the best man. She changed her name from Mary Kathryn to Kate, and changed her man from Seth to Tony. She also changed careers.”

  “From?” he found himself asking, even though he wasn’t sure he was following Shannon’s explanation.

  “From research scientist and professor, to an employee and part-owner of Donetti’s Irish Pub and Cooked Sushi Bar.”

  “Cooked sushi?” Nate echoed.

  Maybe it wasn’t just Shannon’s mother who was crazy…maybe it was her whole family.

  “It’s a long story,” she warned.

  “I’ve got all night. And we’ll need each other’s full stories if we’re going to entertain this plan.”

  Shannon took a deep breath and started, “Well Mary Kathryn and Seth were best friends who decided to marry because it seemed like the logical thing to do, but they didn’t have any passion between them. So on her wedding day, Kate picked up her skirt and hightailed it out of the church before the I-do’s were done. She ran off with Tony, the best man. I felt horrible for Seth, but it turns out he fell head over heels for Desi, the wedding planner. So, it was happily ever after for everyone but me and Tony’s ex-fiancée, Cara, because my mom suddenly noticed I’m single and made a bet with Cara’s mom…”

  Nate half listened as Shannon’s story unfolded. The rest of his mind was occupied with wondering about how she’d look dressed up as a stripper.

  The mental images were tantalizing.

  This might be a crazy plan, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  And this mental image of Shannon disguised as a stripper was making Nate feel quite desperate.

  2

  “NATE, is that you?” Judy Calder called out as Nate entered his parents’ home the next morning.

  Normally Nate would have had to suppress a groan, knowing the course his conversation with his mother would be taking.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love his mother. Of course he loved her. Loved her a lot. After all, how could you not love a woman who almost died giving birth to you?

  But this week the only thing he was suppressing was a grin.

  He followed the sound of her voice into the kitchen. “Ye
ah, Mom, it’s me. Where’s Dad?”

  His father could generally be counted on to run interference on the grandbaby nagging front, not that Nate wanted too much interfering today. He had the plan, after all.

  A delightful plan.

  A perfect plan.

  A mother-proof plan.

  A plan guaranteed to buy him some much-needed respite from his mother’s pleas.

  “Your father was on call and had to run in to the store,” she said.

  “I just stopped in to check that little leak you were having under the sink,” Nate said from the doorway.

  The kitchen was next to blinding. Bright-yellow walls, brilliant-white cabinets, sparkling surfaces. A floor you could probably actually eat off of.

  Judy Calder believed in everything being just-so, whether it was her kitchen or her son’s life.

  She turned from the counter. In her late fifties, his mom didn’t look her age at all. Folks might find his mother young-looking, but no one ever took his father for anything but his age. Paul Calder had been gray-haired since Nate could remember, and he blamed his wife for every one of those gray hairs. But after years of watching how much his father doted on his mom, Nate suspected that both of them owed the color of their hair to genetics, because the two of them were obviously meant for each other.

  “Oh, honey, that’s so sweet of you to stop and see about the sink. But it’s okay. I called a plumber. After all, you know you’re not any more mechanical than your father is.”

  He opened the small door off the kitchen that led to the laundry room and grabbed his father’s toolbox from the corner.

  “Not mechanical? Mom, how can you say that? After all, who fixed the dryer just last week?”

  “You kicked it, dear.”

  “It stopped making the noise right after that.”