The Marriage Portrait. Pamela Bauer
to feel a bit self-conscious if I’m the only man with seven women…” he began.
She chuckled. “Oh, you won’t be the only man. There’ll be four women and four men. Claudia knows her business.”
“What men and what women?”
“Oh, I don’t know that,” she said cheerfully.
“Wait a minute.” He straightened in his chair, uneasiness creeping along his nerves like a fog rolling in from the ocean. “How can you not know who you invited to dinner?”
“Because I didn’t invite them. Claudia did. That’s her job.”
Michael picked up the dinner invitation and looked again at the logo. It said, “Dinner Date—bringing people together.” Tessie had said there’d be four men and four women. This Claudia was bringing men and women together.
“Mother, please tell me this isn’t a dating service,” he said, a sick feeling in his stomach.
“It’s not,” she denied emphatically. “Dinner Date is an alternative to dating services. Instead of having to pay a lot of money, fill out all sorts of questionnaires, and then have someone ‘choose’ you as a prospective date, you simply go to dinner with a group of people who have similar interests as you. There’s no matchmaking at all,” she assured him quickly.
“Isn’t the whole thing a matchmaking setup?”
“No, it isn’t,” she told him. “Claudia told me she started her business so that young professionals could enjoy an evening of dinner and good conversation without any of the pressures of dating. It’s simply a way to meet other professionals your age.”
“I have plenty of friends who make great dinner companions.” It was true. He’d never lacked for female companionship. Tessie, however, didn’t know that. Just because he never brought any of his lady friends to meet her, however, didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
“I’m sure you do.” She patronized him by patting his hand. “I didn’t purchase this opportunity for you because I thought you were short of friends. I just wanted to give you a chance to meet some nice young ladies….”
“I have women friends. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I do date,” he tried to convince her, but he could see by the lift of her eyebrows and the tilt of her chin that she didn’t believe him.
“You haven’t brought a single one here to meet me,” she reminded him.
“If I bring one over does that mean you’ll get a refund from this Claudia person?”
“That’s not funny, Michael.”
He hadn’t meant it to be but didn’t have the heart to tell her that. He struggled to find the right words. “I’m not much for dinners with strangers, Mom.”
“It’s simply an opportunity to meet people with similar interests as you.”
“I don’t think I’ll meet them through some dating service.”
“You don’t know that, Michael. Louella says that her cousin Margaret’s son Dennis—you know, the one who’s the optometrist? Well, he was skeptical, just like you. But he went to Dinner Date and guess what?” She paused, waiting for him to ask what.
He didn’t.
“He met a nice young accountant and they’re planning to get married next year.”
He could feel his collar tightening. “That’s fine for Louella’s cousin’s whatever…” He trailed off impatiently. “But I like to choose my own dates.”
“This isn’t a date,” she corrected him. “It’s simply an opportunity to have dinner and meet new people.” She got to her feet to go over to the bureau. She pulled a pamphlet from the drawer and gave it to him. “Here. You can read about it for yourself.”
Michael took one look at the Dinner Date brochure and set it aside with a grimace. “I really don’t want to read about it.”
“You don’t want my gift to you?” From the look of horror on her face, Michael would have thought he’d asked her to put dear old Cleo to sleep.
He wanted to say no, that he wasn’t going to go to any arranged dinner of single people, but there was something about the look in her eyes that stopped him. He raked a hand across the back of his neck. “I hate the thought of you spending money on something like this.”
“But this is the way I want to spend my money,” she assured him. “You work far too many nights and weekends, helping this one or helping that one,” she said with a flourish of her hand in midair. “Please let me give you a nice evening out with young people your own age. Just one dinner where you can talk to others who share your interests.”
He wanted to refuse. Going to dinner with seven strangers who were looking for love through a dating service was not how he wanted to spend a Saturday evening. Yet Tessie never asked for much. She’d raised him ever since he was a small boy, giving him the love and care his own mother hadn’t been able to give to him. How could he say no?
“I really wish you hadn’t spent your money on this,” he said, tapping the side of the invitation against the table.
“It’s worth it if it makes you happy,” she said, coming over to give him a kiss on the cheek.
Only it didn’t make him happy, yet he couldn’t tell her that. She’d been so excited to give him the gift. She had no idea how much he disliked the idea.
“You are going to go to the dinner, aren’t you?”
Every instinct inside him wanted him to say no, but before he could say another word, there was a knock at the door.
“I wonder who that could be?” Tessie said aloud, looking as if she knew exactly who was at the door.
Michael’s glance flew to the sideboard. “Probably someone who heard you’d baked two pies.”
She flitted out of the room. When she returned she was accompanied by half a dozen gray-haired women. The Mums had arrived.
To Michael’s dismay, they came with a gift. After greeting each of them and receiving more birthday hugs, he opened the package. Inside was a shirt and tie.
“For your dinner on Saturday,” Louella told him with a twinkle in her eye.
Michael almost said, “I’m not going to dinner on Saturday,” but the group of women gathered around him were the dearest ladies he knew. They’d been mothering him almost as long as Tessie had been.
So instead of telling them he could get a date without their help, he simply said, “Thank you. This will make me look like a man about town.”
They all smiled and ate their lemon meringue pie. Michael knew his chances of getting out of the dinner were between slim and next to none. But Lynn was going on vacation, which meant he’d be the vet on call next weekend.
Maybe there was hope.
Chapter Two
Normally the clinic was open until three on Saturdays. Oftentimes that wasn’t near long enough. Pets—like humans—frequently needed treatment on weekends after the office was closed and Michael did his best to accommodate them.
Only on this particular Saturday, business was very slow. As the hands on the clock moved toward closing time, he knew that unless an emergency arose, he wasn’t going to be able to use work as an excuse for not going to the dinner Tessie had arranged. Nor could he say he lost track of time and forgot. His mother called him at least four times to remind him of her birthday gift.
“It’s certainly been a quiet Saturday, hasn’t it?” Tabitha commented as she sprayed disinfectant over the surgical table. “Hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to have a crazy night.