Before You Get To Baby.... Terry Essig
a little crooked, but hey, if a woman expected perfection, she’d have to provide it herself. He knew for a fact Frannie had a scar down one arm from the surgery it had taken to put her arm back together after an attempt to go around the moon on the playground swing set years ago. Man, he’d almost had heart failure that day. He and Rick had been baby-sitting Frannie when she’d tried that little trick. Rick had accused a wailing Frannie of doing it on purpose just to get them in trouble. It hadn’t been the first time. Or the last. And here she was, back at it again, obviously determined to draw him into this latest batch of nuttiness.
But he digressed. He was intelligent and decent-looking. Hadn’t Debi…Dulci…whoever, gotten all rhapsodic over his eyes? Like she’d never seen the color blue before. Drew almost snorted. Go figure. It was a simple factor of genetics. His mother had blue eyes, his father’s eyes were brown, but he obviously carried a recessive gene for blue. Drew had just as obviously gotten it. Simple. No big deal. Try telling that to Deirdre. Yeah, that was it, Deirdre.
At least he had an eye color. Frannie’s license said brown, but that was only because they had to fit her into a category. Her eyes were this oddball color only a woman would have a name for—toffee, toast or maybe café au lait. Drew rolled his eyes. Who thought up these names anyway? he thought with a sneer. And that was just the inside part of her iris. Then there was this darker band around the edge. Dark chocolate bark or something. Whatever.
And furthermore, even though scrupulous honesty would have him admitting that he might have just missed making the six-foot mark, any engineer in the world would tell you that a small margin of error was allowable and you’d still meet specs. At five eleven and three-quarters he was six foot plus or minus a quarter of an inch, so he claimed six feet. Totally within code and definitely un-short.
A growl built up in his throat. “Seems to me you’re asking for an awful lot. What’s the guy going to get in return? Who’s going to marry a little bit like you? A man wants a woman he doesn’t have to worry about losing in the sheets at night. An armful, you know? Something it would take more than a spring zephyr to blow away.”
“I am not that little,” Frannie responded stiffly.
Ah, so she could dish it out, but couldn’t take it.
“And there you go again,” she added. “Is sex all you think about?”
“Me and my half of the world’s population. Yeah, pretty much.”
Frustration rang in Frannie’s voice. “Don’t you want someone who can create a home? Do you ever worry about character, personality, intelligence, humor, for God’s sake? Don’t you want to share a good laugh with a woman you care about?”
“Not when I’m in bed with her,” Drew fervently assured Frannie.
Frannie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, for crying out loud.” She rose and snatched up the plate of cookies she’d brought as a bribe.
“Hey!” Drew protested.
Frannie didn’t relent. “Nothing deeper than surface appeal matters to you,” she said. “You just said so. You couldn’t possibly care that I also bake the best oatmeal cookies in a three-state radius.”
“Food is another basic need, right up there with sex. A man’s got to keep his strength up, after all. And they’re okay,” Drew allowed, not wanting to feed her ego. She gave him enough of a hard time as it was. “Even if they do have raisins in them. It would be too bad if they went to waste.”
“I’ll freeze them. Take them in my lunch.”
“All right, all right. I’m sorry, already. Put the cookies back and we’ll talk. Sheesh. Women are so sensitive.”
“We are not.” Frannie hesitated, then reluctantly sat back down. She kept the cookies in front of her, her arms curled protectively around the plate. “So come on now, Drew, give. Seriously, what’s a guy looking for when he’s ready to settle down?”
Drew squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. The topic had him on edge. “Look, Frannie, every guy is different in what they find attractive in a woman. Just like every woman is different. Didn’t I hear you telling Rick the other day that your friend Annie was wasting her time on some dweeb? That you couldn’t figure out what she saw in the guy?”
Frannie thought. Okay, he had a point, but it wasn’t enough to get her to release the cookies. She wanted some guidelines here, not a cop-out. “All right, so generally speaking what’s likely to interest a guy enough to get him to the altar?” Meanly, she picked up a cookie and waved it in the air a couple of times before nibbling delicately at the brown edge.
Damn her, Frannie knew him too well. Drew shifted uncomfortably once more. For most of the past fifteen years, ever since Drew’s family had moved to St. Joseph, Michigan, Andrew and Rick had been inseparable. Five years younger than her next oldest sibling, Frannie was obviously the family’s much-adored bonus baby. He and Rick had baby-sat Frannie too many times to count. They’d driven her to piano lessons, softball and dance. Drew had helplessly patted her back while she’d cried on Rick’s shoulder after the break-up with her first boyfriend and uselessly assured her the jerk hadn’t been good enough for her. Heck, he’d marked the seasons by the color of the rubber bands she’d picked for her braces each month at the orthodontist. Red and green in December which made her look like her teeth were growing moss, but better than the orange and black she’d favored in October.
In all that time he’d spent watching her grow, Drew had never once realized that she’d been watching him as well. The little brat knew the edges were his favorite part. Just look at her savoring his edge.
Drew would have to be under particularly diabolical torture before he’d admit that her cookies were, in fact, the best in town even if they did have raisins. Heck, they’d have to stake him to an anthill and disassemble his remote control before his very eyes. The problem was, he’d only had a handful before Frannie’d gone into her snit. Previous to that it had been a long dry spell of nothing but store-bought. The injustice of it sang through him. Drew wracked his brain for something Frannie would consider worthy.
“Okay,” Drew finally said. “I’ll tell you what. Leave the cookies here. Brain food, you know, and I’ll think about it. I’ll come over to dinner some time in the next few weeks and we’ll talk.” He raised a hopeful eyebrow.
Frannie eyed him with disgust. Man, Drew gave her no credit at all. He still thought of her as a gullible twelve-year-old who’d fall for the old Tom Sawyer’s I’m-having-such-fun-whitewashing-this-fence-but-if-you-pay-me-enough-I-might-let-you-do-it-instead gambit. He and Rick had used that ruse whenever her mom had assigned them a task to be done while they baby-sat her. Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Half a dozen cookies now, the rest on delivery of the goods, no later than this weekend or the deal’s off. And I’m not cooking for you. I’ll pay my own way, but we’re going out.”
Damn, but she was a tough little negotiator. You had to respect that about her. He and Rick had taught her well with all their stupid pranks. He had nobody to blame for this but himself. “You want to talk about this in a restaurant? Where anybody and their brother can listen in? You know how close tables are in those places.”
Frannie thought about that and nodded. “All right, I’ll cook. In fact, we’ll grill. You bring the steaks and the wine. I’ll do the salad, bread and dessert.”
Drew scowled. Evidently he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. He also suspected it was probably the best deal he was going to get, so he nodded his head in agreement. “Okay. I’ll get back to you when I’ve…what?” Frannie was vehemently shaking her head and frowning.
“This Friday. My place. Seven o’clock.”
“Frannie,” he explained patiently, “This Friday is part of March Madness. Intercollegiate basketball play-offs, you know? Rick made me kick money into a pool thing he started. Frankly, I don’t think Villanova can do it, but it was all there was left and you