Before You Get To Baby.... Terry Essig

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      “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 never know so I…now what?”

      “No excuses. This Friday, seven o’clock, or no cookies. If you’re good maybe I’ll let you check the score once or twice.”

      “Man, you’re a pain.” But Drew really, really wanted those cookies. He was a scientist. He’d taken several different types of chemistry. He still had lab nightmares all these years later. One thing Drew knew for sure, he could weigh and measure with the best of them. But when he attempted cookies, no matter how carefully Drew doled out the ingredients, they simply didn’t hold a candle to Frannie’s. Actually, it was a major point of frustration for him as he’d seen her in action in the kitchen. Frannie would have flunked chem lab, any science lab, that was for sure. She just sort of threw things together. And whatever it was always turned out well. “All right, all right. This Friday. But I get a dozen cookies up front.”

      “Eight.”

      “Ten.” Drew casually inched his hand toward the cookie plate.

      Frannie cradled the plate more closely. “Nine.” She started counting them out.

      “Okay. I think I read somewhere that for attracting a mate, we’re all operating on a subconscious instinctual level. We only think we’ve gotten civilized over the eons.”

      “If you’re trying to tell me men still operate on caveman level, I’m not all that surprised. I will not, however, take it kindly if one of them tries to conk me on the head and drag me home by the hair.”

      Drew snorted. “You haven’t got enough hair to get a good grip.”

      Frannie patted her short crop of curls protectively. “Short hair is easy to take care of as well as very stylish.” She sniffed disdainfully. “Shows how much you know about fashion.”

      “Guys like long. We don’t care if it’s fashionable or not.” Drew gathered his booty in front of him.

      Frannie covered her plate with plastic wrap and rose. “If you don’t care about what’s in, why is your hair so carefully mussed up today, in that bedhead style guys are so into right now?”

      Drew sat back, disgusted. “You asked, I answered. Leave my hair out of it. How big is your waist?”

      “My waist?”

      Drew waved away her puzzled look. “Never mind. We’ll get into it come Friday.” If he couldn’t get any more cookies out of her right now, he wasn’t going to waste his ammunition.

      “What about my waist?” Frannie wanted to know.

      “Friday,” Drew reiterated and shooed Frannie out the door so he could enjoy his treat in peace. Women. Go figure. Tell them what they want to know and they argue. Drew shoveled a cookie up and into his mouth feeling slightly aggrieved. Now he had to spend the next few days thinking up ways for a member of the opposite sex to trap one of his own. Talk about disloyal. He’d sold out to the enemy with barely a whimper. A handful of cookies was all it had taken. Disgusted, he crunched down hard on another one. “Well, too darned bad. They’re all grown men. They can fend for themselves. If one of them gets caught, he probably deserves it for being so stupid as to fall for all those female ploys.”

      Frannie drove home proud of herself. She’d started the process. Subtlety was lost on a man like Drew—actually on most men, she decided as she signaled a left turn and left his street behind. You had to hit them over their hard, fat heads to get their attention. She’d done that.

      “Ought to be interesting to see what he comes up with,” she told herself as she turned again, right this time. Frannie came up to a red light, drummed her fingers as she waited. “At least I’ve got him thinking about marriage. That’s something.” She accelerated as the light changed. “And if he still refuses to open his eyes and see what’s right in front of them, I swear I’ll use whatever he tells me to find myself somebody who will appreciate me. See if I don’t, the unappreciative bum.” Frannie pulled into a spot in front of her neat little frame one-story. “And I’ll tell you something else. When and if that man does wake up, he’s going to have some serious making up to do. Serious making up.” And she sniffed in self-righteous justification as she walked up her front walk.

      Late Friday afternoon she was still sniffing at regular intervals at the male population’s thick-headedness in general, one Andrew Wiseman’s in particular. “Wiseman, hah!” Frannie spat as she pounded the sofa-back cushions back into shape in anticipation of his arrival. Setting the scene was important, after all. “There’s a misnomer if ever there was one. Blindman is more like it. Andrew Stupid-head has a certain cachet as well.” The sofa beaten into submission, Frannie surveyed the room, hands on her hips. Even if it was on a subconscious level, she wanted Drew to see the kind of home she could create.

      Satisfied with the room check, she started down the short hall to her bedroom. “Obviously, I must have a very perverse nature to find the man this appealing. But I’ve got to make my play now before somebody else snaps him up. He’s within shouting distance of thirty, for heaven’s sake, he should be more than ready to settle down. I’d always planned to be the one standing in front of him when he woke up. Where the heck did that silk teddy go? Ah, there it is and my…yes, got that too.” She headed out of the bedroom and into the bath.

      “Well, I just can’t wait any longer,” Frannie said as she reached in to turn on the shower. “His social life is too darn active and he still treats me like I’m his little sister. Not after tonight,” she vowed as she stepped into the steaming stall. “Not after tonight.”

      Drew СКАЧАТЬ