Barbara Dunlop - Hitched For The Holidays - Hitched For The Holidays / A Groom In Her Stocking

“Mountain Monty can’t stand the sight of a noose, not even one with cute little doggies,” she said, giving Eric a smile so broad it nearly cracked her cheeks. “It’ll be about thirty minutes if y’all would like to wait in the lounge.”

So much for reservations, Mindy thought glumly as her father took on the job of host and ushered them into an area too dark for the old-west decor to be totally cloying.

“The evening’s on me,” Dad said expansively. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a long time, Eric. Mindy’s told me a lot about you, all good.”

She’d told him zilch except for the part about being a doctor, but how could she begrudge her father a little exaggeration after telling him the whopper of her life?

“That’s good to hear.” Eric smiled warmly at her.

They settled down, really far down, on a low semi-circular couch in the corner with a tiny table. A server appeared instantly and took their orders: a beer for Dad, white wine for her and a club soda with lime for Eric. Was he going to play the sober doctor all evening, or didn’t he imbibe? She knew so little about him, this evening was going to be massively stressful.

“Tell me, Eric…” her dad began.

She was going to hate those words before the dinner was over unless, of course, her “date” bailed before the entrée.

“Are you a native of Phoenix?” Wayne asked.

“No, I’m an Iowa boy.” He said it with pride. “I came here a couple of years ago to set up my practice.”

“Guess it’s a good place for health practitioners. Aging population and all. I didn’t want Mindy to go to Arizona State when we visited out here. Plenty of good colleges in Pennsylvania. But she liked it well enough to stay. Now that I’m retired I’ll have time to check it out for myself.”

“If you don’t mind the hot summers, it’s great,” Eric said.

Great conversation, Mindy noted. Weather, the dullest and safest of subjects. She jumped in with a few anecdotes about melting makeup and sun-dried skin. Her stories tanked, but they helped kill time until they finally got called for dinner. What had seemed like two hours in the lounge had really been fourteen minutes. This was going to be one whopping long ordeal.

The Old West really came alive with a vengeance in the huge dining room. Long wooden tables for ten were covered with blue-and-white checked tablecloths. Customers sat on benches with thick log legs and no backs. It reminded Mindy of a family reunion with someone else’s relatives. At least the noisy group of six senior-plus citizens at the other end of their table reduced their conversation to spotty exchanges of menu information.

“How about it, honey,” Eric said, resting his hand on her shoulder. “I’ve heard their mesquite grilled steaks are the best. They have a porterhouse for two if you’re up for sharing.”

He massaged the back of her neck with his fingers, a deliciously intimate gesture that made her father look at the cowhide menu with a disapproving scowl. If Eric had acted too cool toward her, her dad would have criticized that later, too!

Eric dropped his hand when she squirmed but only to hide it under the table where, her father would assume, he could feel her up under cover of the blue-and-white cloth. Actually he kept a decorous inch or so between their thighs, resting his hand on his own, not hers.

Overhead the wooden ceiling looked smoky dark in contrast to the white plaster wall beneath it. A country band filed out to a small stage near the middle of the far wall, and a deep bass voice started moaning about the wicked woman who didn’t know how to love just one man. At least it kept conversation to a minimum.

They gave their orders to a jean-clad male server in a flannel shirt too hot for the room. After an eternity of shouting at each other across the table, their appetizers came and the band took a break.

They had salads topped by the house dressing, in bowls large enough to mix up a cake, and red wine spicy enough to make her hair stand on end. Her father sliced bread from a loaf of homemade sourdough and, when she was full enough to call it a night, the main course arrived.

The porterhouse for two was smothered in mushrooms, onions and a peppery sauce, cooked to a delicate pink and served with a baked potato on steroids. Her father had pork ribs and cowboy beans delivered in a brown ceramic pot large enough to plant a tree in it. The idea was, she supposed, to eat one meal here and take home enough leftovers for three or four more in handy foam cartons. At least she wouldn’t have to cook all weekend.

The seniors sharing their table finally left carrying enough leftovers to feed a football team, and she could sense her father’s relief. Now they could have a real chat and hear each other.

“You don’t know how happy I am to meet you, Eric,” he said in the tone of a magistrate reading a prisoner’s sentence. “I tell you, my little girl’s choice of friends has given me some anxious moments in the past.”

“Please, Dad, let Eric enjoy his dinner.”

“Oh, I’m enjoying it,” he said wickedly.

“Can you believe, when she was sixteen some guy came roaring up to the house on a motorcycle with Mindy on the back?”

“I was wearing a helmet,” she said dryly, giving up on the big slab of cow on her plate.

“They wanted to get matching his and hers tattoos. I was supposed to sign a permission slip because she was under eighteen. I told him he’d be getting his tattoo in the state pen if he didn’t get lost.”

“Pen” was her father’s idea of talking the talk. If she and Eric really were an item, she’d want to crawl under the table.

“It got worse,” Wayne went on. “She brought one idiot home from college her first Christmas break. He was into conspiracy theories. Thought Kennedy had been shot by some baseball player.”

“He was a philosophy major. He enjoyed theoretical problems. Anyway, I was sure I could change some of his radical ideas. He was really nice, if you’d only given him a chance. It was wicked of you to make fun of his ideas.”

“He was a jerk.”

“Daddy! He had great potential. Anyway, Eric knows all about me, and he doesn’t want to hear your prejudiced opinions about a boy you scared away.”

“What is that nut doing now?” her father asked, never one to give up on a subject until he’d fully vented.

“I wouldn’t know.”

This was her year to lie, which made her feel anything but good. There was no way, though, that she was going to tell her father that an old boyfriend had lost everything when his dotcom company went under and was now part owner of a mall taco stand, something she’d accidentally discovered.

“How about you, Eric?” Wayne said. “Have you been married?”

He meant, are you really a married man out to seduce my innocent daughter and ruin her life?

“No, I came close once, but it didn’t work out.”

“Happens sometimes.”

He meant that a good prospect like the doc was better off with his daughter. She could read her father like a supermarket tabloid. Would this evening never end?

Eric looked at his watch, a complicated one with lots of extras, great if you wanted to know what time it was in Siberia. Big mistake. Her father had spent his career working with tiny details like commas. He didn’t miss Eric’s sneak peek.

“Are we keeping you from something?” he asked. He was eating his beans two or three at a time, stretching out the interrogation in spite of hovering busboys eager to clear.

“No, not at all, Wayne, but I may have to help with a delivery later tonight. The bitch has had a hard time of it in the past….”

Whoops! Mindy grabbed his thigh under the tablecloth and squeezed, but it was too late.