Jennifer Drew - One Bride Too Many - One Bride Too Many / One Groom To Go

Certainly he made life more interesting. She’d been trapped by a mad inventor—well, a quirky one, anyway—and suspected of industrial espionage. Even better, she’d told Marsh Bailey what was right and wrong with his new products. Would that she could do the same for Kozy Kountry cows!

As she lolled in her oversize yellow sleep shirt, munched microwave popcorn and watched Bride of Frankenstein, Cole was wining and dining Jillian Davis, of all people. If Tess had ever had any aspiration to be a matchmaker, this would have killed it. Jillian wasn’t even on her Z list of possible dates for Cole, although, with brilliant hindsight, she had to admit her fellow kickboxer was probably his type. He thought so, anyway.

Darn, why had Marsh tried to turn the lab into the house from Dr. Zhivago? She’d been blissfully ignorant of how it felt to have Cole’s strong arms wrapped around her for real, not as a tactic to beat her at pool. She was going to remember the moment long after portable potties were forgotten in the mental haze of advanced old age.

The door buzzer aroused her from speculation about whether Cole had curly black hair on his tummy. Not that it mattered to her. Someday she’d find a man who was right for her, one who’d make analytical comments about Bride of Frankenstein while he nuzzled her throat and did other nice things.

She checked her spy hole, as she liked to call it. Cole’s face was distorted like the image in a fun-house mirror, but there was still no mistaking how cute he was. Darn again! She didn’t want him to see her in a nightshirt, and she especially didn’t want to hear about his wonderful date.

Opening the door as far as she could without taking off the chain, she peeked out at him.

“Hi. Can I come in?”

“I’m not exactly dressed.”

“You look decent to me. I really need to talk to you.”

“Your grandfather’s not going to have us arrested for trespassing, is he?”

She took off the chain and let him step into her snug little living room.

“Nice place.”

He looked at the gray and pink striped satin couch—impractical, maybe, but she loved it—and the two deep rose velvet armchairs. The rest of her furniture was salvage from relatives or thrift-shop bargains, but she liked the touch of class her good furniture gave the light beige carpeting and white walls of the bland apartment.

“Are we in trouble for sneaking into the lab?”

“We didn’t sneak.”

“Of course not, but I’ll pass up any more tours of Bailey Baby Products, not to sound ungrateful.”

She didn’t want to hear about his date, but eventually she’d run out of inane chatter.

“Next time you set me up,” he said, plopping down on the couch, “I’d prefer it’s with someone you know better.”

He dipped into the metal mixing bowl of popcorn without invitation.

“Help yourself.”

“Oh, do you mind?”

She didn’t mind sharing her popcorn. She strenuously objected to arranging dates for him.

“You may remember, I didn’t set you up with Jillian. You engineered that.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“So, didn’t you have fun?”

She couldn’t pretend to be sorry. There was something about Jillian that was too perfect.

“I don’t want to talk about it. What are you watching?”

“Bride of Frankenstein.”

“That about sums up my evening.”

“That bad?” She had this terrible guilt-producing reaction—glee.

“Have some more popcorn,” she offered.

“No, thanks. We had a big dinner, surf and turf at Trocadero’s.”

“You do a first date right. Didn’t she like it?”

“I guess she did. That’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

She stopped the VCR. She owned the tape and could watch it anytime. Truth to tell, he looked so glum the date had to have been interesting…to her.

“We went back to her apartment afterward.”

“Horrors,” she said dryly, not at all sure she wanted the intimate details.

“For coffee and lemon bars.”

“Exactly what I thought,” she lied.

He was dressed in tan pants and a black knit shirt that highlighted rippling muscles and dark, broody eyes. If Jillian had blown the date with Cole, her head had to be stuffed with sawdust.

“She slipped into something more comfortable—a fuzzy white robe shorter than my undershirts and fur-ball slippers that went plop, plop, plop.”

“A girl has to relax sometime. So you had coffee and dessert. She can’t make drinkable coffee? Her lemon bars were sour and soggy?”

“No, they both were perfect.”

“Of course, perfect. Why are you here, Cole? Do you have something to complain about?”

“You’ve never been to her place, right?”

“Right, she’s only an acquaintance. I hardly know her at all.”

“She has wall-to-wall…” He took a deep breath. “Stuffed animals.”

“Stuffed as in taxidermy?”

“No, the kind kids play with—plush bears and giraffes all over the furniture, dogs and kittens in wicker chairs, a duck, a whale, even a fuzzy turtle. There wasn’t any place to sit without an avalanche of toy animals plummeting down on my head.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“No.” He shook his head solemnly. His hair tumbled in spikes over his forehead, and she wanted to comb them back with her fingers. Maybe that was the point of the styling.

“When we got to her door, she warned me to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake the babies.”

“I didn’t know she was a single mother.”

“She isn’t. She’s a loony who talks baby talk to inanimate objects. Baby talk!”

Tess laughed…and laughed some more. Even when her ribs started to ache, she couldn’t stop laughing at the expression on his face.

“I knew nobody could be as perfect as she seems,” she said by way of explanation when his glum expression finally dulled her mirth.

“I didn’t come here for sympathy,” he said caustically. “I’m calling in your marker. You still owe me some introductions.”

“Some! I understood one before we played, and you met Jillian in my store. She counts.”

“I didn’t get any help from you.”

“I vouched for you.”

“Whatever that means. You still owe me.”

“If you’re serious about this…”

“Dead serious.”

“Then you have to give me some idea of the kind of person you’d like to meet. And why!”

“I’m not into lists.”

“Or explanations?”

“Object—matrimony. Isn’t that enough? I’d just like to meet some nice women.”

“Nice meaning pure, untouched, unsullied, sweet, virtuous, kind, generous…”

“You talk too much!”

He moved so fast she didn’t have time to protest…or time to enjoy the quick kiss he planted on her parted lips.

“Just serve me up a smorgasbord of eligible women. I’ll do the rest.”

Sure, she should sell him to her friends so he could break their hearts Bailey style.

HE COMPILED the list. Actually, he cheated a little by picking Zack’s brain. They agreed on the basics—a sense of humor, pleasant personality and appealing looks. Truth to tell, they both favored lush breasts and a backside that didn’t sag or spread, but what man didn’t? Cole could have included lips like Tess Morgan’s on his wish list, but he prudently decided to omit physical attributes.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Friends didn’t smooch, especially not when the male friend wanted the female friend to find dates for him, a chore not to her liking. That was strange. Women he knew were usually so eager to play matchmaker, he’d assumed it was genetic.

He hadn’t planned to drive all the way to the Rockstone Mall on Monday when he had a full crew to supervise at the site, but he needed to make a trip to a home and garden superstore. He decided to run into the mall first, ask Tess to lunch, pick out what his crew needed, then eat and give her the list she insisted was necessary. What could be more efficient? He wouldn’t be making a special trip through heavy workweek-morning traffic just to see Tess.