Judith McWilliams - Practice Husband

“Do tell.” Addy grinned at the elderly woman.

“It’s about time someone told you,” Sister Margaret said tartly. “What’s more, you’re not likely to find a husband in a refugee camp in Western Africa run by nuns.”

Addy felt her shoulders tense as the all-too-familiar feeling of inadequacy welled out of her subconscious. “I’m not likely to find one anywhere.”

“Nonsense!” Sister Margaret said bracingly. “A lovely young woman like you?”

Addy blew a damp strand of dark red hair that had escaped from her functional chignon out of her face and looked down at her rumpled uniform, which was liberally stained with the results of treating scores of children.

“Your partiality is overwhelming your common sense,” Addy muttered. “Besides, I may have spent the last four years in Africa, but if you remember, before that I was working in Chicago—a city with millions of men in it, and not a single one of them showed the slightest desire to marry me.”

“And whose fault was that? You were always so defensive about being a little plump—”

“Fat,” Addy corrected. “I wasn’t plump. I was fat.”

“Whatever!” Sister Margaret waved a dismissive hand. “The point is that you aren’t overweight anymore. There’s nothing to stop you from going out and grabbing a man to father those kids you want.”

Addy suppressed a sigh. If all she wanted was a walking sperm bank, then maybe her aunt was right. But that wasn’t all she wanted. She wanted more, a lot more. She wanted someone who was interested in her as a person as well as a sexual partner. She wanted someone to talk to, to share her hopes and fears with. To build a future with. A future that would last after their children had grown and left home.

Unfortunately, if she believed the letters she’d received over the years from her single girlfriends, men like that were scarcer than the proverbial hens’ teeth.

And even if by some miracle she did run across a man who fit her requirements, it wouldn’t do her any good. She wouldn’t have the vaguest idea how to go about attracting his attention. And that was the crux of her problem. She squarely faced the fact. She didn’t know. She didn’t know how to attract men, how to talk to them, how to relate to them on any level. She had absolutely no experience to fall back on. As far as she was concerned, they might as well be another species entirely.

“Good, then we’re decided.” Sister Margaret chose to take Addy’s silence as agreement. “You’re going to return home to Hamilton, find a husband and have some children to brighten my old age. Eastern Pennsylvania will be pretty, with fall coming,” she offered as an added inducement.

A reluctant smile flickered in Addy’s deep brown eyes. If only it were as easy as that. Of course, to her aunt, it probably was. Her aunt didn’t seem prey to the self-doubts that had always haunted Addy.

“I’ll make your plane reservations this afternoon.”

Addy blinked. “This afternoon! What’s the rush?”

“You aren’t getting any younger, and if you wait for a good time to go, you’ll never leave. This place is always in the middle of a crisis.”

Sister Margaret turned to leave and then stopped, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “I almost forgot why I came over here in the first place. A letter came for you in the mailbag.” She pulled a long white envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Addy.

Eagerly, Addy looked at the return address, hoping for a letter from a friend, and then grimaced.

“Bad news?” Sister Margaret asked.

“No, just old news. It’s from that law firm that wants to buy the property that Mom and Dad’s house sits on. Remember, I told you about their offer. They say they have a client that wants to build a factory or some such on it.”

“Are you still adamant about not selling?”

“Yes. I grew up in that house, and even though Mom and Dad are both dead and I haven’t lived there since I graduated from high school, I still think of it as home. And if I sell it, I won’t belong anyplace.” A feeling of panic swirled through Addy.

“All the more reason to get yourself a husband. People should belong to other people, not to a place,” Sister Margaret said as she left.

I should be so lucky, Addy thought ruefully, wishing she had inherited even a tenth of her aunt’s self-assurance.

She leaned back against the examining table and ripped open the envelope, extracting the single sheet of paper. As she’d suspected, it was another offer to buy her property, virtually identical to the ones she’d been receiving for the past eighteen months. The only thing that changed was the price they were offering.

Addy frowned as she peered closer at the scrawled signature at the bottom of the page. No, one other thing had changed—the signature. Instead of being signed by a lawyer named Blandings as all the other ones had been, this letter was signed by the president of the company who wanted her land, one J. E. Barrington.

“J. E. Barrington,” she muttered. Joseph Barrington? Could J. E. Barrington be her Joe Barrington? Not that Joe had ever been hers. In fact, when they were children, Joe hadn’t appeared to belong to anyone. She couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone attending a school function with him. Or standing on the sidelines during sporting events rooting for him. He’d always seemed to be alone, both physically and mentally.

But despite his aloofness, Joe had had a kinder side. A side Addy had discovered when she’d been in the second grade. She’d been standing on the playground after school crying because two boys from the fifth grade had taken her beloved doll and were beating its head on the pavement, saying that fat people didn’t deserve dolls.

As if in answer to her tears, Joe had emerged from the school building and come to her rescue. He’d bloodied the nose of one of her tormentors, chased them both off and then told her that crying never helped anything. Only action solved problems.

After the incident, Joe had taken to walking her home after school, which had effectively ended the vicious teasing she’d endured. Not only that, but she’d acquired a friend. A prickly one, but the fact that he had never once referred to her being fat had made him absolutely perfect in her eyes. Their friendship had lasted until he’d gone away to college and they’d lost touch.

She glanced back down at the signature. Could it be Joe? Had Joe managed to build up a company from nothing? It was certainly possible, she conceded. If ever there was a person who had the will to succeed, it was Joe.

Thoughtfully, she shoved the letter into her pocket. Instead of writing a reply turning down their offer as she usually did, she would go to see this J. E. Barrington in person when she got back to Hamilton, she decided. It would be interesting to find out exactly who he was.

One

“Progress rears its ugly head,” Addy muttered as she pulled into the parking lot of the company that was so determined to acquire her land. When she’d been in high school the whole area had been gently rolling pastureland.

Addy cut the engine of her new compact, which she’d picked up from the dealer that morning, and studied the ultramodern building for a long moment. Now that she was actually here, she was of two minds about going in.

She had very fond memories of Joe. In fact, the only fond memories of the entire male sex she had from school were of Joe. If he had turned into a ruthless, money-grubbing businessman, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Aware that she was being ridiculous, Addy unbuckled her seat belt and got out. Whatever Joe had become had nothing to do with her. She had enough problems of her own to worry about. Such as how she was going to find a man to build a relationship with.