The Perfect Match: First Comes Marriage / Yours and Mine

“I told him no way.”

Janine blinked back surprise mingled with a fair amount of indignation. “Just like that? Couldn’t you at least have mulled it over?” Zach was staring at her as though he thought someone should rush over and take her temperature. “Forget I said that,” she mumbled, fussing with her napkin in order to avoid meeting his eyes.

“I didn’t want to encourage him.”

“That was wise.” Janine picked up her water glass and downed half the contents.

“To your grandfather’s credit, he seemed to accept my answer.”

“Don’t count on it,” Janine warned.

“Don’t worry, I know him, too. He isn’t going to give up easily. That’s the reason I suggested you and I meet to talk about this. If we keep in touch, we can anticipate Anton’s strategy.”

“Good idea.”

Their salads arrived and Janine frowned when the waitress tossed Zach another suggestive glance. “So,” she began in a conversational tone once the woman had left, “Gramps was smart enough not to offer you a large incentive if you went along with his scheme.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She stabbed viciously at her salad. “I hadn’t expected him to stoop that low. Exactly what tactics did he use?”

“He said something about family members having use of the limousine.”

Janine’s fork made a clanging sound as it hit the side of her salad bowl. “He offered you the limousine if you married me? That’s all?”

“Not even that,” Zach explained, not bothering to disguise his amusement, “only the use of it.”

“Why…why, that’s insulting.” She crammed some salad into her mouth and chewed the crisp lettuce as though it were leather.

“I considered it a step above the cow and ten chickens you suggested the first time we discussed this.”

“Where he came from, a cow and ten chickens were worth a lot more than you seem to realize,” Janine exclaimed, and immediately regretted raising her voice, because half the patrons in the restaurant turned to stare. She smiled blandly at those around her, then slouched forward over her salad.

She reached for a bread stick, broke it in half and glared at it. “The use of the limo,” she repeated, indignant.

“Don’t look so upset.” He grinned. “I might have accepted.”

Zach was deriving far too much pleasure from this to suit her. “Your attitude isn’t helping any,” she said, frowning righteously.

“I apologize.”

But he didn’t act the least bit apologetic. When she’d first met Zach, Janine had assumed he was a man who rarely smiled, yet in the short time they’d spent together today, he’d practically been laughing outright.

The waitress brought their entrées, but when Janine took her first bite, she realized that even the pretense of eating was more than she could manage. She felt too wretched. Tears sprang to her eyes, which embarrassed her even more, although she struggled to hide them.

“What’s wrong?” Zach surprised her by asking.

Eyes averted, Janine shook her head, while she attempted to swallow. “Gramps believes I’m a poor judge of character,” she finally said. And she was. Brian had proved it to her, but Gramps didn’t know about Brian. “I feel like a failure.”

“He didn’t mean any of it,” Zach said gently.

“But couldn’t he have come up with something a little more flattering?”

“He needed an excuse to marry you off, otherwise his suggestion would have sounded crazy.” Zach hesitated. “You know, the more we discuss this, the more ludicrous the whole thing seems.” He chuckled softly and leaned forward to set his elbows on the table. “Who would’ve believed he’d come up with the idea of the two of us marrying?”

“Thank you very much,” Janine muttered. He sat there shredding her ego and apparently found the process just short of hilarious.

“Don’t let it get to you. You’re not interested in me as a husband, anyway.”

“You’re right about that—you’re the last person I’d ever consider marrying,” she lashed out, then regretted her reaction when she saw his face tighten.

“That’s what I thought.” He attacked his spaghetti as though the clams were scampering around his plate.

The tension between them mounted. When the waitress arrived to remove their plates, Janine had barely touched her meal. Zach hadn’t eaten much, either.

After paying for their dinner, Zach walked her to her car, offering no further comment. As far as Janine was concerned, their meeting hadn’t been at all productive. She felt certain that Zach was everything Gramps claimed—incisive, intelligent, intuitive. But that was at the office. As a potential husband and wife, they were completely ill-suited.

“Do you still want me to keep in touch?” she asked when she’d unlocked her car door. They stood awkwardly together in the street, and Janine realized they hardly knew what to say to each other.

“I suppose we should, since neither of us is interested in falling in with this plan of his,” Zach said. “We need to set our differences aside and work together, otherwise we might unknowingly play into his hands.”

“I won’t be swayed and you won’t, either.” Janine found the thought oddly disappointing.

“If and when I do marry,” Zach informed her, “which I sincerely doubt, I’ll choose my own bride.”

It went without saying that Janine was nothing like the woman he’d want to spend his life with.

“If and when I marry, I’ll choose my own husband,” she said, sounding equally firm. And it certainly wouldn’t be a man her grandfather had chosen.

“I don’t know if I like boys or not,” thirteen-year-old Pam Hudson admitted over a cheeseburger and French fries. “They can be so dumb.”

It’d been a week since Janine’s dinner with Zach, and she was surprised that the teenager’s assessment of the opposite sex should so closely match her own.

“I’m not even sure I like Charlie anymore,” Pam said as she stirred her catsup with a French fry. Idly she smeared it around the edges of her plate in a haphazard pattern. “I used to be so crazy about him, remember?”

Janine smiled indulgently. “Every other word was Charlie this and Charlie that.”

“He can be okay, though. Remember when he brought me that long-stemmed rose and left it on my porch?”

“I remember.” Janine’s mind flashed to the afternoon she’d met Zach. As they left the restaurant, he’d smiled at her. It wasn’t much as smiles went, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to forget how he’d held her gaze, his dark eyes gentle, as he murmured polite nonsense. Funny how little things about this man tended to pop up in her mind at the strangest moments.

“But last week,” Pam continued, “Charlie was playing basketball with the guys, and when I walked by, he pretended he didn’t even know me.”

“That hurt, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did,” Pam confessed. “And after I bought a T-shirt for him, too.”

“Does he wear it?”