The Husband School Read online

  “Do we get to pick who we go out with?”

  “What are we going to do on these dates?”

  The questions kept coming, with Jerry responding to all of them the same way: “That will be decided by the producer and her staff.” He finally turned to Meg, who stood next to him with her list in her hand.

  “First things first,” Jerry said. “Let’s learn how to impress our future guests. Meg, want to start?”

  Meg looked up at the audience. “Have you ever wondered why a woman you liked wouldn’t go out with you a second time?”

  No one said a word.

  Then one hand rose in the air. Pete Lyons, the school bus driver, asked, “What about if she won’t go out with me the first time?”

  “We’ll get to that,” she promised. “We’ll talk about flirting and making conversation and making a woman feel comfortable around you, but for now, let’s go over how to make a good impression when you’re on that first date, presumably with the women from the show, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Here are some of the suggestions women have given me.” She took a deep breath. “Don’t talk about your ex-girlfriend or your ex-wife. Don’t pick food out of your teeth with your fingernails. Don’t belch, or do it quietly and say ‘excuse me.’ Open the car door for her. Open doors for her. Don’t stare at her chest. Make sure your clothes are clean, you wear deodorant, you’ve brushed your teeth and you have not poured on aftershave lotion by the tablespoon. Do not talk badly about your mother. Do not talk badly about her mother, if you happen to know her mother.”

  Owen assumed Meg had contributed that one herself. He’d personally heard enough rumors about Loralee to fill a tabloid.

  Meg took a sip of water while the men sat in silence. Someone whined, “Are we dating the queen or what?”

  She looked up from the list. “Are you dating anyone?”

  Silence greeted the question. Several men began to sidle toward the door, so Owen stood up and placed his back to it. They’d have to get through him first.

  “Sure seems like we don’t do anything right,” someone else muttered.

  “I need a drink.”

  “When do we eat?”

  “Cripe, how many rules are there?”

  “No kidding. I could use a beer right about now.”

  Les turned to Owen. “My grandmother taught me a lot of this. But it’s hard to remember sometimes, especially if a guy doesn’t have a steady girlfriend.”

  Owen agreed. “Takes practice. My mother was a stickler for good manners.”

  The chorus of protests continued. “I thought we’d just get a drink or somethin’.”

  “Can I take her to the movies instead?”

  “If she has blue eyes, I don’t care if she’s a vegetarian.”

  “This is getting pretty serious all of a sudden. They’re gonna ask us this stuff on television?”

  “Why? Can’t we just have fun?” This question came from a young man with a cast on his arm.

  “Sure,” Meg said. “Dating should be fun.”

  “Sounds serious to me,” he said. “I’m only twenty-four, too young to settle down and talk about politics.”

  “You’re right.” His glasses were broken and taped at the temples. He looked as if he’d been in a fight and lost.

  “So Patsy, Lucia, Iris, Joanie and Aurora are joining us for dinner,” Meg announced. “But before we eat, we’ll do some informal speed dating.”

  That announcement got a mixed response.

  “Okay, okay,” Jerry said. “We won’t call it speed dating. You have a number—remember the number you were given when you arrived? There’s a letter on it, too.”

  Owen glanced at the notecard with “P-2” printed on it in black marker. Patsy Parrish sat down at a table for four and fluffed her golden hair around her shoulders.

  “P is for Patsy, L for Lucia, I for Iris, A for Aurora, J for Joanie. Simple, right?”

  The mayor paused while the men found their cards. Owen folded his in half and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans as the mayor continued.

  “Try to keep your conversations to ten minutes. The ladies will help you come up with things to talk about if you’re unsure. Just relax and have fun. Just be yourselves,” he added. “Smile, even.”

  No one smiled. Les looked sick. Owen eyed the four women who’d come in the side door and watched Jerry move to block the second obvious exit. Bribed by the promise of a home-cooked meal and distracted by the female volunteers who took their places at five empty tables, the bachelors of Willing did as they were told. They took numbers, they lined up, four deep in front of the ladies’ tables according to Jerry’s directions. They seemed determined to do their best to be social.

  Jerry was in charge of the timer. “I’ll tell you when your time is up. Then you move to the end of the line at the next table over. After dinner we’ll have the ladies share what they enjoyed most about the conversations. Everybody cool with that?”

  A couple of men replied positively, Jerry said, “Go!” and Meg fled to a booth in order to go over her notes. She didn’t think she’d done a very good job so far, but she wasn’t sure how to fix things.

  And she didn’t expect Owen to follow her.

  “Do you mind?” He didn’t wait for answer before settling into the booth across from her.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be speed dating?”

  “I’m avoiding it.”

  “Nervous around women, are you?” Meg ignored him and looked back at her lists. Over the next few weeks they’d have to cover a lot of subjects. The bachelors she’d seen on dating shows had been charming, smooth and confident. Like Owen. If he was still around when Hollywood came calling.

  “Why aren’t you talking to the men?”

  Meg didn’t look up. “I’m avoiding it,” she echoed. “And I’m terrible at small talk.”

  “Try,” he urged. “Or do we pretend we’ve never met?

  “Of course not.” What a ridiculous question. He folded his hands on the table. “You could tell me why you’re here, though.”

  “I thought I did.” His smile was brief.

  “Uncle Ed,” she said. “Hermit streak. Sorry, I’m not buying the hermit phobia as the reason you’re getting involved in this whole thing.”

  “Okay, that’s only part of it.”

  She waited.

  “I was reminded,” he said eventually, “of my father.”

  Meg resisted the urge to touch his hand. “He was a very special man.”

  “And he would have expected more of me, I’m sure,” was Owen’s answer. He looked around the room, at the other men chatting with the volunteers or waiting patiently in line for their turn to practice their attempts to charm. Jerry drank from a plastic water bottle and kept an eye on his stopwatch. Lucia looked sympathetic, while Patsy flirted and smiled. He couldn’t see the faces of the other women, but he’d guess that Aurora would appear intimidating to most men. Someone laughed.

  And then Owen’s gaze returned to Meg. “My father wouldn’t have been pleased to see the town fighting for its life without a MacGregor leading the charge.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t get to talk to you at the house, after the funeral.”

  “I hid in the horse barn,” he admitted.

  “I looked there,” Meg said.

  “You were the last person I wanted to see.”

  “I would have told you I was sorry. About everything.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” he snapped. “That’s not what I wanted from you and you know it.”

  That certainly put her in her place. There was a brief silence as Meg wondered what to say and decided to say nothing. He’d hurt her, as he’d meant to.

 
“Time’s up,” Jerry called. “Everyone move up one, number twos take your place at the table and those who just practiced move to the end of the line at another table!” He looked around the room until he found Owen.

  “Come on,” he said, waving him over. “Owen, what’s your number?”

  Owen held up two fingers.

  “You’re up, then.”

  Meg examined her notes once again. She didn’t want to watch him leave the booth, didn’t want to see which woman he was going to talk to. She was sure he would be charming and polite, attentive and maybe even a little self-deprecating.

  He could teach the class himself, and maybe he should.

  “How’s it going?” This time it was Jerry joining her. “What do you think?”

  They both turned to watch the speed dating tables. “I made sure Joey got Aurora first,” Meg said.

  “So he wouldn’t drool all over Lucia?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And now he’s talking with Iris,” Jerry observed. “And she’s drooling all over him.”

  “Ah, romance....”

  They both laughed. The men who were not at the tables helped themselves to pretzels and beer, cheese and crackers, water and smoked sausage. The noise level ratcheted up a few notches during the final minutes of session two.

  “Time!” Jerry hustled out of the booth and issued more directions. Meg left her notes and went to the refreshment table for water. She intended to circulate among the bachelors to see if anyone had questions, but Owen reached past her for a glass.

  “The summer kitchen still looks the same,” he said, pouring water from the pitcher into his glass. “I should paint it, put in a new floor or something.”

  “Or not,” she replied. “I can’t picture it modernized.”

  Silence.

  “So,” he said, his voice steady and cold. “You’re going to renovate the cabins?”

  “I hope so. They’ve been empty for years. They just need so much work, but I think I can afford to have the bathrooms redone and buy some beds and mattresses. And rugs, maybe.”

  “They look well built.”

  “We had the electricity rewired ten years ago when we had big plans to run a motel again, but then Loralee lost interest and I was too busy with the café to do it myself.” She noticed Lucia laughing at something Les was saying. The young cowboy seemed more relaxed than she’d expected he would be. “Shouldn’t you be making small talk somewhere?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve done my part.”

  She wished he’d kill time with someone else, but Meg attempted to match his clipped tone. “How did it go with Patsy?”

  He shrugged. “She wanted to know why I never asked her out when we were in high school.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No. She was just giving me a hard time.”

  Meg took a sip of water. “I’d better circulate,” she said. “See how the guys are doing.”

  “Time!” Jerry again, on top of things with his stopwatch and his enthusiasm. The men did as they were told. Jack Dugan brought Iris a beer. Aurora fanned herself with a napkin. Someone turned the music up.

  “Excuse me.” Meg took a step away from Owen, but he wasn’t done with the conversation. He’d used up any charm he had with Patsy, she supposed, because he acted like a man who wanted to pick a fight.

  “How is your little runaway mom doing? I see she’s still in town.”

  “She’s helping me out in exchange for a place to stay.” At his raised eyebrow, she explained, “She’s living in my mother’s cabin.”

  “And where is the lovely Loralee these days?”

  “Golfing in Tucson. She lives there now.”

  “Ah. Married again.”

  “No.”

  Jerry joined them. “One more round, then we’ll wrap this up and feed them before we do another set of speed dates, okay?”

  Meg picked up her notes while Jerry called for attention and outlined the rest of the evening. While the last session took place, she made sure the buffet was ready. She’d managed to avoid Owen for the rest of the night, and she thought he was avoiding her, too. Which was just fine with her.

  Much later, Meg hurried into the warmth of her tiny home and locked the door behind her before switching on a light. She shrugged off her coat, turned on the heat and walked through the L-shaped kitchen and living area to her bedroom. There, in the back of her cabin, she sat on her quilt-covered bed and untied her practical brown shoes.

  The class had gone well, better than she’d expected, though she clearly had to stop telling the men what not to do and instead show examples of how to succeed.

  Aurora and Lucia had agreed that the men needed their egos boosted. Patsy and Iris figured it was a lost cause, but they’d had a good time. And Joanie? She wanted Cam kicked out of the class because he wasn’t sober. She had a point, and Jerry had agreed to consider it.

  But why had Owen really come tonight? Was this some kind of game to him?

  She’d refused the chance to marry him so long ago. Oh, she’d gone along with the wonderful, passionate fantasy of running away together and eloping. Against her practical nature and against all of her plans to get out of Willing and educate herself, she’d jumped into Owen’s truck to ride off into a very married sunset.

  And when his father, that strong, kind man who had only wanted what was best for both of them, had caught up with them at the Gas ’N’ Go, Meg had realized she wasn’t ready. She was too young.

  They both were.

  And obviously Owen had never forgiven her.

  * * *

  “JUST TELL ME one thing,” Loralee said immediately after Meg picked up the phone in her cabin the next afternoon. “Tell me I’m wrong, that I didn’t hear that the MacGregor boy is back in town.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s no longer a boy. He’s a thirty-four-year-old man now.”

  “I guess that answers my question. And I really don’t care how old he is.” Loralee sniffed. “He broke my baby’s heart.”

  “And I broke his. I was only a teenager. Somebody was bound to break my heart sooner or later. It just happened to be him.” Meg was pleased to sound so casual about it.

  “You and I both know you had no business getting caught up with that family—Irene wasn’t going to let her only son marry the kitchen help.”

  Meg sighed. Was she ever going to be allowed to forget what an idiot she’d been? Probably not.

  “I was eighteen,” she reminded her mother. “Now I’m thirty-two, remember? I think I can keep myself from eloping again.”

  “Well, I certainly hope so. On the other hand, he was a good-looking boy. And always seemed so polite. I never thought anything would come of it, but you were happy. For a while.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “It’s not going to happen. Stop worrying. Go play golf. Go to dinner with one of your new boyfriends.”

  “Wait until you’re a mother, and then you’ll understand.”

  Meg let that remark go by without a comment, because if her mother started in on how much she wanted grandchildren, the phone call would last longer than Meg could bear. “So how’s Aunt Joan?”

  “She’s good. Oh, that reminds me. We shipped you a crate of oranges.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can pretend they’re pumpkins.”

  “And I would want to do that because?”

  “They’re orange. It’s almost Halloween. Sprinkle some black licorice around and you’ll have a nice decoration for the counter. I saw it on HGTV, but with those tiny pumpkins. Except we couldn’t find any. Just oranges.” And now Loralee had turne
d into Martha Stewart.

  “Thank you. I’ll get to work on that as soon as they arrive.” She checked her watch. Shelly was helping the Petersen twins this morning, but there would still be a lot to do. “I have to get to the café soon, Mom. The Sunday-brunch crowd, remember?”

  “Just a minute. When were you going to tell me about the dating show?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Jerry, the mayor, has a blog. This morning he wrote about last night’s lesson on dating. He sounded very impressed. Why didn’t you call me? I could fill a book, two books, on what I know about men.”

  And that, Meg thought, was one of the truest things her mother had ever said. “Then you know it’s for publicity.”

  “Publicity?” Loralee chuckled. “I’m not sure why you’re sprucing up the local men and handing them off to other women. Don’t you want to keep one for yourself?”

  “No,” Meg said quickly. “How’s your golf game?”

  “I’m taking lessons now. From the pro at the country club. You wouldn’t believe how tanned he is. Your aunt and I tried one of those booths where they spray you with a tan, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “It looked good at first, there on the beach, but then it started to streak. Two days later we looked like zebras. Well—” she paused “—zebras with a skin disease.”

  Now, there was a picture Meg didn’t want in her head.

  “Mom, I really need to go.”

  “Fine. Promise me you’ll stay away from that man.”

  “No problem,” Meg said, remembering kisses, longer kisses, hotter kisses. Kisses on horseback, kisses in the hay barn. Kisses in the cattle shed, kisses in the truck. Kisses under the stars. Her chest hurt just thinking about it. She didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to feel that pain again. She wished he’d go back to DC, to his city life and his big world. She didn’t want him tromping around in her life.

  “Good,” her mother said. “You’re a lot smarter now than you used to be.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  WOMEN BAFFLED HIM. Jerry Thompson could no longer delude himself into thinking he knew anything at all about the opposite sex. If he hadn’t pinned his hopes, dreams and substantial bank account on bringing more women to town, he’d cancel the whole thing, take some aspirin for his pounding head and go to an isolated black-sand beach in Hawaii.