To Catch a Husband. Laura Altom Marie

make a great mom. But, babe, how do you expect guys to think of you as anything other than a guy when all you ever do is guy stuff? Play video games and watch ESPN. Slave over your bugs. I mean, if you want some dude to like you—in a baby-making way—maybe you should put on a dress. You know, let him know you’re interested. Speaking of which, got anyone special in mind for the daddy?”

      Someone knocked on the door. The pizza guy?

      “That was fast,” Adam said, relief in his voice at the interruption. As long as Charity had known him, he’d never been all that keen on sharing emotions. Lucky her, it looked as if he wasn’t about to change tonight. “To show how sorry I am about the baby crack, I won’t even ask you to pay half the bill.”

      “Maybe it’d be best if you just left.”

      “What do you mean?” he asked, expression dumb-founded. “The pizza just got here.”

      “Just go,” Charity said, arms crossed, having a devil of a time trying not to cry as the realization of what she’d just done hit her. Blurting out she wanted a baby like that. Nuts. That’s what that was. “I seriously want you to leave.”

      “But—”

      “Please,” she said. Before I not only spill my deepest, darkest secret about loving you, but start blubbering, too. “Go.”

      Adam stood, pizza in hand, in front of the open door. “Sure that’s what you want?”

      Swallowing hard, Charity nodded.

      For the longest time he just stood there in the chilly hall, staring. The cool air raised goose bumps on her miles of bare skin, but she didn’t care. Why, she couldn’t say, but something about her asking him to leave had been akin to drawing her own personal line in the sand.

      She’d only just now realized it, but enough was enough. She couldn’t go on this way anymore. Doing the same old things. Following the same old routines. If she was ever going to make more of her life—stop being the son her father wanted and discover the woman she knew herself deep in her soul to be—now was the time.

      With his free hand, using just tip of his index finger, Adam stroked heat from her shoulder to elbow, causing her to shiver both inside and out. “I’m worried about you. But if it’s space you want, you got it.”

      Dying a thousand tiny deaths over his unexpected kindness, she almost called him back inside. Almost. But what would that have served other than to prolong her pain? They’d never be a couple—not the way she wanted. The sooner she got that fact through her head, the better off she’d be.

      He wagged the pizza box, shot her a heart-stoppingly handsome grin, then headed down the long hall.

      Closing the door, sliding the chain lock into place, lingering scents of Adam and sausage-and-mushroom pizza flavoring the air, Charity finally gave in to her tears.

      SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Adam was drowning his sorrows in football and a bowl of chili—he’d wanted queso, but Bug wasn’t answering her phone and he couldn’t remember the recipe—when the doorbell rang.

      Opening the door, he said, “Bug?”

      “Sorry,” his dad said with a chuckle, barging his way in with a bag overflowing with green stuff. “Better luck next time.”

      “Yeah, right.” Adam muted the TV, then reclaimed his usual end of the sofa. His dad, a retired marshal, set his bag on the small table in what the official apartment complex guide called the dining nook, then lowered himself into the recliner. “What’s up?”

      “Just curious how your trip to the head doctor went. You were supposed to call.”

      “Guess I forgot.”

      “Well?”

      “Want chili?” Adam asked, reaching to the coffee table for his empty bowl, taking it to the kitchen for a refill.

      “No, thanks. I spent the morning at the Briar Street Farmer’s Market with Cal and Victoria. You remember her? Allie’s mom.” Cal was his oldest brother Caleb’s son—the son he hadn’t met till the kid was eight! Allie was Caleb’s wife. Caleb, also a marshal, had recently discovered he’d fathered a child when assigned to protect Allie, a judge. It blew Adam’s mind to think the woman had kept Cal from his father all those years. Still, seeing how the two of them had long since worked it out, Adam wasn’t one to interfere, or to dwell on the past.

      Ha! His conscience had a field day with that one. Other folks’ pasts didn’t plague him. His own, however, was a burden he feared he might always bear.

      Focusing on his old man rather than his own shortcomings, Adam raised his eyebrows. “Was this a date?”

      “No, no.” His dad looked away and coughed. “Just a friendly outing with our grandson. That sack over there’s packed with veggies. Victoria says us men need more antioxidants.”

      Adam grinned. Who knew the old guy still had it in him to charm the ladies?

      “It’s your date I’m here about,” his dad said. “How’d Saturday night go? Caleb and Beau said this Frederika was a real looker.” Count on his nosy brothers to be the ones spilling Adam’s private life to the one person he didn’t want knowing about it. His second oldest brother, Beau, was also a marshal, and carried the Logue family trait of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

      “Should be a looker,” Adam said with a grunt. “She’s a swimsuit model.” He turned the volume back up on the game. Seahawks vs. Jets. Sadly, the Jets were ahead by three touchdowns.

      “And…you going out again?”

      “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. She’s pretty high maintenance. Not my type.”

      “What’s Bug say?”

      “Huh?”

      “You know,” his dad pressed. “About the date. Does she think you should ask Frederika out again?”

      Adam turned up the TV.

      AT WORK MONDAY, Charity did everything in her power to steer clear of Adam. Which was tough, seeing as how their team had just been assigned to a major drug case being tried in federal court. The defendant had been caught with more than thirty-two kilos of cocaine in his vehicle. As a statement to the jurors, the prosecution displayed the mounds of neatly packaged coke in the courtroom.

      The boss wanted marshals on hand to dissuade anyone who’d calculated the drug’s street value and thought it worth the risk to steal.

      All day, Charity stood at the back of the courtroom, dressed in her baggy black suit that, okay, did probably come across as a trifle masculine. But geesh, was she supposed to have shown up to guard the goods in a miniskirt? Trying to avoid eye contact with Adam, who’d been posted behind the judge, had only added to the fun.

      Talk about awkward.

      “Yo, Bug.” Her friend and fellow marshal, Bear, ducked into her office cubicle after court had been adjourned for the day and the defendant escorted “home” for the night. “We’re headed to Ziggy’s. Wanna go?”

      “No, thanks,” she said, not looking up from the report she’d been trying to finish for the past week.

      “Your loss,” Bear said. A few minutes later the giant sweetheart who shaved his head because he thought it made him look meaner, was back. “Seen Adam?”

      She shook her head.

      “If you do, tell him—”

      “Okay,” she snapped. “Do you mind? I’m trying to work.”

      “Ex-cuuu-uuse me,” he said. “What bug crawled out of your collection and up your—”

      “Cut her some slack,” Adam said to Bear, barging into her cubicle, helping himself to the microwave popcorn she’d popped more to keep her mouth busy than because she’d been hungry.