To Catch A Wife. Lee Mckenzie

guy in her life? Fred would make a perfect father and a wonderful husband...for someone. Not for her, though.

      “Em?”

      “What?”

      “You’re kind of scaring me.”

      “Sorry.”

      “What’s going on?”

      She took a deep breath, held it, exhaled in a rush. “I’m pregnant.”

      Fred stared at her, opened his mouth, closed it again, leaving his first thought, whatever it was, unspoken.

      She waited.

      “Um, wow, I...” He stepped back, looked her up and down, his gaze finally coming to rest on her midsection. “You...you’re having a...”

      She nodded. “A baby.”

      “Jack Evans’s baby.”

      Now it was her turn to stare. “How on earth did you figure that out?”

      “The day of Eric’s funeral, I closed the shop for a couple of hours so I could go. Later that afternoon, I came back here, and it was business as usual. Before I closed up, I saw the two of you going into the café down the street. What was that, two months ago? And now you’re...”

      Having a baby. Fred seemed unable to say the actual words out loud.

      “What did he say when you told him?”

      “Well, that’s the thing.”

      “You haven’t told him?”

      She shook her head.

      “Em! Why not?”

      “Because I only found out this morning.” Because the thought of telling Jack terrified her, and because some secret little part of her hoped she wouldn’t have to. She hoped having her family and her best friend to support her and this new little person would be enough, even though in her heart she knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.

      He hugged her again. “So I’m the only person who knows?”

      She shook her head against the soggy mess she’d made of his shirt. “My sisters know, too. CJ found the pregnancy test in my bag, and they made me take it while I was out at the farm this morning.”

      “That must have been interesting. How did they react when you told them it was Jack’s?”

      “I didn’t tell them.”

      “Your sisters didn’t ask? Didn’t try to pry the truth out of you? That’s hard to believe.”

      “They did. I kind of lied.”

      Fred leaned back and stared down at her, momentarily confused. “You told them it was somebody else’s?”

      She glanced up at him but couldn’t bring herself to confess. She didn’t have to.

      He let go of her and abruptly stepped back. “You didn’t. Emily, tell me you didn’t tell your sisters that this...”

      She lowered her head and fixed her guilty gaze on the toes of her beige ballerina flats.

      “You did. You told them... You told them...” His voice had risen a full octave. He stabbed the fingers of both hands through his hair, held them there. He had a tendency to blush when he was embarrassed or angry. Right now even his ears were crimson, and he was looking a little wild-eyed, too. “You told them it was mine? That I...? That we...? Why would you do that?”

      Her sisters would find out the truth soon enough, but since she had humiliated her best friend in the whole world, she owed him an explanation now.

      “I don’t know. It was all so unexpected. I drove over to Wabasha early this morning and went to the pharmacy there.” If she’d bought the test in Riverton, half the town would know by now that she might be pregnant.

      “On my way back to town, I stopped at the farm for my usual Saturday-morning coffee date with my sisters. I had no intention of actually doing the test while I was there. I was going to wait till I was alone at home, but then my phone rang and CJ opened my bag to look for it and...surprise.”

      Fred’s color was gradually returning to normal, and he’d stopped pulling at his hair. Now he stood, arms folded, silent and waiting.

      “I was hoping I wasn’t pregnant,” she continued. “I was hoping I was late, you know? It happens a lot, but I’ve never been this late—”

      Fred’s color deepened again. “Stop. Too much information. I don’t need to know how late or how often you’re... Geez, Em. That’s just...”

      “Okay, okay, I get it.” Too much information. She was feeling woozy all of a sudden, which made no sense, and she reached for the back of one of the barber chairs for support. The chair pivoted away from her, and she lost her balance.

      Fred caught her.

      “Can we sit down?” she asked. “I brought lunch, remember?” She pointed to the brown bag on the counter. Maybe she’d feel less light-headed if they were having this conversation on a full stomach.

      “You thought you could butter me up with lunch?”

      “Annie made sandwiches. Ham and Swiss on rye, with extra mustard.”

      He narrowed his gaze, but she could see she had his attention. It was one of his favorites. “She sent some of her apple strudel, too.”

      His features softened a little. “You sort of had me at extra mustard, but no sane person ever turned down your sister’s strudel.”

      Emily smiled. Given Fred’s appetite and the universal appeal of Annie’s pastries, she’d known the strudel was her ace in the hole.

      “Come on,” he said. “We can sit in the back office. Just don’t think that one of your sister’s killer lunches gets you off the hook.”

      Fred led her into the cramped office-slash-storage room off the back of the barbershop and sat her in a chair. He unpacked the sandwiches and two generous slices of strudel and set them on the narrow wooden table, then pulled two bottles of water from the mini-fridge.

      Emily found the small, familiar space vaguely reassuring. She’d always liked this little room, couldn’t begin to count the number of hours she and Fred had spent in it over the years—playing Go Fish when they were kids, working on high school assignments, catching up on town gossip during her brief visits home from college. These days they usually met for lunch at the Riverton Bar & Grill down the block, but today’s conversation was not for public consumption.

      Fred sat across from her, peeled the plastic wrap off Annie’s signature sandwich, bit off a mouthful and slowly chewed while he studied Emily through narrowed eyes.

      She didn’t know what to say, and Fred was in no hurry to fill the awkward silence. This must be how a criminal felt, sitting in an interrogation room, trying not to squirm beneath the steely gaze of a hardened detective. Like Jack. He would be cool and collected, in spite of feeling disillusioned about his job. Over dinner that night he had told her being a homicide detective was taking a toll on his work life, his personal life...his life. Still, he had been surprised when she’d asked if he had considered making a change. Never, he’d said. He had known since he was a kid that he was going to be a big-city cop. He had invested everything in his career. Change wasn’t an option.

      Well, Jack Evans was in for a surprise. Emily Finnegan, the one-night stand who hadn’t been interesting enough or attractive enough to warrant so much as a phone call, now had some news that would change his life forever. Forget calm, cool and collected. Jack Evans was going to go ballistic.

      “So here’s what I don’t understand,” Fred said. “After all this time, you finally got what you wanted, but you didn’t say anything to anyone. Not me, not even your sisters.”

      “What are you talking about? I’ve never, ever said anything