Not This Guy! Read online

  “You’re going to be a great father someday.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Nice shot, Beth Ann, he thought as he replaced the receiver. She must have seen from the very beginning how much he wanted—needed—a family. And how vulnerable he was because of it. She’d played on that vulnerability as surely as he’d leapt at the opportunity to play the role of hero charging in to rescue the women and children from the bad guy.

  The only problem was, the good guy didn’t end up with the girl.

  Mike went back to the champagne, gave the corkscrew a savage yank and scrambled to get the stein under the mouth of the bottle as the liquid spewed forth. This was one night he didn’t want to waste a drop.

  For a while he relished the sweetness of self-pity. He felt like hell, and no one could blame him. His fiancée had slept with her ex-husband and the child he’d grown to love like a daughter had been taken from him. Instead of becoming a family man, he’d become the cuckolded husband-to-be.

  Husband-never-to-be was more like it! Husband-never-to-be, father-never-to-be, happy-never-to-be—

  At some point during his consumption of the third bottle of champagne, Mike suddenly began to see his situation more clearly. It was as though a huge bank of lights had been turned on, illuminating truths that should have been obvious to him all along: he was a nice guy, and nice guys were fools. Clowns. Jesters in the court of courtship. Comic relief in the war of the sexes.

  He was an anachronism, a fossil; the last dinosaur in the valley; the last cowboy wearing a white hat in a sea of black Stetsons; the last knight to don armor and go out to deliver maidens from peril.

  Well, no more! he thought with drunken resolve. No one could be exploited unless he allowed himself to be. He was going to wise up and get tough. Get rid of his white hat. Put away his armor and quit rescuing damsels in distress.

  He was going to join the rest of the hardened cynics in the real world. He was going to quit getting attached to fatherless waifs and desperate women. He was going to just swear off women altogether—

  Swear off women?

  Whoa! Stop the presses. Put on the brakes. What was he thinking? He didn’t want to swear off women! He wasn’t a monk. He was a healthy man in his prime and healthy men in their primes had needs, after all. He liked women. He liked the way they smelled, he liked the sound of their laughter and he liked the way they felt. Why should he give them up?

  With the lucidity of logic that came from four bottles of champagne, he realized that he shouldn’t have to give up women at all. He just needed to find a different type of woman. A woman who would like him without needing him so much, who could do as much for him as he could do for her. Someone who could appreciate him without exploiting him. A woman unencumbered by the past and anxious to embrace the future, who was not only his intellectual equal, but his financial and emotional equal, as well.

  A new kind of woman. That was it. The answer. He would be more selective. Particular. Discriminating. He would set certain standards and abide by them. No more blundering into relationships based on chemistry. No more being seduced by a woman’s needing him. No more getting attached to children who were no concern of his.

  The longer he pondered the idea, the better he liked it. He hadn’t rushed into setting up a clinic or buying a house without preparing a list of requirements and shopping around. Why would he be less careful in selecting a woman?

  The plan was too profound to be committed entirely to memory, he concluded. He needed something tangible to remind him of his resolve. With Dodger padding after him, Mike walked to the kitchen and dug through his catchall drawer for a notepad. Under the letterhead imprinted with the name Smith’s Worm Capsules, he wrote:

  Mike Calder’s Minimum Requirements for a Woman

  1. She will have a good job that pays well.

  2. No children.

  3. Doesn’t believe men are a scourge upon the earth—no abusive ex-husbands, stalking ex-lovers, harassing bosses or any other troublesome man in her past.

  4. Drives a relatively new car still under warranty and has an established rapport with a professional mechanic.

  5. Lives in apartment or condo, or has a lawn service under contract.

  Pleased with his efforts, Mike read the list drunkenly to Dodger, who responded with a canine cock of his head and a soft whine.

  “I know,” Mike replied. “I am a genius. Nice of you to say so.” He skimmed the list again. “Just one last thing—”

  6. Sexy.

  “There,” he said, adding a final period with the dot of his pen before returning his gaze to the dog. “A man has to have some fun, doesn’t he?”

  * * *

  MONDAY MORNING, Mike posted the list above the utility room sink at the clinic, where he would see it each time he washed his hands.

  Suzie, his office manager, discovered it right away, as he’d known she would. Suzie always noticed everything. And Suzie always had an opinion. She responded to Mike Calder’s Minimum Requirements for a Woman with a derisive snort. “Did a little soul-searching this weekend, did we?”

  Mike responded with a frown.

  Undaunted, Suzie perused him with the sharp gaze developed during the raising of three sons. “You must have also done a little drinking. You don’t look as pretty as you usually do.”

  “There was all that champagne,” Mike said, unfazed by her upbraiding. “I couldn’t let it go to waste.”

  Suzie’s “harrumph” was like that of an impatient parent. “I knew it was a mistake for you to hole up by yourself. You should have been with people, gone out and had some fun.” She lifted the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and put them on. Her forehead wrinkled with concentration as she gave the list a careful reading.

  “I wasn’t in a partying mood,” Mike said dryly.

  Suzie parked her glasses on the very tip of her nose and looked at Mike across the rim. “So you’re looking for a ‘rich bitch’ now.”

  “I’m looking for an economic and emotional equal,” he corrected.

  Suzie removed her glasses and let them fall to the end of the chain on her ample chest. “Seems a bit...extreme to me.”

  “From now on,” Mike said firmly, “when I go out with a woman, I’m going to be more to her than a hunk of muscle and a checkbook.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean it, Suzie. I’ve been too easy too long. I’m tired of doing women’s yard work and fixing their cars and fending off their ex-husbands, then having them run off with the first jerk who comes along.”

  “You’ve had some bad breaks,” Suzie conceded.

  “Some? They should stamp Sucker across my forehead, the way they used to brand thieves.”

  Suzie shrugged. “Whatever. It’s your love life. But you still seem like a yard-work-and-car-repair kind of guy to me.”

  “That was the old Mike Calder.”

  “Well, if you’re serious about this, you ought to be real interested in seeing the letter that came when you were in California. It’s from Samantha Curry.”

  “Samantha Curry? Should I know the name?”

  Suzie rolled her eyes. “Men! Don’t you read anything but the front page and the sports section? Just Samantha Curry of the Orlando Currys. She’s a socialite and a sort of professional volunteer do-gooder. She’s organizing one of those community rabies vaccination days and she wants you to man a clinic at one of the neighborhood shopping centers.”

  “You think she meets my requirements?”

  “She’s beautiful, single and rich.”

  “No kids? No ex-husbands?”

  “Just all that money and all those degrees from all the right schools.”

  “Then maybe I ought to man a clinic. Send the form back to her and write the times on my calendar.”

  “I’ll put you down for supplying a carton of vaccine, too.”

  “That’s very civic-minded of me.”

  “You want to make a good impression, don’t you?”

  “Yes.
And this time it’s tax deductible—unlike the tennis shoes I bought for Beth Ann’s son, and the lawyer’s fees I paid for Beth Ann, and the down payment I made on the braces for what’s-her-name’s daughter year before last, and...I could go on, but I won’t.”

  Suzie placed her hand gently on Mike’s shoulder. “Let go of it, Mike. You’re a nice guy. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I don’t mind being nice, but I’m through being easy,” Mike said. “Women with sob stories can just find some other poor sucker to tell them to. Sob stories aren’t going to cut it anymore. Not with this guy!”

  2

  ANGELINA WINTERS looked at her daughter’s face and experienced the frustrating helplessness of motherhood. Lily’s features were delicate, but the somber expression in her large green eyes revealed a seriousness uncommon to seven-year-olds.

  “See,” the child argued, pointing to the newspaper. “Puppies are not too ’spensive. They’re free.”

  Angelina exhaled a weary, languid sigh. Whose bright idea was it to teach second-graders to read the want ads, anyway? “It’s not the puppy that’s expensive, Lily. It’s everything the puppies need. They need food—”

  “Puppies are little, Mommy. They don’t eat much.”

  “They also need—” Why could she suddenly not think of a single expensive thing that puppies needed? She should have been prepared for this battle; she and Lily had been engaged in the war for over a week—ever since the guidance counselor at Lily’s school had suggested the little girl might benefit from the company of a pet.

  “Flea spray,” Angelina continued, “and collars and leashes and shots and—” She stopped short at the stricken expression in Lily’s large green eyes. “Lily?”

  “I know why we can’t have a puppy,” Lily said. “It’s because we don’t have a good home!”

  “A good home? Lily, what do you mean? Of course we have—”

  “The paper says, ‘Free to a good home,’ and we don’t have a good home because we don’t have a daddy.”

  Scooping her daughter into her arms, Angelina hugged her tightly and rocked her back and forth, wishing she could absorb the child’s misery and insecurities like a sponge. “We’ve talked about this before, sweetheart. I love you, and you love me, don’t you?”

  Lily nodded silently against Angelina’s chest.

  “Well, as long as we love each other, we have a very good home.”

  Lily’s head popped up. “Then we can get a puppy free.”

  Angelina didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She wasn’t quite sure that she hadn’t just been conned in a most calculating manner, but she was certain of one thing: she’d lost the war. The prospect of getting a puppy had wrought a miraculous transformation in her daughter.

  “There’s a telephone number in the ads,” Lily said helpfully.

  Again Angelina looked at her daughter. “You’re sure you don’t want a hamster or a parakeet?”

  “I want a puppy!” Lily insisted.

  Napoleon and Waterloo, Custer and the Little Big Horn, Angelina and the Weekend Want Ads—

  “Well, in that case,” Angelina said, “you can dial, and I’ll do the talking.”

  Angelina held the receiver to her ear, guiltily hoping that the line would be busy, or that no one would answer, or that she would be politely informed that all the puppies had found new homes—anything that would give her a reprieve. If she could only get Lily into a pet store long enough, she was convinced the child would eventually fall in love with a lop-eared rabbit or a guinea pig.

  Angelina didn’t have anything against dogs. She loved dogs. She also knew how expensive they were and how much trouble they were to train—just as she knew how thinly her monthly salary was already stretched and how little time and energy she had left after juggling single parenthood, a full-time job and single-handedly keeping up a house with three bedrooms, two baths and a semitropical lawn.

  But she was just plain out of luck. A woman who identified herself as Kaitlin O’Quinn answered on the second ring, and cheerfully informed her that there were three puppies available, and that she’d reserved the morning to interview prospective owners. Angelina found herself writing down directions to the woman’s apartment and telling her that she and Lily would be there within the hour.

  If Lily hadn’t been anchored by a seat belt, Angelina thought a few minutes later, she’d probably squirm right out of the car. Angelina hadn’t seen her daughter as excited about anything in the twenty months since Thomas had moved out of the house—twenty months of angst and upheaval surrounding a legal separation, a divorce with fights over division of the property and child support.

  Devastated by the shake-up in her previously secure little world, Lily had not adjusted well to her parents’ divorce. Then, just when Angelina was making progress with her, Thomas had dropped the bombshell that he was remarrying and acquiring two stepchildren. Lily had become more distraught and confused than ever when she realized that while her father had chosen to abandon her, he now had two strange children living with him. Her performance at school had dropped to the extent that she was in danger of having to repeat second grade.

  It was her science teacher who’d noticed Lily’s fascination with animals and her rapport with the various small critters who lived in aquariums in the science classroom. The teacher had conferred with the guidance counselor, who’d suggested to Angelina that Lily might respond to a pet.

  Oh, why hadn’t she gone to the pet store and surprised Lily with a fuzzy little bunny! Angelina thought. But no. She’d wanted to be supermother. She’d wanted to involve Lily in the pet-selection process. She’d envisioned an idyllic trip to the pet store and a jubilant Lily leaving with a cardboard box containing something small and simple and beloved.

  Which only proved that mothers should think less and act more, she thought wryly while Lily chatted on and on about what she hoped the puppies would look like.

  From the first mention of the word pet, Lily had been adamant that she wanted a puppy. Now Angelina was torn between logic and love for her daughter. A puppy meant vet bills and chewed-up shoes and fleas in the house and months of cleaning up puppy puddles on the carpet. But if a puppy could produce that uninhibited smile and that sparkle of excitement in her daughter’s eyes...

  Kaitlin O’Quinn had given excellent directions, and Angelina located the woman’s apartment easily. Lily dashed ahead of her up the short walk to ring the doorbell and literally danced in place as they waited for someone to answer.

  They could hear barking inside. Lily looked up at her mother with a beatific expression on her face. “Oh, Mommy!”

  Oh, Mommy! Such a simple phrase to hold all the awe and wonderment of childhood, the joy of boundless hope and untethered anticipation that had been missing from Lily’s life for too long. Such a simple phrase to melt a mother’s heart.

  Looking at her daughter’s face, Angelina vowed that Lily would have her puppy. They’d been making it on her salary and Thomas’s child support for a year and a half. They’d keep on making it—even with a dog.

  The door opened and a young woman in jeans and a chambray shirt welcomed them. By the time Angelina had taken Kaitlin O’Quinn’s proffered hand and introduced herself, Lily was already inside, giggling as she was assailed by three puppies. The mother dog sat nearby looking slightly bored, but surreptitiously casting a watchful eye over her brood. Angelina gestured toward her daughter and said, “My daughter, Lily.”

  “Lily,” Kaitlin said, kneeling as she addressed the child. “I see you’ve already met the puppies.”

  The littlest of the litter, a long-haired, brown-spotted pup, leapt at Lily’s knee, expecting attention. Lily picked it up and nestled it in her arms. “Are they boys or girls?”

  At that moment one of the pups, a brown shorthair with a bulky body, barked at her. Lily’s face registered surprise, then amusement at the dog’s bravado.

  “That one’s a boy,” Kaitlin said. “You can tell, can
’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Lily agreed with a giggle.

  “This one’s a boy, too,” Kaitlin said, petting the third. “And the one you’re holding is a girl.”

  “I want this one, Mommy,” Lily said. “I want the girl.”

  “Are you sure?” Angelina asked, noting the female puppy’s long hair with dismay. “Wouldn’t you rather have the one who barked at you?” The one with short hair.

  “No. He’s too mean. This one likes me.”

  And will require spaying, Angelina thought. She turned to Kaitlin and gave a resigned shrug of her shoulders. “Looks like it’s a done deal.”

  “Not quite so fast,” Kaitlin said. She looked from Lily to Angelina and back. “These puppies are very special to me. I have to know that they’re going to a good home.”

  Angelina saw the panic that crossed Lily’s face and, suddenly, taking home that long-haired little female seemed the most important thing in the world. Every drop of her maternal instinct told her that Lily needed that puppy, needed it as surely as she needed food and shelter and hugs and loving discipline.

  “Lily and I have talked this over,” Angelina said. “She wants a puppy very badly, and we’re prepared to take care of one.”

  Kaitlin gave Lily a firm look. “Puppies need lots of love. Can you give her that?”

  Angelina had seldom seen Lily so serious as when she nodded in response. She was hugging the puppy as though afraid someone might wrest it from her. Yet, Angelina thought, it was a benign seriousness, not the youth-robbing seriousness she’d so often seen in her daughter’s face.

  “I’ll love Princess. I’ll play with her, too,” Lily said meekly.

  “Saints preserve us, she’s named her already,” Kaitlin said with a chuckle before directing her attention to Angelina. “Do you understand how much a puppy demands?”

  “Oh, yes,” Angelina said. “Believe me, I know. But Lily wants a dog and her teachers think it’ll be good for her. We have a house, and a screened patio where the puppy can stay during the day.”

  “All right, then,” Kaitlin said. “But you’ve got to promise to take my address and send me pictures of...Princess from time to time, so I’ll know she’s healthy and happy. She’ll need her next shots in another two weeks.”