don’t want to date a doctor, because of Hal. So what about looks? What’s your type?”
Anna stopped to survey a row of black beans lined up like soldiers on a shelf.
“I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to concentrate on the physical. That’s where we get into trouble. We need to get past that.”
“What? Should I disqualify a guy if he is good-looking?”
She quirked a brow at him as she set two cans in the otherwise empty cart. “I’d love to hear your idea of a good-looking guy.”
He scowled back at her. “I don’t know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. I have no idea what makes a guy attractive to a woman.”
“I was just teasing, Jake. You know you’re my ideal. If I can’t have you, then...”
She made a tsking sound and squeezed his arm as she walked farther down the aisle to get something else on her list.
If he didn’t know her so well, he might’ve thought her harmless flirtation had started a ripple of something inside him. But that was utterly ridiculous. This was Anna, and that’s why he couldn’t put his finger on the something she’d stirred. Maybe it was pride, or actually, more like gratitude that pulled at him. He looked at her in her scrubs that were a little too big for her slight frame. Her purse, which she’d slung across her body, proved that there were curves hidden away under all that pink fabric.
He averted his gaze, because this was Anna. Dammit, he shouldn’t be looking at her as if she was something he’d ask the butcher to put on a foam tray and wrap up in cellophane. As the thought occurred to him, he realized his gaze had meandered back to where it had no business straying.
He turned his body away from her and toward the shelf of black beans Anna had just pored over. He didn’t know what the hell to do with canned black beans, but he took a couple of cans and added them to the cart as he warred with the very real realization that he didn’t want to fix her up with just anyone. Certainly not most of his buddies, who if they talked about Anna the way they talked about other women he’d have no choice but to deck.
“Excuse me.” Jake looked over to see a small, silver-haired woman holding out a piece of paper. “Your wife dropped this list.” The woman hooked her thumb in Anna’s direction at the other end of the aisle. “I’d go give it to her myself, but I’m going this way.”
My wife?
Jake smiled at the woman and started to correct her, to explain that he and Anna weren’t married, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. He found himself reaching out and accepting the paper—a grocery list—and saying, “Thanks, I’ll give it to her.”
She nodded and was on her way before Jake could say anything else.
Hmm. My wife.
He tried to see what the woman saw—Anna and him together...as a couple. But in similar fashion to not being able to look at her curves in good conscience, he couldn’t fully let his mind go there.
It wasn’t that the thought disgusted him—or anything negative like that. On the contrary. And that brought a whole host of other weirdness with it. The only way around it was to laugh it off.
“You dropped your list,” he said as he stopped the cart next to her. “The nice lady who found it thought you were my wife.”
Anna shot him a dubious look. “Oh, yeah? Did you set her straight?”
She deposited more canned goods into the basket and then took the list from his hand.
“No. I didn’t. I need bread. Which aisle is the bread in?”
She let the issue drop. He almost wished she would’ve said something snide like, That’s awkward. Or, Me? Married to you? Never in a million years. Instead, she changed the subject. “Do you want bakery bread or prepackaged? And why don’t you know where the bread is?”
He certainly didn’t dwell on it.
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t retain that kind of information. Grocery shopping isn’t my favorite sport.”
“I can tell,” she said. “And if you don’t pick up the pace, you’re going to get a penalty for delay of game. I’m almost finished. Where’s your list? Let me see if I can help move this along.”
“I don’t have a list,” he said. He knew he should make an off-the-cuff comment about her, his pretend wife, being the keeper of the list for both of them, but it didn’t feel right.
Since when had anything ever not felt right with Anna?
“I keep the list in my head,” he added.
“And of course, you’re out of everything. Here, I can help. We’ll just grab things for you as we go by them.”
She pulled the shopping cart from the front end and turned the corner into the next aisle.
“Do you want cereal?” she asked.
Before he could answer, a couple a few feet away from them broke out into an argument that silenced both Anna and him.
“Look, I’m an adult,” said the guy. “If I want to eat sugary cereal for breakfast, I will. In fact, if I want to eat a bowl of pure sugar, I will. You get what you like and I’ll get what I want.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, honey.” The woman took a cereal box—the bright yellow kind with fake berries—out of the shopping cart and put it back on the shelf. “This won’t hold you. You need something with fiber and protein. If you eat this, you’ll be raiding the vending machine by ten o’clock.”
The guy took the cereal box off the shelf and put it back in the cart. “I grew up eating this stuff. You’re my wife, not the food police. So hop off.”
Anna and Jake quickened their pace as they passed the couple. They exchanged a look, which the couple obviously didn’t notice because now insults were inching their way into the exchange and tones were getting heated.
“We’ll come back for cereal,” Anna said.
Jake nodded. “When we do, are you going to mock my cereal choice?”
“Why would I do that? I’m not your wife.”
There. Good. She said it. The dreaded w word.
“Are you saying it’s a wife’s role to mock her husband’s cereal choice?”
“Of course not. I never told Hal what he could and couldn’t eat. Then again, since I was the one who cooked in that relationship, he didn’t have much say. But he was completely on his own for breakfast and lunch, free to make his own choices. And you see where that got me. Do you think we would’ve lasted if I had been more concerned?”
“No. Hal was an ass. He didn’t deserve your picking out healthy cereal for him.”
“So you’re saying the woman picking
