I’m a poor judge of character,” she finally said. And she was. Brian had proved it to her, but Gramps didn’t know about Brian. “I feel like a failure.”
“He didn’t mean any of it,” Zach said gently.
“But couldn’t he have come up with something a little more flattering?”
“He needed an excuse to marry you off, otherwise his suggestion would have sounded crazy.” Zach hesitated. “You know, the more we discuss this, the more ludicrous the whole thing seems.” He chuckled softly and leaned forward to set his elbows on the table. “Who would’ve believed he’d come up with the idea of the two of us marrying?”
“Thank you very much,” Janine muttered. He sat there shredding her ego and apparently found the process just short of hilarious.
“Don’t let it get to you. You’re not interested in me as a husband, anyway.”
“You’re right about that—you’re the last person I’d ever consider marrying,” she lashed out, then regretted her reaction when she saw his face tighten.
“That’s what I thought.” He attacked his spaghetti as though the clams were scampering around his plate.
The tension between them mounted. When the waitress arrived to remove their plates, Janine had barely touched her meal. Zach hadn’t eaten much, either.
After paying for their dinner, Zach walked her to her car, offering no further comment. As far as Janine was concerned, their meeting hadn’t been at all productive. She felt certain that Zach was everything Gramps claimed—incisive, intelligent, intuitive. But that was at the office. As a potential husband and wife, they were completely ill-suited.
“Do you still want me to keep in touch?” she asked when she’d unlocked her car door. They stood awkwardly together in the street, and Janine realized they hardly knew what to say to each other.
“I suppose we should, since neither of us is interested in falling in with this plan of his,” Zach said. “We need to set our differences aside and work together, otherwise we might unknowingly play into his hands.”
“I won’t be swayed and you won’t, either.” Janine found the thought oddly disappointing.
“If and when I do marry,” Zach informed her, “which I sincerely doubt, I’ll choose my own bride.”
It went without saying that Janine was nothing like the woman he’d want to spend his life with.
“If and when I marry, I’ll choose my own husband,” she said, sounding equally firm. And it certainly wouldn’t be a man her grandfather had chosen.
“I don’t know if I like boys or not,” thirteen-year-old Pam Hudson admitted over a cheeseburger and French fries. “They can be so dumb.”
It’d been a week since Janine’s dinner with Zach, and she was surprised that the teenager’s assessment of the opposite sex should so closely match her own.
“I’m not even sure I like Charlie anymore,” Pam said as she stirred her catsup with a French fry. Idly she smeared it around the edges of her plate in a haphazard pattern. “I used to be so crazy about him, remember?”
Janine smiled indulgently. “Every other word was Charlie this and Charlie that.”
“He can be okay, though. Remember when he brought me that long-stemmed rose and left it on my porch?”
“I remember.” Janine’s mind flashed to the afternoon she’d met Zach. As they left the restaurant, he’d smiled at her. It wasn’t much as smiles went, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to forget how he’d held her gaze, his dark eyes gentle, as he murmured polite nonsense. Funny how little things about this man tended to pop up in her mind at the strangest moments.
“But last week,” Pam continued, “Charlie was playing basketball with the guys, and when I walked by, he pretended he didn’t even know me.”
“That hurt, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, it did,” Pam confessed. “And after I bought a T-shirt for him, too.”
“Does he wear it?”
A gratified smile lit the girl’s eyes. “All the time.”
“By the way, I like how you’re doing your hair.”
Pam beamed. “I want it to look more like yours.”
Actually, the style suited Pam far better than it did her, Janine thought. The sides were cut close to the head, but the long bangs flopped with a life of their own—at least on Janine they did. Lately she’d taken to pinning them back.
“How are things at home?” Janine asked, watching the girl carefully. Pam’s father, Jerry Hudson, was divorced and had custody of his daughter. Pam’s mother worked on the East Coast. With no family in the area, Jerry felt that his daughter needed a woman’s influence. He’d contacted the Friendship Club about the same time Janine had applied to be a volunteer. Since Jerry worked odd hours as a short-order cook, she’d met him only once. He seemed a decent sort, working hard to make a good life for himself and his daughter.
Pam was a marvelous kid, Janine mused, and she possessed exceptional creative talent. Even before her father could afford to buy her a sewing machine, Pam had been designing and making clothes for her Barbie dolls. Janine’s bandanna dress was one of the first projects she’d completed on her new machine. Pam had made several others since; they were popular with her friends, and she was ecstatic about the success of her ideas.
“I think I might forgive Charlie,” she went on to say, her look contemplative. “I mean, he was with the guys and everything.”
“It’s not cool to let his friends know he’s got a girlfriend, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess….”
Janine wasn’t feeling nearly as forgiving toward Zach. He’d talked about their keeping in touch, but hadn’t called her since. She didn’t believe for an instant that Gramps had given up on his marriage campaign, but he’d apparently decided to let the matter rest. The pressure was off, yet Janine kept expecting some word from Zach. The least he could do was call, she grumbled to herself, although she made no attempt to analyze the reasons for her disappointment.
“Maybe Charlie isn’t so bad, after all,” Pam murmured, then added wisely, “This is an awkward age for boys, especially in their relationships with girls.”
“Say,” Janine teased, “who’s supposed to be the adult here, anyway? That’s my line.”
“Oh, sorry,”
Smiling, Janine stole a French fry from Pam’s plate and popped it into her mouth.
“So when are you leaving for Scotland?” Pam wanted to know.
“Next week.”
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“Ten days.” The trip was an unexpected gift from her grandfather. One night shortly after she’d met Zach for dinner,
