Free WG2E All-For-Indies Anthologies: Viva La Valentine Edition by D. D. Scott Page B

personality reminded her of Mac. Grant
seemed to be somewhat shy and didn’t talk much. When breakfast was
done John began barking out orders and the work began. Jan did as
Ruth asked and stayed in the kitchen.
    “Please let me help you, Mrs. Sinclair. I
don’t feel right just sitting around while everybody works.”
    “All right, if you insist, and please call me
Ruth. There’s a bowl of potatoes in the refrigerator that I boiled
yesterday. You could peel and cube them for salad while we talk.
Here’s an apron.”
    Jan retrieved the huge bowl and positioned
herself on a stool at the counter where she watched the Major
deftly orchestrating the set-up of the yard through the window.
While she skinned the potatoes and chopped onions and celery, Ruth
iced numerous cakes lined up on the counter. They talked about
Mac’s childhood growing up as an army brat and living in eight
different places until Ruth changed the direction of the
conversation.
    “Mac is the first of my children to marry.
He’s waited a long time to take the plunge and since he’s a grown
man, I’m trusting that he’s making the right choice. I just want to
know why you think he’s the man for you.”
    Jan had anticipated this moment since Mac
first announced the trip. She took a deep breath. “I know Mac told
you I’ve been married before, and I imagine that might concern you.
Let me tell you about my first marriage.” Ruth’s hands stilled and
her gaze rested on Jan’s face. “Robert and I were only twenty-two
and twenty-five when we got married, and we were totally naïve when
it came to the realities of marriage. Of course we thought we were
in love. No one could’ve convinced us otherwise. Unfortunately, as
time went on and we got to know each other better, we discovered we
wanted drastically different things out of life. Then the babies
came, and the pressure to be successful started weighing on him.
His career became the most important thing in his life. He needed
the kids and me to hold that position. Robert wanted a corporate
wife to hostess boring cocktail parties and to join the other wives
for golf outings. That just wasn’t me. I went along with the
program until I couldn’t stomach it anymore. Naturally, he was
disappointed in me, and I was angry with him for trying to turn me
into one of the Stepford Wives. We went for counseling, but it was
useless. I decided to divorce him, and I’ve never regretted it for
a minute.”
    “You said, ‘as time went on and you got to
know each other,’ How do you know the same thing won’t happen with
you and Mac? You haven’t known each other that long,” Ruth asked
without looking up from the cakes.
    “Because I’m older and wiser now. I know what
I need from a man, and Mac is everything I need. He’s a man who
expresses himself. We talk a lot, and he values my opinion. That’s
very important to me, because I need to feel that I’m important to
my man. He’s successful in his career, but his life is balanced. He
doesn’t allow work to rule his life, knows how to relax and have
fun. The fact that he’s drop dead gorgeous doesn’t hurt at all.”
Jan smiled.
    Ruth returned her smile then lay the
icing-covered spatula down on a plate and inclined her head with a
sympathetic look. “How did the divorce affect your children?”
    “Roberta, we call her Bobbi, is the oldest,
and she handled it very well. Valerie had a much harder time. Until
recently she was still secretly hoping her father and I would get
back together.
    “Poor baby. Divorce is so hard on the little
ones.”
    Oh, brother. I guess I’d better get this
out in the open. It wouldn’t be right to let her show up at the
wedding expecting to see two little flower girls preceding me down
the aisle. “Ruth, my girls aren’t babies. Bobbi is twenty-two
and Val is nineteen.”
    Mac’s mother kept her face composed but
slapped a generous dollop of icing onto the last bare cake and
furiously spread it in a circular