Free The Man You'll Marry by Debbie Macomber

they were seated immediately. Although they’d been talking comfortably during their walk, Shelly suddenly felt self-conscious. She played with her linen napkin, smoothing it across her lap.
    “I’m not a big fan of musicals, so I hadn’t expected to like the show as much as I did,” he said after a while.
    In that case, Shelly considered it a bit odd that he’d ordered tickets for this production, but perhaps he’d gotten them because Janice had wanted to see Jersey Boys .
    “It’s a little frightening the way we keep running across each other, isn’t it?” she ventured.
    “I can see how you’d find it disconcerting,” Mark answered.
    “You don’t?”
    Mark shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought.”
    “I’ll admit all these…coincidences do throw me,” she said, tracing the outline of a fire-breathing dragon on the menu cover. “But I’m learning to deal with it.”
    “So you feel you’ve been caught in something beyond your control?” Mark surprised her by asking.
    Shelly lifted her gaze to his, struck by the intensity she read in his eyes. “No, not really. Well…a little, maybe. Do you?”
    “It wasn’t my aunt Milly who had the dream.”
    Shelly smiled and dropped her gaze. “No, but as my friend Jill reminded me recently, no sixty-year-old dressis going to dictate my life. Or yours,” she felt obliged to add. Then she understood why he’d asked the question. “You must feel overwhelmed. All of a sudden I’ve been thrust into your life. There’s no escaping me, is there?” she said wryly. “Every time you turn around, there I am.”
    “Are you going to stand up and tell everyone in the restaurant that you refuse to marry me?”
    “No!” Shelly was shocked by his remark until she remembered she’d done exactly that the first time they met.
    “If you can resist public declarations, then I think I can bear up under the pressure.”
    Shelly ignored his mild sarcasm. “I’m not interested in marriage yet,” she told him solemnly—just in case he’d forgotten. “I’m satisfied with my life. And I’m too busy for a husband and family.”
    She hadn’t noticed how forcefully she was speaking until she saw several people at other tables glancing in her direction. Instantly she lowered her voice. “Sorry, my views on marriage seem to be more fervent than I realized. But I’m not about to let either my mother or my aunt Milly determine when I decide to settle down and marry.”
    “Personally, I can’t see you ever settling down,” Mark said with a small grin. “You don’t have to worry. When you’re ready, you’ll know it.”
    “Did you?” She hadn’t meant to bring up Janice, but it seemed wise to remind him—and her—that there was someone else in his life.
    Mark raised one shoulder casually. “More or less. I took a good, long look at my life and discovered I’d already achieved several of my professional goals. It was time to invest my energy in developing the personal aspects—marriage, children and the like.”
    Mark talked about marriage as if it were the next chapter in a book he was reading or part of a connect-the-dots picture. Shelly couldn’t stop herself from frowning.
    “You have a problem with that?”
    “Not a problem, exactly. I happen to think of marriage a bit differently, that’s all.”
    “In what way?”
    He seemed genuinely interested, otherwise she would’ve kept her opinions to herself. “People should fall in love,” she said slowly. “I don’t think it’s necessary or even possible to plan for that. Love can be unexpected—it can take a couple by surprise, knock them both off their feet.”
    “You make falling in love sound like an accident—like tripping on the stairs or something.”
    Shelly smiled. “In some ways, I think that’s how it should be. Marriage is one of the most important decisions in anyone’s life, so it should be a deeply felt decision. It should feel inevitable. It’s the union of two lives,