Free Those Angstrom Men!. by Edwina J White Page A

most of the mortgage.
    As soon as the house was his, he promptly moved his Marianne Faithful lookalike in.
    Annie, Alec and Susan had moved her things out not six hours before the trollop moved in.
    Slightly less than two months later Susan was a free woman.
    She spent the next few months learning to live alone again, and liking it very much.
    She found a furnished Georgian townhouse not far from the office on a two year lease and took it, not wanting to make any decisions about property just yet. She painted a lot, and didn’t go out much.
    Annie and Alec took to dropping by on the weekends with bottles of wine. The three of them laughed a lot and gradually, Susan’s smile returned.
    Her father, widowed when she was fourteen, finally married his lady friend. They had been going out for fifteen years.
    They were very well suited and he was busy enough being a bridegroom and cosseting Barbara that he didn’t crowd Susan.
    Alec helped Susan to reorganize her life. He asked her out for dinner one night when they had a five o’clock appointment to revise her will and she found herself wishing he was older.
    He looked so handsome in the candlelight, his dark blond hair and sparkling blue eyes reminded Susan of a film star. She was glad to have such a good friend, and told him so.
    Alec sensed Susan wasn’t interested in finding a new love interest yet, but he also knew that some of the more eligible single men in Portsmouth were beginning to show some interest.
    He was this close now to claiming Susan as his wife, and he wasn’t going to let another man slide in ahead of himself.
    Alec was at his Uncle Brian’s birthday party, and found himself in a group which included his two cousins, Ian and David, and Ian’s wife Maggie. After duly admiring the new baby, and commiserating with David about the state of Man United this season, he drew Ian and Maggie aside.
    “I have a little dilemma, and I thought that you two might be able to give me a clue…”
    Ian smiled. “Sounds like it has something to do with a woman, since you’ve shanghaied Maggie as well as me.”
    “It does. Do you remember Susan Shelton?”
    “Who would forget Susan Shelton? She’s as nice as she is good looking.”
    Alec smiled. “Nice, beautiful, clever, talented, and now she’s divorced…”
    “So you don’t have to admire her from afar anymore, eh, Alec?” said Ian shrewdly. “I used to watch you watching her…but she’s a bit older than you, isn’t she?”
    “Eight years. I don’t think that’s a significant difference now that we’re older.”
    Maggie smiled. “How much older?”
    “She’s thirty six now, and I’m twenty eight. She married young, only nineteen. I fell in love with her when I was nineteen, and there’s just been nobody else who’s measured up to her since.”
    Ian laughed. “And heaven knows Alec has tried, Maggie mine. He must have dated every good looking woman in Portsmouth over the years.“
    “Until a year ago, Ian. Until Susan caught George cheating on her. Since then, I’ve been waiting…biding my time...“
    Maggie smiled, sympathetically now.
    “So what’s the problem then, Alec? Tell her how you feel.”
    Alec shook his head. “She’s not ready yet.”
    “Well, I can’t help you unless I know the problem,” said Maggie reasonably.
    “ There are two problems, Maggie. She’s starting to get her confidence back, and I’m sure two or three men I know are on the verge of asking her out. I certainly don’t want her taking up with anybody but me…and I don’t want her taking up with me until she’s ready to give her heart to me.”
    “Well, then, Alec, you need to keep her so busy she doesn’t have time to date these two or three men if they ask her,” smiled Maggie. 
    “And what’s the second problem, Alec?” asked his cousin.
    “ Ian, the second problem is how to make her take me seriously as a man, and not as a family friend, when she’s ready.”
    “Hmmm…”
    Ian gave it