One Bride for Five Mountain Men

“Lunch meeting in twenty, you ready?” Nance says, leaning in the doorway to my office.

I close my laptop, folding my hands over it protectively before smiling at her.

“Absolutely. Where are we going? Or is Frank bringing sandwiches again? Those are pretty good.”

Nance takes a couple of steps into my office and crosses her arms in challenge. She raises her eyebrows.

“Thai food,” she says slowly, watching my face for reaction. “Is that okay with you? Do you like it? Thai food, I mean?”

I swallow, determined not to show any reaction.

“I love it!” I lie. “Can’t get enough of it. In fact, I have already had it four times this week. But that doesn’t bother me! Love to have it for lunch too.”

Nance sighs in frustration and drops into the chair in front of my desk, swinging her knees over the arm and crossing her ankles. She’s wearing cute mint-green pedal pushers and ballet flats with tiny green cats. Over the last month since I’ve been back, she has really upped her fashion game.

But what she’s trying to do—and what I refuse to let her do—is figure out whether or not I really, truly, actually am pregnant. She keeps dropping hints and leaving highly aromatic objects in my office, hoping to provoke some kind of reaction. Fortunately, my morning sickness has been minimal. I’ve been lucky that way. And since I can only be seven or eight weeks along at this point, I’m not even showing.

Why don’t I want her to know? I’m not even entirely sure at this point. In a few months, there won’t be any denying it. But for right now, I like having my privacy. I guess the guys kind of rubbed off on me that way.

“You look very dainty today,” I observe.

Nance looks down at her outfit, smoothing her shirttails over her flat stomach.

“Do I? I have a date after work with Alice, who owns that little gallery on Oak Street. She’s nice. I like her.”

“What are you up to now?” I inquire politely, knowing that she would much rather talk about herself than my waistline anyway.

She starts ticking off on her fingers vaguely as she stares at the ceiling. “Well, there was Phoebe, Ashley, Zoe, Miranda, Nicolette, Zamira, the other Zoe, and now Alice. What is that, five?”

“Eight, actually.”

She raises her eyebrows and stares at me. “Eight, really? Wow, I am a very good lesbian.”

“Or, you are a really terrible lesbian,” I observe pointedly. “Have you considered that?”

She shrugs, the way she does with all things. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Nance has never been in love. Not even once, not in her whole life. We met in middle school. In all that time, she has dated hundreds of people and has been in love exactly zero times.

She would hate for people to know that about her. Rightly, she knows that’s very strange. It’s not for lack of trying, and it’s not for lack of exposure. She is the last person to be described as a wallflower or somebody who holds back in any way.

I used to think it was because Nance had incredibly high standards. She’s a really unique person, and it would take someone really unique to get through to her, to touch her heart. Of co

urse, all the fairytales tell us that person is definitely worth waiting for. For a long time, I sort of admired the way she was waiting for exactly the right person.

But now, my opinion has changed. I think the reason Nance has never been in love is because Nance has no love to give. There is no there, there. She is just a very pretty facsimile of a person, and not much else.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” she says suddenly, kicking her legs to the ground and whipping out her cell phone. She taps at the face urgently, then finally turns it around to show me. Squinting, I can barely make out the title of the article, but when I do, I take the phone away from her and expand the screen so I can absorb every word.

Money-Grubbing Divorcee Gets What’s Coming To Her.

Back in the old days, the tabloids were rife with stories of vengeance and just desserts. These days, those stories are rare. It seems like no matter how terrible a person you are, there is no justice in the world anymore.

Unless, of course, you are Whitney Carruthers.

You will remember, dear reader, the tale of Whitney, the woman who swooped into the Carruthers family, marrying one brother while attempting to seduce the other four. While her feminine mystique was tremendous, rumors have it that the brothers declined her lascivious invitation, preferring their own family loyalty to her tender temptations.

“Oh my God, who wrote this?” I cringe. “Mark Twain? Was it written in the 1800s?”

Nance bounces in her seat and points excitedly at the cell phone. “Just keep reading!” she insists. “It gets better!”