him, trying to convince Victoria that her Mr. Right might be out there.
“All right. Let’s hear about Carter,” Victoria said.
Rachel thought for a moment. “He’s a firefighter.”
“Rescues people. Love it.”
“He grew up with three sisters, and he calls each of them once a week just to see how they’re doing. He gets along with his parents, particularly his mother, who he adores,” Rachel continued. “Has a dog that he rescued from a shelter—”
“Of course.”
“—named after some poet. Like . . . Emerson,” Rachel said.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. Somebody was laying it on a little thick tonight.
“His last serious relationship was three years ago, which ended amicably when he and his ex realized they were better off as friends. And he has no commitment issues,” Rachel added, with a flourish.
Audrey laughed. “That’s cheating.”
Rachel looked at Victoria daringly. “So. Husband material or not? But before you answer, you really should look at the man in question.”
“Which guy are we talking about?” Audrey asked.
“Dark hair, blue shirt,” Rachel said.
Audrey angled in her chair, then her eyes widened. “Holy smokes, that is one good-looking man. Vic, you have to check him out.”
Victoria shook her head. “Nope. Don’t need to.”
“I don’t care how cynical you are,” Rachel said, with a satisfied smile. “We’re talking about a hot firefighter with no commitment issues who loves his mom.”
“And he sounds very lovely to date. Probably too lovely for a jaded person like myself, but I’d give it a shot, anyway. But as for marriage . . . nope. Not for me.”
“You don’t know that,” Rachel said in exasperation.
“Oh, but I do. Because in my line of work, I’ve seen all the ways your wonderful scenario here can go wrong.”
“Like what?”
Victoria paused, debating whether to go down this route. Then she rested her arms on the table. “All right. Here’s how I see this potentially shaking out.”
“Here we go,” Audrey said.
“Let’s say this Carter the Hot Firefighter and I get married. It’s good in the beginning, all new and exciting, and we decide to buy a house together so we can have more space. This is where we hit the first bump in the road. See, up until now, he’s been saying that he’s okay with the fact that I make more money than him. But when I want to look at houses that would be outside his budget, because I can cover the mortgage, suddenly the money becomes an issue. At first, he makes jokes about it, referring to me as his ‘sugar mommy.’ But then we start fighting about how much to spend on vacations. And birthdays. And how much my shoes cost. And he begins making snide comments about feeling emasculated, and before you know it, all we do is fight about money. The hot sex we used to have five times a week? Gone. We haven’t slept together in months. Which leads to the second bump in the road.” She paused dramatically, getting into her story now. “The ex-girlfriend he’s stayed so friendly with. See, he’s been telling her about our marriage problems, and suddenly they’re meeting for coffee, and then drinks, and then he remembers how much she used to understand him, more than I ever have, and how easy it is to talk to her, until one day I leave work early to surprise him on his day off and find the two of them going at it like jackrabbits on our dining room table—the expensive antique table he’s always hated because we bought it with ‘my’ money,” she added for extra embellishment. “As for the three sisters and the mom, yes, he does adore them. And in our divorce settlement conference, he’ll spitefully tell me how they secretly always hated me, because I work too much and didn’t put family first, and because they never thought I was good enough for him in the first place.”
Victoria finished her speech with a flourish—And that is that, my friends—and then noticed that Audrey and Rachel looked a little . . . surprised.
Uh-oh.
That may have sounded a touch too cynical, even for her. She sometimes forgot that not everyone had a front row seat, day in and day out, as marriages died their slow, painful deaths.
“Or . . . maybe we’ll have two kids, a summer home in Michigan, and be happily married for fifty years,” she said, quickly covering with a joke. “Heck, where is this future husband of mine?”
She glanced over her shoulder to look at the man who’d inspired their whole