How to Hunt a Husband Read online

  HOW TO HUNT A HUSBAND

  HOLLY JACOBS

  The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is coincidence and not intended by the author.

  Ilex Books 2019

  Originally published

  Harlequin Books

  Copyright © 2003 by Holly Fuhrmann.

  All Rights Reserved

  Reviews

  “Holly Jacobs is at the top of her form in this hilariously funny romance. The dialogue is snappy and her characters would be right at home on “I Love Lucy.” … This is a delightfully funny read, and a sure pick me up.

  ~Romance Junkies

  “Sure to please, Holly Jacobs’s HOW TO HUNT A HUSBAND (4) offers a unique and hilarious take on the classic ‘fake fiancé’ plot.”

  ~RT BOOKclub

  “This story is a laugh riot! It is full of witty banter, charming characters, and plans gone awry. Everything comes together to form the perfect tale with just the right amount of everything one desires in a romantic comedy.”

  ~© Loves Romance

  “HOW TO HUNT A HUSBAND showcases Jacobs at her outrageous best.”

  ~Word Weaving

  CONTENTS

  REVIEWS

  HOW TO HUNT A HUSBAND HOLLY JACOBS

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  OTHER HOLLY JACOBS BOOKS FOR YOUR KINDLE

  How to Hunt a Husband

  Holly Jacobs

  “That woman,” Brigit O’Malley said.

  There was a certain humph in her mother’s voice that left no question in Shannon O’Malley’s mind as to who that woman was.

  Tuesday was pinochle day, so that woman had to be Cecilia Romano. Even a beautiful March day—and beautiful days in March were rare and treasured in Erie, Pennsylvania—couldn’t obscure the black cloud that woman had given Brigit O’Malley.

  Actually not much could shake Brigit from her Tuesday evening funks.

  “Mom, why do you go play cards every week when you always come home in a snit?”

  “I am never in a snit. Snit. That’s such an undignified word. I am—” her mother paused a moment, searching her thesaurus-like-brain for a better word choice. “Perturbed. Cecilia perturbs me beyond the limits of what a sane rational human can endure. Why, do you believe she’s saying her daughter could—” she sputtered her way to a standstill.

  “Cara?” Shannon said. “What could Cara do?”

  Shannon didn’t actually know Cara Romano, but knew of her, not only through their mothers, but because Shannon’s sister, Kate, had married Cara’s ex-fiancé, Tony Donetti.

  The logistics of their connection was tangled at best, but it was their mothers that made Shannon feel a bond to the unmet Cara. After all, Cecilia Romano seemed as determined to control the fate of her children as Shannon’s own mother was.

  Thankfully Brigit O’Malley had long ago decided that Shannon was a hopeless cause and had concentrated on getting Kate’s life in order. But since her sister had moved to Texas with her new husband, Shannon had noticed her mother was around a lot more, dropping in unexpectedly—like she’d done this evening—and taking a sudden interest in Shannon’s activities.

  Truth be told, all the attention made Shannon a bit nervous.

  More than a bit.

  A lot.

  Her mother stopped sputtering and said, “Cecilia said Cara can find a man before you can, when everyone knows that you are far more beautiful than that Cara Romano is. Why men are beating down your door, begging to marry you … aren’t they?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Beating down her door? Heck, she could hardly remember what it was to have them knocking softly.

  Shannon hadn’t had a date in months. She’d been so busy planning for Kate’s wedding, then dealing with her parents in the aftermath of her sister’s great bridal escape, that she simply hadn’t had the time—or inclination—to date.

  “And, since I’m not looking for a man, Mother, I’m going to assume that Mrs. Romano is right, Cara will probably beat me to the alter.”

  No, the last few man-free months had convinced Shannon that dating was overrated. Without a man in the picture she’d been able to do exactly what she wanted, when she wanted, without having to consult someone else. She hadn’t watched one blood-and-gut-testosterone-filled film during the entire time. She’d watched chick-flicks. Lot’s of chick flicks. She’d drooled over Colin Firth, Ewan McGregor, and Hugh Jackman—big-screen men who didn’t mind that she hadn’t shave her legs for weeks.

  Yes, there were advantages to a man-free existence.

  “I think in the future I’m only going to date men on a limited basis. Limited, Mom. That’s the keyword. I’m not looking for anything long-term when I date from now on. I’ve decided that I want to see a man only as long as the initial politeness lasts.”

  “Initial politeness?”

  “You know, that golden time in a relationship where a man will do what you want. When he’ll listen to what you have to say, as if every word is a treasure. Why, when things are new he’ll even see chick-flicks or go shopping. Once that glow is over, I’m done with him.

  That was going to be her new rule of thumb. Use them, then lose them.

  “Shannon Bonnie O’Malley, you take that back.”

  Shannon suppressed a shudder. “Mother I hate it when you call me that.”

  “We’ve had this fight over and over again. Bonnie is a perfectly lovely name. It was my mother’s name and she was a wonderful woman. You’re lucky to be named after her.”

  “You’re right. Bonnie is a perfectly lovely name, so is Shannon for that matter. But some names don’t go together. Bonnie doesn’t go with Shannon. Ichabod and Archibald, they don’t go together either.”

  “Why do you have to be so difficult? Mary Kathryn never complained when I called her Mary Kathryn.”

  That was the refrain of her relationship with her mother. Shannon had been difficult when she’d played soccer rather than join the science club. She’d been difficult when she’d discovered a passion for art rather than something more academic.

  Her sister was the good daughter. Her sister had bent to her parents’ dreams for her.

  And Shannon? Well, she was the variable in the equation of her mother’s life.

  “Ah, but Mary Kathryn’s not a Mary Kathryn anymore, is she?”

  When her sister ran out on her wedding she changed her life completely. New man. New state. New job. New name. A part of Shannon envied her sister those changes.

  “She’s Kate. Kate Donetti,” Shannon continued. “And I think she’s happier that way.”

  Her mother just shook her head. “You are the most difficult, cantankerous girl alive.”

  “I learned from the best.” Shannon leaned over and gave her mother a peck on the cheek. She’d never really seen eye-to-eye with her about, well, about anything, but she loved her.

  And though she frequently annoyed her mother, she didn’t doubt Brigit loved her as well, even though she wasn’t overly demonstrative.

  “Here, try this on,” her mother said as she thrust a garment bag at Shannon.

  Shannon looked at the huge bag.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s Mary Kathryn’s wedding dress. I asked her to mail it back to me. We spent a small fortune on that dress, you know. I want to see it walk all the way down the aisle. Oh, she did some damage we’ll have to get repaired, but let’s see if it fits you before we worry a
bout that.”

  “Fits me?” Shannon stared at her mother, not sure where she was going with this. “Why would you care if it fits me?”

  “Well, if it doesn’t we’ll have to get it altered or find something else for you to wear.” Her mother put her hand on Shannon’s shoulder and started steering her toward the bedroom. “Come on, try it on.”

  Shannon ground her heels into the carpet and faced her mother. “Wear when?”

  Maybe her mother’s fight with Cecilia had finally driven her over the edge. Maybe she’d been sniffing just a bit too much formaldehyde in the lab she worked at.

  Maybe her mother was totally deranged.

  “At your wedding,” her mother said.

  “What wedding?” Shannon asked feeling not-very-bright and more than a little nervous.

  “The wedding I’m planning. I told you what Cecilia said about Cara. I can’t let that woman beat me, so that means I can’t let her daughter beat you to the altar. I thought right after school got out. June twenty-fifth. What do you think about that day? That leaves you plenty of time for a honeymoon before you start back to school next fall. Of course that doesn’t leave me long to get the entire thing planned. Less than four months.”

  “Mother, I know I seem dense here, but just who is it that I’m supposed to be marrying?”

  Shannon had often felt like the not-so-bright family member. Her parents and her sister all had a ton of initials behind their names. They worked in academia.

  Well, actually, since she’d married Tony, Kate worked in Donetti’s Irish Pub and Cooked Sushi Bar, but that was beside the point. She still had initials behind her name, and Shannon was still just the high school art teacher.

  Oh, her family never added the just to her job description, at least not out loud, but Shannon knew they thought it. They valued those initials, and though she had a BA in education and art, she didn’t have all those extra, more impressive initials. And she taught art, not a serious subject like science.

  Shannon realized her mother was talking again. Something about a wedding.

  Her wedding?

  Who did her mother think she was going to marry?

  “… Seth.”

  Shannon’s attention jumped back into focus. “Mother, you’re not suggesting I marry Seth? You went to his wedding to Desi, after all.”

  “How could I forget? Why, when it was Mary Kathryn’s wedding that wedding planner didn’t worry at all when I pointed out the cake was too small, but at her own wedding? Why the cake was huge. A veritable mountain of cake. Still I never understood why she had Barbies on the top.”

  Her mother was quiet a moment, obviously pondering why Seth and Desi had Barbies for their wedding cake toppers.

  “So what does Seth have to do with anything?” Shannon finally asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any more.

  “I called Seth to see if he knew a nice man you could marry …”

  Nathan Calder sat at the bar in O’Halloran’s Bar and Grill. He wasn’t drinking anything harder than cola even though it was Friday and he was off tomorrow. He’d simply come to show Mick how he’d spent his tax return … on his new Harley.

  Yep, he was a bad-ass, Harley riding … pharmacist. A bad-ass, Harley-riding pharmacist who’d only just got his motorcycle license and obviously shouldn’t have been awarded it, since he’d stalled the motorcycle three times on the way over to Mick’s.

  He felt like he was this year’s April Fools joke because it was hard to feel tough when you were sitting in the middle of traffic, wearing your new leather jacket … and trying to restart your engine.

  Harder still when you flooded the engine and had to wheel the motorcycle to the side of the road and wait ten minutes for the gas in the carburetor to evaporate before you could restart it.

  Nate took a sip of his cola, wondering how he was going to get the bike home without repeating the incident.

  He planned to ride the bike to hockey practice this week and let his team ooh and ah over it, but maybe he should rethink that plan, at least until he’d mastered the art of not stalling.

  Nate caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned. A beautiful woman took the seat next to him. A heart-stopping, beautiful woman. Tall, with reddish hair cut short, but not the least bit mannish. No, this woman was the type who made any man in proximity sit up and notice.

  The kind of woman who made him forget all about his Harley-troubles.

  “Hey, Mick. Could I have the usual?” she called in a husky sort of voice that made every man within hearing distance who hadn’t already noticed her, turn her way.

  “Sure, thing, Shannon-me-love,” Mick said in his patently fake Irish accent.

  “Come on, Mick. Give the lady a break,” Nate ribbed his friend. “You know you grew right next door to me in Glenwood Hills, not in the green hills of Ireland.”

  Nate shot a grin at the redhead.

  The bartender smiled as he said, “Ah, sure I do, Nate, but Shannon likes the brogue for atmosphere, don’t you my sweet?”

  “Ah, Mick, the-Irish-apple-of-my-eye, you can be sure I do. Why, if me mum keeps insisting I get married, I may just take you home and make the poor woman’s dreams come true. Why, she’d not only be getting her wedding, but it would include a good Irish boy as well. Ah, she’d never recover from the sheer joy of it all. And I’d be trading the O’Malley last name for O’Hallaran. My initials would stay the same. Yes, you may be the perfect husband material … at least if it wasn’t for the wee fact that you’re a hound when it comes to the women.”

  Mick leaned across the bar and said, “And though I’d rather be kissing a banshee than marrying anyone, I might just make an exception for you, Shannon-me-love.”

  Chuckling he moved toward the other end of the long bar where a customer was hailing him.

  “He’s something else,” Shannon murmured as she took a sip of whatever it was Mick had given her.

  “Sure is. Why, his first day of high school he convinced the teachers he was an Irish exchange student.”

  Mick’s Shannon grinned as she asked, “You knew him then?”

  “Sure did. We’ve been friends forever. I’m Nathan Calder. Not that he’d ever introduce me to a pretty lady. He likes to keep them all for himself. Selfish, that’s Mick.” He chuckled and added, “Friends call me Nate.”

  “Shannon, Shannon O’Malley.”

  She held her hand out to Nate and they shook.

  If asked, Nate would have testified that there were actual sparks flying off their joined hands. He’d have sworn to it in a court of law. Slightly bemused by the experience, he pulled his hand back as quickly as possible.

  As a professional, Nate had shaken a lot of hands, but none that left him feeling as shaken as Shannon’s did. It wasn’t as if there was anything special about her hand. He quickly glanced at it to make sure.

  Nope. There was nothing special about it at all. Just five fingers, on a nicely shaped palm. One small ring. Short, neat manicured nails.

  What on earth was he doing noticing a woman’s manicure? He must be more flustered than he thought about the whole stalling the motorcycle thing.

  He tried to pull his scattered wits back together. “Well, Shannon-me-love O’Malley, if Mick stands you up on that offer of marriage, give me a call. My mother would love nothing more than to hear some woman is making an honest man of me.”

  “You’re mother’s on the marriage kick, too?” she asked, sympathy in her voice.

  “Not just the marriage-kick,” he admitted, “but the grandbabies-kick as well.”

  It wasn’t that Nate didn’t like kids.

  Someday he might want one … maybe even two. But not now. After all, he’d just bought a Harley. Harleys didn’t come with baby-seats. Plus it was hard to be a bad-ass biker if you were carting around a diaper bag.

  Okay, so it was hard if you couldn’t go more than three blocks without stalling the motorcycle, but it would be worse with a baby, of t
hat he was sure.

  “Oh, mine hasn’t started in about grandchildren yet,” Shannon was saying. “No, she’s just after a husband for me. She’s already planning the wedding in June.”

  “Oh, so you do have a fiancé?” he asked, slightly disappointed. After all, he’d noticed the ring on her hand, but it wasn’t on the correct finger. He sighed. Here was a woman he would have liked to get to know better.

  Not in a marrying, baby-producing way, but in a she’s-too-hot sort of way.

  He’d love to feel her body pressed against his, his Harley rumbling beneath them as they rode through town. And after the ride … Well he could think of a few other places he’d like to take this woman.

  “No, there’s no fiancé,” she said. “But that’s not going to stop my mother. Why she’s already set the wedding date and is calling around trying to find a priest who will marry us since Father Murphy said no. Fortunately, all the rest have said no as well, since there’s no groom. Priests have rules about that kind of thing. And my mother wouldn’t consider me really married if I wasn’t married by a priest in the Church, wearing a long white gown with a whole group of her friends watching.”

  “You win hands down,” Nate said. “My mother just complains about her lack of grandchildren.” His voice rose and he said, “And to think of the forty-eight hours I spent laboring with you. The doctors said another baby would kill me and so you were destined to be my only one. An only child who almost killed his mother.”

  “Oh, she brings out death-guilt? That’s a hard to battle fight,” Shannon said.

  “It gets worse.” Again he altered his voice and said, “And all those years I slaved away, trying to be the best mother I knew how to be, and all I want from you now is grandchildren before I’m too old to enjoy them. But do you care? No. Every girl I introduce you to you find something wrong with. You’re too picky, that’s what you are.”

  “Too picky. My mother says the same thing. She’s spent the last month fixing me up with … well, between you and me, I don’t think she’s been picky at all about the men she’s hooked me up with. Desperate. That pretty much describes my mother’s match-making.”