A Midwife Crisis by Lisa Cooke

progress.
    Time to slow her down. “How’s it coming with the fiancé choosing?”
    She stopped carrying and frowned. “Not well, I’m afraid.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    She turned toward him, her brows still furrowed. “I can’t seem to make a decision. They all have good points and bad ones, and I don’t know what to do.”
    “I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”
    “Would you help me?”
    Help her? Damn. “How could I possibly help you do that?”
    She sat on a stack of books. “I’ve been thinking thatmaybe I need to make a list of what’s important in a husband. Then I could use that to sort them out.”
    “Sounds like a good plan.” And not one he needed to help with.
    “But I’m not sure what a good husband should be like. I’ve never had one.”
    “Neither have I,” he noted, hoping she’d leave him out of this.
    “No, but you’ve been married. What’s important in that relationship?”
    What’s important in a marriage? Love? Trust? Sex? Hell, he couldn’t point out that one. “I think that changes according to the individual. You’ll have to decide for yourself what’s important.” Then again, stopping to make a list would take up considerable time. He knew he was going to regret this. “But I think making a list is a good idea. I’ll help any way I can.”
    He sauntered downstairs to his office to retrieve some paper and pen and ink. A return saunter ate up a little more time, but his sauntering might have backfired. By the time he made it back to the library, she all but had a spot cleared on the floor for sorting books.
    “I have some paper.” He handed her his supplies, so she couldn’t clean anymore, then proceeded clearing the top of the desk in the room. The fact that he cleared it by moving the books to the spot she’d just made only added to his satisfaction.
    “Now.” He pulled a chair up to the desk and motioned for her to sit. “Shall we begin?”
    Katie wrote the names of her fiancés down the side of the paper: Randy, Harold, and Freddie.
    “I’m not sure where to start.”
    He shrugged and scooted another chair up to the opposite side of the desk to face her. “I guess you should start with what you think you want in a husband.”
    Tapping the pen against her chin, she stared off for a second to think. “He’d have to be smart. Not too smart, but I don’t want a man who can’t think or cipher.”
    “Intelligence seems like a good quality.”
    She nodded and wrote it on her list. He’d hoped by giving her the task of actually writing the list, it would take a little longer, but her quick and fluid writing dispelled that hope.
    “How about money?” he asked.
    “I want him to be willing to work, but he doesn’t have to be rich, just not too poor. I want my kids to have things if they need them.”
    “So not too smart. Not too dumb. Not too rich and not too poor?”
    She frowned. “I’m not doing very well, am I?”
    “Not too.”
    “Oh.”
    “But maybe if you keep going, you’ll be able to narrow it down a bit.”
    Nodding in agreement, she looked off again before she said, “I think he should be handsome.”
    He remembered her telling him he was handsome, and his heart picked up a beat. “And why should that matter?”
    “If I’m going to look at a man for the next fifty years, I want to enjoy it.”
    “Fair enough. Does it matter if he’s too handsome?”
    Her cheek dented with its dimple as she responded to his teasing. “A man can’t be too handsome.”
    “Ah. Just too dumb?”
    “Some of them are.”
    He chuckled. “I think I’ve met a few of those, myself.”
    “Then you understand my concern.” She studied her paper again; then with a raising of her pen in an unspoken aha, she added, “He has to be kind. I won’t tolerate a man who isn’t kind to me or my children.”
    “Nor should you.”
    “And he should love me.”
    “I thought you said love wasn’t important.”
    “I said I didn’t have to love him. I