She glanced at her watch again.

“You have an appointment?” he asked.

She grinned. “I have a surprise.”

“Another one?”

“Oh, yeah. So there’s no little woman waiting in the wings?”

“I told you-I’m not the little-woman type.”

“Of course. You’re the kind of man who enjoys a challenge. Which is what I am.”

Okay, so kissing her hadn’t gotten her to back off. He needed another direction. He refused to spend the next three and a half weeks dodging Meri. All he needed was a plan. He’d never been defeated before and he wasn’t about to be defeated now.

“But I want something different from the men in my life,” she continued. “Maybe my tastes have matured, but I’m looking for someone smart and funny-but normal-smart. Not brainy. I could never marry another genius. We’d have a mutant child, for sure.”

He chuckled. “Your own version of genetic engineering?”

“Sort of. I made a list of characteristics that are important to me. I used to have a whole program I wrote one weekend, but that seemed so calculated. A list is more ordinary.”

“Not if you wrote it in binary code.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I’d never do that. C++ maybe.”

He was going to guess C++ was another computer language, but he could be wrong.

“Not that I needed a computer program to know Andrew is a great guy.”

Jack stared at her. “Andrew?”

“The man I’ve been dating for a while now. He checked out great, and things are getting serious.”

Jack didn’t remember hearing about any guy named Andrew. Not that he got personally involved unless things were heating up-which, apparently, they were. Why hadn’t he been told?

“How serious?” he asked as he heard the sound of a truck heading toward the house.

“I’m probably going to marry him,” Meri said, then ran out of the kitchen. “You hear that? They’re here!”