Male Order Bride by Carolyn Thornton

caused. "Why are you calling?" she asked.
    "Just thinking about you," he said.
    She frowned. He had done this in the past, calling
periodically to bring himself up-to-date with the latest events in her
life. She usually told him, too, letting him know in subtle ways she
was a success without him. She suspected those bouts of phone calls
probably coincided with more broken love affairs; whenever Dominick
felt lonely, for some reason he always returned to Lacey.
    Or tried to, she reminded herself. Since her break with
him she had no longer felt inclined to see him and always turned down
his offers of dinner or lunch. Just talking to him on the phone
depressed her. She wondered again how she could ever have fallen in
love with such a shallow person.
    It was his looks, she always quickly answered. Dominick
had been the envy of the college crowd. Dominick was always the one to
try out for football or baseball or track and make the first team.
Dominick was the one the cheerleaders bounced up and down for. Dominick
was the one the girls tore down pictures of Burt Reynolds for, to
replace them with his varsity clippings from the school newspaper.
    Lacey had tried not to get caught in that hero worship,
but the day Dominick had turned around in social science class and
noticed her was the day she had fallen in love. The first time he had
asked her out she had refused him, out of confusion. How would she act
with the school hero when all the other girls on campus would pay him
to take them out?
    Refusing him, Lacey now realized, had been her downfall.
No one had ever said no to him before. No one had ever done anything
but take his masculinity for granted. He set out to conquer Lacey and
won in six short weeks—short for Lacey, who had held out for
twenty years until a man like Dominick had come along; but long for
Dominick, who never had trouble taking a girl to bed on the first date.
    They dated steadily for the remainder of college
—at least that was how Lacey remembered it. Looking back, she
realized how inconsistent he had been with her even during the new and
exciting phase of their relationship. His excuses for eyeing other
women and spending hours over drinks with them were that he and Lacey
weren't married. They had no legal ties to one another.
    That had continued to be his excuse even after he proposed
marriage to her, after they lived together for a trial year that
dragged into two and then three. His excuse for delaying the marriage
had been that he hadn't wanted to fail. He wanted his marriage to be
perfect, unlike those of all the couples divorcing around them. And the
best way to test permanency in the Marriage Manual According to
Dominick was to live together first. It had all the pluses of marriage
without all the promises.
    Lacey sighed now, wondering why he continued to call her
when she gave him no encouragement. Quickly she answered her own
question: for the same reason he had chased and conquered her in the
first place. Because she had said no.
    The break from Dominick and her subsequent independence
had taught Lacey a lot. She didn't think she'd ever try living with a
man again. It was marriage or nothing, and she wasn't even certain
marriage was what she was looking for anymore. Her "trial marriage"
with Dominick had been only a label for their relationship as
roommates. He had shared none of the responsibilities she now felt
should go with marriage.
    In the end, when she clearly saw how little they had had
in common, she had walked away. That solid relationship she thought
they could base a marriage on had consisted only of yeses and nos.
Whenever Lacey had tried to make the break or had told him no, he had
reeled her closer to him again with affection and attention, confusing
her with kindness. Once he had her satisfied, he became bored and
strayed to other women again.
    Because of him, Lacey was still questioning her appeal to
other men. If she couldn't hold Dominick and give him everything he
needed from