Barbara Jean Milliston, better known as Beejay, has a plan. Her biological clock has gone off
and the formerly rational tax auditor for the IRS suddenly can’t get enough of babies. However,
despite being beautiful, logical and organized-to-a-fault, Beejay is socially inept with no
marital prospects. Hence the plan, which includes an eighteen page questionnaire, and which
Beejay is certain will deliver her a suitable spouse in very short order.
Webster Klein, on the other hand, has no plans whatsoever. His life was turned upside down
several months earlier when his sister and her husband were killed leaving behind five children
for Web to raise on his own. Since then, he’s been trying to muddle through the best he can.
The two meet when Beejay arrives at Web’s office (conveniently relocated to his home, so that
he can keep an eye on the children) to conduct an audit. It’s a case of lust at first sight for
Beejay—thanks to those hormones run amok. Web, however, is a little too preoccupied with,
among other things, parenthood, impending appendicitis and, of course, the audit, to really
notice all that much about her. Too, she’s wearing more clothes than he is—I’m sure that
added to the effect.
Within a very short time, due to a mostly believable series of unrelated events, Beejay’s
orderly life is in disarray and Web, who’s been brought around to her way of thinking, is
implementing his own plan to find himself a wife and mother for his children.
The solution—transparently and almost immediately obvious to the reader, as well as
to several of the secondary characters, who are not at all shy about expressing their
opinions—would be for Beejay and Web to marry each other, especially once they’ve
both realized they’ve fallen in love.
Love, however, is one emotion Beejay doesn’t trust. While she’s running scared, Web is making
plans to marry someone else. He’s too traumatized by his own recent loss and too intent on
providing the children with as much stability as possible to hazard any more involvement with
a woman who’s convinced him she’s a bad risk.
Ms. Martens has given us a wonderful cast of characters who are easy to sympathize with and
who manage to keep us happily engrossed while our hero and heroine figure things out. It’s a
good thing, too, because, for me at least, the fact that it takes the two of them so
frustratingly long to come to their senses came pretty close to ruining what is, otherwise,
a very enjoyable read.