Whitney Talbot went over the details of her Man Menu in her head. First and foremost, he needed a college degree. Beyond that, he needed an ample salary and he needed to own at least one piece of real estate. He needed to be tall—at least six feet—dark, handsome. He shouldn’t have any children or have been previously married—she didn’t need any baby-mama drama. He needed to appreciate the arts and music and love children—because she intended to have at least one, maybe two. He needed to be a conversationalist, because she enjoyed a good conversation.
Her Man Menu was a page long, and she used it loyally. She used it because she and her friends had developed it at the Starbucks just down the street from their college dorm during their Texas A&M. days. They had spent hours pulling it together. It was their bible—their source. They wouldn’t be stuck with the wrong man under any circumstances.
After college, Kenya had ended up with Will. Though she spent more time alone because Will traveled 90 percent of the time, she swore that she was happy. He was providing for his family, she always defended him. And though Tasha’s husband, Louis, had fathered another woman’s child during their marriage, she still swore that he was the perfect man, according to their Man Menu. Yes, he’d made a mistake, but they were repairing their marriage. Marriage took work, she’d say.
All of it terrified Whitney, which was why she had remained the single one in their threesome. She wanted love at the top of her list. Otherwise what was the point? But she wasn’t confident that she would find all of the things on her Man Menu plus love. She’d lost faith in that long ago. And as a result, she would date a man just long enough to discover that he was getting too close. Then she’d break things off, regardless of whether he lived up to her Man Menu list of qualities or not. It was easier this way. And though her best girlfriends both proclaimed they were living in romantic bliss, she knew that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The dating game had become exhausting and a huge disappointment. Her younger sister, Jasmine, and her older sister, Alyson, had found happiness with good men. She wanted what they had, but men like her brothers-in-law didn’t come around that often and surely didn’t exist in Texas. She was convinced that they didn’t even exist on the planet. And she wasn’t taking just any-old-body home to meet her family. Her family was a traditional Bahamian family, and they were certainly a down-to-earth bunch. But their impression of her was that she’d gone away and done well for herself—and she needed to live up to that image. If she took a man home, he needed to be perfect and their connection needed to be real. Her family would see right through her. She was the middle girl and didn’t need nearly as much attention as her other sisters, but she needed a man who loved her. And she needed to love him, for that matter.
She’d gone to college in Texas and landed a teaching position at a local elementary school in Dallas. She wasn’t crazy about Texas but vowed never to return to the Caribbean for any length of time. She needed her independence, and her family wouldn’t allow that if she moved back home. They would be all up in her business, running her life. She had almost entertained the thought of it when she and her siblings had inherited three historical properties from their grandparents. Her family had since transformed the properties into beautiful B and Bs along the Bahamian coast. Though she hadn’t been there during the renovation, her siblings