A Grand Seduction Page 2

  Twyla offered a guilty smile as Fran went on. “But even if you did, you’ve been married for ten years and have three kids. He’d be paying up the nose to keep them in Barbies, Tonka toys, and private school. And I’m betting you don’t have a prenuptial agreement like good old Bruce made me sign on our wedding day, either.”

  “No, Andy would never ask such a thing.”

  “Well, Bruce did. Tromped right into the dressing room at the church after I was already in my wedding gown—can you imagine? His lawyer right alongside, like his best man or something, while Bruce shoves the papers under my nose. Idiot I am, I was so busy protesting how it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride that I didn’t take it for the sign it was. Should have grabbed my Nikes and ran.”

  “But you signed, because you thought it was true love.” Dominique’s sarcasm was flat and unquestioning.

  “Of course. Because back then it really wasn’t about the money. I loved that there was money, I won’t lie. But I loved him more. Now I see that was all a joke, because the money’s got me gripped so tight by the hair that I can’t even breathe.”

  Ridelle plucked at the remains of her Monte Cristo. “Doesn’t the prenup give you any settlement?”

  The waiter reappeared. “Dessert for you ladies today?” To their collective shaken heads, he deposited a leather check wallet on the table. “I’ll pick this up when you’re ready.”

  Twyla grabbed for the check as Fran went on. “Not a dime. The only way I get anything is the Bad Boy clause I told you about.”

  Dom fished through her bag again, this time coming up with a brown leather wallet. “Right. Should his penis turn a wandering eye, the contract is null and void.”

  “Yep. Meaning a typical divorce trial would follow, one where he would be found at fault. Then I could get enough of a financial consolation prize to rethink my prospects from somewhere other than a cot at the Y—or a friend’s couch that I love too dearly to torture with my snoring.”

  “Why don’t we help?” Twyla slapped a gold card down on top of the check. “My treat this time.”

  “I’ll get the tip.” Dominique pulled a twenty from her wallet and snapped it shut. “What kind of help?”

  “We can scrape up some money for a private eye, prove his infidelity.”

  Ridelle nodded her head. “I’m up for that. How much we talking?”

  Fran held up her hands. “That’s another problem. He isn’t cheating on me right now.”

  Now it was Twyla’s turn to snort. “Most women wouldn’t call that a problem.” To Fran’s serious glance she added, “How do you even know that? Just because he said so? No offense, honey, but of course he’s going to lie.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I mean, the whole reason I didn’t go through with getting the P.I. is that I realized he must be between conquests. He started coming home on time, sulking in his office. Then our sex life actually picked up above and beyond the norm. I think he got dumped.”

  “Someone had brains, huh?” Frannie’s hurt look stabbed through Ridelle’s stomach. “Sorry, no offense.”

  The light from the window behind her began the dip into mid-afternoon, dulling the shimmer of the river to a subdued gloss. “No, you’re right. In any case, there’s no point in anyone wasting their money for something that’s not going to turn up anything. The way I see it, I have to bide my time until he finds someone else, or until his hand finally slips when he’s half-slapping me around and leaves some proof.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” Dominique pushed back from the table. “You can’t wait around for that to happen—it’s too dangerous a gamble.”

  Twyla handed the leather case containing the check and her credit card to Ronald without turning her gaze from Fran. When he was gone, she added, “None of us wants to wait around for something bad to happen to you, Frannie. There has to be another way.”

  “What, then? It’s not like I can control whether or not the man decides to cheat on me.”

  “Again, you mean.”

  “Whatever, Ridelle. Either way, I don’t see how it’s any more than it is. I can’t afford to leave him, and that’s that.”

  Dominique had gone quiet, staring out over Fran’s shoulder at the stretch of dimming mirror image of clouds reflected by river, a watery crack on the U.S. map fate had inserted in an attempt to divorce the country from New Jersey. Momentous crossings by George Washington aside, the Delaware seemed to do little else but divide—Jersey from Delaware, Pennsylvania from New York, Jersey from Pennsylvania. Endless divisions, orchestrated by a planetary hiccup that forced four hundred-plus miles of waterway away from the eastern seaboard.

  Twyla’s gold card returned to the table with a Bic and a receipt for the fifty-some dollar check. Signing with a sweeping, precision cursive, she grabbed the yellow copy and pushed back in her seat.

  “I’m really sorry for all this, Fran. You know how much we all care about you.”

  Ridelle chimed in. “Yeah, and if you ever change your mind, the offer still stands to bunk in with me. I don’t care about snoring.”

  “Thanks. I just can’t go somewhere destitute, with two years of schooling or God knows what in front of me until I can find some way to make a living.”

  “And it’s not fair that you should have to, when he’s the unqualified, sanctimonious jerk.”

  Fran shrugged, tossing wavy red hair over her shoulder. “The jerk with the money and iron-clad contract to make sure he gets to keep it.”

  The group rose from the table to make their way through the understated, white-trimmed dining room. All except Dominique, who was still lost in thoughts somewhere over the Delaware.

  “You in there?” Ridelle waved a hand in front of Dominique’s face. “They’re closing up before dinner.”

  Dom blinked and glanced around to see the dining room had emptied out. Ronald and Sue, the plump gray-hair that sometimes waited on them, were both finishing up side work with occasional glances thrown the quartet’s way.

  “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

  Ridelle laughed. “No good ever comes from that.”

  Twyla’s silvery knit sweater set and pants mimicked Dom’s gray pencil skirt and Dolce blazer, placing the four women in the far end of the pastel palette as they strode out the door to the stone-fronted, cape cod exterior. The May afternoon tittered between balmy and the threat of rainfall.

  “You going to be okay?” Twyla put her hand on Fran’s shoulder.

  She nodded, the gray clouds above shimmering in her eyes. “He’ll have either gone to the club or holed up in his office, I expect. Either way, we’re done for the night.”

  A chain hug passed from Fran and Twyla to Twyla and Ridelle, ending with Dominique, who finally broke silence as she took Fran by the hands. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll figure this out. We’ll find a crack in his river.”

  Ridelle and Twyla glanced at each other. The former gave voice to the look. “A what?”

  “Never mind. Talk soon.”

  The women climbed into four very different vehicles–Frannie’s silver Mercedes 350 SL, Twyla’s white Grand Cherokee trimmed in gold, Ridelle’s garnet Nissan Pathfinder, and Dominique’s black Porsche Boxster bearing the vanity plate MNYDIVA. Turning onto the River Road, each headed off to a different direction even as their occupants shared versions of a single thought–Frannie Myers, and whether she’d find a way out of her stormy marriage before the lightning struck.

  Chapter Three

  Fran stood inside the walk-in pantry, senses dulled by sufficient exhaustion that she was unaware of her skin prickling at the horrors laid out before her. Besides, the reaction was the same every time she entered the twelve by twelve nightmare–three times a day now for the past two weeks. First the goose bumps, followed by a slight crest of nausea. Then came the tears.

  Watery eyes peered through sporadic recessed lighting at the interior of her jail cell. Three entire walls lined floor to ceiling with shelves bracketed her as
she stood in the double doorway, auburn curls pulled away from her face and dressed in an ivory Chanel pantsuit quivering with the inevitable prospect of suffering a dry cleaning disaster. Hundreds of jars, bottles, cans, and boxes stared lifelessly at her, daring her to whisk them to life in a heroic act of culinary CPR.

  It wasn’t that Fran never learned to cook anything. Not exactly. As a pigtailed tot Cook showed her how to make scrambled eggs (but helped with the stove part), and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut all fancy on the diagonal and with the crusts removed. “Best this side of the Mississippi,” Cook used to say. Alas, Bruce wasn’t the captain of the PB&J fan club. Allergic to peanuts, truth be known. Thoughts of slipping an accidental peanut into his supper had occurred—in fleeting fashion, but spousicide or whatever one called it wasn’t Fran’s cup of cappuccino. Not that the hairy fool didn’t deserve a turn for the worse.

  Her eyes continued a confused appraisal. Pearl onions, fried Durkee onions, cocktail olives, button mushrooms, asparagus spears…why couldn’t Bruce understand what he’d done to her? Smoked salmon, canned sardines, dolphin-safe tuna. How on Earth did they keep the dolphins from eating tuna, anyway? Bisquick, boxed grits, rolled oats. Fran sighed. Another pointless survey.

  Twirling on Gucci slingbacks, Fran retreated from the room and out onto the black marble and brass kitchen. A fifteen-foot work island centered the enormous echo chamber, where at least forty cherry wood cabinets were fronted by leaded glass. The fixtures and trio of sinks—a double sink on the far wall near the built-in stove, a third with a slim swan neck faucet on the island—were polished brass. Or would be, if she could figure out how one polished brass. When she’d taken on the role of Bruce’s house servant, she giggled with glee over how easy this kitchen would be to maintain. Everything was dark wood and black and wouldn’t show dirt, right? Oh-so-wrong.

  She grit her teeth with every step across the Italian marble floor, as so much as a molecule of dust rose in sharp relief against its mirrored ebony surface. Finger marks showed with every touch of the sink, counter, cabinet, and refrigerator. Then there were those glass cabinet fronts—back lit for convenient highlight of every fingerprint whorl. Already, one of close to two dozen overhead recessed lights had burnt out. The kitchen alone was a full time cleaning job—how the devil had Marian managed the entire house almost single handed?

  On the refrigerator television—a screen was built into the door, an apron-covered marvel beamed as if nearing orgasm as she beat a bowl full of egg whites into frothy bliss. Rolling silvery eyes, Fran turned to an iron baker’s rack, perusing the row of cookbooks there as if some new miracle cure for her lack of domestic skill had arrived overnight to rescue her.

  No such luck. First came The Joy of Cooking. Frannie glanced back at the Orgasmic Egg Beater and shook her head. Apparently, some women felt joyous about flour in their hair and lard on their best linen skirt. Then came The Good Housekeeping Cookbook, The Gourmet Guide, and The Sunset Cookbook. And of course, what appeared to be a complete Time Life series guaranteed to turn even the biggest dolt into an epicurean master. To her chagrin, all were written in some sort of hieroglyphic code that only Martha Stewart and her minions of the damned could decipher. Directions included wonders such as “blanch thoroughly in water.” Who the hell was Blanche? She’d puzzled over this and other terms—frappé, julienne, acidophilus, roux, and clarified butter—before giving up.

  In despair she’d enlisted her friends for help, of course, with mixed results. Ridelle knew little more about cooking than Frannie did, and what she did know could be summed up on the back of a box of microwaveable Lean Cuisine. A call to Dominique fared little better, the woman offering a cooking strategy based on deception and sneakery while distracted with investment portfolios.

  The constant tatter of an adding machine clicked in the background as she spoke. “Just have Chinese delivered or something, then serve it on plates so Bruce doesn’t know the difference.”

  “I can’t, Dom. He cut off my money, remember?”

  Clack, clack. “Well you have to have some. How does the man expect you to buy groceries?”

  “He’s friends with the owner of the local market. They bill him directly now.”

  “Good Christ. I can’t believe this!”

  “I know! The man’s completely impossible.”

  “Not that, I was just looking at something. This guy actually invested in pond scum! Pond scum. Can you believe it?”

  “Dominique please! I’m starving to death here.”

  Not exactly true. During lunches and the occasional dinner Bruce ate in town, Fran survived on milk, cereal, canned smoked oysters, and buttered bread—thankfully not all at the same meal. And the key ingredient: a martini or three at dinner.

  “Sorry, Fran, but I’m no Wolfgang Puck. Try Twyla. She gets off on that whole housewife thing.”

  Dominique had been right, of course. Twyla proved herself worthy of near savior status. She’d been the one who explained that you had to use butter in the pan before cooking eggs, and not to break the yolks unless you’re doing scrambled. About the time Fran was getting the hang of things, Bruce declared theirs a No Egg household. Figured.

  Twyla also talked Frannie through macaroni and cheese, only to discover Bruce hated it, baked chicken with canned asparagus that was undercooked, but he’d been too wrapped up in paperwork to notice, and a chef salad that required an hour and a half’s worth of chopping, just to have him inform her that salad did not constitute a meal no matter how much ham and turkey she diced into it. In the end, however, Twyla was too busy with carpool, soccer practice, PTA, and family dinners of her own to hold Frannie’s hand every time a meal rolled around.

  Grabbing a black dish towel from the counter nearest the fridge, she used it to pull open the right hand door. “Ha!” she said. “No more finger marks for you, Mr. Frigidaire.”

  A cardboard carton of eggs waved to her, enticing Fran to once again pull them from the shelf. No way. After serving a variety of burned, rubbery, and otherwise questionably palatable eggs every morning for the past two weeks, Bruce had finally announced a moratorium.

  “Something else, Fran—anything else, for God’s sakes. A starving man in a third world country would hand back your eggs and hold out for garbage.”

  Her retort—that he hadn’t married a chef and if he wanted edible food he should have thought about that before firing his cook—died unsaid. After all, it did little good to argue with God, which was who Bruce declared himself to be during an argument the previous night. Funny, she would never have pegged God as topping out at five-nine, with Armani suits and had graying hair that retreated into the top of his scalp in order to poke back out through his ears.

  “A dinner party?” Fran had recoiled on the overstuffed chaise when he’d given her the news, as if her husband had just struck her with his alligator skin belt.

  Bruce sat down on the dupoini silk bedspread and kicked off a brown loafer. “Just a small one. A half dozen clients and their wives. A little Memorial Day thing, week from Monday. Nothing too fancy—cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at six, dinner at eight.”

  She stared for a full minute, waiting for the inevitable burst of laughter to let her off the hook from this nasty joke. Then she realized he was beyond serious. “This isn’t a very good time for me.”

  The other shoe dropped from his hand as his chestnut eyes darkened.

  “Well excuse me, Your Majesty, I didn’t realize your social calendar needed consulting before the lord of the manor decides to open his home to help business.”

  She scooted herself upright on the overstuffed chaise, pulling the robe of her satin dressing gown around her tighter. “Very funny. I just meant, I’m trying to learn how to cook and clean and everything.” A thought smoothed the fatigue lines around her eyes. “Unless you’re planning to hire back the help for this party?”

  With that, the brown eyes sparkled and he threw back his head with a whoop. “Oh-ho! You’d like t
hat, I’m sure. Come now, don’t tell me whisking a dust rag around is all that difficult? Any half-wit can manage it. And I’m not asking for a seven-course feast, woman, just a simple dinner!”

  “But I can’t even make eggs the way you like.”

  “That’s for bloody sure.”

  He had gone on to impose sanctions against her eggs. The third world comment stung like the water gathering near the corners of her eyes, and a brief solar flare of rebellion shot through her abdomen.

  Frannie crossed her arms under her chest, ignoring the lustful tinge to Bruce’s face as her breasts heaved upward with the movement. “So how are you going to feel when I mess this up and ruin your dinner party?”

  The eyes narrowed as he rose from the bed, twisting the avocado satin coverlet askew. Like our marriage. He moved toward her as he spoke. “Oh, you’re not going to mess this up. You’re going to do whatever it takes to make the evening perfect.”

  She swallowed. “That sounds like a threat.”

  “Not at all. It’s a promise. You’ve had far too much given to you, Mrs. Myers, and it’s about time you started earning it. You’ll do your husband proud, because that’s your job. If I say dinner party, dinner party it is. Just think of this home as heaven, and I’m God.”

  Fran snorted at his maniacal grin, but stopped when she looked up to meet his eyes. He was dead serious.

  Bruce reached down and took hold of her upper arms, which were still crossed, and pulled her to her feet. “Now, ‘God’ would like his wife to engage in a little physical worship.” His right hand released her upper arm, snaking down the contours of her waist and hips through the silken layers of her gown.

  “I don’t feel like it tonight, Bruce. I’m tired.”

  “I do. And you shouldn’t go around shoving these things in my face if you don’t want it.”