A Grand Seduction (2 page)

Ronald’s microscopic disappointment vanished with practiced professionalism. “Sure thing.”

She stared at his retreat for a long moment, then returned her attention to the group. “Bruce and I had another fight. I know, I know what you’re all thinking—no big news, right?” Her faux laugh was weak and unconvincing. “But this one was different. He...I don’t know.”

Dominique studied her friend’s face, then gestured a manicured hand toward the sunglasses. A large cocktail diamond winked at the motion. “Did he hit you, Frannie?”

“
Oh, he’s very careful about that,” Frannie reached up for the glasses. “The times he’s tried he manages not to leave any marks, as you well know. He did hit me, though; below the belt this time.”

The glasses came off, revealing tortured gray eyes shimmering beneath puffy, red-rimmed lids. Ridelle’s cappuccino-browns narrowed at the sight of Frannie’s pain. “What did the prick do this time? Is he leaving you home again while he traipses off to Europe, no doubt some sleazy tramp on his arm?”

“
No. Bruce found the number of a private investigator I thought about hiring a few months ago to follow him around. He came completely unhinged. After arguing for an hour that I never went through with it, he outlined in painful detail why I will never catch him cheating. Then he...” she trailed off with a maddening sigh.

Dominique’s spine stiffened. “He what? For God sakes, what did he do to you?”

“
He cut me off.”

Dominique’s eyes glittered like emeralds at the words. “Cut you off? So what, he’s not going to slip you the Lincoln log anymore? No offense, honey, but that sounds like a favor to me.”

“
For heaven’s sake, Dom, is all you think about diamonds and dicks?” Frannie sniffed, as taken aback by the rare outburst as Dominique, who recoiled slightly. “Not that. That he expects with the chilling regularity of a Metamucil addict. I mean, he cut me off financially.”

“
What?” Twyla set down the glass of water she’d been sipping with a thump, her typical queen-like manners slipping as water sloshed down along the sides. “That’s ridiculous—he can’t do that.”

“
Why not? The money’s his. I came to the marriage with little more than a suitcase and glossy-eyed dreams that anyone with an IQ over eighty should have known better than to entertain.”

Ridelle grabbed a potato chip off her plate. “But what does that mean, ‘cut off’?” Like he’s taking your credit cards or something? I mean, he can’t starve you or anything, right?”

“
Oh, he took the credit cards—cut them up right in front of me. But he also shifted the money out of my spending account and took my jewelry. Hell, he even made me empty out my wallet. All he didn’t get was a twenty I had tucked in my sunglass case and a grand that’s hidden in the toilet tank. I’m lucky he didn’t siphon the gas out of my car so I could make it here and back to Upper Makefield. Oh, and for a final touch, he let Marian go.”

Dominique frowned. “He fired your housekeeper?”

“
The full time one. So far as I know, Marian’s weekly assistant still gets to come.”

Twyla let out a disgusted sigh. “Your place is five thousand square feet! How can you possibly manage a house that size on your own?”

“
That’s just it. Bruce figures if I’ve got less time and money to plot against him, I won’t be able to catch him at his game. I’ll be too busy figuring out how to strip and wax a half mile of marble floors.” Frannie swore under her breath.

Ridelle wiped her hand on the napkin in her lap and then tucked a strand of chocolate brown behind her ear. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, I know I’m the only never-married here, but I just can’t see you staying with a guy like that. Why don’t you just file for divorce and get him out of your misery?”

Dominique pulled a pebbled-leather Fendi bag into her lap, fished around, and came up with a tortoise shell compact. “And have her go through what I did when Chuck gave me my walking papers? Why not just shove a Black and Decker in her mouth and start drilling, Doctor Strange Love?”

Scrutinizing her model-like perfection, she sneered and dug back into the bag before extracting a tube of her favorite lipstick, known to her friends only as Hooker Red. She applied a double coat before continuing. “If she can find a lawyer that will file for her before she coughs up a couple grand retainer, she’d still be wasting her time. Pennsylvania’s not a community property state—just like when I lived in New York. Both are backward assed, fault-based divorce states, and believe me when I tell you that when a man’s got his precious millions on the line, their lawyers can come up with all sorts of clever and horrible reasons why the wives were to blame for everything from their socks wearing out to the Dow Jones dropping a nickel.”

She dropped the compact and lipstick back in the cream-colored bag. “Me, if I hadn’t been squirreling away twenty here and a hundred there every time Chuck sat on his gold-trimmed toilet that last year, I’d have nothing to show for our time together but my bittersweet memories of the attractive way he belched after downing a bottle of Cristal. As it was, I was all but homeless in the streets while he hopped between the penthouse in Manhattan, the condo in Aspen, and the villa on the Seine.”

Frannie stirred two packets of sugar into the coffee Ronald placed before her. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about this. I have. I’ve faced some hard facts, ladies, and they add up to something unpleasant, but true.” Pulling the hat off her head to reveal a compressed pile of red tresses, she dropped it on her lap. “I am a gold digger, plain and true.”

Dominique snorted. “If you’re a gold digger, Fran, I’m the virgin Mother Superior.”

“
It’s true. Because what this all boils down to is money. Why do I put up with him not coming home, getting drunk, calling me every name in the book? Why do I cry my little heart out knowing he’s off with some floozy? Money. I have nowhere to go, nothing to fall back on.”

Ridelle shook her head. “That’s not true. You’ve got us. You could stay with one of us ’til you get back on your feet.”

Frannie’s slightly round face jestered in a sad smile. “I’m not the crash-on-your-couch type. How could I impose on someone offering to let me get back on two feet I never stood on in the first place? I went straight from my family’s home to Bruce’s, and now my family is dead and buried, leaving me nothing but regrets.”

“
It’s not that bad, Fran.” Twyla’s azure blues twinkled reassurance from a face crafted by the angels, so her Daddy used to tell her.

“
Yes, it is. I’m not like you three. Dominique had a college degree to fall back on, and went into consulting. Now she buys her own damn Manolos. Ridelle came from money and won’t ever have to worry about having a roof over her head while she decides what to do with life. And you, Twyla? You’ve got the match of the century with Andrew. I can’t imagine you two ever breaking up.”

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.