A Grand Seduction (3 page)

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.

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 that, 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.”

Staring into her with piercing meaning, he reached up and squeezed her right breast.

“
For heaven’s sake, I wasn’t shoving them anywhere.”

Still gazing at her, he circled her nipple with thumb and forefinger, then pinched until it peaked. Her breath caught and his voice dropped. “See? There’s proof that you want me.”

“
No I don’t, I—”

God broke off further discussion by grabbing the back of her head and pressing his mouth to hers, forcing her lips apart with his tongue until she permitted entrance. Dammit, but that special thing Bruce did to her inner lip shot straight between her thighs every time.

Later, long after he’d pushed her hips into the mattress with the flat of his palms and thrust like a piston on misfire for fifteen minutes, she came to a decision. Dominique, she realized, was onto something. Cheat where you can, using any shortcut possible. She didn’t need to learn how to do more. She needed to be smarter and make it
look
like she did more.

Peering into the fridge, Fran allowed a tight smile to stretch her soft features. Cheat she did, starting with some routine household duties this morning. Meals were the natural next step. Thus far, Bruce had steered clear of the kitchen, so if some ready-mades slipped into the fridge, who would know? Besides, it wasn’t like it was a crime. He hadn’t told her not to. Not quite. He’d merely said “No take out” when she’d tried it the very first night. As long as it hailed from the local grocer, who cared if it came already sliced, cooked, and hell, pre-heated?