A Grand Seduction (5 page)

Fran arrived first, taking the prime seat looking straight out onto the watery landscape where the Delaware winked with some secret that glimmered up from just beneath the surface. Twyla and Ridelle arrived soon after, and as they sipped coffee and awaited the arrival of a Cherrystone clam appetizer and lettuce wraps, the irony of the vacant fourth seat set in. Dominique was nowhere to be found.

Fran, wearing a turquoise shell with an embroidered black cardigan and black slacks—kneeling on a bathroom floor did unspeakable things to Chanel, reached out of habit to finger a necklace no longer adorning her neck. Remembering too late, she stroked her throat with a sigh.

Ridelle caught the motion as sipped coffee that matched the brown of her Irish knit sweater, frowned, and reached for the sugar. “So how are you holding up, Frannie? Sorry I wasn’t more help when you called. Any cooking effort beyond poking holes in a cellophane wrapper and microwaving for five to seven minutes is outside my domain.”

“
That’s okay. Twyla turned out to be a big help.”

She turned a grateful smile on Twyla, who returned a nod of dismissal. “Hardly. I helped her make a couple dinners Bruce despised, and probably with good reason. I should have thought twice about macaroni and cheese for a man like your husband.”

Ridelle shrugged. “I love mac and cheese. Stouffer’s is to die for.”

Fran laughed. “That’s for sure, considering Bruce will kill me if I ever try to serve it again. Said he doesn’t eat crap off the kiddie menu.”

Twyla’s face twisted. “My bad. I’ve been cooking kiddie menu for too long. Sorry.”

Ronald appeared balancing twin platters along one forearm. “Here you go, ladies.”

Without prompting so much as a jiggle from the precarious arrangement on his left arm, he leaned in to slide two water glasses and a bread plate aside to make room for a deposit of lettuce wraps and another of steaming breaded clams. A sweep of burnished blond locks fell across his forehead as he leaned in. With a quick smile at Ridelle and a nervous twitch that may have been a wink, he was gone.

Ridelle’s eyes shot skyward. “He never gives up, that guy.”

Fran giggled with a wanton mirth that felt wonderful, genuine. “Cause you’re such a hottie tottie.”

“
Please. I know it’s small town around here, but why are all the good ones fags and the rest an evolutionary hop away from amoeba?”

“
Oh, I don’t know.” Twyla lifted a lettuce wrap using a pair of forks and transferred it to her own plate. “Any place with no hardware store and three gay bars doesn’t quite embrace the stereotypical definition of ‘small town’.”

“
Besides,” Fran helped herself to a second lettuce wrap, “I think Ronald’s kind of cute. A bit younger, but that hardly matters once you’re out of high school.”

Twyla’s eyes twinkled with R-rated mischief. “Youger means more stamina.”

Ridelle shrugged. “It’s not like he’s ugly or anything. He’s just so, I don’t know.” She snarled her lip. “
Nice.
Too nice.”

“
Eew, nice. Good God, we can’t have that.” Twyla shook her head, sending a lock of blonde cascading down over her left eye. “We want ’em mean and smelly.”

The women laughed as Ridelle waved the comment away with a sweep of a slightly chapped hand. “I don’t want a mean one. I don’t want any one, really. I’m just saying nice guys finish last for a reason. If a woman can make a doormat out of a guy, she will, and it’s not very appealing. Better they offer a bit of unknown. A little risk.”

Fran raised her hand like a kid in a classroom. “I hereby cast my vote for nice guys. The other kind sucks royal.” She muttered the rest well under her breath, “Or makes you do so on a moment’s whim.”

“
So Bruce wasn’t wowed by your cooking, eh?”

A knowing glance passed between the others.

Fran snorted. “You could say that. Told me a starving man would rather eat garbage.”

“
How supportive.” Twyla’s voice dripped with a thick sludge of sarcasm. “Didn’t it occur to Bruce that expecting you to turn into Julia Childs overnight is a bit ludicrous? Isn’t going to happen on a little planet where the sun is yellow and the grass green.”

“
Honey, on Bruce’s planet the sun is breast-shaped and the grass bears a striking resemblance to pubic hair.” Fran furrowed her brow as her gaze wandered the restaurant. A pair of blue hairs were being seated two tables over, but otherwise there was no movement. “Where is Dominique? She insisted that I be here, and now she’s missing in action.”

Ridelle shrugged. “Ever the mysterious one.”

“
Well, I wish she’d be a little less mysterious and a little more prompt. I’m curious about this master plan of hers. Did she tell you anything?”

Two heads shook negatives in tandem. Twyla’s curls were tamed in a loose upsweep, drawing many an admiring eye to the graceful stretch of her slender neck. A thin knit turtleneck echoed the effect, the royal purple reflecting upward to confuse the shade of otherwise blue eyes. “No, just said to make sure and be here. But this wouldn’t be the first time she led us astray. Let us not forget the cocktail party in the Hamptons incident.”

Ridelle rolled her eyes. “Oh God, when was that? Pouring rain, the three of us all dolled up and crammed into my Hyundai to car pool.”

Fran laughed. “Four years ago. Who’s party was it, some business associate of Dom’s husband? Said she’d meet us there, then gave us that horrendous map, remember?”

Ridelle took another experimental sip of her coffee, then a bigger gulp. “Must have gotten lost three times, at least. Then we finally get up there—”

“
And the place was deserted,” Twyla finished. “She told us the wrong date.”

“
Then Twyla’s cell wouldn’t work, so we drove all over Hell’s half acre for a pay phone to track Dominique down.” Fran fingered her silverware as she spoke. “She was cozied up to some banker in a club in the city. She’d forgotten and wouldn’t have been there either way!”

“
It wasn’t my fault.” The women looked up to see Dominique, lithe and unruffled by her tardy arrival in a tailored black suit and grasping a black leather envelope bag. A triple strand of pearls clutched at her throat. “Chuck deliberately told me the wrong date.” She favored the group with a forgiving smile. “Sharing campfire stories? Missed me that terribly, eh?”

Ridelle shrugged. “We were just recalling another time you told us to be somewhere and then forgot to show up yourself.”

“
Oh, I wouldn’t miss this. Not to worry, salvation has arrived.”

Dominique rounded the table and took a seat backing the window. Ronald was as prompt as she’d been late, materializing at her side as soon as she’d scooted in. “Coffee?”

“
Please. And go ahead and put in my order for the usual, Ronald.”

She looked at the others. “You’ve all ordered, I take it?” To their nods Ronald rushed off in search of coffee and shrimp Pesto.

Dominique plucked a linen napkin from the table and smoothed it across her lap, then raised a brow in amusement when she glanced up to find the other three women staring at her as though Moses had just descended bearing God’s tablets of stone. “I have your attention, I see.”

Fran set her coffee cup aside. “I for one am dying to know what your diabolical mind has cooked up.”

Ridelle snorted. “Yeah, no more stalling, Dom. The fashionable lateness was cool and all, but you’re losing your audience.”

“
Judging by your rapt attention I’d be inclined to argue, but I wasn’t going for dramatic impact. I was stuck on the phone with an investor with all the common sense of a rabid duck.”

“
Ducks don’t get rabies.”

“
This one did. Anyway, let’s get to the point, shall we? Who wants to know how we’re going to help our Frannie here escape the clutches of a vile overlord?”

“
I swear, Dom, if this is some plot to off the guy for his life insurance, I’m sending you in for that psych eval I’ve been recommending.”

“
Ridelle, please. Give me some of my due. I may have bent a few relationship rules here and there to get the upper hand—not always successfully, I admit—but I’m quite above the notion of physical violence against a male.”

A couple of eyebrows raised across the table, prompting a sultry smile. “Alright, unless it’s in a bedroom under controlled conditions. But speaking of violence against men, what happened this morning, Frannie? You said something about Bruce being upstairs, then I heard him shouting and you clicked off our call.”

The redhead’s spoon went on its fiftieth twirling tour of her coffee cup. “You were right about the furniture polish. He fell.” To Dominique’s alarmed expression she hastened to add, “He’s fine, the big baby. Just a bump on the arm and a sore back.” She stopped twirling and stared at the milk-sotted liquid. “He’s gotten worse with the sex thing. Remember when I said I thought he was getting off on sort of forcing me?”

The table went quiet, save silverware dropping to plates as she continued. “It happened again. Last night I noticed it, and again this morning when he fell on the tile floor. He uses sex as a punishment.”

Ridelle glanced around to ensure the mid-thirties couple seated on their right and the grannies behind them were involved in conversations of their own before leaning forward, arms on the table. “Frannie, that’s called rape. You can have him arrested for that.”

The redhead’s eyes widened, and she shook her head so fast that concussion seemed a possible option. “No, no, it’s not like that. He doesn’t force me that way—I mean, it’s not like I’m fighting him off and he holds me down. It’s just that, he seems to want it more when we’ve been fighting.”

Twyla’s cheeks flushed pale crimson as a knowing smile crossed her lips. “Oh, that’s normal, honey. Andy and I do that sometimes, too. It’s called having fun making up afterward.”

Dominique examined a tiny chip in a pointy red fingernail. “No it’s not. It’s called exerting male dominance over a helpless female.”

Twyla bristled, crossing her arms in front of her. “Andy would never treat me like that, Dom.”

The other woman looked up from her manicure. “I didn’t mean you. Her situation is different.” She turned to her friend. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

She gave a sheepish nod, shooting a look for reassurance to continue. Dom’s eyebrow raise prompted her to go on. “It’s like he only wants it when he knows I don’t want him, like after he’s put me down and hurt my feelings. That’s when he gets turned on—when he’s succeeded in making me feel like crap about myself. I try to brush off his advances, and he doesn’t force me, no. He just opens the debate floor until I’m either coerced into wanting it, or I get too tired of arguing to care.”

Ridelle had gone pale, and Dom nodded in satisfaction. “I could sense that about Bruce. He likes to conquer women to prove himself.”

Twyla pressed her point. “Sometimes Andy wants to and I don’t, but I figure there’s no harm in pleasing my partner every now and again even if I’m not in the mood.”

Fran’s hand slapped down on the table harder than she intended, the jangled upset of silverware turning neighboring heads their way. “It’s not every now and again! It’s every time we fight, and the way things are going, that’s a daily thing.”

Twyla sat back in her seat, lowering her crossed arms. “Oh.”

Fran pressed her newfound advantage, leaning forward as Twyla sat back. Her gray eyes darkened as she leveled her gaze at the blond. “I’m betting that Andy doesn’t hit you up for a blow job after he’s through calling you a dim-witted bitch.”

Adjacent heads continued staring in their direction. Dominique covered Fran’s right hand—still slapped down on the linen cloth—with her own. The bulk of a three carat wedding diamond shifted beneath her hand. The older woman’s voice was soft and uncharacteristically mothering. “Frannie, people can hear.”

“
Sorry.” The voice was sober—and Twyla’s. “I didn’t mean to minimize how bad things are for you.” Tears threatened to crest lashes carefully spiked with what was hopefully waterproof mascara. “I was trying to make things better.” she paused, throwing Dom a helpless look.

The other woman didn’t hesitate. “We are going to make things better. We’re going to take Bruce’s own game and shove it right up his prenuptial agreement.”

In a span of heartbeats, Fran’s expression grew several years younger. “How?”

Dominique’s eyes glittered with unnatural shine for the dim overhead lighting. “Bruce is about to break the Bad Boy clause in that contract.”

The other sat up straighter in her seat, voice breathless. “How do you know? Did you find out something?”

“
As a matter of fact, I found out that your husband is about to have an affair. And when he does, we’re going to get photographic proof that you can take to court.”

Ridelle stopped chewing a mouthful of clam, swallowing the still-too-big lump with a grimace. “Where did you hear that? Who’s the girl?”

Dominique gave her a pointed smile. “You are.”

Shocked looks passed between three of the foursome. After a hateful glare at Dominique, Ridelle turned to Fran in vehement denial. “No way, Fran. She’s lying. I’d never do anything like that to you.”