Daddy By Design?: Daddy By Design? / Her Perfect Wife

Trey sighed, caught up in kaleidoscopic reflections of his and Bobby Jean’s shared past. In high school, when she and Trey had been an item, when he’d been captain of the football team and she’d been head cheerleader, when they’d both lost their virginity to each other, she’d been Bobby Jean Nickerson. Then at eighteen, she’d thrown Trey over and married a rich man from Atlanta, who’d made her Bobby Jean Whiteside.

After not too many years of wedded bliss, the much older man had died. Some said mysteriously. Shortly afterward, Bobby Jean married a slug who’d run through her money. So she’d left him and had been forced to marry again. The last Trey had heard—his source being his mother—Bobby Jean had taken up with, then married, some really rich but hard-nosed guy from up north. His mother kept saying Mr. Rocco Diamante had mob connections. Lovely.

Between husbands, Bobby Jean was hell-bent on starting up again with Trey. She always called him her one true love. And somehow, although he never intended to get sucked in by her scheming, he did. Maybe it was the way she went about it that left him no choice. She always involved his poor mother or pulled some public stunt that left him no choice except to get involved on some level. Some stunt like at the upcoming reunion, maybe? How perfect would that be? Trey grimaced. He could see this one coming. Like a freight train. He really, really didn’t want to be involved with Bobby Jean. But she went after him whole-hog and it never ended well. Once he disentangled himself and his family from her clutches, only embarrassment and gossip were left behind.

So what was she up to now? Trey picked up the scented envelope and opened it. On flower-embossed stationery, Bobby Jean—a staggeringly beautiful red-head, no doubt about it, but an overblown magnolia of a woman—told Trey how very excited she was to learn of the reunion. He read about how she was separated now and how her husband wasn’t taking it very well. He was harassing her, she said. So she was looking forward to getting away from Tampa and going home for a weekend…the weekend of the reunion.

Trey cursed out loud, wondering what size concrete shoes he might wear. Bobby Jean was on the run from an unhappy mobster husband. Who didn’t know he’d follow her right to Southwood—and right to Trey? He repeated his curse, only this time more emphatically. Life was no longer good. It was also about to become very short, if Bobby Jean had her way. But her next sentence curdled Trey’s blood. She wrote that she understood from talking with Trey’s mother last year that he—meaning Trey—still hadn’t married. Aw, man, not my poor mother. The mobster husband didn’t have to be a genius to trace that call and get the name and number.

Trey had to go home. He couldn’t leave his mother to face that alone. He could just see her now, a petite, brown-haired woman who wore glasses, worked at the local bowling alley, and loved to bake and do needle-point. She’d become a mother at the age of thirty-eight and a widow at the age of fifty, due to an unfortunate farming accident. Her only child was Trey, and she’d never lived anywhere but in Southwood, Georgia.

It was no wonder, then, that her life revolved around him and the many goings-on in her hometown. She was a goodhearted soul. To Trey, she had only one flaw. She liked Bobby Jean. She always said what pretty babies Trey and Bobby Jean could make together. Dorinda Cooper, Trey’s mother, just thought it was so sad, the run of bad luck that poor Bobby Jean always seemed to have with men. Trey could only stare at her when she said that. Run of bad luck? The woman was a black widow.

Sitting there on the stool, Trey shook his head and refocused on the perfumed letter he held in his hand. No surprise here. Bobby Jean wrote that his mother was just the sweetest thing who thought Bobby Jean would make such a wonderful mother. Trey’s old girlfriend then chastised him for not giving his mama grandbabies and went on to say how she sincerely hoped that the reason he’d never married had nothing to do with any lingering feelings he might harbor for her. She ended the letter by saying she was very excited about seeing him at the reunion. Trey could only wonder if she’d told her husband that, too. He scrubbed a hand over his face. Oh, lordy. Between the two women, they’re going to get me killed.

Then, because he was sane, and because he was human, Trey considered not going to the reunion. Wouldn’t that be the simplest solution? Sure. Until that irate mobster husband showed up on Trey’s mother’s doorstep. Just the thought of that had every protective fiber in Trey’s body raising its hackles. Aw, damn it all to hell. I’ve got to go. That damned Bobby Jean. Trey knew in his bones that she’d use the reunion to make yet another disastrous play for him. That wasn’t conceit on his part. It was knowing Bobby Jean. The woman could not be without a man. And Trey knew he was the man she didn’t want to be without. In fact, she’d always let him know, even when she’d been married, that she wouldn’t mind seeing him on the side.

Trey had never taken her up on that offer for a lot of reasons. For one, because she’d never wanted to marry him. She just wanted to sleep with him. To Trey’s way of thinking, that type of relationship—using the term loosely—would cheapen them both. He also hadn’t taken her up on her offer because he wasn’t the type to get involved with a married woman. Even if her vows meant nothing to her, they did to him.

He was no saint. But he did respect marriage. Still, if he’d felt for her what she said she felt for him, he couldn’t say that he might not have jumped at the chance to be with her. But he hadn’t because he didn’t have feelings for Bobby Jean. Not the ones she wanted him to have, at any rate. Trey actually felt sorry for her on some level. He supposed that meant he did care about her in a “childhood sweetheart” way. After all, she had been a big part of his youthful history and glory. Trey believed he owed her respect, if nothing else—respect she didn’t ever seem to accord herself.

But all of that aside, he was in big trouble here. Trey eyed his mother’s unopened letter. Even as he opened it, he felt certain he already knew what she’d written. He unfolded her letter and started reading. Yep, I was right. She wrote that he hadn’t been home for any length of time in almost two years, and that she really wanted him to come home for this event. All his friends would be there, people he hadn’t seen in years. Including Bobby Jean Diamante, who was separated now. Trey sighed and shook his head. I’m a dead man.

He picked up his reading again. The rest was haranguing him, in a loving way, yet again for not having a family. His mother always did this, bless her good heart, saying she hated to think of him being alone now because when she died, he’d be truly alone with no one to love him. How could she rest in her grave knowing that? Trey chuckled, recalling his mother’s lecture the last time he’d been home. It had been more to the point of why she wanted him married.

You’re thirty years old, Trey, and I’m not even a grandmother yet. How am I supposed to hold my head up at the bowling alley and, worse, the beauty shop? Every lady there except me has a string of grandbaby pictures to wag around and stick under my nose. And me sitting there under the dryer with not the first picture of a child to brag over. How am I supposed to feel when Lula Johnston says “Dorinda, that boy of yours hasn’t made you a grandmother yet? What’s wrong with him?”

Nothing, was Trey’s answer to himself. He just hadn’t met the right woman yet. The one who filled him with passion, like Mark Mason had just said. Suddenly the image of one Cinda Cavanaugh came to mind. Blond, delicate, beautiful. Warm, funny, witty. Rich, out of his league, as good as locked away in a tower, for all the access he had to her. All right, so maybe he had met a possible candidate for “the right one.” But maybe he was trapped in one of those “in another time, another place” deals. Because there she was, a chic millionaire New York woman. And here he was…he looked down at himself, at his greasy dirty mechanic’s coveralls. Yeah, here he was. Damned depressing was what it was.

Trey shrugged his shoulders, as much to exercise cramped muscles as to shake loose his bothersome thoughts. Still, he decided, wouldn’t it be funny if he just waltzed into town with a family? Yeah, real funny. Ha-ha. His mother would kill him. But that was exactly what he needed, if he had any hope of quickly derailing Bobby Jean Diamante’s shallowly disguised plot to catch him in her web. The more Trey thought about it, the better he liked the idea. An instant family. Then he heard himself and shook his head. Like you can pick one of those up on any aisle in a grocery store.

Sudden inspiration dawned. Trey jerked his head up and stared unseeing at the stock-car calendar hanging on the wall in front of him. He knew exactly where to get an instant family. Hadn’t she said to call her if his life needed saving? Trey nodded to himself. His life most definitely needed saving. Or did it? After all, he had no proof that the disgruntled Rocco Diamante would follow his wife to Southwood. Not that Trey wanted Cinda to handle the man for him. Or even Bobby Jean. He had always handled her before, and he could do it again this time.

And there was no real danger here, except to him. Still, it wasn’t as if Trey thought the man would come in shooting the whole town up like in some old mobster movie. And who said the guy was in the mob, anyway? It wasn’t like they advertised that. A more likely story was this was one of Bobby Jean’s drama-queen spoutings of organized crime connections, just to make her life look more exciting. Still, if it was true, Trey figured the guy would load him down with chain, sink him in the lake, and then take Bobby Jean home. He wouldn’t mess with anyone else. He’d have no reason to. Problem solved.

For Rocco maybe. Certainly not for Trey. Okay, that was a pretty scary thought. Trey preferred to think of this from another angle. The one where his ex-girlfriend had maybe just handed him a golden opportunity to reconnect with Cinda Cavanaugh.

Trey chuckled. Yes, if this worked out, he’d have to remember to thank Bobby Jean. She’d love that—about like a hornet did someone stomping on its hive. That quick-tempered redhead would probably react in much the same way, he figured. And then, having created sufficient hoopla and having gotten all the attention she wanted, she’d blow out of town and go right back to her husband.

And everyone would be happy. Then it was decided, right?

Yep. Grinning, Trey reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Before he could change his mind, he lifted out the folded piece of paper and opened it. Staring at Cinda’s handwriting and her phone number, he remembered that day as if it had been yesterday. Even after just having a baby, she’d been the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Certainly the classiest. Yeah, he’d been smitten. Since that day, he’d carried this piece of paper in his wallet like a good-luck charm. It had served as a concrete link to her, a slim possibility that the two of them might become something more to each other some day.

And now, maybe that day was here. Trey took a deep breath. This was a big step. And wasn’t this using her and her baby, somehow? Maybe, but not really. She’d know up front what was going on. So if she agreed, there’d be no harm. After all he only wanted one weekend out of her life. Nothing more. The worst she could do was say no.

Trey focused on the wall-mounted phone next to the calendar and simply stared at it. He admitted to himself now that one of the reasons he hadn’t called her yet was that if he didn’t, she couldn’t reject him. And if she couldn’t reject him, then he wasn’t out of her life. Oh hell, man, that’s stupid. She couldn’t be more out of your life than she is right now this minute. You don’t see her or talk to her. She probably doesn’t even think about you anymore.

Great. So he was going to reject himself before he even gave her a chance to do it. This was messed up. He was a thirty-year-old man who was experienced with women. So act like it, he told himself. Trey reached for the phone but caught himself. The guys he worked with would just love this conversation, wouldn’t they? Trey lowered his hand. Forget it. If he was going to put his heart and pride on the line, then he’d do it from the privacy of his own home. That way, if she said no, he could immediately go drown himself in his shower.

That sounded like a plan. Trey folded the note Cinda had given him and stuck it back in his wallet. He’d call her later.

4

FRESHLY BATHED and clad in her nightgown and robe, Cinda sat curled up on the sofa in the family room. The large-screen TV was turned off, and the built-in stereo system softly played jazz in the background. Cinda was tired but it was too early in the evening to go to bed. She’d already nursed and rocked Chelsi to sleep and this was Major Clovis’s and Marta’s night out. So Cinda essentially had the place to herself.

She loved moments like this. Yet she also hated them. They were too quiet, too ripe for reflection. Her mind insisted on wandering from the book she’d picked up, to center itself on Trey Cooper. She supposed it was only natural. After all, he’d been a major player in a really big moment in her life, the birth of her daughter. Oh, nice try, Cinda. It was more than that and you know it. Much more. Okay, so there had been attraction. She hadn’t imagined that. Something chemical had happened between them. He’d made quite the impression on her senses. A lingering impression.

Feeling all dreamy, like a lovesick teenager, Cinda allowed her hardcover mystery to flop onto her lap as she gave in to thoughts of Trey Cooper. Such a handsome, virile man. Cinda sat up, hearing herself and looking around guiltily. What am I thinking? Here I am a widow with a six-month-old baby acting as if I have my first crush. Now she was sounding like her mother-in-law. The woman would have a stroke if Cinda even thought of seeing someone, much less marrying anyone else. The Real Mrs. Cavanaugh, as Major Clovis called her because of her condescending airs, talked as if she believed Cinda should remain chaste in loving memory of Richard the Second.

Frowning, Cinda spared a moment for her complicated relationship with Ruth Cavanaugh. She supposed she loved the difficult woman, who could be over-bearing and opinionated. Okay, so she could be a battering ram. Most days, though, and on most issues, Cinda simply didn’t give in to her. In disagreements with Ruth, Cinda tried to remain firm but respectful. After all, Ruth was Chelsi’s grandmother, which meant she would always be a part of her life. And, Cinda knew Ruth had it hard. After all, she’d lost her only child.

Oh, Richard. Cinda’s eyes grew damp. She had loved him. Well, she’d tried to. But he wouldn’t allow it. He hadn’t wanted a wife, just a child, an heir. And now he was gone. But wasn’t life for the living? Cinda asked herself. She’d always heard that, and now she understood what it meant. She was alive. And so was Trey Cooper. In light of that, what was she supposed to do with all the hormones that still drove her, as well as the fifty or so years of life still ahead of her? Just sit here and vegetate? She didn’t think so.

So why didn’t she just get over it and call Trey Cooper? Where was the harm? Women called men all the time now. She had, before she’d met Richard. In fact, that was how she’d met Richard. She’d called him. Okay, so she’d been a reporter assigned to do a story on him. But still, she’d made the first move. And that had worked out well, hadn’t it? For a while, anyway. It had certainly worked out better for her than it had for Richard. Poor Richard. He got the yaks, and she got Chelsi.

Just then, the phone rang, shattering the silence. Nearly jumping out of her skin, Cinda tossed her book aside and scrambled up onto her knees. Reaching over the back of the sofa, she plucked up the cordless hand-set from atop the long narrow table that reposed there. A quick check of the caller ID had her groaning as she sank back onto the plush cushions. Speak of the devil. Her in-laws’ name and number graced the tiny glowing screen. So why couldn’t she just be “not at home” and let the machine get it? Tempting. But no. Ever dutiful, Cinda depressed the talk button and put the phone to her ear.

“Hello, Mother Cavanaugh,” she said in a pleasant voice.

“Sorry to disappoint you, sweetie, but this is Grandpa Rick.”

Cinda’s mood instantly lifted. Richard’s father. She loved this man. “Papa Rick! How are you?” He hardly ever called. Couldn’t wrest the phone from his wife’s hands, no doubt.

“The Dragon Lady fell asleep in her lair, so I snatched up the phone when it rang an hour or so ago. And it’s lucky for you I did.”

“For me? Why? Is something wrong?”

“Only if you don’t like the young man who called for you.”

Cinda sat bolt upright on the sofa. Her pulse picked up. Anticipation flitted through her, drying her mouth. “A young man called for me?”

“He did. And like I said, it was a good thing I answered and not Ruth.”

“No kidding.” She and Papa Rick were in this conspiracy together to survive the Dragon Lady. “But why would the, uh, young man call you? You’re in the Hamptons. And I certainly haven’t given anybody your number there. This doesn’t make sense.”

“Cinda, slow down. All I know is he sounded Southern.”

“S-Southern?” Cinda could have kicked herself for that stutter in her voice. Thank God, Papa Rick couldn’t know how her heart was leaping right now. Only two days ago she’d been wishing every call was Trey’s. And now, just maybe, here it was.

“So,” she said, trying to play it cool, “Who was he? What’d he say? What’d he want? Why did he call you?”

Okay, so she blew the cool part.

Rick Cavanaugh chuckled in her ear. “My, don’t you sound eager.”

Cinda took a deep breath. She wasn’t certain yet that she wanted to confide in Papa Rick, or if she even should. After all, Richard had been his son, too. “Eager? No. Just curious is all. Like I said, I can’t imagine why anyone would call you looking for me.”

“It wasn’t exactly your young man who called—”

“I don’t have a young man.” Immediately, Cinda grimaced, rapping her forehead with her knuckles. She’d been too quick to protest.

“Of course you don’t.” Papa Rick’s voice remained friendly and teasing. “You should have one, you know, honey.”

Cinda was pleasantly taken aback. Papa Rick thought she should have a young man? That was enlightening.

“At any rate,” her father-in-law was saying, “our Miss Reeves—oh, you remember our Miss Reeves, don’t you?”

Cinda gave an indelicate snort. He may as well have asked her if she remembered the axe-wielding monster she’d felt certain had resided in her bedroom closet when she’d been a child. “Yes. Tall. Big hair. Humorless. The saint and scourge of social secretaries. The one everyone is afraid of. Well, except Major Clovis, who isn’t afraid of anyone. You mean that Miss Reeves?”

“Yes. Well, our Miss Reeves was at your apartment earlier this evening, making her rounds, as it were, checking on things—”

“She was? Why?”

“The Dragon Lady thought it would be a good thing to do.”

“I see.” So The Real Mrs. Cavanaugh had her spy snooping around in Cinda’s absence. There wasn’t much Cinda could say about it. The penthouse was in the elder Cavanaughs’ names. “So what did she find?”

“A blinking phone message, actually. From two days ago.”

“Two days ago?”

“According to the date and time on your voice mail.”

“Oh, I can’t believe this. I have been so lax about checking it up there. Every time I did, it seemed like there were no messages. And then I got busy here and just stopped thinking about it. I figured by now everyone knew I was in Atlanta.”

“Well, not everyone, I’d say.”

Suddenly it all made sense. Her caller was Southern and last January she’d given Trey Cooper her New York number. Despite her excitement, Cinda wanted to groan. Trey probably believed that she had no intention of returning his call. What must he think? Putting that aside for the moment she concentrated on Papa Rick. “Hey, have I told you lately that I love you?”

“No. I don’t think you have.”

Cinda grinned at the mock hurt in his voice. “I love you.”

“That’s nice to know. I love you, too.”

“Then it’s mutual.” Though warmed by his affection, Cinda worked to get them back on track. “All right, so your Miss Reeves took down this phone message for me and called to tell the Drag—I mean Mother Cavanaugh about it, but got you instead. So, what did you tell her to do?”

“You know it doesn’t work like that. Our Miss Reeves instructed me to call you to see if you know this man. Do you?”

Well, obviously, it wasn’t only in her home where control over the staff had long since been ceded. “I don’t know, Papa Rick. You haven’t told me who called.”

“Well, that makes it hard then, doesn’t it? Let’s see. It was…Oh, for the love of Mike. Where did it get to? Hold on. I seem to have misplaced the note.”

He’d lost the note. Cinda pitched over onto the sofa’s cushions while she listened to sounds of fumbling and searching at the other end. Please, God, let him find the—

“Aha, here it is. Oh, wait a minute. Now I have to find my glasses.”

Cinda vaulted up to a sitting position and shoved her hair back from her too-warm face. “Papa Rick? Look in your shirt pocket. Your reading glasses are always in your shirt pocket.”

Silence. Then… “Well, I’ll be darned. What do you know? There they are. Now let me put them on.”

Cinda put her free hand to her aching forehead. God love Papa Rick, the big old bear of a man. It was a good thing this kind and sweet gentleman had inherited his vast wealth and hadn’t had to earn it because he would have ended up on the street.

“Okay, I think I’m ready now. Do you have something to write with, dear?”

Cinda gasped. She didn’t.

“I’ll give you his number. Oh, wait, how’s my beautiful granddaughter, the light of my life—after you, of course?”

“Thank you. She’s fine. Chubby. Happy. Healthy. She can sit up on her own now.” Cinda fumbled for paper and pen. Until this very moment, there had always been a pen and a notepad of paper on this end table. But not tonight. Cinda scurried around the room, looking. Opening cabinets. Searching through drawers. “I expect she’ll be crawling in a few months, if not heading up her own corporation.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I really miss seeing her.”

The wistful note in his voice caused Cinda to slow down. Her features crumpled into a sympathetic mask. “I know you miss her. I swear I’ll bring her up to see you.” She bit the bullet. “Or why don’t y’all come down here?”

“Ruth won’t cross the Mason-Dixon Line. You know that.”

“Then come without her.” As she listened to Papa Rick telling her all the reasons why he couldn’t come without his wife, Cinda rushed into her gourmet kitchen and snatched a paper towel off the roll. She next opened a drawer of the built-in desk and found a permanent laundry marker. “Oh, sure you can. Just tell your pilot where you want to go, and he’ll fly you here.”

“That’s true. I could do that.”

“See?” Using her teeth, and praying she didn’t get the indelible ink all over her face in the process—she could see a dermatologist having to sand that off—she bit down on the pen, spit the lid out, and said, “Okay, I’m ready. Go ahead.” She smoothed the paper towel atop the granite breakfast bar and waited. “Papa Rick?”

“Shh. Hold on. I think I hear Ruth coming downstairs.”

Dread swept through Cinda and had her gripping the phone tighter. It was like they were conspirators in the French Resistance. “Then hurry, Papa Rick. Give me the name and the number really quick, okay?”

Talking to this dear man was like trying to communicate with a cat—you could, but you had to do it carefully and patiently and with a lot of cajoling. Yet it still might not work, anyway.