Husband Wanted (3 page)

Of course, leaving would make her a coward. Sort of like her father, who’d hightailed it out of town as soon as the doctor had diagnosed his wife with late-stage colon cancer.

Frannie sighed and glanced around the small living room. The walls still looked clean and fresh, from when she’d painted them a couple years earlier. She had decided to “dress up” the boring fireplace. She had taken a faux painting course and given it an antique look, creating an attractive focal point.

In the kitchen, she had sanded the cabinets to the bare wood and painted them white. Paint was cheap. New furniture and carpet were not. Despite all she’d done, she was still left with shabby furniture and threadbare carpet. Those things would have to wait, as would her wardrobe. A chunk of the insurance money she’d collected after her mother’s death had gone toward unpaid medical bills. The rest she had put into a savings account for school, and she added to it faithfully each week with her paycheck and tip money from the diner.

She tried to imagine what the place would look like through a young girl’s eyes, especially someone who’d been raised in an affluent household. Her heart sank.

Frannie jumped when she heard a car pull into the driveway. She hurried to the door and opened it, just as Clay Coleman climbed out of a light blue Mercedes. He made his way up the sidewalk leading to the house, then, paused briefly at the front steps when he saw her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, noting the frightened-rabbit look on her face.

“I thought you’d changed your mind,” she said. She opened the door wide enough to admit him.

“I told you I’d be here. My apologies for running late.” He noticed she had changed out of her waitress uniform and now wore jeans and a faded, snug-fitting T-shirt. She had obviously taken a shower recently, since her hair was damp and all traces of makeup had been washed away. She wasn’t out to impress him, he realized, and that struck him as odd since most women worked hard at it.

“I don’t suppose you have a cold beer on hand?” he said, glancing away, when he suddenly realized he was staring.

Frannie smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do.” She closed the door behind him. “I stopped by the store on the way home. Follow me.”

Clay soon found himself in a neat kitchen with outdated appliances and a worn black and white checkered vinyl floor. Still, somebody had taken the time to paint the walls and cabinets and had done a fairly good job.

“Now you can see why I don’t want to bring my daughter here,” Frannie said, watching him study his surroundings.

Clay didn’t comment, didn’t feel it was any of his business. “We should get started,” he said, wanting to get the meeting over with. He’d thought once or twice about canceling. The whole idea—the two of them trying to fool her daughter into thinking they were happily married
—
was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard of. But he
couldn't
cancel on her. Not when he’d already agreed to it.

“Have a seat at the table,” Frannie told him, grabbing two bottles of beer from the refrigerator.

Clay watched her hurry about, opening two beers and pouring pretzels into a chipped bowl. She set them on the table and joined him a minute later with two yellow legal pads and pencils. She handed him one.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.

“You’ll need to write down information about me. Why don’t we start with birth dates,” she suggested. They exchanged the dates, wrote down the information and moved on.

“My favorite color is green,” she told him.

“Blue for me.”

She smiled. “Which explains why you drive a blue car.” He didn’t reply. She mentally shrugged and jotted down the information. “Were you born and raised here in Hanahan?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Heavens, no. I lived all over when I was a little girl. I was born in a town no bigger than a football field. Culpepper, Georgia,” she added. “If you spit too hard, you’d hit somebody in the next town.”

He looked at her, wondering what to make of her sense of humor. “Yeah, that’s small,” he agreed finally.

They went on for a half hour. Finally, Clay paused and took a sip of his beer. “I’m supposed to memorize all this before your daughter hits town?” he said, indicating his notes.

“That’s the general idea.”

He shook his head. The whole thing sounded absurd. “Why don’t you just tell your daughter the truth?” he asked, knowing it would save them all a whole lot of trouble.

One hand flew to her chest as though she were afraid her heart would leap out at the suggestion. “I can’t tell her the truth,” she said. “Not after all the lies I’ve told her.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have lied in the first place.”

She looked at him for a moment. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said. After all, he was Walter Coleman’s son and had never wanted for anything. He’d never been forced to shop for shoes at secondhand stores. Never had to wear his clothes until they were embarrassingly small. Her mother had let the hem out of all her skirts, but they had still been too short and too tight.

“Try me.”

“I already have one strike against me where my daughter is concerned,” she said matter-of-factly. “I gave her up. I allowed perfect strangers to raise her.”

“So why’d you do it?” he asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.

She gazed back at him, wondering if he had any idea how much it hurt to hear that question, even after all these years. “Look, I don’t know how your father got you to agree to this whole thing,” she said, “but if you want to call it off, I’ll understand. There’s still time for me to find someone else.” Pride alone prompted her to say it, but, again, she did not want him to know just how desperate she was. The truth was, time was running out on her. Mandy’s parents had already purchased a plane ticket, and the girl would be there before she knew it.

Clay saw that she was already formulating a plan in her mind as to where to look for his replacement. “I said I would go along with it. I may not agree with your tactics, but that’s none of my business.” He picked up the legal pad.

“What about your father?” he asked. “Is he still living?”

Frannie thought it was common knowledge that he’d deserted the family. “I don’t know,” she said. “He left when my mama became ill.”

Clay kept his feelings to himself as he jotted down the information. Any man who’d walk out on his kid and sick wife wasn’t much of a man, as far as he was concerned. “So you quit school and went to work once he . . . disappeared?”

“I had no choice,” she said sharply, thinking he was criticizing the fact that she’d dropped out of high school. “I’ve since earned my GED, though, and I’m taking close to a full load at the university.”

“Stop being so defensive,” he said, noting the two red splotches on her cheeks and the unblemished skin. “I’m only trying to get the facts.”

She relaxed. “Sorry.”

He hesitated before returning to the questions about her child. “What can you tell me about the circumstances surrounding your daughter’s birth?” When she looked uneasy, he went on. “In case it comes up.”

Frannie sighed and toyed with her pencil. Of course he had to know. Just in case. “I was seventeen years old, working the day shift at the mill. I met him there.” She paused. “We went out a few times. One night, things sort of got out of control.”

“The two of you never considered getting married?”

She met his gaze. “He left town as soon as he found out about the baby.”

“I see.” Just like her father, he thought.

“Anyway, I started wearing my mother’s old dresses. I was able to keep my pregnancy a secret for almost six months.”

“Did your mother know?”

“Once I got big, she guessed it. I think she would have gone after the boy if she’d had the strength. But mostly we concentrated on hiding it from my boss at the mill. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. He eventually found out, of course. I think he
would've
fired me if several of his best female employees hadn’t threatened to quit on him.” She smiled fondly at the memory of the women who’d been like older sisters to her. “I don’t know what I would have done without them. Anyway, I had about a month to go when one of the women suggested I talk to her minister about finding a home for the baby. And that was that,” she added, deciding not to tell him how painful the ordeal had been, how many nights she’d cried herself to sleep. He would never understand what it was like giving birth to a baby and having it snatched away before she could see it.

Clay put down his pencil and took a long swallow of beer. “What do you hope to accomplish out of this?” he said at last.

Her eyes misted. “I just want to see her. Touch her. I want to be able to go to bed at night and know I did the right thing by putting her up for adoption. This may be my only chance.”

“Why is that?”

“Her father is an important man in Washington. He’s been offered a job in some country I’ve never even heard of. Who knows how long they’ll be gone. Like I said, this may be my only chance to see Mandy.”

“Mandy? That’s her name?”

She smiled. “She lists her name as Amanda Woods on her return address, but she uses the name Mandy when she signs her letters to me.”

Clay leaned back in his chair. “So you’re going to move into my father’s house and pretend it’s yours, so you can impress her?”

Frannie shifted in her seat. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know he thought the whole thing ludicrous. “I really didn’t need such a fine house. I just wanted someplace nice.”

He was quiet for a moment, his mind moving in another direction. “I suppose that means I’ll have to move back home for a few days,” he said, although he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was why his father had gotten him involved. He had tried several times to get Clay to move back, to no avail.

“You know we’ll be expected to share the same bedroom,” he said smoothly and without expression.

Frannie snapped her head up and their gazes locked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s what married people do.” He paused thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure my father will approve,” he said, then waited for her reaction.

Frannie didn’t know what to make of the comment. Why would Walter have a problem with the two of them sharing a bedroom? After all, he was the one who came up with the idea of her moving into his home. Mandy would likely think it odd if she and Clay had separate bedrooms. Frannie shrugged off the remark. “I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to make my daughter’s visit a success,” she said. “That’s how important this is to me.”

Clay didn’t miss the determined look in Frannie’s eyes. She would go to great lengths to see that her plan worked. What had happened to the subdued girl he’d sat next to in biology? Had she been hardened by so much adversity?

“We should probably get back to work,” Frannie said, realizing they were wasting precious time discussing Walter Coleman when they needed to talk about each other. “Is there anything else you want to know about me?”

Clay was tempted to ask if she and his father were romantically involved, but he knew it was none of his business. Or maybe he just didn’t want to know. “I can’t think of anything,” he said instead.

Frannie could tell he was having strong doubts. “You don’t think we’re going to be able to pull this off, do you?”

“It won’t be easy,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Frannie said, “but when you want something bad enough; you do what you have to do.”

Clay thought of the land his father planned to sign over to him once he’d agreed to participate in the upcoming charade. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.”

The Coleman mansion was an English-style residence sitting on a perfectly manicured lawn. The flowerbeds blazed with colorful azaleas, interspersed with gardenias. Frannie had heard that Walter had gone to work for a construction company right after high school. Word had it that he’d lived frugally, using what money he could scrape together to buy parcels of land on which he could build; he was a millionaire by the time he was thirty years old. As Frannie climbed out of her older model Ford and made her way up a front walk, she wondered all over again if she was making a grave mistake in what she was about to do. Even worse, she had gotten her customers involved.

She knocked on the door, and it was immediately opened by an older woman.

“You must be Miss Brisbane,” she said in an accent that was unlike anything Frannie had ever heard. It sounded German, but the words were soft and slurred around the edges, hinting of years spent in the South. “Mr. Coleman is expecting you.” She backed away so Frannie could pass through.

“Please call me Frannie.”

“I’m Greta, Mr. Coleman’s housekeeper,” the woman replied. She wore a simple dress and thick-soled shoes.

Frannie nodded and stepped inside an enormous entrance hall, which was dominated by a freestanding Georgian-style staircase. An antique library table stood along one wall, above which hung an oil painting of several young girls wearing long skirts and frilly hair bonnets, walking down a dirt road. She imagined it was an expensive piece of art. She thought of the bare walls at home and of her mother who’d always liked pretty things but had never had them.

“Follow me,” Greta said. “Mr. Coleman is in his office pretending to work, but I know he is sneaking a glass of whiskey, the scoundrel. He thinks he’s pulling one over me, but I’ve been employed here twenty years, and I know everything that goes on in this house.”

Frannie did as she was told. They entered the living room and she couldn’t help but gape. It looked like something out of
Southern Living
. The ivory Berber carpet and taupe-colored damask upholstery with an assortment of beautiful throw pillows that added color, smacked of money.

Walter must’ve heard the doorbell because he suddenly appeared, a wide smile on his face. “Welcome to my abode, Frannie,” he said, holding his hands out and greeting her, as if she were a long-lost relative. “I was half afraid you’d changed your mind.”

“I was tempted once or twice,” she confessed with a shy smile. She discovered her own hands were trembling as she put them in his. “You have a lovely home, Mr. Coleman,” she said, noting the elaborate window treatments that adorned the floor-to-ceiling windows and tied everything together. She regretted now that she’d allowed Clay Coleman in her house.