Husband Potential

by Rebecca Winters

  “No.” Anticipating a meeting with him had robbed her of an appetite. Before she left her apartment she couldn’t have eaten anything if her life had depended on it.

  “Neither have I. There’s a coffee shop about two miles north of here called the Copper Kettle.”

  “I’ve been there many times.”

  “Good. We could go in my car. But if you’re afraid I’ll carry you off to some place where no one will ever be able to trace us, then I’ll be happy to meet you there.”

  “Andre—” she murmured with a mixture of guilt and exasperation.

  “Be careful what you say. It isn’t as if I haven’t thought about it.”

  His warning, delivered in that deep, grating voice, sounded serious enough to send prickles of awareness through her quivering frame.

  Sucking in her breath she said, “It would be foolish to take two cars.”

  “I agree. Yours or mine?”

  He was still giving her the chance to stay in control, but none of it mattered because no matter what she chose, he knew she felt totally out of control around him.

  “I have to confess I wouldn’t mind driving there in your rental car.”

  The look of satisfaction in his eyes almost made her change her mind. But if she ran away now, it would be admitting defeat. For her ultimate good, she had to follow through with her plan.

  “Be sure to lock your car. These days a monastery parking lot is as unsafe as any other.”

  “You’re right.”

  Grateful that he had reminded her, she turned away from him long enough to press the remote car lock on her key chain. When she heard the click, she walked around to the passenger side of the Mercedes where he held the door open for her.

  This time she was careful to make certain the skirt of her sage-colored, brushed-suede suit didn’t ride up her legs like before. But when she felt his black gaze wander over her hair, she realized that she needn’t have worried about exposing too much nylon-clad thigh.

  “This car looks and smells brand-new,” she said after he’d gone around and had levered himself into the driver’s seat.

  He shut the door, then turned his head and flashed her a penetrating glance. “I bought it off the dealership lot yesterday.”

  Like all precision-made German cars, the Mercedes purred quietly when he turned on the ignition.

  “Are you planning to drive this back to New Orleans?”

  “Why would I be going there?” he plied in a level voice as they started down the winding drive.

  “Isn’t it your home?”

  “Where would you get an idea like that?”

  She blinked. “I guess I assumed it because of the information you gave me about your father for the magazine article.”

  “I was born there,” he admitted, sounding far away, “but it was never home to me. The day I turned seventeen, I left and went to sea.”

  To sea?

  Her mind raced on as she imagined him looking heartbreakingly handsome in full dress uniform. “Are you in the Navy then? Is that why you come and go at periodic intervals?”

  “Nothing so romantic,” he muttered in a harsh tone, reading her mind with embarrassing ease. “I’ve traveled the world many times over as a merchant seaman.”

  Merchant seaman?

  Her breath caught in her throat. Just the word “seaman” conjured up images of a man with no home, no ties. A restless soul who couldn’t stand to be in port very long before he moved on to somewhere else. To someone else.

  “Have you heard enough?”

  “No!” she denied swiftly, looking anywhere except at him. “O-Of course not.”

  “Then what am I to make of that horrified expression on your face?”

  “I’m not horrified,” she said defensively.

  “The hell you’re not!”

  In the next breath he made a U-turn on the quiet street leading to the freeway and headed back in the direction of the monastery.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you to your car, of course.”

  “No, Andre!” she cried in alarm, unconsciously putting a hand on his arm to stop him. With a sense of wonder she felt his body tauten before he suddenly floored the accelerator and drove the remaining distance in a sinfully short amount of time. After drawing alongside her car, he turned to her.

  “You were right not to come to the chapel last night. You’re playing with fire. Get out of the car now, Francesca, while I’m still in the mood to let you go. Run back to your own kind.”

  She struggled for breath. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said.”

  His expression looked like thunder. The way his hands gripped the steering wheel, she could tell he was barely holding on to his control. It caused her temper to flare.

  “Why are you deliberately trying to frighten me off? I’ll admit I’m surprised at the way you’ve earned your living all these years, b-but—”

  “You mean shocked!” he broke in. “Right now you’re wondering how I could be the son of a monk who anchored himself to one spot for the whole of his adult life.

  “I asked myself the same question when I learned my father was still alive. An abbot, no less, of a monastery tucked away in some godforsaken desert city. Until that moment, Salt Lake represented nothing more than an inconsequential dot on a map of a place I’d never seen, nor had the slightest desire to visit.”

  The raw emotion in his voice caught at her heartstrings. “Who told you he was alive?”

  “My Aunt Maudelle.”

  “Not your own mother?” she questioned before she realized how judgmental that sounded.

  “Perhaps she would have told me one day if she hadn’t died giving birth to me.”

  Aghast, Fran stared at him, unable to look away. She hadn’t known about his mother.

  To find out he’d lost her at birth, and then found his own father just two short weeks before losing him forever? She couldn’t comprehend what a shock that must have been to him.

  It explained more than ever his hostile behavior toward her when she first met him at the monastery. He’d been in excruciating pain. No wonder he’d guarded those few precious hours he had left with his father for himself. The last thing he would have wanted was to deal with a journalist who didn’t know how to take no for an answer.

  Her conscience smote her again as she recalled how shamelessly she’d baited him because of her compelling attraction to him.

  “It seems cruel that your aunt waited so long before she told you he was alive.” At least Andre could be proud of his father, and deserved to have had more time with him.

  “She never married or had children of her own. With hindsight I believe she worried that if I learned her secret, I wouldn’t love her anymore. It wasn’t true of course. I loved her very much.

  “I sent her money and made visits to Louisiana to see her. But it wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that her conscience finally got the best of her.”

  Another loss for him. Fran was devastated by everything he’d told her.

  “So now you understand that my life has not been a conventional one. Until recently, all those years at sea have suited me perfectly well. It’s good, hard, honest work that has provided me adventure and a viable income. But I’m aware not all women would find much to recommend it, particularly not a woman like you.”

  His piercing gaze saw more than he knew, but she didn’t want to go down that precarious path.

  “So now that we have my history out of the way, let’s talk about what’s going on inside you, Francesca. Why have you suddenly chosen this moment in time to offer yourself as the sacrificial lamb at my altar?”

  Desperate to keep the situation from exploding she said in a breathless voice, “I drove over here this morning b-because someone important made me realize I needed to deal with my insecurities.”

  “Someone important?” he prodded mercilessly.

  “Yes.”

  “A man?”


  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “He’s threatened by me?”

  “Look, Andre—” she explained jerkily because he had hit on the truth “—I ran away from you on Sunday. It was immature of me. I thought if I came over here this morning we could have a n-normal conversation like two sensible adults, then—”

  “Then I would go away like a nice little boy and leave you to your sheltered existence with a man who has the right pedigree and credentials? A man who’s safe?” He bit out an expletive. “If so, let me destroy that myth once and for all.

  “I’m a man who happens to desire you in all the ways a man can desire a woman. If you were honest, you would admit that your presence here this morning tells me you feel exactly the same way about me. Since nothing about our relationship has been normal from the beginning, I think you already know it’s past time for total honesty here.”

  With his dark eyes searching hers, he moved closer, putting his arm behind her seat. “Why don’t you start by telling me what man put the fear in you in the first place.”

  Ensnared by too many emotions, she blurted that it was her father.

  “What exactly did he do?”

  “What most men do to their wives,” she answered, her voice wobbling precariously.

  After a pause, “In other words, he was unfaithful.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you first learn about it?”

  “I was seven. One day I ran in the house after playing with my friends and saw my mother in the living room sobbing. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me my father had gone away. Since he was out of town on business most of the time, I didn’t understand what she meant.

  “That’s when she explained to me that some men get very restless and can’t stay in one place very long. No one knows why. They just can’t be tied down.

  “She said that he’d had many girlfriends over the years and had finally gone off with one of them.

  “At the time I was too young to comprehend what she’d told me. I loved my father. All I worried about was when he was coming home. She said she didn’t think he’d be back.” Fran stopped to clear her throat. “Her words were prophetic. I never saw him again.”

  A grimace marred his features before he withdrew his arm and sat back in the seat.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to live with so much pain. The only difference between your father and myself is that throughout my travels around the world, I was never interested in any woman enough to marry her and have children.

  “It took great courage for you to come here today.

  After the strange history we’ve shared, let alone the things I’ve just told you about myself, you have every right to believe your life has been twice star-crossed.

  “Now that our normal conversation between two sensible adults has come to its conclusion, go back to that important man and assure him he has nothing to worry about.”

  She sat frozen to the seat. After achieving what she’d set out to accomplish, she found she wasn’t prepared for things to end this abruptly.

  “Andre—”

  “For the love of God— A man can only take so much. You know as well as I do what will happen if we spend any more time together. Aside from everything else, somewhere deep in my gut I have this feeling you’ve never been intimate with a man.”

  Fran stirred restlessly, unable to look at him.

  “I knew I was right,” he gasped. “Either get in your own car now, or I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

  She reached for the door handle, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. Not while she was grappling with so many revelations on top of her chaotic emotions.

  “W-Where will you go when you leave the monastery?” she cried in a panic-stricken voice.

  His sharp intake of breath sounded like ripping silk. It brought her head back around. He darted her an enigmatic glance. “Why do you want to know? Of what possible interest could it be to you?”

  On the night of the open house, he’d told her the only reason he’d come back to Salt Lake was because of her. The idea of never seeing him again was anathema to her.

  Her hand curled into a fist. “Please, Andre.”

  “Please what?” he demanded.

  She swallowed hard. “Will you ever come back to the monastery?”

  After a heart-pounding pause he said, “Not to stay. But there will be times when I’ll want to visit my father’s grave. If by chance you and I should cross paths again, you can consider it another astounding coincidence. Goodbye, Francesca.”

  He meant for her to get out of the car on her own.

  With clumsy, wooden movements, she finally did his bidding. But even before she heard the door close, the Mercedes was moving away from her.

  She watched until it disappeared around the first bend in the drive. At that point a searing pain pierced her heart. She had the awful premonition that she’d just let go of something vital to her existence.

  Terrified this might be a permanent condition, she got in her car and started driving. By the time she reached the mouth of Parley’s Canyon, she heard a siren. When she looked in her rearview mirror she realized a police car had been pursuing her. In her agony, she never noticed he’d been trying to get her to pull over.

  It was her first speeding ticket since high school. Normally the incident would have upset her. But her pain over saying goodbye to Andre was so acute, the citation and warning meant less than nothing to her.

  By the time she reached Heber thirty-six miles away, she realized that running away wouldn’t make the pain disappear. Nothing but a miracle could accomplish that feat. The temporary panacea was to go back to the office and work until she dropped from exhaustion.

  But as she was to find out in the days ahead, no amount of extra work for the magazine or outings with friends, let alone the Thanksgiving holiday with her family, provided surcease from the continual ache in her heart.

  She purposely avoided church because she knew Howard would be there. Until the worst of the pain faded, she didn’t want to suffer from guilt as well.

  How right Howard had been when he’d told her a person didn’t have to be in a relationship to feel emotionally involved with another person.

  She’d never been out on a date with Andre. Aside from the initial interview in order to write her article, they’d only seen each other a few times in passing. For several stolen moments she’d known the primitive fire of his kiss, and had responded with a fierce hunger of her own. That was all….

  Fran kept asking herself how three small hours spent in total with this man since last April could have had such a lasting effect on her.

  What did it mean when she knew he was the kind of man whose rootless lifestyle could break a woman’s heart into tiny bits? No doubt there were bits of his ex-lovers’ hearts strewn all over the earth. If that was the case, then why did his image continue to press in on her thoughts?

  Her nights were the worst. Tormented by memories of the way it felt to be in his arms, she hadn’t had a good sleep in months. If this was love, and she was very much afraid that it was, then she wondered how long her torment would last.

  There was an old adage about love having to be fed.

  Maybe if she were starved long enough by Andre’s absence, her love would eventually wither and die.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “GERDA? NOW THAT your family has settled in with me, I thought we could give a joint housewarming-Christmas party. I know there are people you want to invite. It would provide me the perfect opportunity to thank my neighbors and a few business people who’ve made me feel right at home.”

  “I would love it!” She clapped her hands. “But only if you will let me do the cooking and the decorating.”

  Andre smiled with satisfaction. “I was hoping you would say that. I have a passion for your fine German cooking left over from my university days in Zurich. My mouth’s been watering for homemade Wiener schnitzel and Christmas kuchen.”


  “My mouth is watering for them too! This will be wonderful!”

  “While you’re with me, this is your home. Do exactly as you would do back in Switzerland.”

  Her eyes lit up. “I brought all my decorations with me, but they are in storage.”

  “We’ll get them out tomorrow. Right now I’m printing up the invitations and envelopes. I checked with Harbin and we thought next Saturday night would be a good time for the party. Mid-December, people can still find the time to come. He gave me the names and addresses of some people from the university. What about your list?”

  “Well—I think it would be nice to invite the Bishop and his counselors from the church here who have been in touch with me all this time. And their families, of course. And there’s that nice man and his wife who sang in the choir, the people we met at dinner that night in Zurich after the performance.”

  “I remember them.”

  “They said I should look them up if I ever came to Salt Lake. Since then, they’ve sent me several recordings. I would like to see them again and thank them. I have their address in my little book. I’ll get it for you and be right back.”

  “Before you go upstairs, is there anyone else?”

  “If you mean Ms. Mallory, the beautiful woman from the magazine, I didn’t mention her because I knew she was the first person on your list.”

  Andre shook his head in amazement. He had no secrets from Gerda.

  “I happen to know you’ve been in love with her for a long time. You don’t know how happy I am to see that you’re finally going to do something about it.” Her eyes twinkled. “The whole family has asked to meet her and thank her for honoring us as she did.

  “While you’re at it, why don’t you invite the owner of the magazine too. Do you think he would come? I also want to thank him for sending Ms. Mallory to do the story.”

  “An inspirational suggestion,” Andre murmured. Mr. Kinsale was an affable individual. Francesca could hardly turn down the invitation if her boss received one as well. “I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

  Gerda smiled before walking over to him. She put her hands on either side of his face. With tears in her blue eyes she said, “It was our lucky day when you agreed to room with us. You have always been too good to me and my family. We can’t do enough for you.”