Daddy By Design? & Her Perfect Wife

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Trey chuckled as if she’d said something funny. “You’re welcome. I didn’t mean to make such a big deal of it. I just wanted you to know. I mean, after you cleared up that do-I-look-like-Richard thing for me, I find I…just want to be with you. And there it is again. All of a sudden, I can’t stop saying it.”

  “No one says you have to,” Cinda rushed to assure him. Could his eyes be more blue? That was all she could think about—that and how much she wanted him to kiss her again. He was so wonderful. But then, she had a sobering thought. Their pretense wasn’t only about some sensual game between them. There were consequences for other people as well. “But Trey, what about your ex-girlfriend? That Bobby Sue woman?”

  “Jean. Bobby Jean. She doesn’t scare me.”

  Finding this topic to be safer, firmer ground, Cinda stood on it. “Well, she ought to, from everything you’ve told me about her.”

  “That’s true. But I didn’t tell you everything.”

  Cinda’s firm ground felt suddenly soft and marshy. “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that at all. What is she—?” Cinda cast about for the worst thing she could think of. “—the mother of your child?”

  “Ha. Hardly. No.”

  Thank God. “Then what? Is she in the Mafia?”

  Trey didn’t laugh. And then he made it worse. “No. But her estranged husband, one Mr. Rocco Diamante from New Jersey, is reputed to be. Very strongly reputed.”

  Cinda’s heart turned to stone. Gone was her excitement for the coming weekend. In its place were anger and a sense of having been set up. “Oh, God, Trey, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Trey shot her a sidelong glance. “Would you have come with me if I’d told you that part?”

  “No, Trey, I wouldn’t have. I have a daughter to protect.”

  “And I have a wife and a daughter and a mother to protect.”

  “A pretend wife and daughter.”

  “Okay. Pretend. But three women, at any rate.”

  “I can protect myself.”

  “All right. I have a baby and my mother—”

  “I can take care of my baby, too.”

  Trey exhaled loudly. “Fine. I have my mother to protect.”

  “I’ll bet she can take care of herself just fine.”

  Trey frowned. “Will you leave me someone to protect, please?”

  Cinda crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. Keep your mother. And if I were you, I’d watch my own behind, too.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I will.” Then he became explanatory. “Look, Cinda, you have to know that I wouldn’t have brought you and Chelsi here if I’d thought there was the slightest danger. Besides, there’s nothing to say that Bobby Jean’s husband will even show up—”

  Cinda’s abrupt move to turn toward him cut off his words. “Trey, two words.” She held up two fingers. “Estranged.” She crooked one finger. “Mafia.” She crooked the other one. She now had a fist. “He’ll show up. Here’s another word—Headlines. I was a reporter. This is a story. He’ll show up and he’ll kill us all.”

  “I don’t think so.” Trey stopped the engine and opened his door. “But thank God you’re here to report it, if it does happen. Which it won’t.”

  Cinda was right behind him, releasing her seat belt and preparing to exit the car. “How could I report it if I was dead?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who’s the reporter. But for crying out loud, you won’t be dead.”

  “Oh, you can guarantee that?” Assaulted by the summer’s sticky heat, made worse by her escalating anger, Cinda stepped out of the car and opened the back door where Chelsi slept on in her car seat. Cinda leaned over, poking her head and upper body into the car’s interior, thinking to undo and then extract her little girl from the NASA-worthy contraption. But then she realized that Trey hadn’t answered her. She retreated from the car and found him just then coming around to the vehicle’s trunk.

  He met her gaze, then hit the remote button on his key chain to pop the trunk lid. “I heard you. And yes I can guarantee that you won’t be dead. Don’t you think I’ve thought this through, Cinda? If the guy shows up—and I still think it’s a big if—I know the police chief. Bubba Mahaffey and I went to high school together.”

  Cinda put her hands to her waist. “Bubba Mahaffey? Bubba? Well, there’s a name that will strike terror into a Mafioso’s heart. I think I’d feel better if his name was something like Killer.”

  “You obviously haven’t seen Bubba yet.” His mouth pursed, Trey began tossing their luggage out of the trunk and onto the grass.

  Two pieces of her top-end designer-label bags went flying by. Mouth agape with outrage, Cinda glared at Trey. “Do you mind not throwing my luggage about? There are things in there that could break.”

  Without a word, Trey raised an eyebrow and tossed her makeup kit on top of the sorry heap he’d already made of their weekend things.

  This meant war. Cinda eyed him. “Lovely. We’re not here five minutes and we’re already fighting. I knew I shouldn’t have come. Major Clovis told me this would end badly. So did Marta.”

  “Oh really? What exactly did Marta have to say?”

  Cinda couldn’t quite hold his gaze. “I don’t know. Something rapid-fire in Spanish that required a lot of gestures. She even did that slitting your throat thing with her finger across her neck.”

  “You sure she wasn’t talking about Major Clovis?”

  “She could have been. I don’t know.” Cinda adopted a defensive posture, crossing her arms over her chest. She stared at her “husband” standing next to the raised trunk lid. With his chambray shirt highlighting his broad shoulders, as well as his blue eyes, Trey Cooper could not have been more handsome, damn him.

  Then, suddenly, it was just funny, the two of them standing there in his mother’s front yard and fussing just like they’d been married forever. It was funny and silly. The Mafia? As if. Cinda popped a hand over her mouth, bound and determined not to be the first or the only one to laugh.

  But apparently Trey had come to the same conclusions as she had because he chuckled. “I can’t believe this. What were we fighting about?”

  “I don’t know. The Mafia, I think.”

  “Well, as long as it wasn’t politics or religion.”

  “Or sex and kids. Or money or the in-laws.”

  The humor fled in Trey. Suddenly he looked a bit sickly.

  Without even knowing what was wrong, Cinda caved right along with him. “Oh, no, Trey, what now?”

  “I have something else to tell you.”

  She put a hand to her forehead. “Dear God. What now?”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s my mother.”

  “Your mother? Great. What about her?”

  “You made me think of it when you named those things that married couples fight about.”

  Married couples. But they weren’t a married couple. Cinda pondered that, then feared she knew where this was going. “Trey, if you tell me that you didn’t tell her the truth here—”

  “I did.” He raised a hand to halt her objections. “I told her. Only she doesn’t believe me.”

  “She doesn’t—what does that mean?” Cinda’s next thought stiffened her knees. “Are you telling me that she thinks we’re really married?”

  He shook his head. “No. She doesn’t just think it. She chooses to believe we’re really married and I just didn’t tell her we were getting married. Or having a baby.”

  “What possible reason would you have not to tell her?”

  Trey was looking more and more uncomfortable here. “That’s what I told her.”

  “And she said…?” Not that Cinda really wanted to know. “Based on your having told her the truth, of course.”

  Now he looked defensive. Big, handsome, manly…and little-boy defensive. He couldn’t have been more endearing—if Cinda had been less angry with him, that is.

  “I told her,” he said stubbo
rnly. “But she thinks we didn’t tell her because we—you and I—had to get married, if you get my drift.”

  Cinda could only stare at him. “We had to get married? Trey, does your mother know how old you are? I mean you’re not a kid. It’s not like you wouldn’t be allowed to go on the senior trip because of an unplanned pregnancy. Besides, it’s not a big deal today anyway…” Cinda stopped herself. “Will you listen to me? Now I’m preaching. None of that relates to us.”

  “No it doesn’t. But the important thing here is my mother has it in her head that I’ve made up this cockamamie story—her words—to cover my butt and keep her from getting mad or being hurt.”

  There was absolutely nowhere Cinda could go with this. “Well? Did it at least work? Is she mad or hurt now?”

  “Yes. She’s both.”

  Cinda clapped her hands to her aching head. “I do not believe this. What must your mother think? That you’re ashamed of me? That I’m some kind of…easy woman or something? Someone you don’t love and who trapped you?”

  “I don’t think she thinks any of that, Cinda. It’s me she’s mad at, not you. See, she wanted me to marry Bobby Jean.”

  Cinda dropped her arms to her sides. “Oh, that’s perfect. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  Trey kept talking as if Cinda hadn’t interrupted him. “But once she meets you, she’ll forget about all that. Which is also part of my plan. But come on, Cinda, she could hardly think you’re easy. Everything about you says class. The way you dress. The way you look, talk, carry yourself. Hell, you scream respectability.”

  “So that makes me about as exciting as an old-maid schoolteacher.”

  “Man, I am losing here. Big time.”

  “No, you’re not,” Cinda said, relenting some. “But you know, Trey, just once I would like to have a mother-in-law—real or pretend—who actually likes me.”

  His frown mirrored disbelief. “Richard’s mother doesn’t like you?”

  Cinda made a face. “Yeah, I guess she does. Probably even loves me in her own way. But I took her baby from her.”

  “No you didn’t. The yaks did. Wait. You mean Chelsi, right?”

  “No, I meant Richard. He was her everything, her whole reason for living, despite having a wonderful husband. That’s Papa Rick. A sweetheart of a man. But then Richard married me. And we didn’t really love each other, and she knew it. And then I left and he was killed and then Chelsi—Would you listen to me? You know this story. And I certainly do, too.”

  “Hey, Cinda, listen,” Trey said, his expression sympathetic, “it’s going to be okay. I can feel it.”

  She smiled but she didn’t believe him. “Good. I’m over it. I really am. So your mother thinks I’m some trashy something you have to keep hidden. Whatever.” She quickly bent over to undo Chelsi from her car seat.

  The baby was awake now and chewing on a fist. That meant one thing. She was hungry. In about five minutes she could be screaming.

  Cinda believed that she just might join her daughter, too. Especially when the sound of a car turning into the gravel driveway behind Trey’s car could only mean one thing.

  Her “mother-in-law” was home.

  8

  THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A POTLUCK DINNER. Why the reunion committee had decided to hold this Friday-night event in the too-warm, too-small veterans’ meeting hall in the center of town was beyond Trey. At least the food was great and plentiful. And the three-piece band of old coots with fiddles was jubilant if off-key. Adding to the general celebration, the crowd proved noisy and friendly.

  Trailing docilely behind Cinda and his mother, who had Chelsi in her arms, Trey held on to their plates of food as they searched for three empty chairs together. Trey had no idea how he’d survived that afternoon and his mother meeting Cinda and Chelsi, but he had, and he was grateful for that. But, to his horror, because nothing good for him could come out of this, his mother and “wife” were now best friends and were both mad at him. Why, he had no idea. He couldn’t think what he’d done…except to maybe lie to them both to get them to this point. But that had been for a good cause. And now they liked each other. So what was the problem?

  Being a smart man, Trey remained quiet as they threaded their way through the happy crowd and toward the far tables and chairs set up all around the walls. But he couldn’t get more than two feet, it seemed, before someone else recognized him and just had to clap him on the back and bend his ear about old times and glory days. He’d be more than happy to swap lies with them, he told his old friends, once he could set down the two overflowing heavy-duty paper plates of food from the unbelievable spread at the front of the meeting hall. He’d made it this far with everything from chicken to chocolate cake piled atop the plates. And despite the best efforts of the jostling, churning crowd, he was determined not to drop or spill anything now.

  But of more immediate concern to him was the fact that the two women had their heads together and were nodding conspiratorially. That didn’t bode well. He needed to listen in on them. But once he got close Trey heard, to his relief, that he and his sins weren’t, for once this evening, the subjects of discussion. Instead, his mother was regaling Cinda with her take on the town gossip.

  “Oh, honey, over there that’s old Mrs. Ledbetter. She’s a hundred and five years old and deaf as a door-nail. You got to yell to get her to understand you. Come on, go this way before she sees us. She hasn’t shaved her chin lately and hasn’t got a tooth in her head, but she’ll want to kiss this baby. And that could scare the child into raising a permanent birthmark. Excuse me. Lady with a baby coming through. Trey, be careful with those plates. I don’t want banana pudding smeared on my back. Oh, Cinda, honey, do you see that woman over yonder with the ugly eyeglasses and yellow dress? That’s Pearl Thompson. Her husband’s the preacher hereabouts. The man’s a drinker, I tell you. I haven’t ever caught him at it, but he has the look about him.

  “Now wait here a minute while I see if I can spot—Aha, there she is. The old biddy by the potted plant. See her? I do want you to meet her, Cinda. She’s always bragging about her grandkids. Ugliest children you ever saw in your life. Not that the poor things can help it. The little girl’s got the lazy eye and the boy’s a bit simple. Anyway, the old sow’s name is Lula Johnston. Once we get to a place where we can sit down and eat, providing Trey doesn’t drop those plates first, I’ll take you around to meet her. Yes, ma’am, I want her to meet my daughter-in-law and my grandbaby. We’ll tell her the reason you and the baby haven’t been around before is because you were in some place like Germany.”

  Over her shoulder, Cinda arrowed a pointed this-is-all-your-fault glare at Trey, and he winced. His mother was telling a different story each time she introduced Cinda and Chelsi. So far they’d lived in five different countries. And once they’d been in the witness protection plan. Like you could get out of that. And, oh yes, they’d been lost in a canyon out West, only to be discovered by a passing band of kindly Indians. But Trey’s personal favorite was they’d been living in a commune in northern California. Anything but the truth, which, he had to admit, his mother really couldn’t tell, even if she had believed him. Which she didn’t.

  But even if she did, what could she say? Trey’s pretending to be married to this widow so he can keep Bobby Jean’s mobster husband from killing him? As if his mother believed that. What sane person would? Who cared if it was the truth? Sometimes the truth just wouldn’t cut it.

  Even more importantly to Trey, he wondered what Cinda was thinking about all this. She was certainly being a damned good trouper about everything. He had to respect that. And, God bless her, here she was smiling and being sweet to everyone who—Trey now good-naturedly mimicked his Southwood friends—just had to meet Trey Cooper’s wife. Why we never thought he’d settle down and aren’t you just the prettiest thing and my, my what a pretty baby. Looks just like Trey, doesn’t she? How come we didn’t know about you before tonight? Trey, why are you keeping this sweet girl a secr
et?

  Which resulted in his mother’s varying stories, all of which she would deny saying at a later date. With an affectionate smile on his face as he walked behind his family, real and otherwise, Trey still couldn’t say if he was blessed or cursed. It was hard to tell, given the scene from earlier that afternoon that had resembled a female version of an Old West gunfight when his mother and Cinda had met.

  In a nutshell, his mother had come home from work at the bowling alley, and as she’d climbed out of her car, she saw Cinda, and had just stood there. Then Cinda had lifted Chelsi out of her car seat and the two of them had faced his mother. Then the baby began to cry, followed by Cinda bursting into tears. Then so had his mother. And finally—what man on this green earth understood women?—they had rushed toward each other, only to fall, sobbing, into each other’s arms as they cradled the squalling baby between them.

  Again Trey saw his mother turning to him and smacking his arm for making them all cry. What was wrong with him, anyway, she’d wanted to know, for keeping them all apart like he had?

  While he was happy that his mother and Cinda had—Trey grimaced at his use of the politically correct word— “bonded,” all he could think was what he wouldn’t give right now for something he truly did have a prayer of understanding. Like a lube rack. Or a power drill. Or a life-sized poster of the Andretti racing team. Or a map of the layout of the track at Darlington. A stopwatch. A checkered flag. All those things were easy. And they weren’t women.

  In the interest of self-preservation, however, Trey kept his wits about him. His mother, so far, was content to fill Cinda in on all the town gossip regarding essentially everyone in attendance. That amounted to over two hundred noisy people. And by the time they got to the long cloth-covered picnic tables set up along the walls and found some empty seats together, Cinda had been given the scoop on everyone. She had the blank stare to prove it.