Daddy By Design? & Her Perfect Wife

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  “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.

  “No. It wasn’t her. Must have been the dog.”

  Cinda grimaced her distaste. Calling Ruth’s nasty-tempered little dust-mop of a yappy, biting lap ornament a “dog” was really using the term loosely. “So who was this Southern gentleman who called for me, Papa Rick?”

  “I hate that dog. It bites my ankles and shreds all the hems in my pants—while I’m wearing them.”

  “I know. I hate Empress, too. She’s got an attitude problem. Now, who was it you said phoned me?” Much more of this, Cinda knew, and it would be three days since Trey had called. If it had been Trey who had called at all.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t told you yet, have I? Okay, here it is. Let me see now. A Mr. Trey—now, that can’t be right. People in the South don’t name their children after parts of the silver service, do they?”

  It was Trey. Dear God, it was Trey. Cinda feared she would burst into flames, she was so giddy with excitement. Still she managed to sound sane when she replied. “Yes. Down here they do. I know actual children named Cream and Sugar.” Of course it wasn’t true, but it was a shorter explanation—and one this blue-blooded, harmless Yankee would believe. “So…Trey who?” she added to maintain her air of innocence.

  “Cooper is what I wrote down. And this next part is serious. Miss Reeves said to tell you that Mr. Cooper said his life needed to be saved. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Cinda barely covered her gasp. Trey Cooper was calling in his favor. “Uh, maybe. Give me his number, and I’ll try him right now, okay?”

  “That’s a good idea. I just hope it’s not too late. He could be dead by now. But anyway, here it is.” He finally read her the telephone number.

  Maddeningly, Cinda’s fingers didn’t want to work in concert with her brain. She was too excited, too nervous. She had to ask Papa Rick three times to repeat the numbers to her, but finally she got them in the correct sequence. Relief coursed through her. Short-lived relief.

  “Wait a minute,” Papa Rick said. “Trey Cooper. That name sounds familiar. This isn’t the nice young man who was stuck in the elevator with you last January, is it? The one you told us about?”

  Oh sure, now his mind clears. “Yes. But don’t tell Mother Cavanaugh, all right? I don’t want her jumping to any conclusions that would have her taking to her bed for a week and making your life unbearable.”

  “Oh. I see your point, although I can’t vouch for our Miss Reeves. No doubt, she’ll tattle. But anyway, good luck, dear. I’ll let you go so you can call your young man.”

  “He’s not my young man.”

  “Well, go see that he is. Goodbye. And kiss that baby for me.”

  “I will. And I love you. Goodbye, Papa Rick.”

  Cinda disconnected the call, then stared at the paper towel she held and on which she’d scrawled the phone number with the Atlanta area code. Her heart and her mind were singing. Trey Cooper had called her. And his life needed to be saved. Oh, happy day.

  Then she sober
ed. Surely, he didn’t mean that literally. So this could only be a good thing, right? A social call, as in “how are you doing, I meant to call you before now.”

  That had to be it. She eyed the phone still in her other hand…then the phone number. The phone…the number. Then the kitchen clock. It wasn’t even nine yet. She could call right now. Cinda took a deep breath for courage, swallowed her heart back down into her chest, and began dialing Trey Cooper’s number. Right then, she couldn’t have said if she wanted him to be home or not. After all, this could be a good thing—or it could be opening a Pandora’s box of emotions best left unexplored. She just didn’t know which.

  Somehow, though, the number was dialed and the phone at the other end was ringing. Hearing it, Cinda was seized by a sudden spate of panic that shrieked at her to hang up. Her hand tightened on the phone—

  STARTLED AWAKE, Trey grabbed his phone off the hook on the second ring and put it to his ear. “Hello?” No one said anything. “Hello?” He listened. “I can hear you breathing. I know you’re there. You might as well say something.”

  “Oh. Trey, is that you? This is Cinda Cooper—I mean Cavanaugh. Cinda Cavanaugh.”

  Trey sat bolt upright on his couch, where he’d been about half asleep as the TV blared some mindless nonsense. “Cinda?” Had he heard her right? Had she really said Cooper? Surely not. That was just wistful thinking on his part. “Hi. I didn’t think you were going to call me back.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, but I just now got your message. By a very roundabout way, too.”

  “Really?” He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. The sudden quiet was a blessing. “Been away from the house?”

  “It’s an apartment, actually. In New York. But yes I have been away. In fact, I’m back in Atlanta now.”

  Excitement quickened in him. “Are you serious? You’re here in Atlanta? Just visiting, or what?”

  “Or what. I moved back here a few months ago, into my old house. The same one I lived in before.”

  “Before what?”

  “The yaks.”

  “Oh, hell. Right. But, hey, this is great. If I’d known you were in town, I’d have come by to see the baby. How is she?”

  “Asleep, blessedly. But she’s fine. Absolutely beautiful, of course, and the smartest child in the world. Just ask her mother.”

  Trey chuckled. Then he was silent, gathering his thoughts as he ran a hand through his hair. “So, how are you doing, Cinda? I mean really.”

  “I’m good. You?”

  “I’m good.” He wasn’t. He’d been a wreck since he’d called her and hadn’t received a call back. He’d put himself through hell with all the reasons why she might not be going to call him back. In none of the scenarios had he come off well. In none of them, either, had he assigned such a simple reason as she simply no longer lived at that number.

  Suddenly Trey realized there was a silence between them. He opened his mouth to say something, but Cinda beat him to it.

  “Well, this is certainly awkward,” she said.

  “I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Especially after what we shared together in that stupid elevator—for which I’m eternally grateful, by the way.”

  “Oh really? Why is that?”

  “Because otherwise I never would have met you.” Trey applauded his boldness, on the one hand. But on the other, he wanted to kick himself. He held his breath, wondering just how old a man had to be before he no longer felt like a fool just for calling a woman and saying what he really felt.

  “Well.”

  Trey died inside…fourteen times, to be exact.

  Finally she saved him. “That’s certainly a nice thing to say. You’re being very charming, you know.”

  He exhaled, fully expecting his heart and lungs to whoosh out along with his relief. But boldness had brought him this far. So, ever one to keep crashing onward, even if it was into brick walls, he decided to try again. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It might be.” Her tone of voice was clearly teasing. “You see, I’m very susceptible to charming Southern men and have to watch myself around them.”

  “And yet, now that you are in Atlanta, you’re surrounded by them.”

  She hesitated a moment. “Not so many as you’d think.”

  “Really?” Encouraged to know that she wasn’t inundated with men, Trey’s heart stepped out onto the romantic-risk-taking high-dive and took the plunge. “Good. Because I have a proposition for you.”

  “Is this the part where I save your life?”

  “Pretty much. If you’re willing, that is.”

  “As long as it doesn’t include a stalled elevator, I probably am.”

  “I can guarantee there are no elevators, stuck or otherwise, involved. In fact, I’m not even sure there’s a building in Southwood with an elevator.”

  “Southwood?”

  “My hometown. Just west of here.”

  “That’s right. Now I remember. I’m still trying to figure out why I’ve never heard of it, though, if it’s that close to Atlanta.”

  “No reason why you should have. We didn’t produce any Confederate generals or Olympic medalists. Just a dusty little town planning a big celebration.”

  “I see. Of what?”

  “My high-school class reunion. Our tenth, even though it was actually twelve years ago.”

  “I wish I could say that made sense.”

  “So do I, but that’s Southwood for you. It’s a long story.”

  “Let me guess. You need a date, right?”

  “Worse. Or better, depending on how you look at it. I need a wife and a child.”

  Silence ensued. Trey held his breath, not knowing if he should say something to assure her he wasn’t joking, or if he should just wait and see what her reaction would be.

  “You’re not going to tell me this is some sort of crazy scavenger hunt, are you?” she said a moment later.

  Trey grinned. “No. But you may wish that before I’m done here.”

  “Wow. Sounds really intriguing. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  Trey exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “Intrigue may not be the half of it. And I don’t like asking you this over the phone, but—”

  “But your life needs to be saved and I owe you, right?”

  “Yes and no. Yes my life needs to be saved. And no I don’t feel that you owe me. I meant this to be—I just thought maybe—Oh, hell, never mind, Cinda. Look, I’m sorry. Forget it. This didn’t sound so nuts to me the other day when I called you with this idea of mine. But now, hearing it out loud and asking you, or trying to ask you, well, it sounds stupid. Just never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you. I can go by my—”

  “Wait, Trey. Give me a chance here. I didn’t say no, did I? Just tell me what’s going on, and we’ll go from there.”

  Hope bloomed in his heart. “You sure?”

  She chuckled. “I think I am. Maybe.”

  “An open mind. That’s a good beginning. So, here’s the deal…” Trey launched into his predicament, hitting the highlights, as if there were any, of his upcoming reunion weekend and what role he needed her and Chelsi to play. He worked hard to make it sound sane and logical when, in fact, it was neither. He didn’t tell her about Rocco Diamante, though, thinking there was no reason to needlessly scare her. If the man showed up and made trouble, Trey would call his friend, the police chief, and then get Cinda, the baby, and his mother out of town. But, still, the longer he talked, the more he was convinced Cinda would not only say no, but she would probably also hang up on him and change her phone number.

  But finally, he was through telling his tale. “So, what do you think? You don’t have to say yes, Cinda. Seriously. No harm, no foul. Because I think it’s a crazy plan, and it’s my plan.” She didn’t say anything. Trey sighed. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

  “No. I probably should, but I don’t. You know what? It sounds fun and crazy. And maybe that’s exactly what I need right now. S
o…yes, Trey Cooper, I’ll do it. Well, we’ll do it—Chelsi and I.”

  Trey bolted to his feet, narrowly avoiding colliding with his coffee table, and paced excitedly across the carpet. “You will? You’ll be my wife?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “Well, let’s keep our heads here. I’m saying that I’ll be your wife and Chelsi will be your daughter…but only for that one weekend, of course.”

  “Yeah. Of course,” Trey echoed. “One weekend. That’s all I need.”

  He just wished he could be sure about that. Because he wasn’t. Not at all. And that couldn’t be good.

  5

  JUST AFTER NOON on the following Saturday, Cinda waited nervously for Trey’s arrival at her Atlanta home. His high-school reunion was the next weekend, the Fourth of July, so she’d invited him over to discuss the details of their ruse and to allow him and Chelsi to get acquainted. After all, it wouldn’t do to pose as a loving couple with a young baby if the baby would have nothing to do with her “father.”

  But those combined reasons, while valid, weren’t the whole truth. Cinda forced herself to admit that she wanted to see Trey Cooper and couldn’t wait another week to do so. She wanted to know if he could still affect her as he had that January day in the elevator. The evidence—her never-ending thoughts of him, her incredible excitement that he had finally called, and her giddiness at the prospect of seeing him again—already pointed to the fact that he could, he would, and he did.

  As if that weren’t enough to stress over, Cinda feared that she wasn’t yet ready to act on that speeding bullet of awareness between them. It could turn out that she just thought she was ready and that she’d back off when—if—things heated up between her and Trey. And if she let it get that far and then backed off? Well, it wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to herself. So here she was, not completely in touch with her emotions beyond the recognition of a confused mishmash of desire and restraint.

  And none of that altered the fact that Trey was due at any moment. Cinda had already changed outfits—hers and the baby’s—no less than four times. Right now she had on a new flower-sprigged sundress, but she had yet to call it her final decision. Nor was she satisfied with Chelsi’s outfit. But her daughter wore a mutinous expression that promised a tantrum of diva proportions should her mother try yet again to poke her chubby arms and legs through one more article of complicated baby clothing.