Invitation to Provence Read Free Page A

rendered meaningless. She stared at her handclutching her wineglass so tightly it might break, unwilling to meet Clare Marks’s eyes.
    Clare pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. She signaled the waiter, asked for a glass of the pinot grigio, then turned back to Franny.
    “Of course Marcus didn’t tell you he was married,” she said calmly. “He never does. He leaves it to me to work it all out. He’s a shit that way but …” She shrugged. “Most men are, don’t you think?”
    Franny lifted her eyes and looked at Clare, wondering if she was going to scream at her, accuse her loudly in front of the entire restaurant of being “the other woman.” She glanced wildly around looking for a quick escape but the tables were too close together to make it easy. Instead, for courage, she downed her wine in three big gulps.
    The waiter reappeared to take their order. “I suppose we might as well eat,” Clare said, glancing quickly at the menu and ordering the langostinos with fettucini.
    The waiter gave her an approving smile—it was the house specialty. He turned expectantly to Franny, who took a deep breath. She couldn’t just sit here and have dinner with Marcus’s
wife.
Of course she couldn’t. She was getting up and leaving
right this minute.
Suddenly anger simmered. Dammit, no! She refused to be outfaced by this bitch.
    “I’ll have the potato gnocci with the tomato sauce, please,” she said in a tight little voice she barely recognized as her own. “And another glass of the Chianti,” she added recklessly.
    Clare Marks leaned her elbows on the table, hands folded under her chin, staring silently at her. The happy hum of conversation floated around Franny’s head like confetti at a wedding. Her chest hurt. Well, of course it did, that waswhere her heart was. Her eyes hurt, too, from staring at this vision that was her lover’s wife. The perfect features, the sleek dark hair pulled back to show her perfect profile, the perfect expensive little black dress, the perfect pearl earrings. And the platinum band embossed with diamonds on the third finger of her left hand.
    Suddenly chilled, Franny hitched her blue crochet shawl over her shoulders. She felt unstylish and out of her league. She took another gulp of wine and the dangling earrings she’d thought so pretty clanked loudly against the glass.
    “Cute earrings,” Clare Marks said, and Franny glared at her. She knew Clare knew they were cheap and of course she hadn’t really meant it as a compliment. She wondered bleakly why Marcus had even bothered with her when his wife was so beautiful.
    “You’re looking at me and wondering why he does it, aren’t you?” Clare said. “I mean, I’m Miss America personified, right? And that’s who I was. Well, Miss Georgia, anyhow. Huh, actually I was more like Miss Hick from Hicksville, an innocent just like you when I met him. Anyhow, Marcus and I have been married for seven years. And
you,
Franny, are the seventh woman I’ve had to say good-bye to. How’s that for a record?”
    Franny just sat there silently, stiff as a corpse in the throes of rigor mortis, aware that Clare was looking pityingly at her. Then Clare drained her glass and said, “The hell with it. Why don’t we just get a bottle? After all, this is a kind of celebration. Freedom for you, and—since I’ve left Marcus—freedom for me, too. And this time I really mean it. I won’t stay with that seven-timing, adulterous son of a bitch any longer. Not only that, Franny Marten, I’m gonna take him forevery cent I can get, and trust me, honey, it will be
a lot.”
A grin lit her lovely face. Her brown eyes sparkled and she suddenly looked like a mischievous little girl.
    “Did Marcus really send you to tell me this?” Franny asked.
    “He sure did. The prick never could do his own dirty work, but from now on he’ll have to.
You,
Franny Marten, are my last assignment. I’ve quit.”
    Franny took a big gulp of the wine. “Well, fuck