Free It's a Wonderful Wife by Janet Chapman Page A

suitcase, and simply driving away—Stanley and Wiggles. Well, three things, since she didn’t have a car to drive away in. No, four, as she wanted to see the entire world but had absolutely no idea where to go first.
    Okay, so she wouldn’t leave today. But she could at least start packing.
    Wiggles might actually be the easiest, Cadi decided as she studied the camper at the end of the parking lot. All she had to do was buy a small motorhome and take the little brat with her. She could also get that sporty red convertible and tow it behind them, so she’d have something to zip around in once she got where she was going.
    There; problems two and three solved.
    Then all she had to do was climb in her camper and drive away, because the direction wasn’t nearly as important as seeing Whistler’s Landing in her rearview mirror.
    So she guessed that solved that problem.
    Stanley, however, wasn’t quite so solvable, since she loved him like the brother she’d always wanted. The man had been a rock when her father had suffered his first heart attack, and it had been Stanley’s idea they pretend to get engaged. He’d also shouldered most of the workload at the office, often drafting into the wee hours of the night to meet the impossible deadlines Owen Glace kept promising all the clients he refused to turn away.
    Both she and Stanley had begged him to slow down and enjoy the fruits of his labor, but apparently her dad’s only concern had been to build an even larger nest egg—which Cadi had realized only after she’d learned how to read investment statements. Because despite his already substantial portfolio, the man had spent the last twenty-nine years of his life making sure his daughter could spend the rest of
her
life fulfilling her heart’s desires on just the dividends alone.
    She still wasn’t sure how she felt about his working himself to death on her behalf, since she knew he likely would have
worried
himself to death even sooner if he hadn’t been able to go to the office and get lost in his designs—which he loved doing almost as much as he loved her.
    But it was time she started loving herself, even if that meant she had to kick Stanley off his comfortable couch with a size-eight sneaker of tough love. The man had an innate talent for laying out the mechanics of a house and drafting amazingly smart plans, and if she could somehow . . . force him to find the right partner, Kerr & Whoever Architecture could outshine her father when it came to designing award-winning homes.
    Tough love . . . Tough, creative love . . .
    Cadi stopped twisting the soda bottle cap. No, she couldn’t.
    Or could she?
    No, it was just too cruel. Too unlike her.
    It would certainly be effective, though. And she could soften the blow by giving Stanley a couple of weeks to realize she was serious. But only if during their ride home this morning he promised to start setting up interviews with potential partners
today
. And if she didn’t see the first candidate sitting in his office by . . . oh, by Friday of next week, she would start burning models. No candidate by the following Monday, she’d start burning her sketchbooks.
    Okay, that was the plan, and she was sticking to it. She’d give Stanley fair warning, and if he didn’t like it . . . well, he’d just have to pull up his big boy pants and discover for himself that he had the creative talent to design award-winning, million-dollar homes.
    Because telling him didn’t seem to be working.
    Cadi heard a sound and lifted her head to see Jesse turning from closing the door on his camper. Even from this distance she could see he was scowling as he scanned the parking lot, making her wonder if he might be a bit of a grump until he had his morning coffee. Or, she thought with a snicker, maybe he simply didn’t like having uninvited guests write
Thank You
in pink