No Wife Required!. Rebecca Winters

she could hear “Mr. Ed,” the talking horse, on cable TV. With that much respite she was able to finish the work before getting ready to go pick up Brad’s boss at the airport.

      The more she thought about it, the more she was determined to keep George a secret from him. If Brad ever found out, he’d have a fit. He’d chosen this condo because of the ‘no pets’ rule. His fastidious nature couldn’t tolerate animal hair. And Valerie would start giving Lacey more pep talks about finding another man to love instead of a monkey.

      Lacey wasn’t against the idea exactly. It was just that she’d never met a man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She worked with lots of men in her job as a CPA. That’s how she’d met Perry, the liar. Since there was no way she’d get herself into that kind of situation again, she hadn’t been looking for anyone new.

      Valerie despaired of Lacey’s paranoia where dishonest men were concerned, but then Valerie was happily married and didn’t realize that there weren’t a lot of desirable, available, unattached males in the world who told the whole truth.

      While Lacey fixed lunch, she heard a car.start up in the other carport. Good. Her neighbor had finally gone out. Valerie had mentioned that a man had recently moved in next door, but Lacey had never seen him. He kept strange hours, but at least he was gone and hadn’t complained about the noise last night. “Come on, George. Let’s make a dash for it.”

      She left her half-made tuna sandwich on the counter and grasped the monkey’s hand. With her other hand she grabbed everything else she’d need and headed for the carport, which backed onto an access road bordering the complex. A high fence ran alongside the road, affording privacy.

      So far, no one knew she was keeping George on the premises. She intended to keep his presence a secret until Lorraine came for him.

      The storage shed ran along half of the carport wall. She undid the heavy padlock and ushered George inside, pulling the cord that turned on the light. “See what I have for you.” She handed him his pillow and blanket and watched as he made a little bed for himself at one end of the pad.

      With that accomplished, he examined the contents of the sack she’d put by the door. Out came his red ball, a hoop the size of a dinner plate, and a handmade seesaw which moved up and down slowly when he placed a marble in the holder.

      While he busied himself with his toys, she ran back to the condo and brought out a small, portable TV, which she set up on one of the boxes, hooking up a long extension cord that ran under the door to an outlet in the carport. The television would keep him company if he got lonesome. In his dishes she put water, lettuce, apples, and sunflower seeds. Enough to hold him through the day and night.

      “Be a good boy. I’ll come in and say good-night before I go to bed. Remember. No hooting or screaming.”

      She made the sign Lorraine had taught her. George understood her hand gestures and ambled over to hug her legs. “Lacey loves you, too, George. This is only for tonight. An emergency. And because you’re being so good, I have a present for you. Reach in here.”

      She patted the hip pocket of her jeans. George carefully felt for his surprise. He made low hooting sounds when he discovered a strip of beef jerky. He loved to suck on it like a lollipop, and rolled his eyes in ecstasy.

      With his attention focused on food, Lacey slipped out of the storeroom and padlocked the door. She felt as guilty as if she’d abandoned a child, but she had to pick up Brad’s boss.

      To make doubly sure of keeping George’s presence a secret, she would park out front for the night Brad’s boss wouldn’t have a clue. As it turned out, he was a quiet, self-effacing person in his sixties who just happened to be the vice president of the electronics firm Brad worked for.

      He’d put up Brad many times when her brother-in-law had meetings in Denver. Under the circumstances, taking him to the Utah Jazz basketball game turned out to be a stroke of genius. John Stockton and Karl Malone, two Olympic basketball players from Utah, had been at their best. If taking Brad’s boss to the game helped her brother-in-law up the corporate ladder, so much the better.

      She had been wise to keep George out of sight, but the poor thing must’ve thought she had gone for good. As soon as her guest left the next morning in a taxi, Lacey jumped out of bed, threw on a robe over her nightgown and hurried out to the carport. No telling how long the monkey had been awake. She could hear the TV. It sounded like the Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir.

      George grabbed her around the legs when she opened the door. “I’ve missed you, too.” She patted his head before poking hers outside the door to see if the coast was clear.

      Her neighbor’s blue Saab was now parked in the other carport, but she’d seen no sign of life. “Come on, George. We need to make another run for it.”

      He required no urging and reached the kitchen before she did. Once his breakfast was prepared, she returned to the storeroom and cleaned up. With the TV in one arm, his sack of toys and dishes in the other, she somehow managed to lock the door and make it back inside the condo without being observed.

      While George watched TV, she left for church, slipping out the front door carrying a sack of smiley faces for the children in her Sunday school class. They loved wearing them on their foreheads if they’d been good.

      No sooner had she returned from church than the man from the car rental appeared at her front door. Because of the situation with George, her client had rented her a motor home so that she and George could use it in place of a hotel room while she was in Idaho.

      She parked her own car in the carport, then wrapped George in a blanket and carried him out to the motor home as if he were her baby. She couldn’t take chances on anyone from the condo seeing him. Once their bags were on board, she drove the man back to the rental agency, then she and George were on their own.

      Lacey loved driving the motor home. Because she was on the shorter side, she’d always wondered what it would feel like to sit in a semitrailer and figured it would be like this. King of the road.

      One thing about her client. He never did anything by half measures. He had leased her the best Winnebago on the lot. It had everything. Sleeping for six, a shower, galley, TV, VCR, radio, and a dinner table with blue and white curtains at the windows.

      Though strapped in the car seat, George was in heaven. She was pretty happy herself and flicked on the radio, excited at the prospect of listening to Max Jarvis display his ignorance in matters of love once more.

      A guest was speaking. “...So it makes sense that living together is the only way to find out certain things which would never be learned in a dating relationship.”

      “You mean like discovering that your girlfriend had a snoring problem,” Max Jarvis interjected.

      “Snoring, talking in your sleep, walking in your sleep. The list is endless, and so are the surprises which often cause newlyweds to end up in divorce.”

      “You make a good practical point, Dr. Ryder. You constantly hear married people say that the honeymoon was ruined by something unexpected, which in turn set a negative tone for the marriage. It looks like the board is lit up with callers wanting to talk to you.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Max Jarvis and we have Dr. Victor Ryder in studio for the next half hour, anxious to discuss his new book entitled, Living Together. A solution for the technological age. Hello, Phil.”

      Lacey brought the motor home to a shrieking halt. George hooted.

      “Sorry, but that man makes me so angry I missed the turnoff for Malad. We’ll have to backtrack to Garland.”

      For ‘The Voice’ to agree with some one-book-wonder marriage therapist on the subject of living together made Lacey’s blood boil. Especially someone like Victor Ryder. The name was all too familiar to Lacey and if he was a legitimate therapist she was Madonna! How could Max Jarvis be such a fool? Why didn’t he go back to California where he belonged?

      She had half a mind to call him and tell him just that. When she