The Man Who Came from Nowhere

"Well it took him a long time to quit laughing and then offered me a brother-in-law discount on a divorce but he finally said, 'yes, please make an honest woman out of her.'"

Denise growled, "There will blood on the floor when I see him next. Now, what are you going to do about that?"

"You are so impatient. We have the rest of our lives."

"That's too long; you have less than twenty-four hours."

Nick shook his head. "First things first. Right, Emmy?" She grinned and nodded. "Emma Nicholson, may I have your permission to ask this woman to marry me?"

Denise giggled but Emma put her hands on her hips and said, "I think that there are a couple of things we need to talk about first."

Denise squawked and said, "Emmy, I thought you were on my side."

"Oh yeah, he can marry you but we still have to resolve a couple of issues."

"Like what?"

"Like the guy that he is, he has two bedrooms but only one bed. Last night, I slept in the bed and he slept on the couch. I doubt seriously that you want me to sleep with the two of you. So, he will be taking me to the nearest hotel for the night."

Nick replied, "You will not be staying at the No Tell Motel for even one night. You are staying here."

Denise responded with, "She is not staying alone, dumbass. We will go to my house. I have four bedrooms and four beds. She can choose where she wants to stay after that. And by the way, after you get up the nerve to ask me to marry you, where are we going to live?"

'Well I certainly don't want to end a string of five generations living in that big house. So maybe we live there and let Emma live here while she is in college."

Denise looked at Emma and asked, "You are going to college near here? How wonderful."

"Mother pitched fit when I told her. She wanted me to go to an Ivy League school but I like the University near her. It is only a half hour drive and it has a great program for what I want to study."

"What is that?"

"After being through what I have been, I want to study psychology and figure life out."

All three of them laughed before they sat down to dinner. When they finished, Denise sat up suddenly. "I just thought of something. You said that your mother didn't like your choice of college; what about you coming here to stay with Nick and all of the other stuff?"

"I forgot and haven't even told daddy yet. Last weekend, grandpa called her in and told her that he had sold the company and that as soon as they sent someone down, she was out of a job. That made her mad and when she got home, she started making phone calls. On Thursday, she announced that we were moving to Europe so that she could marry her current boyfriend. I told her 'fine; I'm not going. I am staying here and going to college.' She said, 'fine, you can go live with your daddy.' I called Nick on Friday and said 'come get me; this is for good.' Like he said, he picked me up at noon on Saturday."

Denise replied, "That didn't upset you?"

"Not hardly. I met this guy once. He is a con man if I ever saw one. He says that he is Italian and has a villa in France. I doubt that because he doesn't look Italian, he grew up around here somewhere, and his last name is Blankenship."

Emma couldn't understand why both Nick and Denise were laughing so hard that they cried. When their laughter started to slow down, Emma asked what was so funny.

Denise looked at her and replied, "Honey, what goes 'round comes 'round."