The Man from Oakdale - Hardcover

Coleman, Henry

3.6

63 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416593608 ISBN 13: 9781416593607

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2009

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A tie-in to the daytime drama, As the World Turns, finds opportunist Henry Coleman searching for dowager Lucinda Walsh's missing granddaughter, who years earlier had kidnapped her infant half-brother to protect him from their manipulative father.

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About the Author:

Henry Coleman lives in Oakdale, Illinois. The Man from Oakdale is his debut novel. He has previously worked as a nanny, a private investigator, a television station manager, and a limousine driver. He is most definitely not married.

Alina Adams is Creative Content Producer for As The World Turns and Guiding Light. She is also the author of The Figure Skating Mystery series of books.

Two years later

"It's official." Henry Coleman slammed his Al's Diner reservations book down on the counter. "Oakdale, Illinois, is the most fertile place on earth."

"Only if you are not married," Vienna Hyatt replied blithely. She flitted between the diner's dozen tables, sliding colorfully laminated menus onto every place setting in preparation for their usual dinner rush. In her distinctive Swedish-mangled English, she added, "I have been studying this interesting verity for many months now. I believe I have discovered the secret to Oakdale's baby boom. It only comes into effect if you are single. Very few married people here produce children. Have you also noticed this oddity?"

"Hmmm..." Henry opened the reservations book and ran his finger down the list of private kids' parties Al's Diner had hosted over the past few months. "Sage Snyder... Parker Snyder... Daniel Hughes... Liberty Ciccone... Nope, not a legitimate kid in the bunch."

Vienna had to reach across Henry, who was sitting at the counter, to file away her remaining menus. She didn't have to do it in such a way that first her breasts, then her hips, and, finally, the ends of her flowing ebony hair swished provocatively across his lap, but what fun would it have been otherwise?

"Am I supposed to be listening to anything you say while you do that?" Henry asked. Henry was an average-looking thirtysomething man of above-average height and below-average earning potential. He had ordinary brown hair, jug ears, chipmunk cheeks, and a smile that stretched from sideburn to sideburn. His girlfriend, on the other hand, boasted a face Plato would have described as "the golden proportion" -- a nose no longer than the distance between the eyes, a small jaw, large eyes, and defined cheekbones. It was one that contained what modern-day scientists call "proportional physical symmetry." Not to mention one that men responded to by first staring, then stuttering, then attempting a strangled grunt, and finally blushing and running away in terror. As a result, Henry very rarely managed to actually listen to what Vienna was saying.

He tried his best, he really did. He loved Vienna so much that he even found her sometimes-incomprehensible accent charming. He genuinely wanted to hear what she had to say. But looking at her frequently proved too distracting. And, in this particular instance, her practically lying across his lap didn't help.

She turned around, resting the edge of her equally perfectly proportioned and symmetrical rear end against his thighs. That didn't help much either.

"And you know what other interesting fact I have also noticed?" Vienna asked as she kissed Henry on the forehead. She kissed the bridge of his nose. She kissed his eyelid and his ear and the very tender square of flesh where jawbone meets neck. He definitely liked the direction this was heading in.

"Do tell."

"You and I, Henry. We are single."

"You betcha. Single, footloose, fancy-free, fit as a fiddle and ready for..." Henry was trying to figure out a way to suavely maneuver himself and Vienna onto the counter without violating the Health Department's regulations against, well, having sex on counters, when Vienna's words finally penetrated his lust-addled brain.

"Hey! What's the big idea?" he exclaimed.

Vienna plopped awkwardly down on the counter. Henry did her one better in the slapstick department and actually slipped, hitting the floor with an ego-crushing thump. But he was up in seconds, eager to demonstrate that he had figured out what Vienna was up to.

"You're talking about us two Oakdale-dwelling single people having a baby. I thought we'd settled that."

"You settled it by buying me a puppy."

"Exactly. Pepper was for you to practice on. How did you like the helpless neediness, the constant 'accidents,' the all-night whining for your undivided attention?"

"That was you."

"Exactly." Henry had been shooting for droll. He'd have settled for amusing. Vienna did not look amused. He changed tactics to remind her, "You aren't even sure if you really want a baby. You're just reacting to the avalanche of babies all around us. It's peer pressure, that's what it is. A passing fancy. Like that entire first quarter of your life when you thought gorgeous locales, fabulous jewels, glittering parties, nonstop champagne, and strapping, wealthy men were the key to making you happy. Before you realized it was, in fact, a modest, heavily mortgaged diner in the charming American Midwest, complete with a debonair, though perhaps a touch less than strapping and a whole lot less than wealthy, chap."

"So you are saying that our love is also what you call a passing fancy?"

"No! What passing? No passing! Interception!"

Vienna stomped her foot. "You are trying to confuse me with your baseballing terms."

"What? Baseball? No, it's -- never mind. Forget about my baseballing terms. You and I are the real thing. We're long-term."

"As in marriage?"

"As in long-term investments. Special. Fixed. Secured. A careful accumulation of only the most valuable properties to be nurtured and pampered throughout the course of a lifetime to insure ultimate, maximum payoff."

Henry figured he was safe focusing on money, Vienna's second favorite topic, as a way to keep them off her first favorite topic -- marriage. Over the past year, Vienna had taken to channeling her frustrations over their lack of wedded bliss by doggedly trying to push all their friends into the bonds of matrimony. Which was fine with Henry. He liked to think of said friends as helpfully taking the bullet actually meant for him.

"If you do not take better care of those investments," Vienna said with a pout, "you might soon find yourself out on your precious, special, secured assets."

Henry wondered if that was a deliberate joke or an English-mangling malapropism. It was so hard to tell with Vienna, but either way, Henry had a feeling he was getting his assets handed to him in a sling.

"Admit it," he challenged. "You're not so sure about this parenthood thing yourself. You love our life the way it is. A baby would change everything."

Vienna hesitated.

Henry smiled. According to his favorite writer, nineteenth-century Irish wit Oscar Wilde, "She who hesitates is won." Would the man who also said that "one's real life is often the life which one does not lead" steer Henry down the wrong path?

"So it's settled," Henry barreled on, afraid to discover that what he discerned to be Vienna's hesitation was merely her pausing to refill her lungs so that she might unleash a torrent of fresh persuasion in his direction. "I don't want to hear another word about children," he said firmly.

The bell over the diner's front door jingled merrily. Probably just as well that they'd been forced to put their amorous activities on hold, Henry thought. One never knew when the Health Department might unexpectedly drop by.

Lucinda Walsh entered the diner in all of her dowager, stiff-haired, well-heeled glory. She wore a floor-length fox fur and made a point of carefully lifting the hem so that it just brushed the middle of her knee-high, black suede boots, and not the diner's recently swept, but obviously not very well, plebeian floor. At sixty-plus years old, Lucinda carried herself with the expected self-confidence of a woman who'd made her money the old-fashioned way -- she'd married it. Then she'd waited for her elderly husband to die so she could drive his multimillion-dollar company to even greater, billion-dollar heights.

Lucinda looked critically from Henry to Vienna and back again. She said, "I need to speak with you about children."

"Craig Montgomery is a rotting, oozing pustule on the flesh of society," Lucinda announced.

"Guess we won't be naming a sandwich after him then," Henry muttered.

Thanks to Lucinda's colorful description, Henry felt a bit queasy as he handed her a menu. She, however, slid grandly into the nearest booth, accepted the menu, and skimmed it briefly before archly raising an eyebrow. "No wine list?"

"Our sommelier is in the Republic of Armenia this week for the annual master conference. Naturally," Vienna replied without missing a beat.

Lucinda raised her eyes to peer challengingly at Vienna. The younger woman met her gaze calmly and held it for a long beat. With the hint of a smile, Lucinda returned her menu to Vienna. "Naturally," she agreed.

"You were saying something about Craig Montgomery oozing and rotting," Henry prompted, less interested in what Lucinda ultimately had to say than he was in moving the conversation along before more customers arrived. Henry suspected that Lucinda's choice of words wouldn't precisely complement their special of the day.

"And those are his good qualities," Lucinda snarled.

"Agreed. But Craig hasn't bothered anyone in Oakdale since he went on the run for bombing Paul Ryan's car."

"Disagreed!" Lucinda bellowed. She did have a most remarkable bellow. Not unlike a mountain lion protecting her cubs. While performing a speech by Lady Macbeth. For the hard of hearing.

"She disagrees," Henry translated helpfully for Vienna's benefit. English wasn't her first language, after all. Vienna nodded, either mesmerized or petrified.

"Craig is still tormenting a great many people in Oakdale, due to his relentless hunt for my poor granddaughter Lucy," Lucinda said. "His machinations with Johnny and the attempt to turn Paul into charcoal briquettes was only the most recent in his long, long, long list of criminal acts. Honestly, I don't know what my daughter, Sierra, ever saw in that man. Or what I ever did, for that matter."

Vienna blanched. "You and your daughter's husband -- "

"Don't be vulgar, dear. It was before he was my daughter's husband."

Seeing that Lucinda didn't want to linger on the subject of her long-ago romance with Craig and that she was also less than pleased with Vienna's implied question, Henry hurried to redirect the conversation away from Lucinda's checkered past and back to Craig's. "Craig and Paul were also once in love with the same woman," he explained. "Meg Snyder loved Paul but she married Craig, th...

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