Putting Josh Through the Wringer. . .as told by Freddy Franklin

Let’s get something out of the way from the get-go. I don’t believe in this blog junk. It’s like airing your laundry in public, if you know what I mean. But my daughter asked me to tell this, like she asked me if she could be a cop instead of a dancer, and then a bodyguard instead of a dancer. Okay, now she’s frowning at me like she’s got a right to be pissed but let me tell you, as her father I know what’s good for her. Of course, being how stubborn she is, she never seems to agree with me.

Take Mr. Naked Guy Josh Wyatt for example. From the get-go I did not like the bum. Who invites the paparazzi to photograph them while they’re taking a dip in the altogether? That’s just plain – wait a sec, now I’m getting a lecture from my daughter that Josh did NOT invite the paparazzi, he was blindsided by them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s rich enough to afford a pool right? Well then he’s rich enough to afford swim trunks. But that’s a whole other story.

My daughter wants me to share with all of you strangers that I don’t know and don’t want to know what Josh did to win me over before he asked her to marry him at the end of their story in Close to Perfect. Is she serious? Win me over? Bulldoze me is more like it. Threaten me is closer to the truth. Just a sec. She’s trying to take the keyboard away from me now so I can’t write this stuff I didn’t want to write to begin with. But now I’m on a roll so I’m going to finish. Josh just told her it’s okay, to let me say whatever the hell I want. While she’s glaring at him, I’ll get on with this.

As you’ll recall if you read my daughter’s and his story in Close to Perfect, they broke up near the end of it because he was being a real jerk. Thought he owned the world. Thought he could tell my little Tessie what to do. Yeah, right. Every time I read Chapter Sixteen I laugh at what she does to him to show him she’s no pushover. That’s my Tessie all right. But then comes the next chapters where she’s acting like it’s the end of the world. That was a real killer. But I’ve lived a long time and I know the score and I’m gonna tell all of you something that maybe you didn’t know – romance isn’t what you read in those supermarket books, and once you fall in love that’s not always a good thing. But try to tell that to my daughter or Josh.

A couple of days after she broke it off with him he came to see me at my house. Showed up while I was outside working on it; lucky for him I had just put my hammer down on the ground cause there’s no telling what I might have done with it otherwise. I did tell him the score though – that he was to stay away from my daughter. She’d made that very clear. You know what he said to that? He told me he was going to marry her and although he’d like my approval there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. He stood in my yard like he owned the damn thing and had the gall to tell me that. I told him he was a bum. He said I was wrong. He admitted only to being clueless sometimes when it came to women – what man wasn’t – but he had not tried to deliberately hurt Tess or piss her off. I told him it didn’t matter; my Tessie still didn’t want him. He said that she loved him and that I knew it and that’s why I was acting like I was.

He was making me real hot, you know.

But he wouldn’t back down. He told me we could talk about it again later. Yeah, like I wanted that. But the next day he shows up at my security business. And the day after that, he takes me out to lunch. And the day after that, he was fixing the broken slats on the fence around my house. Did a good job, but I still told him it’d be best if he’d just go away and hook up with one of those babes that was after him. After he finished hammering he looked at me and said ‘no, sir’; that he was in Tessie’s life and he was staying there as long as she wanted him and that it’d be easier on her if I just got used to the idea.

Was he nuts? The idea made me mad as hell, but I got to admit I do like the boy’s backbone. He doesn’t scare easily and when it comes to my daughter I could see that he really wanted her. . .the same as I wanted her mom. Not even a gun to my head would have kept me away from my Carlie. And I was beginning to see that not even my hammer in the middle of his head was going to make Josh stay away from my Tessie.

Not that it meant he had won me over. The next day while he and I were working on the plumbing in my house I told him that if he ever hurt her, if he ever made her cry that he was a dead man.

He told me he’d do his damndest to make her happy but being only human he’d probably make her cry at least once or twice without even trying or knowing how he did it, but that she’d certainly piss him off unknowingly or deliberately and that would even things out.

After I stopped laughing, I told him I wouldn’t stand in his way. He gave me a look that said I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

Like I told all of you before, he wouldn’t back down. He’s got balls, you know. He even got me to agree to help him with the way he surprised Tessie at the end of Close to Perfect.

So there you have it, what Tessie wanted me to tell you – how I put Josh through the wringer. Yeah, right. But I will tell you one thing. The hard part for them is only beginning. Take me and her mom for instance. Sure, we hit it off right away and our romance seemed as perfect as that rose picture my daughter put up with this blog, but it doesn't show you the thorns, does it? And that's the problem, because there were thorns since Carlie and me were from different worlds, just like Josh and Tessie are. And that made it real hard in the beginning, but we lived through it. And next time Tessie will be telling you about that, because that’s what kids do these days – air their personal laundry and mine with this blog junk.


(IMSI USA Image)

See more smoking hot couples at www.tinadonahue.com