A Crying Shame (81 page)

 

Badon slipped from the warm, loving, sleeping flesh of Linda and walked down the hall to answer the phone, pausing only to pull on twill trousers. He thought he knew who might be calling, and he smiled as the voice spoke to him, tersely, at best.

Seventy-two hours. If not completed by then, the second payment will not be made.

Good enough,” Badon said. He gave the voice the number of his bank in Geneva, then softly replaced the phone. He stood in the center of the room for a quiet moment, thinking.

Seventy-two hours was not nearly enough time, but he would make an effort.

Yes. Adding this money to the money he had saved over the years—some of it drawing interest in a bank in New Orleans—he would finally have enough to buy that winery out in California to retire from war. Not a large winery, but ample for his needs. A steady money-maker. Jon had been very careful over the years to have no criminal record. Of the four hits he had made for the U.S. Government, one had been a known Mafia don, two were drug dealers, and the fourth had been a war lord in Burma, up in the Golden Triangle, also a drug dealer and supplier.

Jon felt he might have to get a person with a clean record to front the complex for him, but that could be easily arranged.

But now there was the woman. Linda. Jon Badon had always taken women as he found them—casually—never allowing himself the luxury of falling in love. Hell, he'd never had the time. There had been two women toward whom he had felt a very strong attraction . . . that might have grown into something, but he had backed off, sensing he was not yet ready for that much permanency, and not wanting to cause the ladies any hurt.

But this woman, this Linda Breaux, with all her grace and charm and manners and breeding . . . he grinned, recalling her language when angered . . . beneath all of that was one hell of a sexual lady, with all the wants and needs of a woman that, Jon admitted, finally, and with much reluctance, could handle him. No, that was not entirely correct—that
he
would
allow
to handle him, to control him to some degree. This woman . . . she brought out some feeling from deep within him, some sense that he had been missing out on something very important that he had needed for most of his adult life. Something that every human being desires: the feeling of being wanted and needed and, he finally thought the word, loved.

He rudely shoved those gentle and loving thoughts from his mind and walked back down the darkened hall, pausing by Tammy's room. Linda was sleeping the deep sleep of the sexually exhausted. She had not even so much as moved when the phone rang. Jon pushed open the door and stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him.

A night light gave off its soft muted beam.

He walked to the bed and looked down: Tammy's eyes were open, staring up at him. Her gaze left his face, drifting down his bare chest, with its thick mat of hair, to linger at his crotch.
You and Lady Linda really got it on a couple of hours ago, didn't you?” she whispered.

Reasonably well.” He returned the whisper.
But my sexual activities, and with whom, are really none of your concern.”

She giggled softly.
I love the way you talk, man. So very, very proper. How much of a man are you, man?”

That depends entirely upon the person asking the question.”

She threw back the thin sheet that covered her, allowing Jon to gaze at her body, naked, all its valleys and secret pockets highlighted dimly by the night light and the faint glow that seeped through the curtains from the floodlit grounds.

She was a beautiful woman; Jon admitted that to himself. All woman. But brazen women turned him off; they always had. Tammy's breasts were lovely, rose-tipped, the nipples jutting upward in anticipation of what she thought he had come for. She was wrong. Her belly was smooth and unmarred, all soft and silky, tapering downward into a honey-colored valley of delights. She opened her thighs, inviting him to touch and savor the smoothness. When he did not, she rose to sit on the side of the bed; to touch his crotch. Her fingers traveled the soft length of him.

Nice,” she said in a low voice.
I kind of thought you'd have a nice screwing tool on you.”

Are you always so vulgar, Miss Gray?”

Sex is vulgar?”