Whatever It Takes (21 page)

Read Whatever It Takes Online

Authors: Gwynne Forster

“I'm sorry, Kellie. I'm not planning to run a bordello. I'm opening a marketing consultancy, and I'm unaware of your professional marketing skills.”
She could feel the anger starting to boil in the pit of her stomach. “How can you say that to me?”
“How can you suggest that I'm unattractive to men? Let me tell you something. You don't want to help me succeed with my business. You'll do everything you can to ruin it and me.”
“You don't mean that.”
“Yes, I do, Kellie. You have always wanted everything I had and you've taken it. The minute you get your hands on what you've been craving, you attempt to destroy it, and you have succeeded in doing that so many times, while I cried. You've destroyed my toys, books, clothes, and you've even taken my friends. I will never forget your taking my date to the high school senior prom. A week later, you refused to speak to him. Oh, no. This is mine, and you are not going to destroy it. You are my sister and I love you, but I have finally accepted that you don't know what love is or what it means. I have a lot to do, Kellie, so I have to go now.”
Kellie looked at the receiver, unwilling to believe that little meek Lacette had hung up on her. “She will live to regret it,” Kellie fumed. “I didn't destroy anything of hers that she didn't give me, and as for that pimply boy who took me to the prom, she didn't lose much. Oh, yes. She will regret this.”
Chapter Eight
“Hi, Daddy,” Lacette said in response to her father's call. “You won't believe the proposition Kellie put to me this morning. I'm still in shock. It wasn't so much what she wanted as the way in which she justified it.”
“As long as you said no. That's what matters. She mentioned it to me, and I told her she was up to no good. Don't let her into your business in any capacity. She has a job, and if she'd take that one seriously, she'd get ahead. Anybody who can't get promoted working for a government agency isn't trying.”
It relieved her beyond words to know she had her father's support, for she would never hire her sister in any capacity. “When are you coming to see my house? It's a mess right now, but the part I've straightened up is attractive.”
“I'm sure it is. How about sometime this weekend? I can see your house and your office space, too.”
“Come over Saturday morning, and I'll fix you some breakfast.”
“Thanks. I'll be over about nine. I can't wait much longer than that for my breakfast.”
She hung up and telephoned Lourdes, the Ladino woman who worked at the Belle Époque across from her booth and with whom she had developed good relations.
“Lourdes,” she said when the woman answered the phone. “I hope to open my business a week from Monday, and I'm looking for a combination secretary/receptionist. If you're interested or if you know a good person who is, please let me know.”
“I don't have a contract or any fringe benefits, because I'm substituting for a woman who went on maternity leave and hasn't come back to work yet. I don't think she's coming back, and the management is taking advantage of me. What're you offering?”
“Thirty-five thousand, health insurance, two weeks annual leave and three weeks of sick leave with a doctor's certificate.”
“When do I start?”
“Monday after next, same day as I start. Thank you, Lourdes. It's a load off my mind.”
She called Lawrence Bradley, gave him the terms and asked him to draw up a contract for Lourdes. “Make it for two years,” she said, with provisions for renewable if we're both satisfied.
“I'd start with one year. When is Reverend Graham planning to move into his house?”
“He hasn't said.”
“Oh, well. I suppose that will take care of itself. You ready for opening day?”
“I've furnished it, and I've taken out ads in all of the local papers. I'm due for an appearance on the Liseann TV show Thursday. It's pulling together.”
“You'll be fine. I'll get to work on this contract at once.”
She hung up, and the phone rang immediately. “This is Douglas Rawlins. Need any help over there this evening?”
She wasn't sure whether he was asking for a date or staying on the safe side. “Not that I can think of.” She could be as cagy as the next person. “What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner someplace. I'll be working till around seven o'clock. The owners of that mansion on College Avenue near Frost want me to prune their fruit trees. I want to get started after I leave the hotel. And your father engaged me to landscape the property surrounding his house. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“No indeed. I'm learning about it as we speak.”
“That makes me feel a lot better about the job. Believe me.”
They talked for a few minutes about inconsequential matters and agreed that he would be at her home that evening at seven.
While Lacette's life seemed increasingly richer and more fulfilling, Kellie continued to flounder. She hadn't been desperate to work with Lacette, certainly not as an underling, for she considered herself superior to her sister in every way. Still, she had asked, and the rejection hurt as badly as if she'd counted on a position with Lacette's firm. But not getting the promotion at her job and having to work under Mabel devastated her. She looked for a way to prove herself and her worth, but found none. Desperate, she telephoned Lawrence Bradley.
“I called to apologize, Lawrence. I was way out of line in asking you to do something unethical. I can't believe I suggested that you get that brooch for me. As far as I know, Lacette still hasn't received it, but I'm resigned. It's hers and she can have it.”
“What a surprise, Kellie! There's no need for an apology, because I wasn't offended. I must say it served to get my head screwed back on properly. About the brooch. I understand you violated the court order and broke into the house trying to find it. The police asked if I wanted to prosecute you, and I said only if you do it again. Nice talking with you.”
The bastard! She hated him. He hadn't given her a chance to make her pitch. All right. He wasn't the only man in Frederick. He might have it on Hal in looks, money, and finesse, but in the bed—where it counted—he was a nincompoop compared to Hal. One day, she'd laugh in his face.
She didn't go to her father's house after work that day, because Hal had begun to flex his muscles with her, and she wanted him to be grateful for what she gave him. That was becoming more difficult, she knew, because she had developed an itch that he was an expert at calming, and no other man had ever done that. If he knew it, he would be unmanageable, and she meant to use him only until she found a man who suited her socially as well as physically.
“I thought you'd be dropping by today,” the voice on the other end of the wire said when she answered the telephone. “What's with you? Don't tell me you sneaked in here again and found what you been looking for.”
She swallowed the liquid that accumulated in her mouth, sat down in the chair beside the telephone table and crossed her legs. “Where're you? I told you not to call here so much. Suppose my mother had answered the phone.”
“I'm at your daddy's house. I'm finishing up today and tomorrow, so if you still want to look around, you'd better hightail it over here right now. My boss will be here tomorrow checking out the place. You can't come tomorrow.”
“I'd planned to—”
“I don't care what you planned. Uh . . . look, babe. Remember I promised you something special the other night, but I couldn't do that in the front seat of the van. Come on over here.” His tone became pleading. “I'll make it real good for you.”
“I need to check out the dining room and the kitchen.”
“Okay. You can do anything you want to. Just come on over here.”
Thinking that she had him where she wanted him, needy and at her mercy, she said, “Okay, but I'm going to look around first this time.”
“Sure, babe. I'll do anything you want.”
He opened the front door before she touched the bell. “Come on in here,” he said, picked her up and raced up the stairs.
“You said I could look around first,” she said, punching him in the chest with her fist.
“That was before I saw you.” He set her on her feet, yanked her sweater over her head and began his assault on her senses. Within minutes, her moans banished the silence that had been their environment and, once more, she was his willing victim. He stripped off her clothing, laid her down and pulled her hips to the edge of the foot of the bed, where he steeled himself on his knees, braced her open thighs against his shoulders, parted her folds and devoured her with his tongue and lips. She tried not to think of old man Moody and how he did the same thing to her when she was fourteen but never brought her to climax. But as Hal invaded her thoughts and her senses as he did her body, she thought of every man she'd ever twisted beneath and cursed them all for not having given her the feeling of completion that Hal gave her. For if any of them had, he would not at that moment be drawing her into his prison the way a spider traps a fly.
He pressed his tongue into her, and she thought she would die from the pleasure of it.
“Finish it,” she screamed. “I'm dying. Oh, Lord, if I could just burst wide open.”
He ignored her pleas as she bucked and writhed, only increased the rhythm and force of his twirling and sucking. When at last she could explode with relief, he climbed atop her body, filled her and spent himself. Then he looked down at her.
“You gonna be giving me a lot of trouble after this? Are you?” he asked her.
She wanted to ask him how he got the temerity, but not a sound came from her open mouth. “I want to go downstairs and look around,” she said after a few minutes.
“Sure. Help yourself. You got twenty minutes, then we're leaving.”
“Suppose I decide to stay.”
“When I say we're leaving,” he sneered, “we're leaving. And I don't just mean now.”
She dressed and walked down the stairs, mentally measuring every movement of her feet until she reached the bottom. It hurt. She couldn't remember when anything had hurt so badly. And the worst of it was that if he hadn't phoned her, she would have gone there anyway—though she'd sworn she wouldn't—as much to feel him pounding into her as to look for the brooch. The pain of it streaked through every muscle, sinew, joint, and bone of her body. However, undaunted, she wiped her tear-stained face with the bottom of her sweater, opened the bottom drawer of the hutch and began searching. That brooch was somewhere in the house, and she meant to find it no matter what it cost her. In less than fifteen minutes, she heard his brogan-shod feet lumbering down the stairs. She didn't bother to remind him that he promised her twenty minutes, but merely closed the door of the cabinet she'd been searching and walked to where he stood in the foyer. Waiting.
“Now you're showing some sense,” he said, opened the door and walked out, leaving her to close it. She also noticed that he didn't open the passenger door of the van for her as he usually did, but left her to the task. She got in and slammed the door with all the strength she could muster.
He glanced at her as he pulled away from the curb. “Seems like you got some money you don't need. Break my door, and you'll pay for it . . . after I whack your ass till you can't sit on it, that is.”
After I get that brooch, he won't know what country I'm in. He's not going to bully me and talk to me as if I'm as low class as he is.
“What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“I have no intention of getting into an argument with you. You want a fight, and I don't fight with people.”
“Listen to Miss High and Mighty. Just make sure you don't break my door.” He drove up to the church and was about to park, but drove off when he saw two women standing there talking. “I'll have to let you out a block away.” He stopped, and she opened the door and got out without speaking. “So long, lover,” he called to her as he drove off.
She didn't know how she managed to walk those two blocks. Luckily, her mother wasn't at home. She climbed the stairs, showered and went to bed wishing that she had never seen him
.
 
 
The following Saturday morning, Nan drove to the farmers' market on North Market street to buy her weekly produce and to select fresh fruit for the preserves she made. “What you doing here?” she asked a man who was a member of her church. “I thought you were working on Marshall's house.”
“I finished that. You know there ain't much work installing windows these days. Nobody's building, so I work at whatever I can get. Have to make a living, you know.” She picked up a peach and smelled it.
“Them peaches is a waste of money. Not a bit of taste, but some fine raspberries just come in here from Chile. Say, what's you niece's reason for wanting to get into her daddy's house, and how come she can't just ask Reverend Graham for the key?”
Her antenna shot up, and she rested the basket of fruit she had selected on the ground. “Which one of my nieces you talking about?” she asked, though she had no doubt that he referred to Kellie.

Other books

This Is Your Life by Susie Martyn
The Mighty Quinns: Ronan by Kate Hoffmann
Skeletons in the Closet by Terry Towers
Witches by Stern, Phil
Eria's Ménage by Alice Gaines
Love Like Hate by Linh Dinh
Unscrupulous by Avery Aster