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Authors: Bettye Griffin

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BOOK: Nothing But Trouble
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Chapter 16
D
ana closed her eyes. Her breath escaped from her lips in low moans that escalated as her climax intensified. She had almost forgotten how just plain good sex could be.
Sean rolled off her onto his back, and Dana sneaked a peek at the shriveled, liquid-filled condom on his now-limp penis. It had been years since she'd seen one.
“Umph, umph, umph,” Sean said as he slowly raised to a sitting position. “You can give me a heart attack.”
“Oh, no, not the first time out. The third, maybe.”
“The third? Sounds like you've got real serious plans for me tonight.”
Dana feigned hurt feelings. “Aren't you interested?”
He removed the used prophylactic, tossed it into the trash, and quickly turned to take her in his arms, nuzzling hungrily on her neck. “You know I am. Did I make you happy?”
She snuggled comfortably in his embrace. “Extremely.”
“Good. We'll wait a few minutes, give me a chance to catch my breath, and then I'll give you some more, uh, happiness.” He chuckled. “Can we take our time, or do you have to be home by a certain hour?”
“No. Brittany is spending the night with a friend.”
His moved his large hand up and down her body. “Great. So we've got the whole night.”
Norell shifted uncomfortably in her chair. This new dermatology account—the first CDN had garnered through its advertising—made her fidgety. Visit after visit about teenagers with acne, adults with rosacea, and youngsters with diseases like impetigo and scabies had her wanting to scratch herself all over, and for hours afterward she felt imaginary beings crawling up her skin.
Transcribing consecutive similar cases made Norell miss the days of multispecialty hospital work, but she couldn't argue with success. CDN was doing great. This week alone they'd had two more inquiries from medical practices. She and Dana were scheduled to meet with representatives from both of them next week.
For some reason Norell felt especially energized this evening. She worked until ten-thirty
P.M.
, which coupled with her work earlier in the day, was enough to complete all the dictation for that client. The work wasn't due back until Tuesday. The client would be pleased, and so would Dana and Cécile. Several of their contractors had left the CDN roster altogether, while others had cut down on their hours. CDN paid competitive rates and more frequently than their competitors, but some of the women cited the need for health benefits due to marital breakups or spousal layoffs. Others had forgotten to pay their quarterly self-employment taxes, were now in hot water with the IRS, and had decided to work as employees so taxes would automatically be deducted from their earnings. It had been difficult to find qualified replacements, and the workload for the three partners had gotten heavier, particularly for her, since Dana and Cécile both had other jobs.
They've got families, too.
Norell pushed that thought out of her head. How long, she wondered, would it be before this terrible longing for a child of her own went away? Would she still hurt like this a year from now? In five years? Ten?
As she straightened up her desk she wondered what Dana was doing right about now. Dana had said Sean would pick her up for dinner at seven-thirty, three hours ago. They'd certainly had plenty of time to eat by now. Dana had named the restaurant where they would be dining, and Norell knew it was conveniently located in the lobby of a downtown hotel. Dana seemed especially excited about tonight, and since she'd been dating Sean for weeks it could only be for one reason. Norell fervently hoped Dana would sleep with him once or twice and then drop him, but she was afraid that once Dana had a sample she wouldn't want to let go. She feared her friend would be hurt in the end.
“Hey Norell, it's after ten. How long you gonna be?” Vic called from downstairs.
“I'm just finishing up,” she called back. She sighed quietly. Vic hadn't bothered to disguise an annoyed tone. He clearly resented the time she devoted to CDN. Norell didn't understand what the big deal was. She'd asked if he wanted to go out, maybe bowling or something, since Jessica and Amber were here this weekend. He said no, suggesting they stay in and order pizza and rent a movie. The girls picked some sci-fi movie, a genre Norell hated. After eating her pizza, she'd excused herself and gone up to her office. She could hear Vic and the girls reacting to the film. Obviously they were having a good time, but she simply couldn't get interested in the movie, and Lord knew she had plenty of work to do.
She descended the stairs. “How was the movie?” she asked cheerfully.
“It was good. How was work?”
“Fulfilling.”
“Oh Norell, you work too hard,” Jessica said.
“Working hard is a given when you run a business. Look how hard your father works.” She wished she could tell them how Vic had jumped through hoops just a few days ago to obtain a fifty-thousand-dollar cash bond for a client who'd been busted for operating a meth lab. It was rare for Vic to land what he considered a dream client, the type who kept hundreds of thousands in the bank as a general rule so that he could always pay ten percent of quarter- and half-million-dollar bonds. Vic ran around like crazy that day and didn't even get home until he'd gotten his client released at 10:00
P.M.
, and he fell into bed and was snoring within minutes. But let her try to operate a business of her own, and she got accused of neglecting him. She knew what he would say if she brought up his drug-dealing client: “I made fifty grand that day, Norell. You won't make that much in a year, at least not your first year.” So she just kept quiet.
“Norell, you gonna clean up in here?” Vic asked.
She glanced around at the drinking glasses dripping onto coasters on the coffee table, the greasy plates holding remnants of half-eaten pizza crusts, and the dining room table, with its pizza boxes, no doubt with big grease stains on the bottoms. “No,” she calmly replied. “I think we can entrust that to Jessica and Amber.”
“Oh, maaaaan,” Amber moaned.
“Don't forget to wipe the table good,” Norell said, unfazed. “Good night.”
 
 
Norell, brushing her hair in front of her vanity, looked up as Vic entered their bedroom and closed the door behind him. “Norell, what's wrong with you?”
“Nothing's wrong with me,” she said, calmly moving the brush to the hair growing from the nape of her neck. “I just don't like being treated like I'm the maid.”
“I've never treated you like a maid.”
“You waited for me to come downstairs so you could ask me to clean up the mess you and the girls made. What would you call it?” When Vic hesitated she rushed on. “When they're home with their mother, I'm not around to clean up after them.”
“All four of us ate, Norell.”
“Yes, all of us did. But I think it's very inconsiderate of you to ask me to clean up, especially when you know I'd been working.”
He took a few steps toward her, having recovered from being caught off guard moments before. “Before you started this company you wouldn't have been upstairs working. You would have been sitting in the room with us, even if you were just reading a book.”
Norell lowered the brush and stared at him incredulously. “Is
that
what all this is about? You think I'm spending too much time working? Vic, that's not fair. You know CDN is short handed. If we don't deliver the work on time we have to adjust the billing for being late. Having your own business means long hours. You, of all people, should know that. And I didn't go into this venture so it could fail.” Her eyes searched his face anxiously. The last thing she wanted was for CDN to come between them.
“Vic?” she prompted.
“Yeah. You coming to bed?”
Two hours later Norell lay on her back, staring at the rapid circling of the ceiling fan. Vic lay beside her, stretched out on his stomach in the large king-size bed, his snores and the gentle whirring of the fan the only sounds in the room. The sex had been exciting and fulfilling as ever, but the moment it was over the tension returned, hanging between them like a steel curtain.
Norell felt Vic was behaving like a petulant child. He, more than anyone, knew her fears. Hadn't he said that CDN would be good therapy for her? First he wanted her to go into business, then the moment it became a little inconvenient for him, he pouted.
At last her eyelids became heavy.
One thing is for sure
, she thought as sleep overtook her,
I'm in business to stay
.
Vic better get used to it
.
Chapter 17
D
ana found her reintroduction to sex after a yearlong absence thrilling. Over the next week she and Sean met as often as they could. Sean, who had moved in with his mother after his marital breakup, rented a room in a motel on Phillips Highway—the old U.S. 1—Tuesday after work, which allowed Dana to get home to Brittany by seven-thirty. While Dana enjoyed the illicit nature of their rendezvous, she didn't care for the shabby surroundings. When she hesitantly shared her feelings with him, he suggested, “What about your place?”
“Of course not! My daughter is there!”
“I'm talking about when she's in school. I can take a longer lunch hour.”
Dana thought about it and decided it was better to be with Sean in her own bed than at that awful motel, where the sheets were clean but the carpet was so filthy she didn't even want to walk barefoot on it.
Sean came over on Thursday for an hour of bliss. “Can you get away on Saturday?” he asked. “Let's go out for some dinner, and then get a room. Someplace nice.”
Dana immediately brightened. There'd been just one blight on her rapturous mood, something she tried not to think about but found herself lingering on in spite of her best efforts. Sean's suggestion made her think that maybe she'd just imagined it after all. “I should be able to get away, but not for the whole night. The latest my babysitter works is midnight.”
 
 
Dana and Sean kissed in his Eclipse still parked in front of her house like two teenagers who didn't want the evening to come to an end. But it was ten minutes to twelve, and she had to get Tina home by midnight or else risk losing her babysitting services.
“I had a wonderful time,” she said shyly. They'd had a quick, informal dinner at The Loop in San Marco, then gotten a room at the Radisson Riverwalk.
“Me, too. What're you doing tomorrow?”
“Maybe going to the beach.” Actually, Dana had definite plans to bring Brittany and Cécile's three older girls to the beach, but Sean didn't have to know that.
“Good idea. It's supposed to go up to ninety-four degrees tomorrow. Which beach do you go to?”
“Jax.”
“All right. I'll catch up with you sometime before the day is over.”
Dana went stiff. That sounded awfully final. Wasn't he going to walk her to the door?
She hesitated a moment before realizing Sean wasn't making any move to get out of the car. She considered saying something playful to remind him of his manners, but couldn't come up with anything that didn't sound like a rebuke. Still, it bothered her. She'd noticed little changes in his behavior ever since last Saturday, the first time they'd slept together. Did he feel that since they'd been intimate those little courtesies were no longer necessary?
“Good night,” she said, opening the door.
She could hear the car's motor running in the stillness of the night. At least he didn't drive off the minute she got out. At her door she turned and waved before going inside. Only then did he put on the car's lights and pull away from the curb.
She wondered if he was going back to the hotel. She didn't remember him turning in his key. It was still early. He probably had something like eleven hours before he had to be out, so it probably did make sense for him to get his money's worth.
 
 
Dana rested the heavy Igloo cooler on the sand. It held a dozen cans of soda. “All right,” she said to the four children, who had thrown down the items they were assigned to carry and were already stripping to their swimsuits. “I want everybody to put on some sunscreen before going in the water. No one goes out past chest level. You guys are used to swimming in the pool. The beach is different because of the waves; you can't really swim here. Keep an eye on where you are. The currents will push you down the beach. Just remember the lifeguard should be straight ahead. And, most important, I want you to stay together. Brittany and Josie, you two are the oldest. Watch out for Monet and Gaby, okay?”
“All right, Miss Dana,” Josie Belarge said easily.
“Would you look out for Vanessa, Mommy?” Brittany asked.
Dana glanced around at the dense crowd. “Yes, but there's still an awful lot of people out here. I don't know how you expect to find her.”
“She said this is the part of the beach where her father always takes them.”
Dana, not sharing her daughter's optimism, merely shrugged. In an instant all four of the kids were running toward the water, leaving her alone. She set up her beach chair and its matching umbrella, then straightened up the old, faded quilt that lay on the sand. She even folded the towels the kids had thrown down so carelessly.
Next she fiddled with the portable radio, changing it from the hip-hop station Brittany always listened to to something easier on her ears. Then she had nothing else left to do, and she knew she could no longer put off what she dreaded.
The swimsuit Dana wore beneath her T-shirt and shorts was a far cry from the skimpy bikinis she had worn at eighteen or twenty—the sarong skirt and modestly scooped front and back necklines covered her as much as a tank top and shorts would. The simple act of undressing in public made her uncomfortable. She knew it was silly, but she imagined that the eyes of everyone in the vicinity were glued to her.
She pulled off her shorts with one quick yank, managing to simultaneously lower herself into her low-slung beach chair without losing her balance. The shirt came off after she sat back down. Dana put on her sunglasses, and in the act of reaching for her sunblock she glanced around to see if anyone was watching her. No one seemed particularly interested. Now she felt silly for being so self-conscious.
Dana enjoyed coming to the beach, a twenty-five-minute drive from her home. She didn't come very often only because she had a pool. Still, nothing compared to the salty smell of the ocean and the soothing sound of the surf rushing in. So what if the car was so full of sand by the time they got home that it had to be vacuumed, in spite of everyone rinsing with the hose at the beach exit? And so what if they had to do a thorough rinse with the pool hose once they got home to keep the ever-present white dirt from making its way into the house?
She applied sunblock and put on her straw hat for added protection, then popped open a can of no-name lemon-lime soda—Brittany called it “fake Sprite”—and opened the paperback she was reading. She had plenty of time to get in the water with the kids. For now she was going to chill.
It pleased her to notice several admiring glances thrown her way as she sat and read her book and sipped her soda, her knees raised and her ankles crossed in ladylike fashion. She rested a hand over her calf and absently stroked the unfamiliar smoothness of her leg. She felt so attractive, so feminine, a simple feeling she hadn't experienced in months. The transitory glances from strangers were only a small contributor to her gratification. Most of it came from the way Sean made her feel last night. Just thinking about it made her toes curl and sent a little shiver through her upper body.
She wondered what he was doing right now. He'd said he would call her, and the female in her hoped he called before she arrived home. She didn't want to give him the impression that she never left the house. Then again, she'd mentioned the possibility of going to the beach, so she might not hear from him until this evening, when he could be fairly certain she'd be home.
She leaned back to get an unobstructed view of the shoreline. She rather liked Neptune Beach, a little further north. Although crowded, it didn't have the wall-to-wall people found at Jax Beach, nor did it have the loud music and sometimes raucous behavior found at its neighbor to the south, which had more bars in its vicinity. She'd probably come to this section from now on.
It was easy to keep an eye on the children. All four girls wore bathing caps, which made them stand out among the swimmers. Brittany never objected to wearing the cap when she swam at home, but she usually balked at wearing it in public, insisting that no one wore bathing caps anymore. Fortunately, Cécile was just as adamant about protecting her daughters' hair from the elements as Dana was about Brittany's, and seeing that the Belarge sisters and Monet Rivers wore caps kept Brittany from whining.
The four girls were far from the only black females on the beach wearing bathing caps, and in Dana's opinion the Olympic-style caps they wore were far more becoming than the old-fashioned type with chin straps the others wore. Long hair was the trend nowadays, which was probably why Brittany, unlike Dana at that age, had never asked to cut her hair. It reached to her shoulder blades, and she usually wore it in a ponytail. The caps fit snugly on the sides, but there was enough room in the back to accommodate all but the longest and thickest heads of hair.
After an hour and a half in the water, the children returned, their appetites whetted by the salt air. Sandwiches, potato chips, pickles, and cookies were consumed, and sodas were gulped down, followed by an hour's worth of sand sculpting. When they went back into the water, Dana went with them.
She loved the surf, but not as much as the youngsters. “I'm going to dry off,” she told them after about forty-five minutes.
Back in her chair, she peeled off her bathing cap and combed the flatness out of her hair. She could feel the sand inside her suit where it had landed after standing up against repeated waves, and she suddenly wished she could take a shower right here and now. She'd give the kids another half hour, and then that would be it. She couldn't stand feeling the scratchy sand all over herself, and didn't know how the kids dealt with it. She likened it to toddlers running around happily with a load in their diapers, but of course it had been many years since any of them were toddlers.
She indulged in some people-watching instead of returning to her book. There were plenty of size-four bikini-clad blond types lying on blankets soaking up sun, some on their stomachs with their tops untied to avoid those pesky tan lines. The over-thirty-five set was generally, like Dana, more covered up, at least the females. Men, on the other hand, didn't seem to care if the world saw their beer bellies hanging awkwardly over the front of their trunks.
Then there was the woman who was with a large group, including several children. Perhaps she didn't have a bathing suit, or maybe it had become too small, since the sister was plump. At any rate, she was swimming in a pair of dark shorts and a white heavy cotton T-shirt, which in its wet state stuck to her firm breasts like a second skin. It wasn't as bad as those lightweight fabric shirts, where every bump of the areolae were outlined, but it nevertheless left little to the imagination. The woman didn't seem to care about her revealing silhouette as she frolicked in the surf. Dana rolled her eyes, thinking that it truly did take all kinds of people to make a world.
The black couple a few yards to the right was a stark contrast to the wet T-shirt. They looked like they belonged in an ad for cigarettes or beer. The woman was light skinned with a short brown ponytail, wearing an orange maillot cut dangerously low in the back. Dana couldn't see the man too well; he seemed to delight in going underwater and pulling the woman down on top of himself. He wore goggles—not a bad idea, considering how salty the water was.
When Dana tired of looking at the other beachgoers she knew it was time to go home. She stood up and tried to catch the kids' attention by waving to them, but their backs were to her. She walked down toward them, her feet and ankles getting wet as the tide rushed in. “It's time to go,” she called when she had their attention.
She waited for them to come out of the water, then brought up the rear. As she turned she saw the couple from down the beach, who had been pushed by the tide closer to where she stood. The man removed his goggles, letting them dangle around his neck from a rubber strap.
Good Lord, it was Sean!
Dana turned her head quickly. He hadn't seen her, and she didn't want him to. Less than twelve hours ago they had been wrapped in each other's arms, and now he was with another woman? Was this his wife? Someone else? What was going on with him, anyway?
She rushed back to the blanket, careful to keep her back to the ocean. “All right, let's pack up and get out of here. Everybody, get your stuff and carry the same things you brought in.” She watched impatiently as the girls began shaking out the towels. “Don't worry about getting all the sand out; just take them. We'll shake them when we get home. That's why I brought all those garbage bags, so we can just stuff them in and put them in the trunk. Let's go.”
Dana sneaked one last glance at Sean and his companion. They were leaving the water, and he was carrying her in a sickening display of affection. Because of the way the woman had her arms around his neck and her face turned, Dana could only see a partial profile. Her jaw set in a hard line. No wonder he had asked her which beach she went to. He had this outing planned and didn't want to run into her.
“Oh, look, there's Vanessa!” Brittany exclaimed. She immediately began running to her friend.
BOOK: Nothing But Trouble
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