Whatever It Takes (8 page)

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Authors: Gwynne Forster

BOOK: Whatever It Takes
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Lacette leaned against the sideboard that rested in the dining room by the door leading to the hallway, folded her arms and crossed her ankles. Her sister was not a scatterbrain but, at times, you had to dig deep to find evidence of mature intelligence beneath that long mane that she was so proud of.
“I'm, thirty-three, Kellie, not thirteen. And who'd want a man tailing behind you because he liked your car? That kind of guy is looking for a meal ticket, and trust me, no man is washing down my food with my wine on a regular basis.”
“All right. All right. Get off your soap box. Poor thing; you're gonna die a virgin.”
Lacette raised an eyebrow. It had never occurred to her that Kellie perceived her as unfulfilled and man-shy. Her white teeth sparkled in what was half a grin and half a grimace. “You think so, huh?”
If Kellie was after confirmation or denial, she would get neither. During their formative years, she shared everything with her sister, her thoughts, dreams, and possessions. But by the time they reached junior high school, she'd begun to notice that their sharing went one way, from her to Kellie, and that her sister was not averse to taking what she wanted if Lacette refused her. After Kellie made a date with the boy she knew was to take Lacette to their high-school senior prom, leaving Lacette without a date and unable to attend, she shielded her private life, including her dates, from her sister.
Lacette went into the living room where Cynthia sat crocheting and watching
Judge Mathis.
“If you'd like to try out my new car, Mama, we can go for a ride Sunday afternoon.”
“I'd love to, dear, but I promised my cousin Jack I'd go over to Baltimore with him Sunday afternoon. He's a football fanatic and loves the Ravens.”
“I didn't know you liked football.”
“I don't, but it's a chance to get out of this mausoleum. I never liked it, but I had to support your father, and living in the parsonage was a part of his salary. I didn't complain, at least not where anybody could hear me.”
“We can do it another time.” She left her mother and climbed the stairs. Who were these people who she had lived with for thirty-three years? She didn't know them. She'd have staked her life that her parents had the perfect marriage, that they would live together until death separated them. She'd thought her mother a mild, conservative housewife, and though she knew her sister flirted on the edge of immorality, she hadn't thought her capable of what she now suspected—that Kellie was involved with Lawrence Bradley, a married man.
She left work later than usual the next afternoon owing to heavy sales late in the day that made up for the morning slump. As she walked through the garage on the way to her car, she saw a man fiddling under the hood of his car.
“Do you need a battery charge?” she asked him.
“I sure do.” He straightened up, and she could see both the surprise and the disappointment that blanketed his face. “I've been trying to start this thing for half an hour.”
She positioned her car, and he clamped the jacks on his battery. “Your car is relatively new,” she said, “how could the battery die?”
“It's been real cold, and it didn't help that I forgot to turn off my headlights. Best thing is to turn them off as soon as you enter the garage.”
“You ever done that before?” she asked, frankly curious that such a meticulous man would make that mistake.
“Yeah. A couple of times, but I caught it before I got to the elevator.”
“Well, I'm glad I stayed late. See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks a lot. I appreciate your help. You're working on a Saturday?”
“I'm a freelance demonstrator right now, and a part of my salary comes from commissions. New groups and tours come in on Saturday morning, and I want to get them before they go to Everedy Square and Shab Row and spend all of their money.”
“Or those antiques shops on Urban Pike. Well, see you tomorrow, and thanks again.”
She didn't know whether to try to prolong the conversation or get in her car and drive off. The more she saw of him, the more certain she was that, if he wasn't married, she'd like them to be more than friends. The earth didn't move when she saw him, but stars had twinkled, so to speak, on more than one occasion when he smiled at her. She got into her car, waved and drove off.
She drove into the parsonage two-car garage, parked in the space that her father had kept for himself, and went across the street for a quick visit with her aunt Nan. “Did you ever get your brooch?” Nan asked. They sat in her aunt's oversized kitchen sipping hot cider and eating roasted chestnuts. “If you let that thing lie around somewhere, before you know it, it'll be pinned to a jacket that ain't yours.”
“That's true, but the lawyer didn't find it among the things that Gramma stored with him. He's going to search the house for it.”
“Well, I hope he finds it; somebody's been working on the place, but I guess Marshall knows about that. Anyhow, you be careful. Know who you can trust, and don't forget that some linen that looks clean's been used and folded back up.” They talked for a while, and Lacette went home to check her mail for she was anxious for letter from Lawrence Bradley. She found both the house and the mailbox empty. After considerable contemplation as to whether she should take the time to stop by her grandmother's house and check on the person working there, she rejected the idea and stayed home to work on plans for her marketing business.
 
 
Lacette's decision meant a reprieve for Kellie who, at that minute, approached the house that Carrie Hooper willed to her son-in-law. When she saw the front door crack, she bounded up the front steps. It opened, and the same man she met there a few days earlier stepped out. Her first thought was,
Good Lord, and in the same old clothes. Doesn't he ever change?
His bulk blocked her way.
“What do you want, babe? I told you you're not getting into this house.”
“But it belongs to my father. I'm Marshall Graham's daughter.”
His glare unsettled her; she was accustomed to enticing a man with no more effort than it took to give him her best seductive smile. “Big damn deal! I don't give a shit if you're the daughter of the President of the U.S.A. You ain't coming in here.”
Tough, was he? She stepped closer to him. “You want to bet? I haven't met the man stupid enough to turn me down.”
“Turn you . . .” He flipped back his baseball cap and scratched the back of his head. “What the hell's in here that's so important to you?”
“If you go in with me, I'll show you.”
He narrowed his right eye. “Oh, yeah? What else will you show me?”
It was the opening she'd waited for. “Anything you want to see.”
When his eyes bulged and his lower lip dropped, she knew she had him. Emboldened by his seeming loss for words, she said, “I don't want anybody to see me standing out here. Let's go inside.” While he gaped, she walked past him into the house, pulled off her coat and threw it across the banister.
“You're sure of yourself,” he said.
Her smile telegraphed to him the satisfaction she felt at having him in her clutches. “I'm just not used to men ignoring me, and I didn't intend for you to do it either.”
“I could lose my job for this.”
She ignored that. “What do you say I check out things upstairs, and—”
“Yeah. That's a good idea. Let's go.”
She pulled off her jacket, threw it on top of her coat and started up the stairs ahead of him, giving him a good view of her tight-fitting skirt. “Let's see,” she said when she reached the top of the stairs, “that was Gramma's room over there.”
When she headed in that direction, he grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute. You think you're just gonna walk in here, take whatever it is you're after and leave me holding the bag? I wasn't that stupid the day I was born.”
“Who said you were stupid?” She looked around at the familiar wallpaper and the pictures of her great grandparents who gazed down at her with censoring eyes and shuddered. “It's kinda cold in here,” she said, not wanting him to see her sudden attack of nerves. “Can't you do something to warm up this place?”
“Keep it up,” he snarled, “and you'll get what you've been begging for ever since you walked up those front steps out there. Damn right I can warm it up, and you too.”
“Well, I wish you'd get to it.” She rubbed her arms, hoping to tease and confuse him, to rob him of some of his arrogance. But he wasted no time closing the distance between them, pulled her sweater over her head and threw it on the floor. She stood there and let him look, knowing it wouldn't be long before he went after what he wanted.
“Unhook that thing,” he ordered in deep guttural tones. “Take it off.”
“If I do, you're going to let me check out this place any time I want to. Understood?”
He reached toward her, but she backed away. “Understood?” she asked him again.
His breathing deepened, and she rubbed her breasts. “Yeah. I'll do it, dammit. Just take that thing off.”
With a smile of triumph, she moved closer to him. “If you want it off, take it off.”
His calloused fingers fumbled with the front hook, but she didn't help him and, exasperated, he jerked the garment from her, hooked his arm around her back and sucked her nipple into his mouth. She tried not to react to his rhythmic pulling and sucking, but he kept at it until groans spilled out of her throat, groans that were not faked as they had been with Lawrence Bradley and every other man who had tasted them. He pulled her clothes off and, without looking, threw them across the room where they landed on the dresser.
She had expected brutality or, at the least, that he would be as crude and fumbling in bed as he was coarse in conversation, to relieve himself quickly and let her do what she came there to do, find the brooch. But like a pilot checking his plane for safety, he paid careful attention to every one of her body's erotic pulses.
Don't rush me,” he said when she showed impatience. “This takes a lot of energy and I already worked all day—”
“Well, if you're tired—”
He cut her off. “Don't even think it. I'm going to take my good time and get everything that's coming to me. All you have to do is lie back and relax—that is, if you can; I'll do the rest.” He stripped, rolled her under the covers and slid in beside her.
His mouth, hot and moist, clamped over one nipple while his fingers pinched and massaged her other breast, and she crossed her legs and told herself not to move, not to reward him. But his hand began to move in circles over her belly, to skim her thighs with the delicacy of a soft breeze, inching closer and closer to her vagina. She wanted to grab his hand and force him to touch her, to massage her, to do anything that would combust the embers smoldering inside of her and burst that awful fullness that she could neither name nor identify.
I won't beg him. I'm damned if I will.
At last his fingers delved into her folds and began their dance, and she couldn't hold back the moans. Her hips began to undulate, as if by instinct awaiting a long sought treasure. When he spread her legs and let her feel the thrust and pull of his tongue, she knew at last that it was not she, but he who was the captor.
“Get in me. What's wrong with you? Get in me,” she moaned.
He hovered over her, his eyes closed and his head thrown back. “Take me in.”
She grasped him, lifted her body and waited. “Oh,” she yelled, when he surged into her.
“Sorry. It'll be okay in a minute,” he said.
She forgot the initial pain of his unusual size as he thrust with the skill of an expert, and she moved to his rhythm until the bottom of her feet flushed hot, her thighs quivered, and she thought she couldn't stand another second of the swelling and pumping. Lord, if only she could burst.
“I can't stand this,” she moaned.
“You're doing great, baby. Let it go.”
He accelerated his pace and she let out a keening cry as he hurtled her into spasm after spasm until she gripped his buttocks in frenzy and then went limp. Shocked and disoriented by the unexpected experience, her first orgasm, and humiliated by her response to him, tears drained from her tightly closed eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, using her breast for a pillow.
“At first.”
“That always happens till the woman gets use to me. I'd better warn you. I got my first time to have a woman who didn't want me again. That's because I do it right. I don't cheat women.”
He didn't have to brag to her; he'd just showed her. Now, she could stop wondering what was so great about sex, but she sure would rather have learned it from some other man.

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