Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

  She tried to rid herself of the image. She had every girl’s dream man sitting beside her. Smart, successful, and well-bred. This was the man she loved. The man whose diamond ring she was again wearing.

  Gloria let her hand glide across Bastian’s thigh. “I wish you wouldn’t be so mad at me,” she said softly.

  “I’m not mad at you, Gloria. I’m just perplexed.”

  “But I bobbed my hair for you, Bastian. As a surprise.”

  He snorted. “Why would you do a thing like that?”

  “I thought you would find it sexy.”

  “You should strive to be respectable, Gloria, not sexy,” Bastian said. “I hate to see you be like all those other girls. Those indecent, dime-a-dozen flappers who do nothing but get intoxicated with a different man every night of the week.”

  “But Bastian, I’ve never had a drink in my life!” Lie. “And besides,” she said, leaning her cheek into the curve of his neck, “you’re the only man I want.”

  Double lie.

  Gloria tried to find something in his eyes to reassure her that this, their engagement, was the right decision. She kissed him, softly at first and then with more passion. Bastian followed her lead, his lips gliding to her neck as he lightly cupped her breast with his palm.

  “I wish we could spend the rest of the night alone,” she said.

  She could see his eyes ignite with the promise of something he’d never quite considered before. “But, sweetheart, may I remind you that your mother is upstairs? I don’t see how that is possible.”

  “Then we should go somewhere else.…”

  He slid away in disapproval. “Gloria, I will not take you to a hotel, if that is what you are proposing. And if my landlord sees you—”

  “No, silly, I was only proposing a date.” This was the moment of truth: Now all she had to do was say the words. “Why don’t we head into the city, to the Green Mill? We could dance, listen to some new music—”

  Bastian stood up from the love seat in disgust. “Have you completely lost your mind? First you embarrass me with this hair of yours, and now you want to go to a foul juice joint like that? Do you even know who owns those kinds of places? People connected to the Mob. They use these speakeasies as their offices of corruption. Are you telling me, Gloria,” he said, raising his voice, “that you want to join the ranks of those scoundrels and whores?”

  Gloria could feel all the blood in her body rushing to her head. She wanted to scream “Yes!” into his face, to tell him that she’d already been to the Green Mill, and that she had flirted with men of different races and gotten tanked.

  Instead, she shook her head gently. “No.”

  “Good. I didn’t think so.” Bastian straightened his navy-blue suit and fixed his tie, the checkered one Gloria had given him as a birthday present.

  “I was only curious—”

  “I should go home,” he stated flatly, adjusting his collar. “I have an early-morning meeting. While I uphold my duties for the sake of the economy, those flappers and their swells are out every night carousing and dancing till all hours. It’s disgraceful.”

  “Right. Disgraceful.”

  Gloria watched him leave. She slumped into the love seat, hugging a pillow to her chest. Her throat ached as she tried to swallow the oncoming flood of salty tears.

  Of course, this was exactly when her mother chose to enter the room. Both hands were on her thick waist, and she looked angry—thin lips, red eyes, sweaty brow.

  “Now that Bastian has left, there is something we must discuss.”

  “I’m really tired, Mother. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “No, Gloria, it cannot.” Her mother sat down on the love seat next to her. “You’re lucky you still have a diamond on your finger after this little stunt you pulled.” She was referring to Gloria’s bob, of course, but her tone made it very clear that she had also been eavesdropping. “Unfortunately, it’s no longer just about you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother.”

  Mrs. Carmody carefully smoothed her skirt, looking everywhere—the gilded paintings, the wooden clock, the Oriental rug—except directly at Gloria. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.”

  Gloria nearly fell off the love seat. “What?”

  “He sent a telegram this afternoon from New York to inform me.”

  “A telegram?” Gloria could see by her mother’s pained expression that she was serious, but the words seemed ludicrous, a jumble of misunderstanding. “He’s probably just confused because he’s been away so long on business. New York must be so disorienting. He’ll come back home and everything will be fine.”

  “It will not be fine, because he is not in New York on business,” her mother said. Her voice cracked, and Gloria feared she was about to cry. “He’s in New York with … another woman. Some tramp he’s apparently fallen in love with.”

  “Wait. He told you this? In a telegram?”

  “Amber. She’s twenty-three. And a dancer.”

  “What kind of dancer?”

  “The kind that has a name like Amber!” Her mother broke down into loud sobs. She folded Gloria into a tight embrace.

  Gloria had never seen her mother so upset before. She’d never really considered whether her mother loved her father—she played the part of perfect wife with such unquestionable dedication. Gloria’s mother’s life had always revolved around her father—doting on him and waiting on him to make sure he was happy, comfortable, and well fed. In fact, Gloria’s mother didn’t seem to have any sort of life beyond him.

  Was this what Gloria’s own future held in store if she married Bastian?

  “Does this mean he’s not coming home?” Gloria asked.

  Mrs. Carmody wiped her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “It means much more than that. The Carmody name, our entire family’s reputation, could be permanently destroyed. Running off with some floozy? We’ll be ruined once this gets out in the papers. Unless,” her mother said, taking hold of Gloria’s hand and squeezing it tightly, “you are married to Sebastian Grey.”

  Gloria felt her heart sink. “I’m already engaged. Remember?”

  “I do. Only, we no longer have the luxury of a long engagement. Now there is no time to lose. The second this scandal breaks is the second Bastian takes that ring away.”

  “But, Mother, it’s 1923. Plenty of couples get divorced these days!”

  “You don’t understand me, Gloria,” her mother said sharply. “Your father is the sole proprietor of your inheritance, which is due to you on your eighteenth birthday. But if you fail to marry Sebastian, you won’t see a penny of it.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Gloria said, growing uneasy. “Daddy would never do that to me.”

  “I sometimes forget you’re still just a child,” her mother said, placing a heavy hand on Gloria’s cheek. “I don’t know how to say this gently, so I suppose I’ll just say it: Sebastian didn’t propose to you for ‘love.’ ” She sighed. “He and your father negotiated a deal: a role in managing our steel fortune in exchange for the dynasty that is the Grey name and lineage. You know very well that being nouveau riche gets you nowhere these days. Your father needs the business of Chicago’s elite in order to continue making a profit, and what they trust is a name—a name they recognize. But if you don’t seal this bargain, you and I will be on the streets. We’ll be left with nothing.”

  “But why does Bastian care about our money? He’s practically royalty himself.”

  Her mother’s jaw tightened. “Bastian has nothing, Gloria. He’s living on credit and loans, and he’s about to go under. His father gambled away all their money. All that’s left is their name.” She grasped Gloria’s hand. “Your name, when you marry him. But you must do it now, before word gets out about your father. If you don’t marry Bastian before then, no one will want to marry you once they discover your father’s infidelity. You’ll be just another penniless girl from a broken home.”

  Gloria’
s head began to swirl. She managed to croak, “But I have till June …”

  “No. You are now getting married in a month,” her mother stated firmly, folding up her handkerchief into a tight square.

  “But that’s not possible!”

  “Sebastian has already approved. He’s as desperate as we are, only for different reasons.” Her mother straightened up, her face now as taut and distant as the face of a woman in a cigarette ad. “I’m sorry, dear, but there’s really no other choice.”

  After her mother left the room, Gloria could no longer contain her tears. Her mother must have known about her father’s affair long before tonight—how else could Sebastian have approved the new wedding date? Why else would Clara have agreed to live with them like some nineteenth-century governess? Gloria was trapped, and everyone was conspiring against her. Marrying Bastian would mean the end of her as she imagined she could be—a singer perhaps, and an independent woman—but not marrying him would mean the end of her family. No money. No respect. How could she do that to her own mother? How could her father do this to both of them? If she’d thought there was even a chance he would change his mind, she would have appealed to him. But he was as stubborn as he was absent.

  As she sat alone, crying, she found herself trying frantically to twist off her diamond ring. Before tonight, it had been a promise, yes, but a dazzling one. And a slippery one, to be put on and taken off according to her own free will.

  Now her finger bulged under the platinum band, cutting off her circulation, the skin beneath turning purple. The ring was stuck.

  CLARA

  Clara was bored. She’d been living in the Carmody house for almost a week, and the only evening activity so far had been cards (which she hadn’t known could be played without stripping or drinking). Everyone had bought her country act so far, with the possible exception of Mrs. Carmody, who was always watching. No doubt waiting for Clara to make a mistake so she could ship her off to reform school.

  Only, Clara wasn’t going to give Mrs. Carmody that satisfaction.

  Clara put down her book, La Vagabonde by Colette, about an actress who rejects men in order to retain her own independence—a fitting read for her current state of mind. Too bad she hadn’t read it back in New York; she could have saved herself the trouble of falling in love with the wrong man and getting her heart broken.

  If only she could see her old roommates, that might make her feel better. It was seven-thirty on a Saturday night, New York City time. Coco and Leelee would be out by now, with their beaux du jour, rushing to make an eight o’clock show. Then the speakeasy scavenger hunt would begin, on the trail to seek out the latest hush-hush place—housed in some millionaire’s garden in the Village or in the back room of a private restaurant’s basement off Madison Square. God, she missed New York. So far, Chicago had merely been … windy.

  Just then, a peal of laughter exploded from the end of the hallway. It came from the bedroom of wedding-bell-blues Gloria, who was painting her nails (carnation pink, no doubt) with her vaguely desperate sidekick, Lorraine. It was the kind of hyena-esque giggling that accompanied gossip; there was no doubt in Clara’s mind that she was the subject.

  Clara almost laughed aloud at the thought of Gloria and Lorraine trying to make it in her old city life. They wouldn’t survive a day in her run-down apartment building, with its bohemians and cockroaches, with its furniture scavenged off the streets, where the electric went out so often they’d had to rely on tea candles for light. They knew nothing of skinny-dipping with a bunch of drunken strangers at three a.m. in the Central Park Reservoir. And judging by the way Bastian and Gloria behaved—a polite peck on the lips, about as passionate as a smooch between an eight-year-old boy and his grandma—they knew nothing about sex. And that was one thing Clara knew a lot about. Maybe a little too much.

  This was what these Chicago socialites knew: buttoned-up private school uniforms, afternoons of piano and French lessons, and the goal of a rock on their finger. Her cousin’s bobbed-hair “rebellion” was no more than a fleeting temper tantrum that would last the hot minute her locks took to grow back. Then she’d marry Mr. Sebastian Grey and settle down into the coffin of her life as a wife and a kept woman.

  The laughter was louder now. Clara left her room, tiptoeing toward the sound. She paused at Gloria’s door, straining to overhear the conversation.

  GLORIA: I’ll bet she hasn’t even been kissed before.

  LORRAINE: As if you’ve done so much more.

  GLORIA: Shut up. I mean, I’ll bet she hasn’t even, say, gone on a date.

  LORRAINE: Definitely not.

  GLORIA: Do you think she’s [gasp] a lesbian?

  LORRAINE: Who knows what they do on that farm?

  GLORIA: Oh, Raine. She’s ridiculous. So polite. So annoying.

  LORRAINE: She’s a fifty-year-old woman trapped in an eighteen-year-old’s body.

  GLORIA: She’s practically best friends with my mother.

  Clara couldn’t help smiling. They had no idea. She wasn’t insulted by their gossiping—they weren’t really talking about her, but about her alter ego, the Country Rube-in-Residence. Who knew role-playing could be so much fun?

  She was about to retreat to her room when something caught her ear:

  GLORIA: So when do we set this plan into action?

  LORRAINE: Marcus said he would take care of that.

  GLORIA: Do you think it will really work? My mother is pretty intent on her being here.…

  “Caught you!” a deep voice whispered behind Clara.

  She gasped and whipped around, expecting to find a nosy servant. Instead, she saw one of the sexiest boys she’d ever laid eyes on in her entire life. She gasped again. His eyes were pools of Caribbean blue, his lips were full and perfect and ripe for kissing. His blond hair was slicked and parted at the side, his cheeks were smooth, and—oh! He had dimples!

  He was totally and completely swoon-worthy.

  The boy put a finger up to his lips with a faint shushing noise. Without thinking, Clara took his hand and pulled him through the hallway into her room. She shut the door. His grip was strong, and she felt an old familiar thrill at his touch. Only then did she realize that taking him into her bedroom might not have been the most in-character thing to do. Country Clara would never be so forward. She dropped his hand.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you were—”

  “Your dream come true?” He grinned widely, showing off his dazzlingly white teeth.

  “Absolutely … not!” Clara said. Immediately, she knew this boy was Bad News. He might have been good-looking—all right, he was insanely good-looking—but he was the type of guy who knew exactly how good-looking he was. There was nothing more unappealing than that. More importantly, she’d sworn off boys. They weren’t part of her new image.

  She motioned toward the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  He walked closer to where she stood. “Wilt you leave me so unsatisfied?”

  Clara took a giant step backward. Was he really quoting Shakespeare to her? “If you expect to impress me by misquoting Romeo and Juliet,” she said, “then you are sadly mistaken.”

  “Shows how behind I am in my English homework.” The boy grinned wickedly and plopped down on the edge of her bed. He patted the empty place next to him. “I only wanted you to explain what you were doing in the hallway when I found you.”

  “Oh,” Clara said, trying to look innocent—however that looked. He was leaning back, an easy grin on his face. Was he trying to seduce her? Her natural instinct was to pounce on him. But of course, that was out of the question. She remained standing, for her own sake.

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping, if that is what you are insinuating.”

  “I would never accuse you of such an immoral act.”

  “Good,” she said, “because I would never think to commit one.”

  The boy tugged her toward the bed. She resisted slightly at first, but then happily yielded. She quickly crossed her le
gs, which she assumed was the sort of thing they taught in the etiquette class she’d managed to skip in high school.

  His hand was warm. “You’ve never been tempted to do an immoral thing?”

  How she wanted to whisper into his ear what she wanted to do right then and there! Instead, she withdrew. “I think that is an outrageously inappropriate question to ask of a stranger.”

  The boy examined her slyly. “You certainly are a strange one. Clara.”

  Clara shot him a look of mock horror. “How did you know my name?”

  “You’re Glo’s cousin.” He tilted his head. “I’m Marcus.”

  Marcus. Lorraine and Gloria had been discussing a Marcus … and some kind of plan.

  “I’ve heard all about you,” Marcus said.

  “Oh? Good things or bad things?”

  “I thought I knew, but now I’m not quite sure.” He stood up. “There is only one way to find out. Tonight, you’re coming with me. I’m taking you to the Green Mill, the—”

  “The hottest speakeasy in town, I know!” Clara blurted out. She watched Marcus’s face twist in confusion: How would she, Country Clara, know about the Green Mill? “I mean, I’ve only heard rumors about it,” she said. “Very bad rumors.”

  Marcus’s face softened. “So then it’s settled. You’ll meet me at midnight.”

  “I don’t think that is a very sensible idea. I don’t know you. I can’t go somewhere with you alone.”

  “We won’t be alone. Glo and Raine are coming, too,” he said with a laugh.

  “Wait a second,” Clara said, genuinely shocked. “You mean to tell me that my cousin Gloria goes to places like the Green Mill?” She would never have pegged Gloria as someone who’d sneak out to a place like that—even in New York, the Green Mill was infamous. Rumor made it sound like a thrilling mixture of glamour and danger, run by young, good-looking gangsters.

  “Not usually, but tonight we’re celebrating her bob.” He shrugged.