“Tiff, I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” Carla fretted.
“You don’t know what it was like,” Tiffany said, “to have three cocks going at you at once. It was unbelievable. I need more of it.”
“Did you ever make those reservations for a winter trip?” Carla asked.
“I don’t know if I want to go now,” Tiffy replied.
“You’re starting to scare me,” Carla said. “The Channel is fantasy, not reality.”
“So says the woman who spent years playing a libidinous pirate queen on the Spanish Main,” Tiffy shot back.
“I don’t deny it,” Carla replied. “But I knew when I had had enough, and canceled my subscription to the Channel.”
“Well, I haven’t had enough yet,” Tiffy said. “In fact, I’m just getting started.”
“I’m not suggesting that you do what I did, but you weren’t so nutzo with your original fantasy,” Carla pointed out. “You’ve gone over the top with this one. Make some reservations for a luxury winter trip with Joe, and get back to your reality.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tiffy answered.
“Hey, Joe is just dropping Rick off. Your guy will be home in a minute,” Carla said. “Gotta go. But for heaven’s sake, think about what you’re doing.”
“Sure,” Tiffy responded, hitting the OFF button and putting her phone back into its cradle.
Carla sighed. Tiffy had always been a little naive where the Channel was concerned, but Carla had always felt she was safe in her simple fantasy. This new fantasy, however, had turned her friend into a raving sex maniac. It scared her. Then she considered that Tiffy usually had a good head on her shoulders. When the twins had gone off to college, she had gone back to school and become a paralegal, and she now ran the law offices of Johnson and Pietro d’Angelo. She was going to calm down in a couple more days, and everything would be okay again. Carla laughed at herself for being such a worrywart.
In the next month, however, Tiffany began to look paler and paler. Joe insisted she see Dr. Sam, who prescribed rest.
“She’s obviously been working too hard,” he said.
“But she isn’t,” Joe Pietro d’Angelo said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping too good. I haven’t been for a couple months now, but suddenly I wake up and Tiffy isn’t there.”
“You okay?” Dr. Sam asked.
“Yeah. I just had to cut the caffeine and stop eating after seven o’clock. Once I did that, I began to sleep better,” Joe said.
“Make her stay home for a week or two,” Dr. Sam advised.
“We’re supposed to be taking a winter trip this year,” Joe told the doctor.
“The perfect prescription for overwork,” Dr. Sam answered. “In the meantime, keep her home. I’ll stop by and see her in a few days.”
“I’ll get bored staying home,” Tiffy protested.
“So be bored,” the doctor responded. “You’re showing all the signs of exhaustion, Tiffany. Stay home. Take naps. Drink wine. Eat chocolate. In other words, get some damn rest.”
“You’re playing out that fantasy every night, aren’t you?” Carla accused when she learned of Tiffy’s visit to Dr. Sam. “I’ll bet you’re hiding out in your craft room, aren’t you? You are going to get caught.”
“No, I’m not,” Tiffy said. “When I get to the bottom of the cellar stairs, I turn off the lights in the stairwell. You can’t see the door of my craft room from the stairs because it’s around the corner. I don’t turn a light on in the room, and I put a towel down so nothing shows through the bottom crack of the door when I have the television on. I carry a flashlight so I won’t fall. I have it all under control.”
“No one goes into the Channel every night,” Carla said.
“How do you know?” Tiffy countered. “The caliph has a new game. Instead of spanking me, he whips my bottom with a hazel switch. I get so wet so fast when he does that. The sultan and the khan tied me down last night and let my three slave girls make love to me. Then they forced me to watch while the three men fucked those little wretches until they were shrieking for mercy. Only then did they give me what I wanted.”
“You’re exhausted between work and the Channel,” Carla said. She was really getting worried now. She had hoped Tiffy would get bored and let go of this particular fantasy. Instead her friend was becoming more and more involved with it. The fantasy was almost taking on a life of its own.
“Now that I can rest all day, I’ll be fine,” Tiffy assured Carla.
Early the next morning, however, the local emergency team came howling into Ansley Court. Carla’s first thought was of Rina Seligmann, who was the oldest of the five friends. She hurried to the door, horrified to see the EMS guys entering the Pietro d’Angelo house. Opening the door, Carla hesitated. Should she go over? Before she could decide, Rina Seligmann walked quickly over to where Carla stood in her doorway.
“It’s Tiffy,” she said. “Joe found her unconscious and called Sam. Sam called the EMS when he couldn’t get any response.”
Carla leaned heavily against her doorjamb. “Oh, God, Rina, she isn’t dead, is she?” She felt light-headed, as if she might faint, and struggled to fight the sensation.
“What happened? Does Sam know?”
“She was down in her craft room watching television,” Rina began, and then she gasped. “That’s her Channel telly, isn’t it? She hides out from Joe there, doesn’t she?”
Carla nodded. Please, no, she thought. “When did he find her?”
“He told Sam he woke up about three a.m. She wasn’t in bed, so he went looking for her. When he didn’t find her downstairs, he headed into the cellar and discovered her asleep in her recliner in front of the television.” Rina’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, crap! He turned it off,” she whispered. “He turned the Channel off because he thought it was just an ordinary television channel. But he left her there because she had been having trouble sleeping too. Then he went back to bed. He got up, dressed, and fixed his own breakfast, thinking to give Tiffy a little more sleep time. When she hadn’t come up by the time he was ready to go to the office, he went down to her craft room again and tried to rouse her. He couldn’t. Poor Joe is all upset, to put it mildly. He keeps telling anyone who will stop and listen to him how much he loves Tiffy; how she takes such good care of him, not just at home, but she’s so smart in the office. He says he can’t, he doesn’t want to go on if anything happens to her. This is just terrible! Oh, God, Carla, what’s happened to Tiffy? Where is she?”
“In the Channel,” Carla whispered. “She has to be in the Channel.”
“She can’t be!” Rina replied.
“Well, she is. Remember when that asshole Jeff Buckley was divorcing Nora and trying to take everything after all those years of marriage. Do you recall what happened? Nora was found unconscious in front of the den television. Well, she wasn’t unconscious. She had made a deal with the guy who owns the Channel to remain there until she had time to figure out how to thwart Jeff, keep her house, and protect the kids.”
“What?” Rina Seligmann was astounded.
“You can’t repeat any of this, Rina,” Carla said. “So you can remain in the Channel if you want to stay there and you have permission. However, that’s not what happened to Tiffy. What’s happened is that poor Joe turned off the television before four a.m. and stranded his wife there.”
“What can we do?” Rina was looking very distressed. She was teary-eyed as the local rescue squad rolled the unconscious Tiffany Pietro d’Angelo out of her house and into the waiting ambulance.
“I’m going to call Nora now. Remember, she works for the Channel Corporation and is very tight with the guy who owns the whole shebang. She’ll be able to help us out. In the meantime, they’re taking Tiffy to the hospital. Sam diagnosed overwork, stress, and so on. They’ll check her for stroke and other stuff. Hopefully, by the time they can’t come up with a reason she’s unconscious, she’ll be conscious again.”
“From your lips to God
’s ear,” Rina said.
Carla slipped back into her house. Rick had signaled her from across the street that he was going to take his partner, follow the ambulance, and drive to their local hospital. With her husband out of the way, she could get to Nora Buckley quickly. Finding her cell, she punched in the number 6 and the phone automatically dialed.
“Carla,” Nora Buckley’s voice greeted her.
“There’s a problem here, and you are probably the only one who can help us fix it,” Carla began. Then she went on to explain Tiffy’s new fantasy, how she had become addicted to it, and what had happened a few hours ago.
Nora listened. “I have been warning Mr. Nicholas that we were going to have to eventually make the remotes touch-sensitive only to the women who possess them. That way if anyone else picked up the remote when a customer was in the Channel, it would awaken her. This was bound to happen sooner or later. The dem . . . delinquents who monitor this sort of thing for us obviously weren’t on the ball. There’s been no report of an incident. I’ll call Mr. Nicholas immediately and get back to you. Do you have Skype?”
“Yes,” Carla said. “Rick likes to see people when he talks to them.”
“Mr. Nicholas may phone you to hear this firsthand, Carla. He’s a real charmer. Reminds me of that old-time movie actor Claude Rains. You’ll like him, and you can speak freely with him.”
“Okay,” Carla said. She was actually curious about the mysterious Mr. Nicholas.
“I’ll be back to you in any case,” Nora said, and rang off.
In midmorning Carla’s cell rang. A crisp, impersonal female voice said, “If you would be kind enough to turn on your Skype connection, Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Nicholas will speak with you.”
“Okay,” Carla agreed, and did as she had been bid. She immediately found herself facing an elegant gentleman, and he did look like Claude Rains.
“Good morning, Carla,” the elegant man greeted her in a faintly British accent. “I’m so sorry you have been distressed by this little glitch in our services. I want to assure you that it’s being attended to as we speak. Tiffany will be regaining consciousness very shortly. Her condition will be put down as extreme exhaustion, but she’ll be fine otherwise. I hope you will tender her my personal apology, although she will get a form letter regretting the incident and a year of the Channel free.”
“This shouldn’t have happened,” Carla said bluntly.
“No, it shouldn’t have,” he agreed. “I am taking Nora Buckley’s advice. New remotes will be issued as quickly as possible to our customers worldwide. They will have new built-in safety features. They won’t work if anyone other than the female customer attempts to use them as they already do. If anyone else tries to turn off a television with them, their owners will awaken immediately. I suppose we should have done this years ago, but we corporations will nickel and dime everything,” he said and chuckled. “I’m sorry we lost you as a customer, my dear. Julian has been punished, of course,” Mr. Nicholas said. “He should not have invaded your fantasy.”
“He suspected he would be,” Carla answered.
“You were wickedly clever in your last encounter,” Mr. Nicholas noted. “I could use a woman of your talents in my business.”
“I’m happy being a wife and a nurse,” Carla told him.
“Well, even I can’t have everything,” he said with a sigh. “Go and see your friend now. And reassure her she is safe, for her last few hours have probably been overstimulating. Good day, Carla, my dear. Perhaps we will meet again.” And then he was gone.
Carla ended the connection. Her cell rang. It was Rick.
“Tiffy’s awake,” he said.
“I’ll be right over,” she replied.
As soon as she had arrived at Egret Pointe General Hospital, both Rick and Joe left for the office. But not before Carla witnessed a tender little scene between her best friend and Joe. Holding her hand tightly, Joe told his wife how much he loved her and how he couldn’t have gone on without her, had she not recovered.
“I’m going to cut back at the office, babe,” he promised her. “We need at least two associates. Rick’s been telling me that for the last few months, but I wouldn’t listen. I’m listening now, Tiffy. We need more time together. What the hell has all our hard work been for if we can’t take time to be with each other outside the office?” He kissed the hand he was holding. “I’ll be back later. You get some rest now.” Reassured his wife was going to be all right, Joe had said he’d rather work than go home while she was hospitalized.
Once the men had gone, Carla said, “I spoke with Nora’s Mr. Nicholas himself. He wanted me to deliver his personal apology for what happened.”
“What did happen?” Tiffy asked “I’m kinda blanking. I remember a very wild night that seemed to go on and on and on. And then I woke up here.”
“Joe woke up and came looking for you. When he found you, he thought you had been watching television and fallen asleep. He turned off your telly before four a.m.”
“Oh, my God! I was trapped in the Channel?” Tiffy grew pale and fell back onto her pillows. Could her crazy behavior have cost her everything? Perhaps her life? She shivered.
“Yeah, you were trapped, but it’s okay. I called Nora. Nora called Mr. Nicholas, and voilà! You were sprung. And it won’t happen again. Everyone is getting new remotes so no one but the remote’s owner can turn off the television with it.” She reached out and picked up Tiffy’s hand. “You’re going to be all right, sweetie.”
Tiffy nodded. “I’ve had enough of foursomes,” she said. “I think if I want a fantasy, I’ll set up the trip I’ve been wanting to take with Joe next winter.”
“Yeah,” Carla said. “And you might want to delete the tale of the Star of Cinnabar from your remote,” she suggested.
Tiffy giggled. She hadn’t died. Indeed, she was very alive. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll delete the foursome, but my sultan is a pretty nice guy, and a girl’s got to have more than one fantasy in her life.”
“If you say so,” Carla replied, laughing. “At least don’t play when Joe’s home. Another accident like this and we might not get you back.”
Tiffy’s expression grew serious. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I’ll only play in the Channel when Joe is away.” The color was already coming back into her cheeks. “Now, go find out, Nurse Johnson, when they’re going to let me out of this place.”
Carla stood up. “Yes, my princess,” she said, and went out laughing.
Tiffany chuckled. The foursome might go, but Ahmed, the Sultan of Sherazad, was definitely going to stay for a while. It didn’t mean she didn’t love her Joe, because she did. She always had and always would. But she was none the worse for wear for her recent adventure, and as she had said to Carla, a girl had to have more than just one fantasy.
Especially when she was facing fifty.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bertrice Small is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of numerous awards. In keeping with her profession, she lives in the oldest English-speaking town in the state of New York, founded in 1640. Her light-filled studio includes the paintings of her favorite cover artist, Elaine Duillo, and a large library. Because she believes in happy endings, Bertrice Small has been married to the same man, her hero, George, for forty-eight years. They have a son, Thomas, and four wonderful grandchildren. Longtime readers will want to know that Nicki the cockatiel flew over the rainbow bridge on December 8, 2010. However, they will be happy to know that Finnegan, the long-haired, bad black kitty, and Sylvester, the black-and-white tuxedo cat, still remain her devoted companions.
ALSO BY BERTRICE SMALL
The Pleasures Series
Passionate Pleasures
Sudden Pleasures
Dangerous Pleasures
Forbidden Pleasures
Private Pleasures
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