"So you're saying that creation has annoyed and upset a lot of people, because of God's sense of humor?"
Brad smiled at her. "I think that 'God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and the sky, the light and the dark, and the beasts and the fishes'; but by the sixth day—when He was creating men and women—He decided to have a bit of fun. With men, He keyed on the physical aspects of sex, and with women, He made emotional considerations of paramount importance. Then, on the seventh day, when He was supposed to be resting, He sat back and laughed, because He knew he'd created some major problems in the boudoir."
"In our case it's the other way around. I love you for your bod. I'm surprised that by now you haven't realized that I'm only using you for sex. The first time I saw you, I said, 'That boy has a bod that I'm going to get to know better for strictly selfish reasons'. And I've long suspected that you're only interested in my soul."
"You do have an intriguing and mischievous soul. And I'm going to get even closer to it in Troy."
"In Troy?"
"We'll get married right after the U.S. Open. Then we'll fly to Troy for our honeymoon."
Ecstatic, Betty-Jo pounced on Brad, and then she bounced on him. "For how long?"
"For as long as you want. We'll make love all day. We'll make love all night, and we'll explore the ruins in between."
"Small problem. We won't have time for ruins if we're making love all day and all night."
"Then the hell with the ruins. Although we could solve our problem by making love among the ruins."
"Love among the ruins sounds like fun."
"It will be, as long as you're not spending our honeymoon in a Turkish prison."
"A Turkish prison?"
"Unfortunately, you can't walk across the street without being recognized and mobbed."
"So how can we go to Troy?"
"Would you believe that I have a plan?"
"That I believe. But is it a good plan?"
"I'm not sure."
"Why was I afraid of that?"
He picked her up, carried her to the wall, and stood her against it. Then he placed the palms of his hands flat against her breasts, and pushed. "Doesn't fool me," he said.
"Doesn't fool me either," she said, "but I kind of like it."
"My plan is to dress you like a man. It worked for Rosalind."
"You mean the Rosalind in As You Like It?"
"The same. Unfortunately, if my disguise doesn't work you'll spend ten years in a Turkish prison, and I doubt there'll be a male guard in the place who won't want to spend his breaks getting to know you better."
"In that case, you'd better make sure that your disguise works. But why will the Turkish guards get to have me, and not you?"
"Because it's you who'll be traveling on a fake Canadian passport. You'll be my brother, Brian Jefferson Raiden."
She pulled at the hair on Brad's chest. "At least I'll still be B-J."
"Let's see how you'll look disguised as B. J. Raiden." He took off her skirt and handed her a pair of Jockey shorts. "Here, put these on."
"I thought I wasn't allowed to wear panties."
"You're not, but men's Jockeys don't count."
"They're kind of sexy, and they have a hole in the front, so you can still play with me without too much difficulty." She swung her hips suggestively.
"Slip into these jeans. You can wear men's cutoffs after you've stopped shaving your legs for a few weeks."
"I can hardly wait."
"Your hips are too broad for men's jeans—you're not slipping. Hop up and down while I pull."
"I thought you liked the way my hips flair!"
"I don't like, I love—except when you're trying to fit them into men's jeans. Now off with your makeup, and on with this binding bra and boy's shirt. Then tuck your hair under this cap."
When she'd finished changing, Brad stepped back and studied her. "You know, my plan just might work."
"If it doesn't, do you really think the Turks will throw me into their prison, and lose the key?"
"I doubt it. Your fans are everywhere. If your Turkish fans ever found out that you were in one of their prisons, I'd hate to be the official who'd put you there. It's a shame that we'll have to cut your hair."
"Cut my hair?"
"And then we'll have to dye what's left of it brown."
She studied herself in the mirror. "I'm not a bad looking guy."
He moved behind her, and pressed himself against her. "Fine enough to make a straight guy gay," he said.
She pulled away, and messed the bed until it looked like ruins. Then she pushed him onto the ruins, and used him for love among the ruins practice, blissfully unaware that a gray ghost was about to come along, and ruin her honeymoon.
-55-
BETTY-JO CHANCE & BRAD RAIDEN
Belting a Tawny Cat
Betty-Jo Chance was a household name worldwide, and it seemed to Brad that every male on the planet wanted a piece of her. So he did the only thing he could think of to show her that she was all that mattered in his life. He bought her a chastity belt—and installed it.
He knew that love was blind, but he also discovered that it was also possessive and stupid. I have a fabulous woman, he thought, who loves me, and wants nothing more than to marry me and spend all of eternity with me. So why am I fumbling around in the middle of the night trying to get a chastity belt on her? He was certain of part of the answer. If I tried to belt her while she was awake, I'd be a dead man. But why am I willing to risk eternal damnation by belting her in the first place? He also knew the answer to that one—thieves! If I owned a Ferrari, I'd worry about thieves. I'd take out insurance, and keep the beauty under lock and key. Now here's Tawny—so much more important to me than a yuppie car—but she's uninsurable, irreplaceable, and thieves surround me.
* * *
Betty-Jo was livid when she awoke, and found that her pussy had been encased in a chastity belt. "You're an imbecile!" was her first thought on the matter.
Brad looked embarrassed. "Maybe it's impossible to be wise and in love."
"But it's possible to be in love without being an imbecile!"
He tried to explain. "You have to look at it from my perspective. If you owned a Ferrari, you'd fit her with The Club, wouldn't you? Now here I am, the proprietor of the most beautiful woman in the world, and since 'beauty provokes thieves, sooner than Ferraris,' doesn't it make sense to protect her with The Belt?"
She couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.
"Tawny Cat, you have to put a positive slant on this belt business. It takes a professional car thief about thirty seconds to circumvent The Club. Even wearing your belt, the dimwits you might choose to slumber with will eventually get smart, find a hacksaw, and be in paradise in four or five hours. Besides, you should be pleased—yours is a designer belt."
"Well why didn't you say so? That makes me feel a whole lot better." She faked a crying jag, so when she swung he was caught off guard. The blow caught him in the solar plexus, and he buckled over, gasping for air.
"They're right," he said between gasps, "love hurts."
Betty-Jo couldn't believe what she'd done to her lover. Immediately repentant, she told him that she'd wear the loathsome belt. "Brad, she said, "you worry too much. You should know by now, that only you will ever live in my heart.
"Tawny Cat, did you know that chastity belts were invented back in the days of Richard the Lionhearted so that the knights would have their prized possession under lock and key when they went off to fight in the crusades? Those were the days of chivalry, so a knight felt confident leaving the key with a trusted friend."
"To guard his prized possession, and only unlock the belt in the event that he was slain in battle," she ventured.
"Right. But there was a problem. The knights—who on their sacred oath were entrusted with the key—took advantage of their charges. You see, if the fair maidens wanted loving, they had no alternative but to befriend the guy with the key."
"Do I get to choose who you leave the key to my belt with, when you go off to do battle on hockey rinks in far away places?"
He laughed. "No way. Not after what happened to the noble knights. When they returned from their battles in the Holy Land, they found a bunch of pregnant wives and lovers. Needless to say, that was the end of the age of chivalry, and there hasn't been another since."
"In other words, you don't have any trusted friends."
"Not when it comes to you. With you as the prize, only a complete fool would leave his key with a friend. I can see it now. My plane would be taking off, and my trusted friend would be tearing down the runway screaming that I'd left him the wrong key."
She beamed. "Even the Sheik?"
"Especially the Sheik. That Sheik would probably be checking to see if the key fit as I was backing out of the driveway."
She hugged her fool. "You don't have to worry about the Sheik, or anyone else for that matter. Nobody gets to have me while my hero's off battling goons."
He kissed her cheek, and carried on with his story. "The chastity belt lived on, but men no longer entrusted the key to anyone but themselves. However, you'll be pleased to learn, that when it comes to chastity belts, men have become more civilized."
"Could have fooled me."
"Chastity belts were diabolically clever back in medieval times. Some belts even had a built in guillotine. A youthful swain would take a look under the shift of a fair damsel, and see a hole where a hole shouldn't have been. Counting his blessings, in he'd go, and down would come the guillotine. Hurt like hell."
She caught him with a rabbit punch. "And I suppose the moral to that story is that it served him right, for messing with a knight's prized possession?"
"Of course."
"So how did they get the swain's joystick out once it had been lopped off by the guillotine—which, you should know, wasn't invented until the French revolution."
"No idea. But that needn't concern you, because your chastity belt doesn't have a guillotine. What kind of a guy do you think I am?"
"You're a sweetheart."
"Another chastity belt model worked on the same principle as a fish hook. A knight would be fooling around with a fair maiden, and he'd come across a chastity belt with a hole in the middle."
"He'd better be careful. It could be a trap—like the guillotine."
"The thing did look like a trap, but the knight would have a great desire for the fair damsel. So in he'd go, but only a little way."
"Grab himself an appetizer," she said with a grin. "But I suspect your story is going to have an unhappy ending for our amorous knight."
"With only good things happening to him, our knight would go in further still, until eventually he was in all the way."
"Up to his hilt," she said, trying to sound medievalish.
"But when he tried to withdraw for another thrust—agony! You see, the ingenious device was designed..."
"Like a fish hook."
"A fish hook goes in easily, but once in, it's almost impossible to extricate it because of the barbs. For our amorous knight, you might say that it was a bit of a sticky wicket."
"Why would I say that?"
"Because those Brits all play cricket. It's an analogy they'd understand."
"How many Brits do you see here? Why can't we say that the knight needed a well executed drop shot?"
Brad laughed. "Why not? The Brits also play tennis. They understand drop shots."
"There are no Brits!"
"Don't be too sure. Remember, that's what Rommel said when he went off on a holiday and missed D-day."
She threw up her hands. "I give up."
"In any event, the knight's only hope was to lie there quietly, and pray that he'd shrivel enough so he could safely withdraw."
"Would the fair maidens co-operate?"
"That was the problem. The damsels would often have their own ideas about what should be happening. They might have gone without loving for months, even years. So they were eager for action. Many a good knight was lost before he ever embarked on his own crusade."
Brad was laughing by the time he'd finished his tale, and she was grinning. "Hold me, fool," she demanded. "Brad, you're handling our impending separation all wrong. Do you know the poem:
If you love someone,
Set them free.
If they come back to you,
They are yours.
If they don't,
They were never yours."
"Half the men in America were suckered in by that one. They set their women free, and their women—unable to believe their good fortune—took off like frogs out of a blender."
"'What's red and green and goes a hundred miles an hour,'" Betty-Jo asked.
"Those frogs would have been, if they hadn't escaped the blender," Brad said with a grin. "Anyway, the guy who penned that poem refused to fess up, because he knew he'd be lynched."
"Brad, now I know why you have such lovely brown eyes. You're full of the brown stuff."
He laughed at her. "Intuitively I realize that our anonymous poet friend is right. But I find it intolerable to think that I might lose you. If I hold you too tightly for a while, try to be patient with me."
"Bad, Bad Brad, I'm stuck to you stronger than I would be if I were stuck to you with Crazy Glue. Even when we're apart, you're a part of me. I will always be yours. Do you want to know how you can be sure? Read my lips." She kissed him in a way that left no doubt about her devotion. Then she smiled. "Besides, nobody throws out a lover who's still performing well."
Brad, remained serious. "I'll always love only you, even should death do us part."
"Don't talk about death doing parting. Tell me instead how much you'll always love me while you're alive."
"I'll always love you more than Little Jackie Paper loved Puff the Magic Dragon."
"Is that more than Romeo loved Juliet?"
"That's even more than Mary loved the little lamb."
-56-
BETTY-JO CHANCE & LORD WORTHINGTON
The Gray Ghost's Warning
Betty-Jo had a dream three nights before her first U.S. Open match, but it wasn't really a dream. It was more like a wide-awake nightmare. A gray ghost materialized, and ruined her evening.
"Flee, Betty-Jo, flee!" the gray ghost said. "Leave New York, and take your fiancé with you. Return to Myrtle Beach, or you will surely perish."
"Are you real, or are you just spooking me for the fun of it?" she asked.
"I'm real, and I'm not real. I'm not real physically—what you see is electromagnetic energy. It took me a few days to get here from Olympus, traveling at sixteen hundred times the speed of light in the infrared portion of the light spectrum. But what I am about to tell you is real. I beg you, Betty-Jo, flee!"
"But why?"
"Listen to me, and believe. Zeus allows me to return to earth once every five years because of what a horrid goddess of love, nicknamed Goritch, did to me."
"Venus?" She put Brad's maroon-striped dress-shirt on over her teddy.
"Who else? Usually I warn of an impending hurricane, because I can save the most lives that way. But this time I am forfeiting hundreds of lives to save yours. You might wonder why I would do that?"
She did up two buttons on the shirt. "Now that you mention it."
"In saving your life, I may be saving millions of lives, and the democracies of the free world."
"That sounds like no mean feat."
"Stop being a smarty-pants, and pay attention. My name is Lord Worthington, but I come to you now as this gray ghost that you see before you. In 1773, I was riding to make a formal proposal of marriage to my beloved, Jane Clementine. Does the name sound familiar?"
"My mother's middle name was Clementine."
"Indeed. Jane Clementine was your great, great, great, great, great grandmother."
"You were in love with my great, great—how many greats?"
"Five."
"Great, great, great g
randmother?"
"She was everything to me. I had been sent to America by British Prime Minister North, to negotiate the repeal of the Tea Act, and to offer our American colonies full representation in the British Parliament."
"You jest." She glanced over at a slumbering Brad, and thought about waking him.
"It was a major shift in British policy. North had a hell of a time, but he finally managed to get that insane King George III to agree to full representation for our American colonials. The signing was to take place four days hence. If it had, Boston would have missed out on its tea party, there would not have been a Declaration of Independence, and the British Empire would have flourished."
"Rule Britannia."
"It should have been. But Goritch sent her bungling son, Cupid, to punish my dearest Jane for grievances from the past, and to destroy the British Empire while she was at it."
That is too unbelievable. "How could Goritch do that?"
"Her plan, ridiculous as it may seem, was to make dearest Jane fall in love with my horse, and then murder me. Her success would have brought an end to a long line of beautiful women, and set the British Empire on a slippery downward slope."
"Did she succeed?"
"Partially. After the fall of Rome, Zeus decreed that the gods could no longer interfere in the lives of Earth mortals. Cupid, although fearful of Zeus, agreed to do his mother's dirty work one last time. When he arrived, at what is now Myrtle Beach, he decided to shoot Empire first. The inept scoundrel almost missed the entire horse—it was just a fluke that he hit poor Empire in the nuts."
Betty-Jo couldn't help herself—she laughed.
"When it happened to me, I laughed too," Lord Worthington said. "At least I laughed until Empire took off into a bog. My anguish was short-lived, and terminal. I was going down with my horse, and nothing could be done to save me. Of course dearest Jane tried. My dear darling ran straight away into the quicksand, but she couldn't reach me. I was too far out. Her father rescued her, but it was the end for me."
"My God!"
"Not your God, my dear—Goritch! So the treaty went unsigned, and Britain never recovered from the loss of her American colonies. It was the beginning of the end of Britain's glory years."
The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever Page 26