by Lass Small
Then Chas smiled just a little. He parted his lips to say something, but Amy said, “For Pete’s sake! Both of you leave! Out! Both of you!”
And Chas snarled at Miles, “See what you’ve done?”
That surprised Miles. “I’ve done? I was peacefully leaving, and you barge in and start throwing your weight around. You’re the one who’s upsetting Amy.”
“She needs upsetting!” Chas ground through clenched teeth.
“That may well be.” Miles recognized he hadn’t a chance, so he might just as well help Chas. “I don’t know the whole story, but she did say she’d lied to you.”
Amy gasped as Chas asked, “She told you that?”
“Yes. And she said she was devastated, but not as bad as Hiroshima.”
“Good grief!” Amy shrieked. “Out!”
Miles gave Chas his hand as he said, “Luck. Name the first one after me.”
Amy shouted, “What are you doing to me?”
Miles smiled pacifically at her. “I’m helping. You have my card. Let me know how things come out. Understand?” If she didn’t, he would be in touch. This might clear the air. The other guy was hostile and no real competition. She now knew that after Chas left, he was in the wings and waiting.
She glared at him.
With Chas glowering, Miles added recklessly, to Amy, “I believe you’re a treasure.” She would remember he’d said that after this Cougar left.
Chas hurried him along, “Goodbye, Clifford.”
Miles gave Chas a long study, then he asked Amy, “Okay?”
She nodded woodenly.
Miles leaned over and kissed Amy’s surprised cheek. He figured that should give Cougar something to think about. Then he smiled, rather pleased with himself, picked up his cases and left the two antagonists there, together.
Miles was barely out the door when Chas closed it after him with an emphatic thump. Then he glared down at Amy, who wouldn’t look up at him. “All right. Tell me just why you took off that way? I suppose you have a reasonable excuse?”
“How did you find me?” Was that thin little voice really hers? She cleared her throat and straightened her spine, and again she worked at prying his fingers from her arm.
Before he released her, he tightened his fingers in a brief shake to show her it was his choice to let go. “Did you think I couldn’t find you? If this is the beginning of a career as a thief, then you— ”
“I didn’t mean to keep it.” She finally looked up at him with wide, earnest eyes. “I was going to mail it back to you.” She fished the pearl from the front of her shirt. “Do you always carry two hundred business cards?”
His head was still forward in the threatening-bear stance. “I had them printed while I waited for Connie at the doctor’s office.”
“Oh.” She had begun to take the chain off over her head. “I fully intended to leave your pearl with the note.” The chain was tangled in her hair and his restraining hands.
“I was being symbolic in calling you a thief. Using men and discarding them is a kind of thievery. The pearl was a gift. If you’d left it with that stiff little note, I’d have lost hope.”
“I worked very hard over that note.” She defended as she gave up on removing the pearl for then. She finally led him into the living room overlooking the other end of the pool from the kitchen.
“I found the rejected versions in the wastebasket.”
“How rude of you to find them.” She had gone back to avoiding looking at him. There was a silence. “Did you explain to Sally?” She stood there.
“Yes.” He finally sat down on one sofa. “Everybody missed you.”
“I thought about you and wondered how...things went.” Primly she sat on the sofa facing him.
“You could have stayed and found out,” he said nastily.
There was a longer silence. She watched her fingers comfort each other in her lap.
He cleared his throat and asked in such a manner that she knew he wasn’t talking about anything he really wanted to discuss, he was making a conversational bridge. “How, exactly, do political consultants work?”
And Amy, who had never told Chas very much, seized the opportunity to tell about herself. “A candidate pays for our expertise. We’ve done it all before.”
“Is it fair? An expert against amateurs?” Naturally Chas would ask that.
“It’s still up to the voter. You must be aware how few people actually vote? We do try. The registration push is done ahead with volunteers.”
“Then what?”
“We help the candidate target issues, we learn where the local ‘buttons’ are, and which to avoid and which to punch. We become acquainted with the media people. We make up the advertising and schedule those. We supervise the raising of funds— direct mail and/or telephone, boiler-room type with volunteers. Events like breakfasts where the candidate can speak briefly. We sort out requests for speaking engagements, invitations, and arrange appearances.”
He sat watching her for a while, then commented, “We are using a similar approach in localities where we’d like the Cougar products to become stronger. We couldn’t count on volunteers, but there’s that great resource— Cougar offspring.”
“Chas, you aren’t into anything that pollutes or harms, are you? The fact that we now have wastes that are harmful for two hundred fifty thousand years simply appalls me.”
“We’ve been around a long time in this land, and we want it to last as long as we do, and on beyond us, I promise.”
She allowed her eyes to rest on him, finally. He watched her back, wondering what she was thinking. How bad was their rift. Could it be healed?
After a time, she inquired, “Do you use your name in your company?”
It wasn’t what he had expected her to say. “No. Billy Cougar called it the Ace Manufacturing Company, and the title’s come down unchanged.”
“The Cougar is such an American symbol. Dreyfus uses the lion, but the cougar is American. Why not consolidate under the cougar symbol? You could use cougar pins among your prize employees.”
“You’re hired.”
She looked off, unseeing, frowning, concentrating. “It would take other kinds of research. Politics is very interesting. I’ve met some wheelers and dealers, and the movers and shapers.”
“That’s how you met Martin Durwood.”
“Yes. Why did you back me so quickly when I told Cousin Kenneth to watch out for him? Do you know him?”
“I’d heard tales of Durwood and, by then, I knew who you were and under what circumstances you’d probably met him. When you warned Kenneth, I was very pleased. It only confirmed what I knew about you. But it wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t been so quickly committed. It was already too late for you.” Slowly, so not to spook her, he moved to her sofa.
“I thought I was anonymous.”
“And safe?” He sneakily put his arm along the back of the sofa behind her.
“Yes. And I suffered so, thinking you might be hurt.”
“Seeing Clifford here scared the hell out of me.”
“You thought I’d gone sexually berserk? That no man was safe from me, now that I’d experienced you? That Miles was fleeing from my voracious body?”
He brought his other hand over to smooth her hair back from her face. “Is your body voracious?”
“Not as much as last week.”
“Why is that?” He’d lightened his deep voice so it sent shimmers down her spine.
She swallowed. “A mysterious stranger has been slowly rubbing out voracious.” He drew in a sharp breath, but she went on quickly, “I thought about you and wondered how...things went.”
“I hope your bloody conscience gave you fits.”
When he leaned and kissed her cheek, he very seriously excited her down the middle of her stomach, and she said sadly, “I felt terrible. I was afraid I’d hurt your feelings. I didn’t know how to say goodbye.”
“I should think not!”
In that sad little voice, she told him, “I had nightmares.”
“I sweat a little, too. I didn’t know where you’d run. Then I got here, and you opened the door right on cue, but you were with another man! With suitcases! Ready to go God only knows where!”
“He was leaving.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Good grief! I only met him last night!”
“You were in my bed that first day.”
“Well...” She looked helpless to explain.
“Amy, about your ‘using’ me. There’s something you need to know.”
She confessed, “I set out deliberately to seduce you.” She raised guilty eyes to his.
“Did you?” He smiled down at her.
“Yes. I figured if men could be womanizers, then I could be a man-izer.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t mean to be so fast and crass. But there was only a limited time.”
“Yes.” He was grave, watching her.
“It was so easy!”
“Was I?”
“Oh, I don’t mean you’re loose,” she assured him earnestly. “I just meant I was amazed how...” She looked at him, anxious not to offend him. “It... just...worked. I sort of waited around, and went along and it all worked out. As you know, you were my first.”
“And last. What made you choose me?”
“Well, in the lobby when I was registering, I saw you.”
“As early as that?” He very carefully moved her to him, with her head on his shoulder, and his free hand held hers.
“I had been considering an affair,” she told him openly. “But I had never seen a man I really wanted, before. But then I saw you, and The Plan formed. After I overheard all the talk about Trilby’s elusive family, I revised the title to The Relative Plan.”
“Clever.” He kissed her forehead, his breathing was a little quick.
“I thought so, too. At that time, I foresaw a long list of titles for my seductions. I thought I might put the titles next to the check marks on my closet wall.”
“Closet wall?” He’d lost track.
“Instead of notching the bedpost, you remember.”
“Ahhhh. Of course.”
“When I made my move, you didn’t blink an eye.” That still amazed her.
“Are your parents home?”
“No. They’ve taken their friends, the Peckerels, to church then brunch. They won’t be back until two or three this afternoon.”
Chas looked at his watch. “You were saying I didn’t react when you made your move?”
“No. I thought you might be startled, but you didn’t react at all.”
“That was when you... Show me.”
“I’ll have to lie down.” She was excusing her conduct.
“Oh, yes.” He rose and removed his suit coat and tie in the wink of an eye. He’d unbuttoned the top several shirt buttons and was working on his cuffs by the time she’d arranged herself.
She moved until she was just so, then she looked up. “We were going to watch the film, remember? And...well, you have to lean over as if you’re going to kiss me.”
“This is just a tad narrower than the bed, move over a little. There. And I was like this?”
“Yes. And...ummmmm. Uhhhh. Ummmm. I didn’t mean you actually had to kiss me.”
“We’re being authentic.”
“Yes. Well. Then I put my hand right there and nudged your head closer. Ummmmmm. Yes. Like that. And you acted the same way then! You weren’t startled or anything.”
Chas said, “You’re very subtle.”
“Thank you. What are you doing?”
Chas was involved. “Taking off your shirt.”
“I know. But... Here, let me help.”
“I need the practice.” Chas was kneeling beside the sofa. He took off her shirt, lifting her and being very gentle. He discarded her shoes, undid her slacks and eased them off along with her lace panties.
When he stood up, and worked on the rest of his shirt buttons, she said, “I feel lazy, not helping.”
“I like looking at you, lying there, waiting for me.”
His voice was husky and deep. It sent thrills through her as she watched his body unsheathed from his clothing. He was awesome. While Miles had been beautifully made, Chas was awesome. “You worked hard for those muscles.” She reached out a hand and ran it along his hard thigh.
“The family has lumber camps,” he explained. “We all work our way through college, but they start us out in high school in what the elders call training. All Cougars are muscled, because we’re family and work cheap. The elders call it experience, but it’s really just child exploitation.”
He grinned at her. “When a boy is born in the Cougars, the elders all cheer. It’s not that he’s a male, it’s just they have gained more cheap labor. Cougars have sons. The daughters are so rare that they’re cherished. That’s why I need you. I need some cherishing.”
She touched him. She reached and put her hands on him as she watched his face. “Why did you have to come here? I’ll never get over you now.”
Chas was sympathetic. “I know.”
“You’re making this hard for us.”
“Yes.” He laughed low in his chest as he came down to her.
“Impossible.” She agreed as she curled around him. “Ah, Chas.”
He rolled on a condom and began to make exquisite love to her. She didn’t have much chance to cherish him. He was so loving that she could only gasp and squirm as their hotly filmed bodies melded together, with their hearts thundering and their breaths ragged.
He murmured outrageous things to her, which she accepted as very serious. He meant them. He told her she was his, that they would marry and try for cherished daughters. They would all look like her. He would love her all his life and take care of her, while she cherished him.
He examined every inch of her, giving her his concentrated attention and his murmurs of appreciation. He drove her wild, as he trembled and shivered with his need, and waited. He kissed and touched and stroked and felt and kneaded and suckled and tongued, while she squeaked and dug her fingers into him and writhed, riding his passionate restraint.
When he finally took her, she convulsed in ecstasy, and he laughed in her pleasure as he rode her climactic shudders, reaching his own.
* * *
Lying spent, their hair sweat limp, their bodies cooling. He was inert and she was languid. She moved lazy fingers in his hair as she said pensively, “We’re all wrong for each other. I really don’t care for domineering men.”
He moved the slightest little bit, only to press into her, then he said, “I’ll change.” But he said it so complacently that there was no conviction to his words. “We’ll get married as soon as your parents get over the shock of meeting me.”
“My father would be so pleased with you for a son-in-law, and my mother would adore you.”
“If parental approval is a stumbling block, I can contrive for them to dislike me.”
“Impossible.” Then she asked earnestly, “How can you approve of me when I went to bed with you the first time I met you?”
“It wasn’t the first time, it was a whole, discreet twenty-four hours after we met! It was meant to happen just that way. I knew we were meant to be, but you had this silly idea of shopping around.”
“Tasting,” she corrected.
“Whatever.”
“How could you possibly have known this was serious with us?”
“I knew when you came into the lobby that first night. I had a hell of a time maneuvering so I could be in back of you when you gave your...false name.”
“How did you know it was false?” She was a little indignant, lying there under his relaxed, contented body.
“No one named Abbott calls herself AAAbbott. Dead giveaway. When did you know I was the one for you?”
“I haven’t yet accepted that. But out on the pier...”
“Yes. That’s why you got the p
earl instead of a sailfish.”
Hesitantly she inquired, “A sailfish? They’re enormous!”
“I would have hung it over your bed...as a reminder of me.”
She laughed, still lying under him. “But, Chas, we aren’t suited.”
He shifted just enough to remind her where she was.
“Oh, there’s no question we’re sexually compatible,” agreed the novice, “but our life-styles are quite diverse. You are a part of a large family, and I am used to a very isolated existence, and quite a selfish one. I was overwhelmed by all your family.”
“There are many, many more of us.”
“This whole situation is impossible.” Then curiosity forced her to ask, “How did you find me?”
“Your license number.”
“You traced me?”
“That first night.”
“On Wednesday? We hadn’t even met yet!”
Apparently she still didn’t realize what exactly had happened to her, and how little she had to do with anything. Should he tell her? Make it clear? After he saw her come into the lobby, she had never had a chance. He relished lying on her soft body. She...
She was saying, “I’m not sure I could marry and leave the business world. My brain could dissolve. I believe you should forget marriage.
“I plan to compile a paper on our research on issues, problems, worries, grass-roots opinions for national election usage. It’s a neglected resource. Our polls are more complete.
“However, I am willing to carry on an affair with you as long as you like. I travel, and we can meet wherever you can be. Perhaps you could marry a complacent, sharing woman, who would give you those sons for the mills, and I could be a great and good friend?”
He simply ignored most of what she was saying, “We’ll bend to make you comfortable in our mass of Cougars, who are an untapped research resource for your paper and very willing to share their opinions and advice. You might even have an office to yourself. By mine.” He nuzzled along under her ear. “But to get this plum space, and opportunity, you have to marry me.”
“There’s always a rock in the bed.” She made her voice disgruntled.
He loved it. “So you compare me to a rock?”