Family Ties

by Danielle Steel

  “You make it seem so simple,” he said with admiration. She was a good teacher, and he liked her style. She was an easy, warm person, a bright woman, and obviously a good mother from what he had seen. She was like Mother Earth as she tucked her feet under her, and smiled at him. She had a lush body and seemed limber and graceful and explained to him that she had done yoga for years. She taught it privately sometimes and said that she did everything she had to to make ends meet. Her ex-husband was an artist and couldn’t even pay child support. She was carrying it all herself. Ted admired her for her openness and courage. She didn’t say anything nasty about her ex-husband, and she seemed to accept her life as it was, and it had been kind of her to help him. He felt like he should pay her something for the tutoring help but didn’t know what, and he didn’t want to insult her.

  He was about to get up to leave, so as not to impose on her further, when she offered him a glass of wine. He hesitated for a moment, not sure what he should do. She somehow made him feel boyish and inept, and next to her he felt awkward. And so as not to offend her, he accepted the glass of wine. She poured him some inexpensive Spanish red wine and poured another glass for herself.

  “It’s pretty good for cheap wine,” she commented, and he nodded. It was good, and it was pleasant sitting there with her. He stretched his long legs out under the coffee table, and she brushed against him as she set down her glass on the table and turned to smile at him. “You’re young to be in law school,” she said warmly. “Did you come right in after college?” They both knew that that was rare—most law students worked for a few years before entering law school.

  “I’m not that young. I’m twenty-four. I worked as a paralegal for two years. I had a great time and it convinced me I wanted to go to law school.”

  “I clerked for a family law judge during law school. It convinced me I wanted to teach. I’d never want that kind of responsibility, screwing up people’s lives and making decisions for them.”

  “I’d like to be a federal prosecutor when I grow up,” Ted said, half teasing, and half serious.

  “That’s pretty tough stuff. I’m thirty-six, and all I want to be when I grow up is happy and able to stop worrying about how to pay my rent. That would be great,” she said, and took another sip of wine. Their eyes met over the glass, and there was something smoldering in hers. He didn’t know what it was, but it was mesmerizing, as though she had the secret of the ages in her possession and wanted to share it with him. As he looked at her, the difference in their ages disappeared like mist.

  They didn’t say anything for a long moment and Ted was about to thank her again for her help with the contracts class, when without a word she leaned toward him, put an arm around his neck, and pulled him close to her. She kissed him then, and as she did, he felt as though his lips and soul and loins were on fire. He had never felt anything like it before. He started to pull away and then found he couldn’t stop. It was as though he had been drugged. She was the drug, and he wanted more. When they finally drifted away from each other, all he wanted was to go back, and he slipped a hand under her sweater and touched her breasts. She didn’t seem to mind at all, and her hand was resting lightly on his crotch, which bulged at her touch. He felt as though he had suddenly gone insane. Pattie was smiling at him, as she pressed closer to him and kissed him again.

  “What about your kids?” he asked as he reached hungrily into her jeans and devoured her mouth. Worrying about her children was the last sane thought he had.

  “They’re asleep,” she whispered, and he was aware of silence from the second bedroom. They had finally worn themselves out. But Pattie and Ted had come alive, as though they were being held together by an electric current that was drawing them to each other. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, and she unzipped his pants and was cradling him in her hands. “Let’s go to bed,” she whispered, and without hesitating, he followed her to her bedroom. It was the only place he wanted to be, as Pattie locked the door and literally tore his clothes off him, as he peeled off hers. All he wanted now was to be inside her, and he couldn’t get there fast enough as they fell onto her bed, and she teased and taunted him unbearably until she let him get there, and then suddenly she turned around and swallowed him whole, letting him pleasure her, and then she turned again and took him into her, and Ted felt as though he had been sucked into another world and turned inside out. He had never known sex like that in his life. He was dizzy and light-headed when they finished and lay panting on the floor, where they had wound up.

  “Oh my God … ,” Ted said. He had been so excited that he almost felt sick, and all he wanted was more. She was a drug. “What happened?” He sounded as dazed as he felt as he squinted at her in the dark, and they climbed back into her bed. His long athletic body was glistening with sweat, and so was hers. Hers was full and lush, and every inch of her was like a heady, warm embrace, like some kind of magic elixir that he could no longer live without.

  “I think they call that love,” Pattie said softly in the dark. They had tried not to make too much noise so as not to wake her kids, and they were whispering now. He wasn’t sure he agreed with her word choice. He didn’t know her well enough to love her, he didn’t know her at all, but it was the wildest sex he could ever have imagined and an experience he knew he would never forget.

  “I’m not sure that’s love,” he said honestly, “but it’s the best sex I’ve ever had.” He ran a hand down her stomach and between her legs and touched the place that had just welcomed him so warmly and given him so much joy.

  “Is that all it was for you? Just sex?” She sounded disappointed, and he laughed softly in the dark.

  “It was some kind of world-class explosion,” he tried to describe it. “The Hiroshima of lovemaking, or Mount Vesuvius or something.” It had never happened to him like that before. He could only imagine that it must be how people felt on psychedelic drugs, which he had never tried.

  “I’ve wanted you since the first time you walked into my class,” Pattie whispered, and as he saw her in the moonlight streaming through her bedroom window, she suddenly looked like a little girl, with masses of soft curly blond hair and huge eyes. She looked innocent and sweet, not like the femme fatale who had taken him to the heights of seduction only moments before. She seemed to have many faces and facets, which only helped intrigue him more. He was surprised to hear that she had noticed him in class.

  “I didn’t think you even knew who I was.” There were two hundred students in the class, and Ted was always low key and often sat in the rear.

  “I knew exactly who you were,” she said as she kissed his neck and pinched his nipple at the same time. It aroused him faster than he thought. The little girl was morphing into the sex goddess again, and moments later they were rolling on the bed, and he tried every position that Pattie directed him to try until he could stand it no longer and they exploded violently at the same time. Afterward he could hardly speak.

  “Pattie … what is this?” he said weakly. “What are you doing to me? I think you have me under your spell.”

  “I told you … ” Her laughter was a tinkling sound like tiny bells. “This is love … ”

  “I think it may kill me if we don’t stop for a while.” But she was relentless, she aroused him and teased and tormented him and satisfied him again and again. They didn’t stop till dawn, until he finally fell asleep with his head resting on her breast, and she gently caressed his hair, as she would have a child. She tucked the covers around him and gently kissed the top of his head. It was the most incredible night he had ever spent.

  Chapter 5

  When Ted awoke the next day at noon, Pattie had already left. There was a pot of coffee for him, some bagels, and a note, “See you in class. I love you, P.” He realized with dismay that he had missed two early classes that morning, and when he staggered to the kitchen, he could hardly walk. He had no idea what had happened to him the night before. She had bewitched him. She had the effect of a sorceress o
n him. She looked and seemed so motherly and wholesome, and with one kiss she turned into a tigress, and after that a child. He told himself that it couldn’t happen again. It was too trite to be sleeping with his professor, and yet as he drank the coffee, all he could think of were their acrobatics of the night before, and he was aroused just thinking about her. He felt temporarily insane.

  He took a shower then and got dressed, smoothed out the covers on the bed, grabbed his coat, and ran down the stairs of her foul-smelling building. He didn’t even care. He was almost late to her class and was the last person in as he hurried to his seat, and he found himself staring at her during the lecture, remembering the night before. She was wearing the same pink sweater she had worn the previous night, and she turned several times to look at him, with a glance that flicked over him and ripped right through his soul. He had an erection all through her class and waited for it to calm down before he got up to leave. When class ended, she walked over to him with a smile and looked down at him. He could feel everything tighten when she spoke. They were the only ones left in the classroom, and for a crazy moment he wanted to make love to her right there. She took his hand and pressed it between the legs of her jeans. He grabbed her and looked at her with utter amazement. Overnight she had turned him into someone he didn’t even know. He was a stranger to himself as much as he was to her.

  “You must be a witch,” he whispered as he looked up at her, and she shook her head.

  “No, I’m just yours. You own me now, Ted.” She said it so simply that it would have touched him if the words weren’t so odd. Suddenly everything around him was new.

  “I don’t want to own anyone,” he said honestly, trying to keep a grip on sanity before he lost it again with her. “I just want to be with you again.” He felt like a kid with her, until he entered her and turned into a man he had never even dreamed he could be. This was a part of life that went way, way beyond the ordinary experiences he had had till then. He had broken up with a girlfriend six months before, because he didn’t want to get serious with her. Now this was a whole new world, with a woman who was much, much more experienced than he. It was a heady feeling, as she leaned over and gently rubbed the bulge in his jeans and pulled him to his feet. He stood with his arms around her, clinging to her, like a child lost in a storm.

  “I love you, Ted.” She said it so fiercely that it unnerved him, and he was almost beginning to wonder if this was what love was. Maybe she really knew.

  “Don’t say that. You don’t know me yet. Let’s get to know each other and find out what this is.” He tried to reason with her, but nothing that was happening made sense.

  “This is love,” she whispered in his ear, and he was willing to believe her if it would get him to her bed again. “Let’s go home,” she said as they walked out of the room.

  “What about your kids?” He was worried about them. He didn’t want them to become aware of what he was doing with their mother, and it unnerved him knowing they were there. He had forgotten it eventually the night before, but he didn’t want to do that again. It didn’t seem right to him.

  “They’re with their dad tonight,” Pattie said with a girlish grin, and Ted looked at her and smiled. “He picked them up at school. They’ll be with him for two days.” It was good news to both of them, and she and Ted walked home to her place at an ever-quickening pace and raced up the stairs to her apartment. He was already slamming her against the door as she unlocked it, then kicked it closed, and they both flew into the living room and fell on each other on the couch. The night they spent together was even wilder than the one before. And the next day, neither of them went to school. They both called in sick and made love night and day. Pattie commented that you had to be Ted’s age to make love as often as that, but she was there with him every time. As their bodies writhed and joined and blended together, neither of them thought or cared about their age. All Ted wanted now was her.

  When Pattie’s children came back from their father’s, Ted went to his apartment for the first time in three days. The nights he had just spent with her felt like a tidal wave, and he had been washed up on the shore. He looked like he’d been on a three-week drunk when he finally got home. He was grateful that none of his roommates were in. He hadn’t been to school in three days. Pattie had promised to give him an A in her class no matter what he did, but that didn’t feel right to him. He had to get back to school. She had finally gone back to work that afternoon.

  She called him an hour after he got home. He was lying with his eyes closed on his bed.

  “I can’t stand it. I have to see you.” Pattie’s voice sounded ragged on the phone, and he smiled, thinking of her.

  “We may have to go everywhere like Siamese twins.” The day before he had actually carried her to her kitchen, still deeply plunged into her. He fed her grapes and strawberries, sat her on the kitchen counter, and finished it there. There was nothing they hadn’t tried in the past three days. Thanks to Pattie, his sexual education was now complete, or maybe it was just beginning.

  “Can I come over?” She sounded desperate.

  “Where are the kids?” He always worried about them. He didn’t want them to be upset in any way because of his wild affair with her.

  “I can leave them with Mrs. Pacheco downstairs for a couple of hours. What are you doing?”

  “Lying on my bed. My roommates should be home soon, but you can come over if you want.” He had his own room, although the walls were paper thin. It didn’t even occur to him that they might be startled by her age. He had stopped thinking about the difference in their ages the first night. Sex had leveled the playing field between them.

  She was there half an hour later, after dropping the kids off and taking a cab to his place. She got there before his roommates, and they made love frantically for two hours before she had to leave. They had never left his bed or his room. They hardly talked to each other, except when they were too exhausted to make love again, but Pattie said they were kindred spirits, and he believed her. What other explanation could there be for this? He could think of no other.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said dreamily as she left, and he kissed her. He was so exhausted that five minutes later he was sound asleep, and he never got to all the studying he had to do and had promised himself he would do that night. He’d have to make up for it the next day. He had so much catching up to do now.

  Ted caught up on some of his work for the next two days, and they were both miserable. But she had papers to correct too. She wanted to come over for a couple of hours, and he wouldn’t let her. He knew they wouldn’t be able to tear themselves away again, and he had to study for final exams in a couple of weeks. He had promised to take her to dinner at the Waverly Inn on Friday, and they were both looking forward to it. He wanted to spend a normal evening with her, talk to her across a dinner table and get to know her, not just have wild abandoned sex wherever they could on every surface in her apartment. He wanted to have a relationship with her and try to figure out what this was. Was it just an animal attraction they couldn’t control, or was it what Pattie kept saying, that it was love? Ted wanted to find out, and he wanted to take her to dinner and act like a civilized adult with her, not just a sex maniac on a rampage. Pattie was touched that he wanted to take her out, and the kids were back at their father’s for the weekend. With their joint custody arrangement, the children went back and forth every couple of days, which gave Ted and Pattie time to be together, and a little breather in between.

  Their dinner at the Waverly Inn started out perfectly, with a nice table and a good dinner. Ted ordered wine for them. He was showing off a little and wanted to demonstrate how sophisticated he was, but Pattie didn’t care. She never took her eyes off him all evening, and they were both aching to go home long before dessert.

  “Maybe we’re just not ready to go out yet,” Ted said, as they hurried home. The idea had been good, but practically they couldn’t keep their clothes on, stay out of bed, and keep thei
r bodies away from each other long enough to have a decent meal or get to know each other. Ted locked the front door behind them, and they never made it a step farther. He spun her around, gently laid her down on the carpet, and shoved her skirt up. She was begging for him as he took her right there, and then carried her to the bedroom with their clothes strewn across the floor. They didn’t leave the apartment again after that for two days, until her kids came home. Ted left five minutes before Pattie’s ex-husband dropped them off, and he went back to his own apartment, exhausted and happy and missing her.

  Annie called Ted several times over the weekend, but his phone always went to voice mail. She finally called Liz and Kate, who was out with friends.

  “Have you heard from your brother?” she asked them both the same question. He usually checked in with her every few days, and this week he hadn’t, and she thought it was strange. “I hope he’s okay.” Maybe he was sick. But he was never too busy to call her, and she hadn’t heard a word from him since the Sunday after Thanksgiving when he’d left. Kate said he hadn’t called her, and Liz said the same and that she’d had a busy week herself. They all had, and things were going to be even busier before Christmas and over the holidays.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Liz reassured her. “He’s probably just busy with school. He was complaining about it the other day. Law school is really tough.”

  “Maybe he has a new girlfriend,” Annie suggested, sounding pensive, and Lizzie laughed.

  “I don’t think so. After he broke up with Meg, he’s been pretty careful not to get too involved with anyone. I think it’s just school.”