Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  “It’s been real cold, and it didn’t help that I forgot to turn off my headlights. Best thing is to turn them off as soon as you enter the garage.”

  “You ever done that before?” she asked, frankly curious that such a meticulous man would make that mistake.

  “Yeah. A couple of times, but I caught it before I got to the elevator.”

  “Well, I’m glad I stayed late. See you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks a lot. I appreciate your help. You’re working on a Saturday?”

  “I’m a freelance demonstrator right now, and a part of my salary comes from commissions. New groups and tours come in on Saturday morning, and I want to get them before they go to Everedy Square and Shab Row and spend all of their money.”

  “Or those antiques shops on Urban Pike. Well, see you tomorrow, and thanks again.”

  She didn’t know whether to try to prolong the conversation or get in her car and drive off. The more she saw of him, the more certain she was that, if he wasn’t married, she’d like them to be more than friends. The earth didn’t move when she saw him, but stars had twinkled, so to speak, on more than one occasion when he smiled at her. She got into her car, waved and drove off.

  She drove into the parsonage two-car garage, parked in the space that her father had kept for himself, and went across the street for a quick visit with her aunt Nan. “Did you ever get your brooch?” Nan asked. They sat in her aunt’s oversized kitchen sipping hot cider and eating roasted chestnuts. “If you let that thing lie around somewhere, before you know it, it’ll be pinned to a jacket that ain’t yours.”

  “That’s true, but the lawyer didn’t find it among the things that Gramma stored with him. He’s going to search the house for it.”

  “Well, I hope he finds it; somebody’s been working on the place, but I guess Marshall knows about that. Anyhow, you be careful. Know who you can trust, and don’t forget that some linen that looks clean’s been used and folded back up.” They talked for a while, and Lacette went home to check her mail for she was anxious for letter from Lawrence Bradley. She found both the house and the mailbox empty. After considerable contemplation as to whether she should take the time to stop by her grandmother’s house and check on the person working there, she rejected the idea and stayed home to work on plans for her marketing business.

  Lacette’s decision meant a reprieve for Kellie who, at that minute, approached the house that Carrie Hooper willed to her son-in-law. When she saw the front door crack, she bounded up the front steps. It opened, and the same man she met there a few days earlier stepped out. Her first thought was, Good Lord, and in the same old clothes. Doesn’t he ever change? His bulk blocked her way.

  “What do you want, babe? I told you you’re not getting into this house.”

  “But it belongs to my father. I’m Marshall Graham’s daughter.”

  His glare unsettled her; she was accustomed to enticing a man with no more effort than it took to give him her best seductive smile. “Big damn deal! I don’t give a shit if you’re the daughter of the President of the U.S.A. You ain’t coming in here.”

  Tough, was he? She stepped closer to him. “You want to bet? I haven’t met the man stupid enough to turn me down.”

  “Turn you . . .” He flipped back his baseball cap and scratched the back of his head. “What the hell’s in here that’s so important to you?”

  “If you go in with me, I’ll show you.”

  He narrowed his right eye. “Oh, yeah? What else will you show me?”

  It was the opening she’d waited for. “Anything you want to see.”

  When his eyes bulged and his lower lip dropped, she knew she had him. Emboldened by his seeming loss for words, she said, “I don’t want anybody to see me standing out here. Let’s go inside.” While he gaped, she walked past him into the house, pulled off her coat and threw it across the banister.

  “You’re sure of yourself,” he said.

  Her smile telegraphed to him the satisfaction she felt at having him in her clutches. “I’m just not used to men ignoring me, and I didn’t intend for you to do it either.”

  “I could lose my job for this.”

  She ignored that. “What do you say I check out things upstairs, and—”

  “Yeah. That’s a good idea. Let’s go.”

  She pulled off her jacket, threw it on top of her coat and started up the stairs ahead of him, giving him a good view of her tight-fitting skirt. “Let’s see,” she said when she reached the top of the stairs, “that was Gramma’s room over there.”

  When she headed in that direction, he grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute. You think you’re just gonna walk in here, take whatever it is you’re after and leave me holding the bag? I wasn’t that stupid the day I was born.”

  “Who said you were stupid?” She looked around at the familiar wallpaper and the pictures of her great grandparents who gazed down at her with censoring eyes and shuddered. “It’s kinda cold in here,” she said, not wanting him to see her sudden attack of nerves. “Can’t you do something to warm up this place?”

  “Keep it up,” he snarled, “and you’ll get what you’ve been begging for ever since you walked up those front steps out there. Damn right I can warm it up, and you too.”

  “Well, I wish you’d get to it.” She rubbed her arms, hoping to tease and confuse him, to rob him of some of his arrogance. But he wasted no time closing the distance between them, pulled her sweater over her head and threw it on the floor. She stood there and let him look, knowing it wouldn’t be long before he went after what he wanted.

  “Unhook that thing,” he ordered in deep guttural tones. “Take it off.”

  “If I do, you’re going to let me check out this place any time I want to. Understood?”

  He reached toward her, but she backed away. “Understood?” she asked him again.

  His breathing deepened, and she rubbed her breasts. “Yeah. I’ll do it, dammit. Just take that thing off.”

  With a smile of triumph, she moved closer to him. “If you want it off, take it off.”

  His calloused fingers fumbled with the front hook, but she didn’t help him and, exasperated, he jerked the garment from her, hooked his arm around her back and sucked her nipple into his mouth. She tried not to react to his rhythmic pulling and sucking, but he kept at it until groans spilled out of her throat, groans that were not faked as they had been with Lawrence Bradley and every other man who had tasted them. He pulled her clothes off and, without looking, threw them across the room where they landed on the dresser.

  She had expected brutality or, at the least, that he would be as crude and fumbling in bed as he was coarse in conversation, to relieve himself quickly and let her do what she came there to do, find the brooch. But like a pilot checking his plane for safety, he paid careful attention to every one of her body’s erotic pulses.

  Don’t rush me,” he said when she showed impatience. “This takes a lot of energy and I already worked all day—”

  “Well, if you’re tired—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t even think it. I’m going to take my good time and get everything that’s coming to me. All you have to do is lie back and relax—that is, if you can; I’ll do the rest.” He stripped, rolled her under the covers and slid in beside her.

  His mouth, hot and moist, clamped over one nipple while his fingers pinched and massaged her other breast, and she crossed her legs and told herself not to move, not to reward him. But his hand began to move in circles over her belly, to skim her thighs with the delicacy of a soft breeze, inching closer and closer to her vagina. She wanted to grab his hand and force him to touch her, to massage her, to do anything that would combust the embers smoldering inside of her and burst that awful fullness that she could neither name nor identify.

  I won’t beg him. I’m damned if I will. At last his fingers delved into her folds and began their dance, and she couldn’t hold back the moans. Her hips began to undulate, as if by instinct awaiting a long sou
ght treasure. When he spread her legs and let her feel the thrust and pull of his tongue, she knew at last that it was not she, but he who was the captor.

  “Get in me. What’s wrong with you? Get in me,” she moaned.

  He hovered over her, his eyes closed and his head thrown back. “Take me in.”

  She grasped him, lifted her body and waited. “Oh,” she yelled, when he surged into her.

  “Sorry. It’ll be okay in a minute,” he said.

  She forgot the initial pain of his unusual size as he thrust with the skill of an expert, and she moved to his rhythm until the bottom of her feet flushed hot, her thighs quivered, and she thought she couldn’t stand another second of the swelling and pumping. Lord, if only she could burst.

  “I can’t stand this,” she moaned.

  “You’re doing great, baby. Let it go.”

  He accelerated his pace and she let out a keening cry as he hurtled her into spasm after spasm until she gripped his buttocks in frenzy and then went limp. Shocked and disoriented by the unexpected experience, her first orgasm, and humiliated by her response to him, tears drained from her tightly closed eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked, using her breast for a pillow.

  “At first.”

  “That always happens till the woman gets use to me. I’d better warn you. I got my first time to have a woman who didn’t want me again. That’s because I do it right. I don’t cheat women.”

  He didn’t have to brag to her; he’d just showed her. Now, she could stop wondering what was so great about sex, but she sure would rather have learned it from some other man.

  “What’s your name?” she asked when he finally pulled out of her after rocking her senseless two more times.

  He rolled off her and braced himself on his left elbow. “I’m glad you asked. I might have gotten the wrong impression.”

  “What do you mean?” She felt annoyance beginning to churn in her, though she knew it was more at herself than at him.

  “A prostitute doesn’t ask a man’s name, but she doesn’t let herself burst wide open all around him, either.”

  She sat up. “Are you comparing me to a—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t go getting self-righteous on me. You got a helluva surprise. I know what to do with women, and I didn’t short you.”

  He got up, found her clothes and threw them on the bed. “Come on. I gotta get the truck back before my boss sends the cops out.”

  “You what? I haven’t had time to—”

  “Look. I can’t stand cry babies. You can come back Monday about the same time as you showed up here today. Now, let’s get going. Good jobs are hard to get.”

  “Now you wait a minute. You’re not keeping your end of the bargain.”

  “Look, babe. You wanted to steal something in this house. You can do that Monday. Beside, you didn’t expect a good lay, and what I gave you was first class. Next time, I’ll make you bloom like a flower in the springtime. You and me, babe; we can really get it on.”

  She finished dressing, but clothes didn’t erase the chill that sent tremors through her. It wouldn’t be easy to get rid of him, and after what he’d just done to her, she wondered how she could pretend that he didn’t exist.

  Chapter Four

  Lacette didn’t like having friends and members of her family visiting her at the place she worked, but she knew it was futile to tell Kellie not to come to the Belle Époque hotel to “check you out,” was the way Kellie put it. Normally, she disliked being the object of Kellie’s concern, considering that her sister had a hidden motive for most everything she did. Before she died, she meant to ask both of her parents how they accounted for the differences between their twin daughters in morality and most any measure of human decency. She didn’t consider herself disloyal or even unduly critical of her sister. Kellie was Kellie, and she loved her, faults and all. It was because she understood her sister that she didn’t want her coming to the place where she worked. And she specifically didn’t want her to meet Douglas Rawlins. Not that he was special to her; he wasn’t, but once Kellie made him the object of her attention—like a cutting horse separating a calf from the herd, Kellie would kill any chance that a relationship would develop between Douglas and her. Maybe it wouldn’t anyway, but she hated the thought of losing another man to Kellie, and especially since Kellie would dump him as soon as she proved she could get him.

  With sales dragging as they usually did in midweek, she had time to telephone Bradley. “I’d like space in that building across from the hotel here,” she told him. “It’s almost perfect for what I need, the location is great, and I can afford it.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you a lease for a little less than he’s charging. You ought to pay the same per square foot of floor space as other tenants with the same accommodation. Sure you want it, now?”

  “Yes,” she said, her gaze on the door of the florist shop and the sign that indicated it was closed. “Thanks, Lawrence,” she added, feeling expansive because Douglas had left for the day and wouldn’t encounter Kellie, and forgetting that she didn’t call the man by his first name.

  “What are you talking to Lawrence Bradley about?” Lacette whirled around to face her sister, who stood, arms akimbo, so irate that her chest heaved and her nostrils flared. “You lied to me. You said there wasn’t anything between you and Bradley.”

  I ought to let her think whatever she wants to. “Would you please lower your voice, Kellie. Can’t you see that this hotel is quiet and elegant? If you want to act out, go somewhere else, not where I work.”

  Kellie stepped closer. “You’re just covering up, but you’re not fooling me,” she hissed. “Why can’t you get your own man and stay away from mine?”

  “Yours? Did you say yours? I imagine Lawrence Bradley’s wife would have a few things to say to you, Kellie. Bradley is taking care of some important business for me. He’s my lawyer.”

  “You’re lying.”

  It wasn’t often that she got the upper hand with Kellie, and having it brought a sense of serenity that wrapped around her the way fog closes over mountain lakes early in the morning. She folded her arms and rocked back on her heels; there was power in being right when one’s adversary was dead wrong, and she could almost feel her chest expanding.

  “Lying about what? The man’s wife or his being my lawyer? Which one?”

  “The whole thing’s immaterial to me. I dropped him.”

  “If you dropped Bradley, why should you care who he hangs out with? Anyhow, he’s not making time with me.” She held up a sheaf of papers. “Look, Kellie, I have to tally the day’s take and place these orders. That’s a lot of work, and I have to pack up in an hour.”

  Always quick to change the subject when a conversation wasn’t going her way, Kellie’s face bloomed into a wide smile. “Oh, that’s great. I wanted to borrow your car to run down to Ceresville. I’ll be back before you finish that. I just want to drop something off.”

  Lacette spun around, thinking she heard someone say “Don’t do it.” It was so real, a human voice, but how could that be when only she and Kellie were in that booth? She shook it off.

  “Okay, but be back here in an hour. I promised Aunt Nan I’d drive her out to Frederick Fairgrounds to see the Christmas Fair. It closes at six.”

  “Not to worry. There isn’t a thing to do in Ceresville but leave it.”

  Lacette handed her car keys to Kellie and then turned her attention to a man who subsequently ordered a bread maker, two cookbooks and a chef’s apron. Her curiosity piqued, she asked if he planned to give cooking lessons.

  “Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. I’m going to use these cookbooks to learn to cook, but I know I won’t learn how to make bread, so . . .” he pointed to the machine.

  “Why can’t you learn to make bread?” she asked him.

  His shrug indicated that he thought the matter of little import. “Both of my parents mess it up every time they try, s
o I figure it’s not in my DNA. Besides, it’s just bread. I want to learn how to make biscuits and cornbread.” He looked hard at her. “Do you eat in the restaurants in this hotel?”

  She shook her head. “They’re too expensive, though I hear the food is good. I eat mostly at home.”

  “These restaurants offer you gourmet this and gourmet that, and it’s getting to be that way everywhere you go, but from time to time, I have to have me some soul food. First thing I did when I got back from Afghanistan was head to Mica’s in Baltimore and get me some stewed collards, some good old fried lake trout and cornbread. Man, that’s food.”

  She smiled in agreement, hoping he would move along and she could get her work done. She had to abide by the company rule requiring her to do daily accounting. The man finally left, and she set about her work. When she finished and looked at her watch, she saw that it was seven-fifteen. Where on earth was Kellie? Immediately, she remembered the voice admonishing her not to lend Kellie her car, but she had ignored it, something she rarely did. Calls to her parents inquiring whether they had heard from her sister brought negative responses, and a premonition settled over her and hung there like an ominous cloud.

  She didn’t think she had ever been so happy to see anyone as she was to see her father when he walked up to her booth. “If she hasn’t come yet, she won’t be here any time soon,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “But, Daddy, maybe she’s in trouble.”

  An expression of sadness settled over his face, “I checked with the police. They don’t have anything on her.” He took her arm. “Come on. She’s all right. The Lord wouldn’t take Kellie now, because she’s got too many sins to atone for.”

  Marshall’s sense of humor was capable of seeping out during his most serious moments, and it raised her spirits as it always did, but only for a moment, as she vacillated between fear for her sister and anger at her for not keeping her word.

  “Where could she be?” Cynthia asked them when they entered the parsonage.