_____
Just the three of them in a brand new foreign luxury sedan, tolling down the highway at seventy miles an hour, happily heading for a taste of the simple life. A weekend in the country. Woods, lakes, wildlife. Wild so to speak. Nobody was to say the word lawsuit, nobody permitted to mention Sharon. It was a pretty quiet ride.
Helaine watched the cityscape gradually disappear from her back window, saw it replaced instead with sprawling neighborhoods and commercial strips. An hour passed and still no one had spoken and there were only clusters of houses left on the landscape. After that the trees took over, miles and miles of trees, some of them hinting at turning color. She didn’t mind the silence. She watched the trees as they began to merge with each other, until the view from her window consisted entirely of hills and valleys and then mountains.
The monotony got the better of her and eventually she fell asleep.
_____
“Helaine, wake up, we’re here. Helaine?”
It was dark by the time they reached their destination. Helaine had slept through the dramatic approach and had no idea how steep an ascent they had made into the wilderness. The car was parked before a modern log cabin and the automatic spot lights flooded the driveway, revealing the outline of a smaller building behind it.
“What time is it?” she asked, disoriented.
“It’s nine,” Robert said, helping her out of the back seat and collecting her bags for her. “You’ve got the guest house all to yourself. Come, I’ll get you situated.”
“I’ll put our stuff in the house,” Kay shouted from the car.
Robert and Helaine headed for the guest house along a narrow stone path, the stones clicking together under their feet. She was exhausted and not wearing appropriate shoes and lost her footing twice as she stumbled after him.
“We’re out there, aren’t we?” she asked.
“It seems more remote at night, but yes, we’re out there.” He stopped at the door and waited for the sensors to react to their presence. A night-light over the door flickered before coming on. “A little slow, this one. You all right?”
“Long day,” she said, “long week, for that matter.”
He pushed open the door for her and they stepped gingerly inside.
“Oh, that light’s out again. I’ll have to replace it in the morning. Too late now.” He set the bags down by the entrance and turned to leave. “Don’t feel beholden to us. Sleep as late as you want.”
Helaine hesitated in the darkened entranceway beside him. “Robert, wait!” Across the main room she saw the silhouetted figure of a woman posed in one of the interior doorways. A soft light shone from the room behind the stranger distinguishing the shape of her body but leaving the rest of her features in shadow.
Helaine could make out a form fitted dress, cut above the knees, sleeveless, black perhaps, heels. She squinted in the darkness but couldn’t make out the face. “Robert,” she repeated nervously, “who’s that?”
Robert placed his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, her?” he laughed. “Consider her a gift from your friends, Dr. Kristenson. Enjoy,” he said, attempting to leave.
“What?”
“A pick-me-up, Helaine. Someone to keep you company this weekend.” He opened the front door.
“Robert!” She grabbed his sleeve. “You’re joking.” She looked over her shoulder. The woman stood motionless in the doorway, leaning against it with one arm, the other on her hip. “Oh, Robert, you can’t be serious. This is…she’s a…? You’re joking, right?”
“No joke. Just relax. It’s no big deal.”
“Relax? Robert?” Helaine let go of his shirt and shot another anxious glance at the lit doorway. “No, Robert. You–you make her go. I can’t do this. I’m not–she has to go.” She saw him only grin. “Please, I’m very uncomfortable.”
“Don’t be. She’s a professional.”
“Take her out of here, Robert Keagan!”
“I can’t do that, Helaine. We’re in the middle of nowhere, after dark–”
“Robert–” She looked back again. The woman was clearly not inclined to leave on her own and he was not going to make her. “Then give me the car keys, please. I’ll drive her somewhere.”
“Drive her? She’s not a local girl, Helaine. Where do you plan to leave the woman? At the bottom of the hill?”
She stared at him in disbelief. He slipped past her and stood outside on the path.
“Give me the keys, Mr. Keagan. I’m taking her home.”
“Dr. Kristenson…she’s the cream of the crop.”
“That is not the problem–the keys.”
“Helaine, you don’t even know where you are, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m too pooped.” He started for the house, jingling his keys in his pocket as he walked.
“Robert!” Helaine yelled. “What am I going to do?” She listened to his footsteps fading in the dark, the chorus of peepers serenading the darkness. The light flickered over her door and fizzled out.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he called back to her. “Play cards if you want.”
“I’ll sleep outdoors,” she threatened. She heard him laugh at that.
“With the bears and coyotes?” he taunted.
She searched the blackness around her and fearfully stepped backwards into the entranceway. He was between buildings now. She could no longer see his shape and could barely hear him walking. In the distance the cabin lights shone warm and comforting. She was tempted to run toward them. But bears and coyotes?
What else might be out there? Trees, she thought grimly.
“Goodnight, Helaine,” Robert yelled, finally at his front door.
She watched him disappearing into the cabin. The flood lights in the front of it blinked like sleepy sentinels as one by one they nodded off, the rooms all went dark again, the small piece of civilization belonged once more to the wilderness and to the pitch black night.
Helaine swore under her breath. Bears and coyotes. And snakes, and skunks, and bats? She solemnly closed the door and leaned her back against it, studying the woman in the distance as she tried to organize her thoughts. The woman hadn’t moved an inch.
Helaine sighed. She definitely couldn’t do this. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this.” Her friends had meant well. “My friends meant well, but…” It was misguided. “It was misguided of them.”
The woman said nothing.
She had no doubt she was attractive. A nice physique. The dress was similar to one Lydia had worn once.
The woman’s body, also similar, same body type. She still couldn’t see her face. Helaine reached for the light switch. Nothing. He probably had the bulbs removed, she thought, ruefully.
The woman in the doorway dropped her arms and began to peel off the dress.
(Oh, no.) “No, don’t do that.” Helaine saw her walking slowly toward her. “Please, you have to stop. This is not going to happen.” The woman halted in her tracks and let the dress fall to the floor around her feet.
Undergarments. A white bustier glowing like a beacon in the dark. She was absolutely lovely. (Oh, nuts.) It was not her fault. “Look, you are obviously…this is not your fault…this is my fault.”
No reply.
Why didn’t she say something for godsakes? “Say something, please.”
“Talk?” the woman asked in a sleepy alto.
Alto, like Lydia. “You’re definitely going. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting this.” There was no protest, no motion at all. “How did you get here?”
“Drove.”
Drove? Well, that was possible, she guessed. She hadn’t noticed a car, but perhaps she had been sleeping and missed it. Nice voice. Very nice. Helaine stood free of the door. “I can pay you for your trouble,” she said, taking her eyes off her to scout around for her purse. There it was over there. The woman began walking toward her again.
“Can you?” the woman asked, now only a few feet away.
She was a dead ringer. Robert a
nd Kay must have put their backs into it, Helaine thought. “That’s close enough–please.” The woman stopped short. “I can’t do this with you,” Helaine explained one more time.
“Why?”
“I can’t. I have someone.”
The woman dropped her arms to her side. “Where are they?”
Where? (Good question.) “How much?” Helaine asked, wallet in hand, butterflies in stomach.
The woman put her hands on her hips. “For what?”
“For…?”
“What?”
“For your trouble?”
The woman laughed gently. “No trouble, darling.”
Darl– “Say that again?”
The woman pushed her hair from her eyes. “No trouble.”
Helaine moved closer to see her face, but the light was still directly behind the woman and there was no other light source in the guest house. “I’m not–I–how much should I pay for you? To go, I mean?” The woman was an arm’s length away, close enough to touch.
“Whatever you like.”
Helaine withdrew all the cash from her billfold and offered it to her. “Go. Please.”
The woman put her hand to her breast. “Slip it in here…please.”
There? Helaine could see that. She exhaled. “And then you’ll go?”
“Yes.”
Helaine rolled up the bills and hesitated. She shouldn’t touch this woman. She shouldn’t let their skin meet. She shouldn’t even be standing in the same room with her. The money was poised in her hand. She shouldn’t be negotiating anything in the dark with this woman who reminded her of someone she missed.
She inched closer. “Let me see your face.”
The woman lightly clucked her tongue. “Why?”
“What is your name?”
The woman sighed provocatively. “It matters?”
Helaine fell silent. This was Robert’s fault, weak knees and that she was wondering where Lydia Beaumont actually was this moment and why they were not together and how similar their separation was to her last dissatisfying relationship, the one biting her ass now like a rabid dog, keeping them apart for too long, so that a woman like this one, someone masked in Lydia’s likeness–
“Does it?” the woman repeated.
Does it matter? That they look the same? Sound the same? Helaine felt herself leaning forward.
“Hmmm?”
She should not ask or answer anymore questions. She should not get any closer to that mouth or those breasts. She should not entertain anymore conversation. She should go and find a light bulb, leave the money by the door. She should unpack her bags. And take a shower. And go to bed. She was tired. She should sleep.
Sleep instead of standing there like a dope, face to face with this woman, the money dropping from her fingertips.
The woman bent slightly toward her. The money disappeared between her breasts. Behind her Helaine saw the discarded dress lying in the middle of the floor. She brought her face close to the woman’s cheek.
Even the perfumed hair smelled familiar.
Her hand was on her hand. Her lips were near her lips. “Darling,” she whispered, as they dropped to the floor.
“Ah…you’re a very difficult customer, Dr. Kristenson. You had me worried. Should I stay or should I go?”
Helaine kissed her and she opened her legs.
“That was very risky behavior, Ms. Beaumont.”
“Risqué. You’re shaking.”
“Pleased with yourself?”
“Very. Make love to me–quickly.”
“Let me breathe a minute first or it won’t be love you’ll be getting.”
Lydia turned her face into Helaine’s neck. “What would it be instead?”
“Something akin to it–did I pay you enough for your trouble?”
Lydia bent her legs and held her tight between them. “Akin to love? Am I in trouble here, I hope?”
“Indeed, you might be. Have I paid my lovely courtesan enough for her trouble?”
Lydia held her closer. “Yes–trouble me.”
_____
Helaine was awake by nine with a note on her pillow. Her courtesan was taking a morning swim. She threw on a pair of khakis, a turtleneck and loafers, grabbed a heavy bathrobe and waited for Lydia on the deck with Kay and Robert.
“You told her to jump in the lake? I hope she knows that’s only a pond.”
“Robert, that was terrifying last night, I’ll have you know.”
“Coward.”
“You figured it out by morning, I hope,” Kay asked, suddenly alarmed by the other possibilities.
“I figured it out soon enough.” She held her hand to shield her eyes and watched the woman on the water. “Do you think she makes a habit of this?”
“Prostitution?” Robert asked.
“NO. Grueling exercise?”
“Same difference. I’m making steak and eggs. That’ll get her hormone levels back up for tonight.” He left them smiling.
“What kind of lover is she, Helaine? I’m just being nosy, I know.”
How is Lydia in the sack? “It would be rude of me to answer that. What do you think?”
Kay looked thoughtfully at the water. “Straight, right?”
Helaine laughed. “Not anymore she’s not.”
“Well, but before she was. So I’m going to say careful. How’s that description?”
How’s careful? Lydia was heading back to them, slicing through the water and leaving a glittering wake behind her. It was a crisp morning on the mountain and the water was as bright blue as the sky, as blue as the eyes of the woman swimming in it. Helaine wished the weekend would last forever. She needed more time with her new lover, more than just the few moments they had been together. They needed a month in bed.
How was she in bed? Routine question. Helaine stared out into the water. Shy Lydia Beaumont.
Thankfully not anywhere near as shy in bed, although somewhat cautious on top. Helaine smiled at the thought of it, forgetting Kay for the moment.
It was clear Lydia was in love with her. She could hear it in her breathing, in the soft whispers and sighs.
She could taste it in her mouth, on her tongue. It was always on her lips, when they talked, when they kissed.
Always in her eyes. Deep sexual love.
“Where did you get a body like this?” Lydia murmured last night.
“Hah…you like my dimensions?”
“You are a goddess.”
“Mmmmm…thank you. Which one?”
“All of them. All of them.”
That voice.
“Come for me, Helaine.”
The long forgotten orgasm. Love in her bed once more. Getting lucky with Lydia. She came for her.
“More. One more time for me.”
Coming in soft focus. Helaine watched Lydia swim, her steady even strokes hitting the water and propelling her back to the shore. Her back, her arms, her legs, every motion executed with an eye toward perfection. Out there was the woman who sucked at her nipples this morning like they were sweet hard candies, who played with her body like it was fine finger food and then held her as she slept. She was a careful woman, parting the water carefully with her hands, everything under control, perfectly disciplined. But there was more and Helaine wanted it all. She held her breath; Lydia swam.
“Share, Helaine. You should see your face right now!”
They needed more time together. Hiding and being hunted like a dog was hardly conducive to a developing romance. She thought about Sharon Chambers then and rued the day she had met her. “Careful is appropriate,” she finally answered. “That’s a very good word.”
“Must be nice,” Kay said in return. “Especially after–” she put her hand over her mouth and stopped herself from saying it.
Lydia was almost to the pond’s edge. Helaine held up her robe. “How’s the water?”
“Absolutely perfect!”
_____
“I need to–can you do it like
this?” Lydia straddled her on the chair and thrust her hips forward, pushing Helaine inside her and emitting a small gasp.
“I can try,” Helaine said, readjusting herself. “Need to what, darling?”
Lydia pumped her hips and sighed. “To talk,” she said and fell silent for awhile, her head resting against Helaine’s, her body shuddering. “There,” she whispered urgently, “There.”
“I have it?”
“Mmmm…”
Helaine felt her tighten. “About?”
Lydia moaned and grasped the back of the chair.
Helaine shifted her weight. “You’re doing all the work, I fear.”
“Mmmm.”
“Is this all right?”
Lydia sighed. “You’re a miracle. But…then…you probably know that.”
Helaine pulled her closer and let her finish. She could feel her fingers pressing into the flesh of her shoulders, hear the sound of an orgasm hidden amongst the short gasps. When she was done she lifted her head up and Helaine held her in her arms, her mouth at her breasts. “Tell me.”
Lydia leaned into the moist mouth and pulled away again. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“This?”
“Uh, no, Helaine. Not this.”
“Hide, you’re saying?”
“I can’t be with you and then without. When will I see you again?”
Helaine quietly ran her hands down the strong thighs. The complaint was overdue.
“I spoke to my mother this week. About you, Helaine.”
“Oh?” Inevitable. “And she thinks I’ve led you astray?”
Lydia scoffed behind her. “She would really like to meet the woman who seduced her daughter.”
“That’s all she said? You told her everything?”
“Most of it.”
The Secret Keeping Page 25