by Cathryn Cade
Daisy looked up at her, face serious. “You know that after what happened to you, the guys installed new security, right? Cameras in all the rooms, as well as the locker rooms, which is where Kevin was coking up. They’re going to have someone monitoring the cameras all the time the club is open.”
Sara wrinkled her pert nose. “Really? Who’s going to be the spy?”
“Hey, it’s not spying, it’s safety. They already patrol, especially upstairs, but this is an added measure. All the doms will take turns—the three guys and others who’ve been around awhile, like Twila and Mason. It was Mase’s idea actually.”
“Mase is a nice guy,” Carlie offered, remembering her dances with him.
“He is,” Sara agreed. “There’s something about him… I wonder if he’s in law enforcement?”
Daisy shrugged. “Dunno. He’s nice, but he’s a dom and don’t forget it.”
“What’s it like kissing a guy with a mustache and beard?” Carlie asked, remembering Mason’s dashing facial hair. Dack wore a full beard and mustache too. Like Mase, he kept it short and neat.
Daisy smiled beatifically. “So sexy…”
“Oh, God, now she’s all mushy again.” Sara groaned, flopping back on her towel.
Daisy giggled. “Can’t help it. My big weightlifter is my dream come true.”
Carlie smiled at her, but her smile slipped away as she propped her chin on her folded hands, and dug her toes into the warm, gritty sand at the end of her beach towel.
She had dreams of her own—starring Jake. She wanted him so badly she had to press her thighs together and stifle a moan just thinking about him. Her vibrator was going to get some use later.
But while he supposedly admired full-figured women, she seriously doubted his admiration would extend to more than a night at the club.
Was it worth being with him, even though she knew this? Or would it hurt even more to watch him with another woman after she’d been with him herself?
She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. Of course it would hurt—a lot. The question was, how badly? And was he still worth it? She had an idea he was.
Carlie’s phone rang as she was stepping out of the shower after work. She did not usually shower after a day at the office, but today had been so steamy hot, the humidity climbing along with masses of white, puffy clouds on the southern horizon, that she felt damp and sticky.
She glanced at the clock on her bathroom counter. Six o’clock, Monday evening, which meant it was probably her mother. Paula Milton served dinner at six-thirty on the dot, which left her plenty of time to have a cocktail with Carlie’s father after he arrived home from his office. On Saturday and Sunday, her father either worked in the yard or in his wood shop, but dinner would still be at six-thirty.
This schedule also left Paula plenty of time to phone Carlie at six, when she knew her daughter would just be preparing her own dinner after work. Carlie’s lip curled. Wouldn’t put it past her mom to know with some spidey sense that Carlie planned to have a personal pizza and salad for supper tonight. With all the fat and calories from the cheese and meat, pizza was on Paula’s no-no list for herself and her daughter.
Carlie picked up the phone with one hand and swiped her towel down her wet torso with the other. “Hi, Mom.”
“Carlie,” her mother said decisively. She always spoke that way, and it still made Carlie tense, as if she were on the verge of receiving a scolding for some infraction. Despite being a “good girl” who spent much of her childhood acting out only in her head, Carlie had received plenty of scoldings for her food choices, such as taking cupcakes from the fancy decorative tiered dish her mother liked to have on the counter for her bridge club. Seth and his friends, who were always hungry and as thin as rails, had not been scolded for this.
Carlie had also been reprimanded for not putting herself out to make more friends herself, specifically boyfriends, and for daydreaming when she was supposed to be hanging on her mother’s every word.
“What have you been doing? Did you get out and about this weekend?” Paula asked.
Carlie swiped the towel over her shoulders, and then her breasts, dabbing up under the heavy curve. “Mm-hmm,” she answered. “An afternoon at the beach with friends.”
“Oh, anyone I know?”
“Daisy and Sara.” Carlie waited two beats, counting silently.
Sure enough, her mother responded with a sigh. “Oh, those two. I’m sure I told you Damon Roscoe is back in town. I saw him just this afternoon, driving a cute new sports car down the street. Didn’t have a girl with him.”
Carlie rolled her eyes. “Mom, Damon and I have never been interested in each other. We’ve known each other since we were seven, so I don’t think lightning is gonna strike now.”
And besides, he might manage a bank and his mother might consider herself the queen of Hillsdale Avenue, but Carlie didn’t like the smirks Damon had been giving her since she started to develop in sixth grade, so if lightning struck, she hoped it would jolt him into treating women like people and not walking sex toys.
She grinned to herself. Jake, on the other hand, just might be welcome to make her his personal sex toy. Because even though he irritated and flustered the crud out of her, when he looked at her, he saw her, not just her body. Okay, he saw a her he felt free to tease unmercifully, but it was in a way she could handle, not in a mean way, not in a way that made her feel less, just irritated and flustered.
Her mother sighed again. “Well, what a shame you won’t at least make an effort.”
“Mom, did you call to talk about Damon?” Carlie asked dryly. She finished drying herself, draped her towel over the rack and straightened it one-handed, then walked into her closet to select a fresh pair of panties from her bureau.
She knew what her mother wanted: to be able to announce Carlie’s engagement—to some fabulous catch—at her younger brother’s wedding, which would happen in November and was already being planned to the nth degree by Seth’s fiancée and her mother.
Her mother hesitated. “No,” she said. “No, that’s not why I called.”
Carlie hesitated with a pair of lacy white panties in her hand, foreboding clutching at her stomach. “Mom? What is it? Is something wrong?”
“Well,” said her mother evasively. “Why don’t you come and have dinner with your father and me? I know it’s last minute, but we haven’t seen you for nearly two weeks. I’m serving chicken tarragon.”
Carlie blinked. Her favorite chicken dish, made with creamy white sauce and served over rice. Granted, her mother had figured out how to siphon out most of the fat, but her light version of the recipe was still pretty good.
“Um, sure,” she said. “I can be there in…thirty minutes.” Her parents lived on Bull Mountain, which meant she would have to battle summer evening traffic.
“All right. See you then.”
Carlie clicked her phone off and set it down as she pulled up her panties and shimmied to settle them on her hips. Something was up. She just hoped it wasn’t too bad.
An hour later, Carlie sat at the glass-topped table on the large deck in her parents’ backyard. She had a glass of Columbia Crest chardonnay in her hand, and a half-eaten salad before her. She was relaxed and comfortable in black capris and tank with built-in bra, her hair tied back with a black-and-pink flowered scarf. She wiggled her toes in her black velvet-strapped flip-flops and took another drink of the light, fragrant wine.
Her mother had yet to spring anything unpleasant on her and even seemed determined to make the most of the chance to listen as Carlie shared about her week.
Typically, Carlie’s father had claimed her when she walked in the front door, with a hug and a demand that she come and view the latest woodworking project in his large basement workshop. She spent some time admiring the bookshelf he was crafting of oak, no hardship as the wood was smooth and gleaming, the workmanship perfect. The big space was full of the expensive tools and stacks of wood and finishing materials
of his avocation. Other men played golf or fished; George Milton relaxed after a day writing insurance policies by working with wood.
“It’s beautiful,” she said sincerely. She had two end tables and an entertainment center in the living room of her apartment that he’d built for her.
“It’s yours if you want it,” George Milton said, stroking a polishing cloth over the top. A big, ex-athlete now gone soft, his dark blond hair mostly gray, he sighed dolefully. “Seth and Tiffany have some exotic hardwoods chosen for their new condo—although I’d like to know how they’re going to pay for the stuff on their salaries. Anyway, your mother says if I want to put more furniture in our house, I have to buy her a bigger one.”
Father and daughter exchanged a look, both knowing Paula would love to have a bigger house, but with Seth and Carlie gone, she couldn’t manufacture a good reason to need one.
“I could put it in my bedroom,” Carlie said, thinking. “For my romance novels.”
Her father scowled in mock indignation. “You’d stack bare-chested men on your father’s bookshelf?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well, when you put it that way…”
He gave a last swipe of his polishing cloth to the wood and tossed the cloth aside. “At least that way the shelves will have pretty girls on them too, eh? I’ll have it finished soon. Just needs one more coat of sealant. Now we’d better go up to dinner before your mom sends the cavalry after us.”
Paula had just been putting the last touches on a green salad with mandarin orange and almond slices when they came upstairs to her big kitchen. Carlie’s height, she was reed slim, with highlighted blonde hair and perfect makeup. She wore slim black slacks and a sleeveless mint-green blouse, with diamonds at her ears, throat, wrist and finger.
She turned to flick a look over the two of them, as if assessing whether they were presentable for the dinner table. Her lips curved up a smile that to Carlie, trained by a lifetime of judging her mother’s moods, held a nervous edge. “Here you are,” she said. “Come and help. Carlie, you take the salad, and George the casserole. Careful, it’s hot.”
Now they sat at the outdoor dining table on the back veranda, which looked out over a large lawn and manicured gardens, and a hazy view of Portland’s Mount Tabor in the distance. The temperature had cooled to a balmy eighty degrees in the shade here on the east side of the big house. The deck was also covered, because Portland received a lot of rain in the spring and fall. It was going to rain later this evening, if the dark purple clouds building in the west were any indication. Carlie hoped the rain waited till she got home. She didn’t like getting all wet when she was dressed.
She took a sip of her wine and picked up her fork.
“I spoke with Tiffany this afternoon,” her mother said, her gaze on her wineglass, which she set down with careful precision on her tastefully flowered placemat.
Carlie took another bite of salad, enjoying the tart sweetness of orange, the cool crunch of lettuce and the salty edge of almond. She swallowed. “Really? What’s she up to?” As if she needed to ask. Even though it was not happening until November, The Wedding occupied every one of the brunette’s brain cells not required for her job as a receptionist and her task of turning Seth into an appropriate groom for her wonderful self. Okay, that was catty, but still. Tiffany was a bit…driven.
“Well, it seems that her cousin Stacy isn’t able to be a bridesmaid after all.”
Carlie paused with her fork partway to her mouth. Uh-oh, trouble in the ranks. She herself had not been invited to be a bridesmaid. At the time this had hurt her feelings, but Tiffany had explained that she had four friends she needed to invite, and a cousin whom Tiffany’s mother insisted at the last moment had to be a bridesmaid, and Seth only had five friends to ask to be groomsmen. Seth was not happy about Carlie’s exclusion, but Carlie assured him and his bride-to-be she was fine hostessing the table where the guests would sign the wedding book.
Then, when Carlie met Tiffany’s equally chirpy and type-A besties and neurotic cousin at the engagement party, she’d realized having to spend time with all of them doing bridesmaid-ish things would be sheer torture. Tiffany with Seth was a different person. Tiffany with her gaggle of gal pals was not someone with whom Carlie wanted to hang out. So, she’d shrugged mentally and gone on with her life.
Daisy had been pissed on her behalf, but Sara noted that at least this way Carlie could relax at the wedding and party with family and friends instead of with Tiffany’s bitchy and Seth’s immature friends.
Since Carlie agreed on both counts, she had relaxed, smiling at her own best friends. She and her brother, who was only a year younger, got along well, but while she liked his friends, she preferred them sober. And since Seth was the first of them to marry, at his wedding his friends would not be sober. They’d be drinking hard, while doing their best to get the groom so drunk he couldn’t perform in the bridal suite at the downtown Revillion hotel. The evening wedding would be held in the Revillion ballroom, and nearly an entire floor had been reserved for any bridal guests who wished to stay the night.
Now Carlie nodded, trying to look sympathetic about the bride’s plight, while her mother gave her a pained smile. Carlie’s father took another roll from the basket, staying out of the discussion, something at which he had become adept while living with a high-strung wife, and with a daughter. If pressed for an opinion, he would amiably ask them to repeat the entire conversation. Since Paula was too impatient to do so, this tactic worked for him.
“So,” her mother said, rubbing her fingertip up and down the stem of her wineglass in a nervous gesture, “I suggested that you might like to fill in. Tiffany thinks that would work.”
“No, really, I—” Carlie began. Be a fill-in bridesmaid? A last-minute pinch-hitter? No, thank you very much.
“Of course, you’d have to lose a little weight,” her mother went on in a rush. “To fit the bridesmaid dress. But you could do that. After all, you have until November. That’s four months.”
Carlie stared, her mother’s words ringing in her ears. Paula smiled encouragingly, eyes wide.
“She doesn’t need to lose any weight,” her father protested. He laid his hand over Carlie’s and squeezed, his grip warm and damp but reassuring.
Carlie barely felt it. The salad and wine knotted in her stomach, and she had to swallow hard to keep it down. Fire climbed her chest, her throat and into her face. Humiliation and rage poured up through her in a scalding wave.
“Tiffany said I can be her bridesmaid, if I lose weight?” she repeated numbly. This was why she hadn’t been invited in the first place, because she was too fat to stand beside the toothpick bride and her friends? Stacy was so skinny Carlie was pretty sure she was anorexic.
Her father looked up, roll halfway to his mouth, alerted by her tone. Her mother cocked her head, her lipsticked mouth in a sympathetic moue. “You can do it, sweetie. I just know you can. You’re going to that gym and working out. Just cut back a little more, and the pounds will pour off.”
Paula’s gaze flicked away from Carlie’s as she clearly sensed she’d gone too far. She popped out of her chair, grabbing the salad bowl away with maniacal cheer. “Now, let’s have some chicken. I made it extra-light for you.”
She whipped the lid off the casserole, and Carlie and her father stared in silence at the chicken breasts huddled in the dish, each with a tiny dab of green-flecked white on their skinless surfaces.
“Where’s the damn sauce?” George demanded, his voice rising. “That’s not chicken tarragon, it’s—it’s naked poultry. It’s a desecration of fine cuisine.”
“It’s low calorie,” his wife hissed to him.
Carlie shoved back her chair with a loud grate of metal on wood decking. “You know, I’m…just not hungry anymore,” she said, which was the truth. “Mother, go get the pan of sauce I saw heating on the back of the range and feed it to Dad. He’s right—that chicken is a cooking felony.”
Her parents stared, he
r father in loving dismay and her mother with guilty determination and a hint of pleasure at the news that her daughter was full on only salad. Carlie rose and set her napkin carefully by her plate.
“You can tell Tiffany I won’t be able to be her bridesmaid,” she said. “I just like my cupcakes too much, y’know?”
She watched with satisfaction as her mother flinched. Then she walked around the table, kissed her father’s cheek, air-kissed in the vicinity of her mother’s cheek and walked away.
“Sweetie, don’t go,” her father called. “We’ll have double sauce, whaddya say?”
Carlie didn’t stop. She loved her father, but if she had to stay in the same airspace with her mother right now, she was going to do or say something she could never take back. She didn’t know what, but it would be bad.
And then she’d probably dump half the pan of tarragon sauce on her chicken and gobble it down even though she didn’t really want it anymore, in some childish can-if-I-want-to act of defiance. That was how her mother affected her.
Chapter Five
Carlie drove back down Bull Mountain in a state of alternating hot and cold misery. This hurt was too big even to summon up any satisfying fantasies of vengeance and tearful remorse.
Her mother still, now that Carlie was an adult, a successful career woman, chose to define her by her figure. Which Paula considered too fat. Too fat to get a man, too fat to stand in front of family and friends as her brother got married. Too fat, too fat, too fat. Not good enough the way she was, even though Carlie took after her father’s side of the family and he had two tall, plump sisters who were attractive and happily married. And now Tiffany was joining in the fray, on her mother’s side. How dare she?
The clouds moved over the sun, casting purple shadows over the boulevard. The clouds were nearly black with rain. Light flickered within them, and the air blowing in her open car window was oppressive with humidity.