Pleasure My Lustful Heart: A Romance Novella (10 page)

“What will you do now?” I said.

“I’ll go do my job. Until somebody tells me to stop.” He gave my shoulder a kindly squeeze, then went to his worktable to lay out patterns.

Walking back to Pa’s office, I knew I had to tell Gregg. He was still
longing to pull off a miracle and land the customer who would save us all. Would he need to console me, or was I going to console him? I called him and asked him to come to my apartment at six. I’d cook him a good spaghetti dinner, I promised. I decided I’d save the bad news for then.

After a horrendous day in Pa’s office trying to untangle the details of the money situation, I gave up at four and went to check on him in Mercy General. His eyes were closed when I came in to the ICU. He opened them halfway as I approached his bed, then let them slowly droop closed again. Had he seen me? I couldn’t be sure. I pulled a chair to his bedside and sat there waiting for him to open his eyes. For half an hour he lay there motionless. Finally I went to the nurses’ station and asked how he was.

“He’s stable. His vital signs are good,” his nurse told me. “But he’s tired. He sleeps a lot. Don’t worry. He’s being monitored every minute.”

I thanked her and asked her to tell Pa I’d be back in the morning.  In a way I was happy he was asleep. I didn’t have to decide whether to talk about money or not. Now I’d find out how Gregg would take the news. And what would become of
the two of us.

CHAPTER 1
2

I stopped at a liquor store and bought a good bottle of Chianti to go with dinner, and opened it as soon as I got home. Someone once told me wine should breathe for an hour or two before it’s drunk. Then I started cooking my spaghetti dinner, the only food I knew how to prepare that might earn me compliments.  Diced onion softened in extra virgin olive oil, canned tomatoes from Italy, a bit of tomato paste, and a teaspoon of dried basil. Plus some prosciutto I had in the freezer, sliced into ribbons, to add a special tang to the sauce.

I knew my electric stove took forever to boil a big pot of water, so I got that started, too, as the sauce simmered slowly. Everything was cooking, and filling the apartment with enticing smells, when I heard Gregg
buzz. I buzzed open the door.

Only it wasn’t Gregg. It was Lucien, wild-eyed and totally disheveled, his jeans filthy, and his shirt torn, looking as though he had just rolled out of the gutter. Before I could speak, he brushed past me and into the living room, pushing the door to close it behind him as he went. I could smell him as he passed — sweat and alcohol.

I knew this was going to be trouble, so I caught the door before it closed completely and left it open a crack, just in case I needed to get out in a hurry, or call for help. “My darling Kit, I come bearing a gift, something that will jolt your senses and evoke rapturous memories,” he said. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a plastic bag and a package of cigarette papers. “Look,” he said proudly. “Weed, the good stuff.”

“You’re stoned, Lucien. Get out of here.”

He flopped down on the couch and tossed the bag and the papers onto the coffee table. “Have a joint with me. Just like we used to do, remember? We’d smoke, and then we’d fly around the room and land in my bed.”

“You have to leave, right now,” I said

“Leave? Okay, we’ll have some of this good weed and we’ll leave together.” He babbled on about running off together, and being free, and the joys of sex. Suddenly he jumped up from the couch and took hold my arm, “I’m here. I showed up this time. We’ll drive to Mexico, like we planned. Or anyplace you want.“

I tried to pull away from him, but he held tight. “Let me go.  I’m not driving anyplace with you. Don’t you understand? I’m with somebody else now. And he’s on his way here.” I slapped his face as hard as I could with my free hand, but he didn’t seem to feel it.  He never flinched.

“Have you missed me, Kit? I’ve missed you.” He pulled me toward the bedroom. “Do you know I haven’t had sex with anyone since — since we used to do it? That’s a long time. I’ll bet you’ve done it plenty of times since then. You always loved it. I think you’d like to do it now, with me.” He was in a frenzy, jumping from one fantasy to another.

I raised my hand to hit him again, but he grabbed it before I could strike. Now he was holding both my wrists, turning me to push me backward into the bedroom. “You could always get me hard in a minute. Less, even. You can do it now, because we’re back together. You’ll see.”

In an instant I was on the bed with Lucien on top of me, pressing me down. His body odor was repulsive.

Then I felt the weight of Lucien’s body lifted fr
om me, and I heard Gregg say, “You son-of-a-bitch.”  Gregg had entered through the door I left ajar, and he had his arm around Lucien’s throat. “I told you not to come back,” Gregg said.

Lucien raised his arm, and turning quickly, slammed Gregg with his elbow on the side of his head. Gregg was stunned by the blow, and dropped to one knee. But he stood quickly and caught Lucien squarely on the chin with his fist. Lucien fell face down across the bedroom rug, and lay still.

Gregg took me in his arms. “Are you all right?”

“I think I am,” I said.  “You?”

“I have a hard head.” He nodded toward Lucien, who began to stir on the floor. “This guy isn’t just annoying any more. He’d dangerous. If you don’t do something, he’ll keep coming back. I’m going to call the police and get him locked up.”

Gregg was right to be worried, but I didn’t want to get Lucien involved with the law. He had become a human wreck, an unpredictable wild man. But still, he was someone I’d once shared my passions and my life with. I couldn’t bring myself to ruin what was left of him. “No police,” I said. “I can’t do that to him. I know a better way.”

I told Gregg about Lucien’s mother Norma, who was looking for her son. I said if we could hook the two of them up on the phone, maybe she could talk him into returning to Birmingham, and leaving me alone.

Lucien sat up, dazed, on the floor. Gregg lifted him and put him on the edge of the bed. I looked for Norma’s number,
then punched it into the phone on my nightstand. I told her what had happened, and told her to persuade her son to come home.  I couldn’t hear what she said to Lucien, but he began to look shame-faced and contrite as he sat there listening. He himself said little, but made a few sounds of what sounded like agreement to whatever she was telling him to do.

The call lasted a good fifteen minutes, and when it was over, Lucien stood, and without looking at me or at Gregg, walked through the living room to the open door into the hallway. He murmured to himself, not words, but rough sounds, as though he was clearing his throat. I closed the door behind him, wondering if I’d done the right thing. What was he capable of now? Was I turning a dangerous man loose, or showing compassion for a poor lost soul? And most important, would he ever contact me again?

“Do you think he can make it back to Birmingham?” I said to Gregg.

He didn’t share my concern for Lucien. “If he got here, he can get back.”

“Oh my God, my spaghetti sauce.” I said. “I was so busy getting attacked, I forgot about it.”

“Very funny.” Gregg followed me into the kitchen. The skillet of sauce was still simmering. It was quite thick now, but not burned.  “Looks good to me,” he said

I tried to be calm, but inside I was still churning from the episode with Lucien. “I have an idea. Let’s drink the wine first, then I’ll cook the spaghetti. I feel the need of some alcohol in my bloodstream.” I poured two glasses fuller than they’re supposed to be, and we took them into the living room to drink .

Gregg saw the bag of marijuana and the papers Lucien had left on the coffee table. “You want a joint with your wine?” Gregg said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

“Not since college,” I said. “Wine is better. And more civilized.” I took a big swallow of the chianti.  “This is a day full of unexpected goings-on,” I told him. “You might as well hear about the rest of my day now, while you have a big glass of chianti to drink.  Ready? The bottom line is, there’s no money.”

“No money where?” he said.

“Porteous Limited has run out of cash. My father always said we had plenty of money in the bank. But when business slowed down, he used it up to keep the company going. In six weeks we’ll spend the last of the payroll money. So if we want to merge so we can show a big bank balance — well, we can’t. ” I raised my glass in a mock toast. “Drink up.”

“Why didn’t he say something?” he said. “How did he let this happen?”

“I could try to explain it, but it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

Gregg was already on a different tack. “Maybe we can take what you have left and add it to what I have left, and come up with a number Higginson will accept,” he said quickly. “He’d still be getting the
Porteous reputation. which is important to him.”

“We won’t have that money. We’ll have
use it to pay our workers.” I said. “Besides, my father doesn’t want a merger.”

“A merger is his last hope.”

“He doesn’t care. He signed that check for Uncle Aaron because he thought that would make you back off the merger plan.”

“Why did he think that?”

It pained me to answer, but I had to be truthful. “Pa thought if most of the money was gone, you’d lose interest in the company.’

“And in you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No. Never.” I thought this would be a good time for him to kiss me, as a sort of romantic seal of approval, but he didn’t move to do it. Well, I thought, he has a lot on his mind.

We drank the wine in our glasses, then finished the rest of the bottle while we took the situation apart,
piece by piece, grasping for answers. The alcohol made me feel better, but it didn’t help my thinking any. I wanted the problems to go away. I wanted to serve up my spaghetti dinner, find comfort with Gregg, and get serious about the future in the morning. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

But when dinner was done Gregg said he had to leave, that he needed some space to mull over the options. I couldn’t imagine what options he was talking about. Seemed to me we were all out of options.

His good night kiss was less than passionate. “That wasn’t your best effort,” I told him at the elevator, “but after all, you did take quite a knock upside the head.”

“That explains it, but it doesn’t excuse it,” he said, and gave me another kiss, long, hot, and
wet . Not too bad, but I did have to prompt him to get it. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” And he was gone.

It had been some kind of day.  Life doesn’t get more complicated than this, I thought.

But I was wrong.

CHAPTER 1
3

The first thing I did at the factory in the morning was to check our cash balance with Jason
Dunay, manager of the First National Bank branch where we kept our business account. I was startled by what he told me.

“Your uncle Aaron
Porteous was in yesterday afternoon to transfer money from your business account into his account,” he said.

“He moved business money?”

“Yes. He presented a check for two hundred thousand dollars.”

“And you honored it?” I said.

“It was signed by your father, and the signature appeared rather shaky. We were careful. We did our due diligence. Aaron Porteous told us about your father's stroke, and we sent our Ms. Hammond to Mercy General to see him and validate his signature. She said he was quite clear about moving the money. ”

“So how much is left in the
Porteous Limited account?”

“A bit more than seventeen thousand dollars.”

I was so stunned I could barely speak. “I’ll get back to you on this, Mr. Dunay.” I asked Henrietta if Uncle Aaron had written a company check yesterday. She said no, but he took a blank check from the checkbook, telling her that Pa had asked for one.

Uncle Aaron was waiting for me when I hurried to the cutting room. “Kit, I can tell by the look on your face. Let me save you from having to ask. Yes, I transferred the money. The business is going to fail, and I want to get out with something to show for so many years on the job.  It’s not much, but at least it’s a little something. This company owes me.” His expression turned dark. “Sidney always got the lion’s share of everything.
A big salary, a big house, a big car. But never yours truly. So I took what I could, while I could.”

“How did you get Pa to sign the check?”

“I told him the truth, that if we had no money in the bank, your boyfriend —what’s his name? —Monsell, would leave you alone. And the company was going to fail in any case. He believes Monsell just wants to use our money. That’s why he signed.”

“Pa isn’t thinking straight. You know he isn’t himself. You took advantage of him. What you told him isn’t true, and it doesn’t even make sense.”

“He signed the check,” Uncle Aaron said gently, but with a tone of finality.

“We’re trying to save the company, and we need the money.”