The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever (35 page)

"A Turkish prison?"

"Unfortunately, you can't walk across the
street without being recognized and mobbed."

"So how can we go to Troy?"

"Would you believe that I have a plan?"

"That I believe. But is it a good plan?"

"I'm not sure."

"Why was I afraid of that?"

He picked her up, carried her to the wall,
and stood her against it. Then he placed the palms of his hands
flat against her breasts, and pushed. "Doesn't fool me," he
said.

"Doesn't fool me either," she said, "but I
kind of like it."

"My plan is to dress you like a man. It
worked for Rosalind."

"You mean the Rosalind in As You Like
It?"

"The same. Unfortunately, if my disguise
doesn't work you'll spend ten years in a Turkish prison, and I
doubt there'll be a male guard in the place who won't want to spend
his breaks getting to know you better."

"In that case, you'd better make sure that
your disguise works. But why will the Turkish guards get to have
me, and not you?"

"Because it's you who'll be traveling on a
fake Canadian passport. You'll be my brother, Brian Jefferson
Raiden."

She pulled at the hair on Brad's chest. "At
least I'll still be B-J."

"Let's see how you'll look disguised as B. J.
Raiden." He took off her skirt and handed her a pair of Jockey
shorts. "Here, put these on."

"I thought I wasn't allowed to wear
panties."

"You're not, but men's Jockeys don't
count."

"They're kind of sexy, and they have a hole
in the front, so you can still play with me without too much
difficulty." She swung her hips suggestively.

"Slip into these jeans. You can wear men's
cutoffs after you've stopped shaving your legs for a few
weeks."

"I can hardly wait."

"Your hips are too broad for men's
jeans—you're not slipping. Hop up and down while I pull."

"I thought you liked the way my hips
flair!"

"I don't like, I love—except when you're
trying to fit them into men's jeans. Now off with your makeup, and
on with this binding bra and boy's shirt. Then tuck your hair under
this cap."

When she'd finished changing, Brad stepped
back and studied her. "You know, my plan just might work."

"If it doesn't, do you really think the Turks
will throw me into their prison, and lose the key?"

"I doubt it. Your fans are everywhere. If
your Turkish fans ever found out that you were in one of their
prisons, I'd hate to be the official who'd put you there. It's a
shame that we'll have to cut your hair."

"Cut my hair?"

"And then we'll have to dye what's left of it
brown."

She studied herself in the mirror. "I'm not a
bad looking guy."

He moved behind her, and pressed himself
against her. "Fine enough to make a straight guy gay," he said.

She pulled away, and messed the bed until it
looked like ruins. Then she pushed him onto the ruins, and used him
for love among the ruins practice, blissfully unaware that a gray
ghost was about to come along, and ruin her honeymoon.

Belting
a Tawny Cat

Betty-Jo Chance was a household name
worldwide, and it seemed to Brad that every male on the planet
wanted a piece of her. So he did the only thing he could think of
to show her that she was all that mattered in his life. He bought
her a chastity belt—and installed it.

He knew that love was blind, but he also
discovered that it was also possessive and stupid. I have a
fabulous woman, he thought, who loves me, and wants nothing more
than to marry me and spend all of eternity with me. So why am I
fumbling around in the middle of the night trying to get a chastity
belt on her? He was certain of part of the answer. If I tried to
belt her while she was awake, I'd be a dead man. But why am I
willing to risk eternal damnation by belting her in the first
place? He also knew the answer to that one—thieves! If I owned a
Ferrari, I'd worry about thieves. I'd take out insurance, and keep
the beauty under lock and key. Now here's Tawny—so much more
important to me than a yuppie car—but she's uninsurable,
irreplaceable, and thieves surround me.

* * *

Betty-Jo was livid when she awoke, and found
that her pussy had been encased in a chastity belt. "You're an
imbecile!" was her first thought on the matter.

Brad looked embarrassed. "Maybe it's
impossible to be wise and in love."

"But it's possible to be in love without
being an imbecile!"

He tried to explain. "You have to look at it
from my perspective. If you owned a Ferrari, you'd fit her with The
Club, wouldn't you? Now here I am, the proprietor of the most
beautiful woman in the world, and since 'beauty provokes thieves,
sooner than Ferraris,' doesn't it make sense to protect her with
The Belt?"

She couldn't decide whether to laugh or
cry.

"Tawny Cat, you have to put a positive slant
on this belt business. It takes a professional car thief about
thirty seconds to circumvent The Club. Even wearing your belt, the
dimwits you might choose to slumber with will eventually get smart,
find a hacksaw, and be in paradise in four or five hours. Besides,
you should be pleased—yours is a designer belt."

"Well why didn't you say so? That makes me
feel a whole lot better." She faked a crying jag, so when she swung
he was caught off guard. The blow caught him in the solar plexus,
and he buckled over, gasping for air.

"They're right," he said between gasps, "love
hurts."

Betty-Jo couldn't believe what she'd done to
her lover. Immediately repentant, she told him that she'd wear the
loathsome belt. "Brad, she said, "you worry too much. You should
know by now, that only you will ever live in my heart.

"Tawny Cat, did you know that chastity belts
were invented back in the days of Richard the Lionhearted so that
the knights would have their prized possession under lock and key
when they went off to fight in the crusades? Those were the days of
chivalry, so a knight felt confident leaving the key with a trusted
friend."

"To guard his prized possession, and only
unlock the belt in the event that he was slain in battle," she
ventured.

"Right. But there was a problem. The
knights—who on their sacred oath were entrusted with the key—took
advantage of their charges. You see, if the fair maidens wanted
loving, they had no alternative but to befriend the guy with the
key."

"Do I get to choose who you leave the key to
my belt with, when you go off to do battle on hockey rinks in far
away places?"

He laughed. "No way. Not after what happened
to the noble knights. When they returned from their battles in the
Holy Land, they found a bunch of pregnant wives and lovers.
Needless to say, that was the end of the age of chivalry, and there
hasn't been another since."

"In other words, you don't have any trusted
friends."

"Not when it comes to you. With you as the
prize, only a complete fool would leave his key with a friend. I
can see it now. My plane would be taking off, and my trusted friend
would be tearing down the runway screaming that I'd left him the
wrong key."

She beamed. "Even the Sheik?"

"Especially the Sheik. That Sheik would
probably be checking to see if the key fit as I was backing out of
the driveway."

She hugged her fool. "You don't have to worry
about the Sheik, or anyone else for that matter. Nobody gets to
have me while my hero's off battling goons."

He kissed her cheek, and carried on with his
story. "The chastity belt lived on, but men no longer entrusted the
key to anyone but themselves. However, you'll be pleased to learn,
that when it comes to chastity belts, men have become more
civilized."

"Could have fooled me."

"Chastity belts were diabolically clever back
in medieval times. Some belts even had a built in guillotine. A
youthful swain would take a look under the shift of a fair damsel,
and see a hole where a hole shouldn't have been. Counting his
blessings, in he'd go, and down would come the guillotine. Hurt
like hell."

She caught him with a rabbit punch. "And I
suppose the moral to that story is that it served him right, for
messing with a knight's prized possession?"

"Of course."

"So how did they get the swain's joystick out
once it had been lopped off by the guillotine—which, you should
know, wasn't invented until the French revolution."

"No idea. But that needn't concern you,
because your chastity belt doesn't have a guillotine. What kind of
a guy do you think I am?"

"You're a sweetheart."

"Another chastity belt model worked on the
same principle as a fish hook. A knight would be fooling around
with a fair maiden, and he'd come across a chastity belt with a
hole in the middle."

"He'd better be careful. It could be a
trap—like the guillotine."

"The thing did look like a trap, but the
knight would have a great desire for the fair damsel. So in he'd
go, but only a little way."

"Grab himself an appetizer," she said with a
grin. "But I suspect your story is going to have an unhappy ending
for our amorous knight."

"With only good things happening to him, our
knight would go in further still, until eventually he was in all
the way."

"Up to his hilt," she said, trying to sound
medievalish.

"But when he tried to withdraw for another
thrust—agony! You see, the ingenious device was designed..."

"Like a fish hook."

"A fish hook goes in easily, but once in,
it's almost impossible to extricate it because of the barbs. For
our amorous knight, you might say that it was a bit of a sticky
wicket."

"Why would I say that?"

"Because those Brits all play cricket. It's
an analogy they'd understand."

"How many Brits do you see here? Why can't we
say that the knight needed a well executed drop shot?"

Brad laughed. "Why not? The Brits also play
tennis. They understand drop shots."

"There are no Brits!"

"Don't be too sure. Remember, that's what
Rommel said when he went off on a holiday and missed D-day."

She threw up her hands. "I give up."

"In any event, the knight's only hope was to
lie there quietly, and pray that he'd shrivel enough so he could
safely withdraw."

"Would the fair maidens co-operate?"

"That was the problem. The damsels would
often have their own ideas about what should be happening. They
might have gone without loving for months, even years. So they were
eager for action. Many a good knight was lost before he ever
embarked on his own crusade."

Brad was laughing by the time he'd finished
his tale, and she was grinning. "Hold me, fool," she demanded.
"Brad, you're handling our impending separation all wrong. Do you
know the poem:

If you love someone,

Set them free.

If they come back to you,

They are yours.

If they don't,

They were never yours."

"Half the men in America were suckered in by
that one. They set their women free, and their women—unable to
believe their good fortune—took off like frogs out of a
blender."

"'What's red and green and goes a hundred
miles an hour,'" Betty-Jo asked.

"Those frogs would have been, if they hadn't
escaped the blender," Brad said with a grin. "Anyway, the guy who
penned that poem refused to fess up, because he knew he'd be
lynched."

"Brad, now I know why you have such lovely
brown eyes. You're full of the brown stuff."

He laughed at her. "Intuitively I realize
that our anonymous poet friend is right. But I find it intolerable
to think that I might lose you. If I hold you too tightly for a
while, try to be patient with me."

"Bad, Bad Brad, I'm stuck to you stronger
than I would be if I were stuck to you with Crazy Glue. Even when
we're apart, you're a part of me. I will always be yours. Do you
want to know how you can be sure? Read my lips." She kissed him in
a way that left no doubt about her devotion. Then she smiled.
"Besides, nobody throws out a lover who's still performing
well."

Brad, remained serious. "I'll always love
only you, even should death do us part."

"Don't talk about death doing parting. Tell
me instead how much you'll always love me while you're alive."

"I'll always love you more than Little Jackie
Paper loved Puff the Magic Dragon."

"Is that more than Romeo loved Juliet?"

"That's even more than Mary loved the little
lamb."

The
Gray Ghost's Warning

Betty-Jo had a dream three nights before her
first U.S. Open match, but it wasn't really a dream. It was more
like a wide-awake nightmare. A gray ghost materialized, and ruined
her evening.

"Flee, Betty-Jo, flee!" the gray ghost said.
"Leave New York, and take your fiancé with you. Return to Myrtle
Beach, or you will surely perish."

"Are you real, or are you just spooking me
for the fun of it?" she asked.

"I'm real, and I'm not real. I'm not real
physically—what you see is electromagnetic energy. It took me a few
days to get here from Olympus, traveling at sixteen hundred times
the speed of light in the infrared portion of the light spectrum.
But what I am about to tell you is real. I beg you, Betty-Jo,
flee!"

"But why?"

"Listen to me, and believe. Zeus allows me to
return to earth once every five years because of what a horrid
goddess of love, nicknamed Goritch, did to me."

"Venus?" She put Brad's maroon-striped
dress-shirt on over her teddy.