Kathryn dozed lightly on her side and felt fingertips gently tracing her arm from shoulder to elbow. In her half waking state, she thought it was Jenny, and that the last twenty-four hours had been nothing but a nightmare. She smiled and rolled onto her back, only to be greeted by Forrester’s smiling face.
“Good morning, darling.”
The real nightmare had begun, or, more accurately, was just sinking in.
It started the moment she entered Forrester’s home, just after midnight the evening before. She thought she’d prepared herself for the job ahead, but face to face with her grinning assignment made reverting to form seem like it was going to be harder than expected.
“I thought you were ill, darling,” Forrester cooed as he cupped her face upon her arrival.
He had been working late in the study when she called to tell him she was coming over, but now he was dressed in his nightclothes and robe, slippers on his feet, and a drink in hand. He kissed her on the cheek and took her suitcase from her hand, setting it on the floor beside them. Kathryn kicked the door closed with her heel, quickly coming to grips with the fact that she’d already passed the point of no return and had nothing to lose anymore. She smiled and leaned in to his kiss.
“I’m fine now. I woke up and I missed you,” she lied, moving closer. “I wanted to be near you.”
She gazed seductively at the drink in his hand and borrowed it, taking a significant swallow for courage before returning it to him.
“I wanted you,” she whispered, as she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. She took it slowly at first, not sure what to expect—from either of them. To her surprise, she found it easy, as did he, and he not only accepted her mouth, but he tried to take more.
She pulled away and smiled, as her latent fear of revulsion dissolved with his eager response. She stroked his cheek with a devilish grin. Her control over him was an empowering drug—much like the drink warming her belly.
She pointed at his glass. “You’d better finish that. You’re going to need it.”
He licked his lips, tasting her sweetness mixed with his expensive scotch, and silently watched as she picked up her case and walked into the main hall and up the grand staircase.
Kathryn smiled as she walked away, thankful she’d found her disconnect switch. Embrace the power, liberate the mind. It was all coming back to her now.
Forrester eventually followed and entered the bedroom slowly, unsure of what to expect. Kathryn was unpacking her makeup and a few items of clothing from her case.
“Darling?” he asked hesitantly. “Are you all right? You look tired.”
She turned, telegraphing insult.
“Beautiful,” he quickly countered. “But tired.”
She straightened and crossed the room, shutting the door behind him before she faced his way and loosened the belt on her overcoat.
“I am tired.”
The belt fell to the floor and her coat parted, revealing her naked form to a stunned Marcus Forrester, who looked ridiculous, standing there like a cast iron lawn jockey with a drink in his hand.
Kathryn made no effort to reveal her body further, preferring to let the light fabric hang where it may and her movements dictate her exposure. She wasn’t sure her audience appreciated her bold approach, but if his audible swallow was any indication, he would quickly warm to the idea.
She moved into his personal space and removed the drink from his hand, setting it carefully on the nightstand beside him. She thought about downing the contents of the glass, but she was in control now and preferred to stay that way.
“I am tired, Marc,” she repeated. “I’m tired of waiting for you to make love to me.”
She was impossibly close. She knew he could feel the heat of her skin through his nightshirt. He tried to avert his eyes from her long, naked torso, the intimacy making him uncomfortable. He backed up and stepped to the side, reaching for his drink again.
“What is this, a cruel joke? You know I can’t …”
She was back in his face instantly, with her hand around his and the disputed glass getting an excellent view of her left breast.
“Look at me, Marcus.”
He hesitated and turned his face away.
She forced the glass into his chest, sloshing the contents over their hands. “Drink that if you have to. Drink the entire bottle if you have to, but I want you, and you’re going to make love to me tonight.”
“What is wrong with you?” he snapped, corralling the glass from her grasp, but not its contents, which splashed all over her chest and coat.
Forrester stood like a deer caught in headlights, as the scotch glistened down Kathryn’s body and highlighted every lovely peak and valley on her exposed pinup-worthy frame.
“That’ll work,” she said with a smirk and then licked an errant drop of liquor from the side of her mouth.
“Honestly,” Forrester complained, slamming his empty glass down. He pulled a handkerchief from the nightstand drawer and wiped his face before picking up the phone. “If you want sex, all you have to—”
Kathryn moved in and carefully took the phone from his hand, returning it to the cradle. The sledgehammer approach had gotten her this far, but now it was time for some delicate maneuvering.
She ran her hand up his arm, to his neck, and then through his hair. “If I wanted sex with someone else, I certainly wouldn’t be standing in your bedroom wearing nothing but an overcoat and your sixty-year-old scotch.”
“Kathryn, I can’t—”
“Shh.” She covered his lips with her fingers. “There’s more to sex than that.” She moved closer and situated her thigh between his legs as she leaned in. “Let me show you, Marc,” she whispered in his ear. “Let me show you how to please me.”
She kissed his ear, then his neck. “You want to please me, don’t you?” She lingered in his ear. “You want to feel me, don’t you?”
Her sensual kisses crackled in his ear and mixed with her warm breath until the sexually stoic Marcus Forrester actually exhaled a pleasurable moan.
“I want you to feel what you do to me,” Kathryn went on unmercifully. “I want you inside me when I come, and I want you to know that you did this to me.”
His breathing increased. Any other man would have taken her by now, but Forrester’s lack of response on her thigh reminded her that this was no ordinary man and that she had her work cut out for her.
She pulled back and looked as aroused as possible. “Touch me, Marc. I want you to. I need you to. Please,” she practically begged as she cupped his tense jaw.
She saw that he was buying it, and that he was willing, so she slipped her thumb into his mouth, and he sucked the scotch from it, seeking approval with his questioning eyes.
“That’s it,” she said, feigning sexual gratification as he licked the remaining alcohol from the rest of her fingers and hand. She slowly parted her coat and curled her fingers under his chin, leading his mouth to her breast. “You missed a spot.”
He kissed her breast and chased the trail of liquor like a desperate alcoholic in need of a fix. Kathryn ran her hand through his hair, making erotic sounds of approval as he tasted her nipple for the first time. Her stomach roiled at his touch, and then she was angry at herself for losing focus. This wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before with many men. She’d promised Smitty she’d get her head in the game, but the game had left her. She silently swore at herself and redoubled her efforts to appear aroused.
He looked up at her reaction and seemed surprised and apprehensive all at once. She imagined he wasn’t used to being an instrument of pleasure. She shrugged her coat from her shoulders and guided his head back to her chest before he lost his nerve.
Kathryn didn’t know if Forrester’s problem was emotional or physical, nor did she care. While his mouth and hands wandered her body, her mind pulled her away from the physical sensations until she felt nothing. She was nothing.
She moaned for effect as she let him explore her, and she showed him how to make love to her with no more thought than she’d proffer a stranger asking directions to the nearest subway. She’d never felt so disconnected from her body. So disconnected from everything. She didn’t dare think of what she’d lost in Jenny. She’d break down completely.
Forrester watched in wide wonder her reaction to his efforts, and Kathryn knew he now felt the power of sexual control. Control was something he knew well, and something he relished. He followed her verbal pleasure map, and she escalated her responses until she decided it had gone on long enough. She threw her head back into the pillow with an exaggerated cry and held his hand to her center as she arched her back and faked the best orgasm she was sure he’d never been a part of.
A half hour later, he still had his head on her chest and one leg draped over hers, hugging her like a grateful child.
“You’ve made me feel like a man again,” he said with equal parts appreciation and melancholy.
“You are a man, darling.” She tenderly stroked his head—and his ego. “You are a man.” Kathryn stared at the ceiling. This was her life now, and she deserved every wretched second of it.
“We’re here, hon,” the lady cab driver called out as she looked at the snoozing blonde in her rearview mirror.
Jenny groaned as she lifted her head from the back of the seat and rubbed her eyes. Her watch read seven-fifteen in the morning. She’d only gotten three hours’ sleep at Bernie’s, and the early morning sun was stinging her eyes. After paying the cabbie, she got out and stared dejectedly at her large house, as the events of the previous evening came crashing back. A brick from the demolished mailbox column lay in her path, so she kicked it onto the grass and slowly approached her damaged car.
She put her hands on her hips. Not only had she destroyed the bumper and fender, but the impact had pushed the twisted metal into the left front tire, which was now flat. She’d have to put on the spare and wait until after the war to find another whitewall tire.
“Fucking perfect.”
She threw her hands up, finding it the least of her problems, and headed for the front door. She glared at the still burning porch light, which was a testament to Kathryn’s thoughtfulness that would go wholly unappreciated.
Once inside, Jenny was struck by the smell of ammonia, and her confused expression quickly turned into a scowl when she realized Kathryn had cleaned up before she left. Defiantly, Jenny kicked over the waste pail full of broken glass and miscellaneous rubbish by the doorway to the living room, sending the wreckage skittering down the hallway.
“Bitch,” she said, as she followed the debris field toward the kitchen.
On the kitchen table, Jenny found a letter. Perfectly centered atop the letter was Kathryn’s key. She scooped up the letter and the key and opened a drawer below the kitchen counter, where she tossed in the key and took out a box of matches.
She struck a match and held the envelope over the sink, where she lit the corner and watched the flames consume the words Dearest, please read! written in Kathryn’s sweeping hand. She watched the letter burn, feeling nothing but hate and disgust for its author.
She watched until the letter was nothing but ashes, and to ensure there would be no resurrection, she turned on the faucet until all traces of the lies and the woman who wrote them disappeared down the drain.
Jenny was emotionally wrung out and drained. She stalked into the bedroom and was annoyed to find the nightstand light on—another unwanted courtesy.
Jenny considered extinguishing the lamp with a well-placed pitch of her shoe but thought better of it. It was her favorite lamp, and one of the few items that she had added to the house and not some remnant of a Ryan gone by.
She lifted her heel and removed one shoe, then the other, and tossed them into the open closet instead.
“Leaving lights on,” she muttered at Kathryn’s offensive kindness. “I think I know my way around my own damn house.”
She slammed the closet door and entered the bathroom, mashing the light switch with her open palm before cranking on the hot water in the sink. She pulled the hand towel from the towel ring on the wall and found it damp from Kathryn’s final visit. She threw it to the floor in disgust.
“For the last time, get out of my house, get out of my life, get out of my head!” She yanked another hand towel from the shelf next to the sink and snapped it to its full length before tossing it to the counter. She washed her face and dried it, moaning into the clean towel as she pressed it to her tired eyes.
She straightened, and as her haggard face appeared in the mirror from behind the towel, she was struck by the stranger looking back at her. For the first time in her life, she questioned who she was.
She leaned closer, searching her bloodshot eyes for an answer. She blinked. Her eyes—she’d seen them before, and not as a reflection in a mirror. Of all the lies surrounding her, there was one truth that could not be denied, and maybe, just maybe, that truth would hold the answer.
She made her way into the study, barely noticing that everything had been put meticulously back in its place. A neat pile of now frameless photos on top of the damaged piano was her destination. She pushed aside another note from Kathryn, one pointing her to a piano refinisher in town, and this time Kathryn’s intrusion was ignored in favor of the only photograph she had of her mother: the one with Daniel Ryan under a sprawling oak tree.
There was no question this woman was her mother. They were almost identical. Jenny reached out and touched her mother’s smiling face. She longed for this woman now, as never before. She longed to be a daughter, to feel a blood connection, to have a mother to comfort her and tell her everything was going to be fine. It struck her how alone she was, how the only person she felt would understand was a woman she’d never met. A woman long since dead.
“Who am I?” she whispered, almost believing a mother’s love would take pity on her from the grave and provide the answer.
“Who were you?”
She turned over the black and white photo to find a handwritten message she never knew was there.
Your love grows like a beautiful vine of yellow roses, tucking and weaving its way through the latticework of my life, until I no longer know if the lattice holds up the vine or the vine holds up the lattice. In the end, it matters not. For the rose will continue to bloom and grow, bloom and grow …
We did it, Danny! Soon we’ll be together—love you till the end of time. Bess
Jenny peered at the smudged date. It was dated one month before she was born. One month before her mother’s death. She turned the photo back over and looked at the smiling faces. With his arms wrapped around her, Daniel Ryan was obviously in love, and from the message, so was her mother. What had they done? Why were they not together? If Daniel Ryan was not her father, who was?
Jenny realized she knew next to nothing about her mother except her maiden name from her birth certificate. Other than that, the woman, and her life, was a mystery. She searched the photograph for clues. There was a plain stone building in the background with three tall chimney stacks. Not much to go on. Her quest for answers had led her to more questions, but the questions replaced her anger and gave her something to focus on, something she gladly embraced, rather than face the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Only one person could help her in her new quest, and it coincided with her new assignment. She picked up the phone and swallowed any trace of pride.
“Hi, Uncle Paul. What are the chances there’s still a desk for me at the Daily Chronicle?”