Breaking the Ties That Bind (3 page)

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Authors: Gwynne Forster

BOOK: Breaking the Ties That Bind
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“What are you looking so sharp for? Or maybe I should say, who?” she asked, and added, “Nobody’s going to look at your hands, pretty though they are.”
He sat forward. “What do you mean?”
So he liked compliments, did he? She decided to be less direct. “Surely you don’t need compliments from me. I imagine you get so many that you’re bored to death with them. You go to school?”
“I’m a junior at Morgan University. You think I have nice hands?”
“I don’t think it. I know it, and I see hands every day and all day. But, like I said, nice as they are, I definitely wouldn’t spend my time looking at
them
.”
He narrowed his eyes and creased his face with a slight frown, and she wondered if she’d taken the wrong approach. He didn’t know it, but before he slept tonight, she meant to have him.
“Would you mind explaining that?” he asked her.
She supported her answer with a slow upward movement of her right shoulder. “Listen, honey, you’re a man. I don’t have to paint a picture for you. A guy who looks like you has had his share of options, and don’t tell me I’m wrong.” She pushed her stool closer in order to give him a better look at her ample cleavage and the hard nipples pressing against her scoop-neck jersey blouse. She saw his Adam’s apple working and smiled inwardly.
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly, annoying her with his blunt attempt to put her in her place.
She looked him in the eye. “Old enough to know what to do with you and how to do it. Anything else you want to know?”
“Yeah. What time do you get off, and how far do you live from here?”
“I get off when I finish with you. I live on Kalorama Road. Why?”
“Who lives there with you?”
“I live alone. You want to go home with me?” She let the palm of her right hand graze her left nipple a few times.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’d like to see if your bite lives up to your bark.”
She winked at him. “Don’t waste time thinking about that, honey. You can’t even begin to imagine what I’m going to do to you and how I’m going to make you feel.” She got up, patted his shoulder, and smiled. “And you’ll feel real good about yourself, too.”
She knew she had a couple of bottles of white wine in her refrigerator, but what would she give him to eat? He’d have to be satisfied with a ham sandwich, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream.
“Let’s go. I don’t have a lot of time,” he said, but she didn’t answer. Once she got him in her bed, he’d stay there for as long as she enjoyed him.
“This is a neat place,” he said when they walked into her living room. “It’s very feminine.”
“What would you expect? I’m a woman and proud of it. Sit in here while I get you a bite to eat. Sex and an empty stomach are incompatible.”
“Good idea, because I didn’t eat much lunch.”
She made the sandwiches, warmed the pie, and opened the wine.
“You fixed all that?” he asked when she put the tray on the coffee table. “I love apple pie and vanilla ice cream.”
She poured two glasses of wine and gave one to him. “I hope you’ll enjoy your visit sufficiently to come back.”
A grin spread over his face, and she thought,
This kid is a helluva looker.
When he’d drunk most of the wine in his glass, she picked up a sandwich. He ate his and followed that with the pie à la mode.
“That was terrific. Thanks.”
She handed him another glass of wine, and when he’d finished it, she leaned over and loosened his tie. His gaze clung to her cleavage, and she put his hand on her breast and rubbed. “Want some? It’s all yours.”
“What do you mean, do I want some?”
Remembering his age, she put her hand behind his head, released one of her breasts, and pulled his hair. “The quicker you get a woman’s nipple into your mouth, the quicker you’ll get her into bed. And you’ll love sucking it.”
He suckled her like a greedy baby, and heat plowed through her, but she didn’t rush him, because the wait would be worth it. A glance showed that he was not only ready but well equipped. And his moans told her to head to the next stage. She put his hand on her thigh beneath her dress, and he didn’t need instructions as to what to do next.
You shouldn’t do this, Ginny,
the weak voice of her ineffectual conscience told her. But she pushed it aside, as she usually did when mental remnants of her early teachings emerged. Nothing was going to prevent her from getting a taste of that pig meat. She doubted that he was a virgin, but if he was, so much the better. She unzipped his trousers, stroked and squeezed him, and when his head lolled on the back of the sofa while he moaned in pleasure, she bent over and tasted him.
“Don’t stop,” he yelled.
“I’m not crazy, honey. This is for both of us. You’re going to give me my share, too. Come on.” She relieved him of his trousers, and led him to her bed. For the next three hours, she worked him over, showing him that she did indeed know what to do with him and how to do it. His rapid recovery after every session reminded her of the value of youth in a man. She relished every minute of this man in her bed until, finally exhausted, she’d had her fill.
“Honey, you have to get up now,” she told him. “I don’t want my neighbors to see you leaving here in the morning.”
“In the morning? What? Good Lord, I was supposed to pick up my date at eight-thirty.”
“It’s too late for that now. Does she have a cell phone?”
“What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “Eighteen minutes to ten. I’ll make you some coffee.”
He swung off the bed. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Right across the hall.” She watched him stride out of the room, tall, naked, and all male, and liquid accumulated in her mouth. Damned if he was going anywhere right then. She got the remaining bottle of wine from the refrigerator and a bag of Cajun-spiced Doritos, put them on her night table, and was back in bed before he returned. He sat on the side of the bed.
“Here,” she said, handing him a glass of wine. “As fine looking as you are, she’ll forgive you. Any woman would. Besides, the way you put it down, honey, you can get any woman you want.” She opened the bag of Doritos and handed it to him. He ate them absentmindedly and drained the wine glass, which she quickly refilled. Like a zombie, he drank more wine.
Ginny eased her hand from his back to his genitals and began her assault on him. Figuring that, after so much sex, he wouldn’t explode the minute she touched him, she said, “Lie down. I never did get you all the way into my mouth.”
When the sunlight awakened him, his mouth was at her breast, and his right hand rested between her thighs. Abruptly, he separated from her, jumped up, and began dressing. “Good Lord! I’ve ruined my life. My girlfriend’s an only child. Her father was going to give me a job at graduation, and I would eventually have been CEO of a Fortune five hundred company. All that for a romp in the bed of a woman whose last name I don’t even know and who’s older than my mother. Shit.”
Affronted by his reference to her age, she sat up, put on her pink negligee, and waited until he was looking straight at her. Then, with an elaborate shrug, she said, “That’s life, honey. You like to screw, so this won’t be the last time your penis gets you into trouble.”
“I see it doesn’t mean a damned thing to you. All you wanted was a good lay. Well, you got that, and maybe more. Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t use a condom?”
She gasped, as fear settled over her. “You bastard.” She jumped up to express her rage with her fists, but the front door slammed, and she dropped herself on the bed as tremors wracked her body.
Chapter Two
Kendra rushed along rain-spattered Sixteenth Street, Northwest, and turned into Dupont Circle with one eye on traffic and the other on the threatening clouds. She dashed into La Belle Époque Restaurant seconds before a torrent of rain exploded from the sky, and entered the cloakroom out of breath.
“I was hoping you’d get here a little early,” Natalie, the blonde who she was replacing, said, “but it doesn’t matter. I can’t go anywhere in this downpour.”
“You want to borrow my umbrella?” Kendra asked her.
“Thanks, but I don’t think an umbrella would do much good. Just look at that.”
“I hope you’re not missing something important,” Kendra told her. She liked Natalie, for Natalie had befriended her on several occasions.
“I have a doctor’s appointment. You’re such a terrific person, Kendra. Find a way to get out of this job. You’re too smart for it. I’m here because I can go to school mornings, work afternoons, and I live in Laurel, Maryland. I don’t get much sleep, but I’ll graduate in June, and then this torture will be a thing of the past.”
“I’m working here to save enough money to go back to Howard and finish my undergraduate degree. Considering the tips, it’s the best job I’ve been able to find.”
“I’m glad to know you have a plan, and I wish you the best.”
“It’s stopped raining, so you may still be able to make your appointment on time.”
“Thanks.” Natalie hooked her purse strap over her shoulder, started out of the cloakroom, and then turned and looked at Kendra. “If you pray, please pray for me. I think I may be pregnant.”
“Oh, Lord no. If you are, what about the father?”
“I thought we had a good thing going, but when I told him what I suspected, he told me he was married. I wanted to kill him. Even if I find I’m not pregnant, he’s history. How can a man pull such a rotten trick on a woman? We’ve been seeing each other for eleven months.”
“If you are, are you going through with it?”
“Considering how much I hate that man right now, I honestly don’t know. Well, thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.”
Kendra adjusted her uniform, pinned her big “smile” button to the lapel, and then greeted her first customer. A man collected his raincoat and umbrella and gave her a one dollar bill. She thanked him warmly, for she knew that the next time he might leave her five dollars.
“Have a good day, sir.”
“Thank you, miss. The same to you.”
She said a prayer for Natalie and she wrestled with the sadness she felt for the twenty-two-year-old girl, who’d had the misfortune to meet and fall in love with an unprincipled man. Maybe her own trials with Ginny weren’t the worst that could happen to her. The lunch hour wound down, and she could finally sit down for a few minutes.
As she sat, barefoot, to rest her feet, she saw an iPhone on the cloakroom floor. She picked it up, made a note of its description as the restaurant rules required, and was about to take it to her boss, when she remembered that the last time she returned a “found” item to him, he put it in his pocket. The following day, the owner had come back for it, and Ray had told the man that none of his staff had seen it.
She saw an address and phone number on the back of the iPhone, took a chance, and dialed the number.
“Clifton Howell speaking.”
“Mr. Howell, this is Kendra at La Belle Époque. I’m the coatcheck girl. I found your iPhone, sir. But please don’t tell my boss I called you. We’re supposed to give everything we find to him. But I wanted to be sure you got it.”
“Thank you so much, Kendra. I was thinking that I dropped it when I got out of my car, and that I didn’t hear it drop because it was raining. Don’t worry. I won’t mention this call to your boss. I’m very grateful to you. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
She wrapped the iPhone in a paper napkin, and when Clifton Howell—a man who appeared to be in his fifties—arrived, she handed it to him. “At least now I know your name,” she said to him; he was one of La Belle Époque’s regular patrons.
“It’s really nice of you.” He opened his billfold to remove a bill, but she held up her hands, palms out.
“No thank you, sir. I didn’t do this for you to give me something. I know it’s very expensive, and it probably contains very personal and important information. I wanted to be sure that you got it.”
He looked at her for a full minute. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness.” A slight frown creased his brow. “Uh . . . How far did you go in school?”
She wondered at the question, but he’d posed it in a matter-of-fact way, evidently without an ulterior motive, so she replied truthfully. “I’ve completed two years at Howard University. My major is communications, and I’m working to save enough to complete the remaining two years.”
He rubbed the left side of his face absentmindedly. “Hmm. You carry yourself well.” He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to her. “If you’re ever looking for a job, give me a call.”
“Thank you, Mr. Howell. I definitely will do that. Have a wonderful day.”
A half-smile flashed briefly across his face. “The same to you. By the way, what is your last name?”
“My full name is Kendra Richards.”
He wrote it on the back of another of his business cards, and put it in his pocket. “Good-bye, Miss Richards.”
The dinner hour proved hectic and crowded, and by eleven o’clock when she could at last leave, Kendra felt that she couldn’t stand for one more minute. She had learned that standing in that cloakroom was more tiresome than waiting tables.
Kendra got home at midnight, and after a half an hour soak in a tub full of warm bubbles, she got ready for bed thinking that at least she had an offer of a job if she ever needed one.
She crawled into bed, reached toward her night table to extinguish the light, and she accidentally turned on the radio and heard someone singing “. . . one chance is all I need.”
She bolted upright. “Am I crazy?” she said aloud. “I can at least call Clifton Howell and find out what kind of job he can offer me. I don’t even know the kind of business he’s in. I’ll call him in the morning.”
With that decision, an attack of anxiety set in and she tossed and wrestled with sleeplessness throughout the night. When her clock alarm went off in the morning, she jumped up and began planning what she’d say to Clifton Howell.
 
Ginny stopped at a drugstore and bought the darkest pair of sunglasses available there. She’d never been so humiliated in her life. Imagine having to go to a doctor and ask for an STD or HIV test. And it would cost money that she’d rather not have to lay out. She’d chosen two gynecologists and two internists listed in the yellow pages, because she didn’t want to go to her regular doctor.
She reached the gynecologist on Columbia Road first, took a deep, fortifying breath, and went in. By then, chills traveled through her repeatedly, and she had begun to break out in hives. Needing support, she sat down in the waiting room without stopping to speak with the receptionist.
The woman walked over to her. “May I help you? If this is your first visit to Doctor Elms, you’ll have to fill out these forms.” Ginny filled out the three pages as quickly as her shaking fingers would allow, leaving blank the question of whether she had HIV/AIDS. Half an hour later, a nurse appeared.
“Come with me, Ms. Hunter. Doctor Elms will see you now.”
It didn’t help that she had to pull off every stitch of her clothing, including her stockings. The nurse gave her a gown, took her temperature, and weighed her. “The doctor will be with you in a minute.”
Ginny’s jaw dropped when a tall, white, no-nonsense-looking woman walked into the examining room. “I’m Doctor Elms, Ms. Hunter. How are you feeling? What’s the problem?”
A woman doctor was the last thing she wanted. “I think I ought to have some tests. I was with a guy who said he might have some kind of VD. Naturally, the bastard told me that after he’d done the damage.”
“Let’s see what we have here. Next time, protect yourself. If you’re in the habit of doing things in a hurry, keep a condom in your pocketbook. The average single man keeps one in his wallet.”
After examining Ginny, the doctor said, “I don’t see any signs, but we’ll get a smear and some blood. These pimples look like hives. Ever have them before?”
“Never. They started coming out when I got to your door.”
“Anxiety. Here’s a prescription. Take this if they persist.”
“How soon will I know?”
“I’ll have to send this to the lab. You should know in a couple of days. Meanwhile, avoid any sexual activity.”
Sexual activity! She never wanted to hear the word
sex
again.
And she never wanted to see J. H. Elms again, either. The woman had the personality of a flea.
For the next two days, Ginny hardly ate and slept fitfully at night. She’d been so anxious to get that boy into her and enjoy sex with a strong, energetic man who was eager to learn, that she hadn’t used her common sense. Just because he looked clean didn’t mean he was.
Janet Elms finally called her in the afternoon of the third day.
“This is Dr. Elms. You’re clean right now, but come back for another HIV test in six weeks. And don’t forget to practice safe sex.”
The bill from the diagnostic center arrived the next day. Eleven hundred dollars—for what? Well, they could wait till they got it. She called the owner of the beauty spa where she worked. “I’ll be in tomorrow and all of next week, so you can fill my card.”
She hated to let him know she was broke. But he’d already guessed that she only worked when she was desperate for money and hadn’t been able to borrow any. Maybe if she worked full time for a couple of weeks.... She sucked her teeth in disgust.
Hell no. I’m not standing on my feet pampering vain women eight hours a day, forty hours a week. No, indeed. Kendra would just have to loosen up and let her have some more money.
 
Kendra’s life was about to change, and, along with it, so would her conception of herself. She got up that morning, and drank her usual two cups of coffee, but she drank them while walking from her kitchen to her balcony to her living room and back to the kitchen, over and over again. She put the coffee mug on the counter with a resounding thud.
“Time’s up,” she said to herself. “No more procrastinating.” She glanced at her watch. A quarter to ten. Slowly, her fingers dialed the number on Clifton Howell’s business card.
“Mr. Howell’s office.”
“I’ll never get through that sister,” Kendra said to herself.
“Good morning. This is Kendra Richards. May I please speak with Mr. Howell. He’s expecting my call.”
“Oh. Let me check my list. There must be some mistake.” Kendra bristled at that. “There’s no mistake, Miss, at least not on my part. You only have to check with Mr. Howell to find that I’m right.”
“Well, just a minute.” Kendra couldn’t help wondering why some people enjoyed exercising the power of the word no.
“Hello, Miss Richards,” Howell said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Did you get fired, or did it occur to you that I might offer you a better job?” he asked with a tease in his voice.
“I didn’t get fired, but I came home exhausted, and it occurred to me that you might give me something better to do.”
“I definitely can. Can you get here by noon?”
“Yes, sir. Please tell your secretary that you’re expecting me.”
After she ended the call, Kendra inspected her closet and chose a Dior blue two-piece seersucker suit with short sleeves and a mandarin collar. She added the de rigueur white pearl earrings and beads. Couldn’t get less sexier or less threatening, she assured herself. Besides, her father liked blue, and he claimed that it was a ladylike color. Maybe all men liked that color. Medium-heel blue patent leather shoes and a matching bag completed her outfit.
 
She remained in the building’s lobby until two minutes to twelve, took the elevator to the ninth floor, and rang the bell at noon. Someone buzzed her in, and she walked into the elegant suite of offices.
Less nervous than she’d thought she’d be, she addressed the receptionist. “I’m Kendra Richards.” The woman raised an eyebrow. “Please tell Mr. Howell that I’m here.”
Kendra let her gaze take in the area—the original paintings of Edward Hopper and other American painters, the enormous Tabriz carpet, brown-and-gold velvet seating arrangements, and live plants. What a lovely environment in which to work, she thought.
“Mr. Howell will see you now.”
A door opened, and Clifton Howell entered the lobby while putting on his suit jacket. “I didn’t want you to wait,” he said, extending his hand and ushering her into his private office. “You said you’re planning to get a degree in communications,” he began, making it clear that she was not there for small talk. “Do you like music?” From the way he scrutinized her, it was clear that he was not planning to judge her on her words alone.

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