Guilty Pleasures (20 page)

“Your whore mama didn’t do what she should, girly, so you’re going to do it for her. You a virgin?”

J.P. nodded, her eyes wide.

“I ain’t had a virgin in a long time, girly, but I’m going to enjoy popping your cherry for you. Maybe next time your cold-ass mama will do her job better, ’cause if she doesn’t, I’m coming back. You got sisters, don’t you?”

J.P. nodded.

“They’re younger, right?”

Her head bobbed.

“Good, ’cause I’ll give them a poke too. Hey, maybe I’ll do it tonight.” He laughed. The sound was like that of a donkey braying. And all the while he was speaking, he was massaging his flaccid penis, trying to bring it to a point where he could use it. He wasn’t having a great deal of success, however. “Damn! You’re like your mama, girl. I ain’t never had no trouble with my dick before. You’re going to have to suck it, girly.” He slid up on her, his hand moving from her mouth so quickly she had no time to scream. He pinched her nostrils shut with one hand, pushing his penis into her mouth when she gasped for air. “Bite me and I’ll kill you, girly. Now, start sucking!”

J.P. thought she was going to die then and there. She could feel the bile rising up in her throat. She was going to vomit, and then she heard a loud thwack and her attacker fell forward on her with a deep groan. As he did, his penis pulled out of her mouth, to her great relief, and she threw up all over herself.

“You okay, sis?” It was her fourteen-year-old brother, Joe, and he was holding his baseball bat. “Pete,” he called to his thirteen-year-old sibling, “help me get this son of a bitch off Janie. Did he hurt you, sis? You okay?” he repeated.

She burst into tears as they pulled the man away. She was covered in vomit, but filled with relief to have escaped the worst, although having a dick in her mouth was hardly the best.

“Ah, crap, Janie, don’t bawl like that.” He wanted to hug her, but considering the mess on her thought better of it.

“Get him out of here,” J.P. said to her brother. “And see if Mom’s all right. He obviously wasn’t happy with her and came in here. How did you know something was wrong, Joe?”

“Marybeth came and woke us up. She heard the guy when he was talking to you,” Joe said. “I didn’t think to check on Mom. I just got my bat and came to rescue you.”

“My hero,” J.P. told her brother. “Really. Can you see his face? Who is he?”

“Maintenance guy down at the school,” her younger brother said. “He’s always looking at the girls in my class, and he licks his lips a lot.”

“Marybeth, you go find Mom. You boys take him out of here,” she instructed.

“We ought to call the sheriff,” Joe said.

“Look, he didn’t rape me, and I don’t want it known all over town that he tried to,” J.P. told her brother. “They tolerate what Mom does Saturday nights, but someone is sure to say she let the guy into our room to get more money. You know how people are. Then we’ll have to deal with Social Services. They’ll separate us, and we’ll end up God knows where or, worse, a group home.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Joe agreed. “But you’re sure you’re okay, sis?”

“I will be when I’ve taken a shower,” she told him. “Codfish cakes really stink when you toss ’em up, don’t they?”

Her brothers laughed. This was the Janie they knew: sensible and sharp of tongue. Following her instructions, they dragged the body of the man from her room. She heard it
bumpbumpbumping
as they descended the stairs. The creep’s face was going to be a mess, and he deserved it. She went into their little bathroom, stripped off her nightshirt, rinsed it out, swished some Listerine around in her mouth, and then took a quick shower. Quick because the water wasn’t very hot, and it was a winter’s night. Wrapped in a towel, she hurried back to the room she shared with her sisters. Marybeth was sitting on the bed, comforting eight-year-old Julie.

J.P. quickly pulled on her other nightshirt. Marybeth looked pale. “You okay, sweetpea?” J.P. asked the eleven-year-old.

“He beat up Mom,” Marybeth said. “I think she might be dead.”

Julie began to cry.

“Hush up, peapod,” J.P. said. “I’ll go and look.”

But Dorcas Woods wasn’t dead. She was badly beaten, however, and finally conscious again. “Call your aunt Faith,” she told her eldest. J.P. nodded and did as she was told. Faith Leighton was their only living kin. She was a spinster.

Aunt Faith came and, seeing her younger sister’s condition, said, “Do you think you have a concussion?”

“No, just a lot of bruising, maybe a rib or two out of place, and I think my right wrist is broken,” Dorcas said. “I’m lucky.”

“Yeah, you look it,” Aunt Faith told her. “Well, let’s get you patched up.”

In the morning, it was their aunt who escorted them to church. “Poor Dorcas fell on the ice last night. She bruised herself up pretty bad and broke a wrist,” Faith informed the pastor in a voice for all to hear.

“Bad night all around,” Pastor Clarke replied. “They found Ed Gary, the school’s maintenance man, on the beach this morning, half dead from the cold. Both of his legs was broke, and his two arms as well. His face was so black-and-blue they hardly recognized him. They think he was drunk and fell off the bluff.”

“Ought to get rid of that man,” Faith Leighton said sharply. “I understand he’s always leering at the girls in school, especially the younger ones. How long before he’s drunk and something happens?” she finished meaningfully. “You’re on the school board, Pastor. You should do something.”

A murmur of assent was heard from those standing around them.

The pastor raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t heard that, Miss Leighton. But you’re absolutely right. Can’t have a fellow like that around our kids. The board is meeting this Tuesday night. I’ll bring it up.”

“If you don’t, I will,” the owner of the general store remarked. “I’m on the board too.” Then he turned to Faith Leighton. “I expect Missus Woods will need a few days to heal,” he said. “Tell her to take the week, and I’ll not dock her pay. Hard enough for that woman without having to lose a week’s wages when she’s sick.”

“I’ll come in after school, Mr. Brown,” J.P. said. “And I’ll work all day Saturday for you, sir.”

“Mighty obliging of you, Jane. You’re a good girl,” the storekeeper said.

There were no more Saturday nights for her mother after that. J.P. and her two brothers got jobs after school, which was not easy in a small town in northern Maine. If there were some who suspected that Ed Gary’s injuries and Dorcas Woods’s injuries were connected, they said nothing. And Ed Gary was gone once the hospital released him.

The incident, however, had driven home a hard lesson to J.P. She didn’t want to be anyone’s victim again, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Bug Light.

A straight-A student and valedictorian of her high school class, she had been accepted at an excellent women’s college. She wanted to go, but the aid package just wasn’t enough, and so she made a deal with the college. She would attend the local community college for two years, keep a straight-A average, and then transfer to them. In return, they would give her a full scholarship, including room and board, for her last two years.

She had worked filleting fish down on the Bug Light town dock winter and summer, even as she worked to keep her scholarship those first two years. She didn’t know which was worse: summers, when the stink of the fish was overpowering in the heat, or winters, when her hands almost froze in the icy cold. She had helped her mother with the household expenses while putting aside half of what she earned for the day she left Bug Light. And then it came.

She quit working a week before her departure, showering several times a day because she thought she would never get the smell of fish off of her skin and out of her hair. The men down on the docks, who had all known her dad, had scrabbled together a hundred dollars for her as a going-away gift. J. P. Woods cried for one of the last times in her life at their kindness. But the man she recognized as the head of Bug Light’s small fishing fleet put a beefy arm about her, saying, “You’ve more than earned our respect, Jane Patricia. Your dad would be proud of you. You ain’t going to come back here, I suspect, but don’t forget Bug Light and where you come from.”

She never had. Hard work could get you anywhere in life if you persisted at it. Luck was something you made. But J. P. Woods’s biography only mentioned her hometown of Bug Light, Maine; her college; her work history; and the few awards she had received. She never spoke of her family, and if asked, she would only say that they were smalltown people. Few asked, however, and most assumed she came from a privileged background because of her alma mater and her beautiful manners.

Martin Stratford had done some investigating on his own when he began to notice J. P. Woods. “Where did she come from?” he asked his longtime secretary, Alice.

“NAL,” Alice said.

“No.
Where did she come from?
” he repeated.

“How much do you want to know?” Alice asked.

“Everything,” Martin Stratford said.

Several days later Alice had put a folder on his desk. Martin Stratford learned that the up-and-coming young female executive in his company was the daughter of a fisherman and a sales clerk in a general store in a little Northern coastal town in Maine with the absurd name of Bug Light. He read how she had worked her butt off to get into a good school and then negotiated with her college so she could go. He nodded and smiled to himself as he read. This was a woman who knew how to work hard and how to take advantage of opportunities, and she had no qualms about beating out an opponent. This was the person he wanted to run his company when he decided to retire. Not that he would ever really retire completely. But one day he was going to want to start to do a few of those things on his bucket list; and when he did them, he wanted to know his publishing house was running smoothly. So he had begun to groom J. P. Woods to take his place. And eventually she had.

J. P. Woods was both respected and feared in her position as head of Stratford. Once she had gained a certain level within the company, she chose a gay male assistant. One of his duties was to pick young men working their way up the corporate ladder to sexually service his boss. If J.P. were a man, she would have been accused of sexual harassment, but no young guy wanted to admit he had been coerced into having sex with a woman. It was embarrassing.

But J.P. had met her match with Michael Devlin when he had come from Random House in London to be Stratford’s editor in chief. Mick had a reputation as a ladykiller, but he wasn’t about to sleep with her—a fact he made very clear. Not being able to control this man frightened J.P. She knew that Martin Stratford was going to retire shortly, and she was wondering if he was having second thoughts about her taking over his publishing house. Had he brought Mick Devlin in to undercut her? Martin could be a bastard when he wanted to be. But Devlin had assured her that all he wanted to do was edit. Martin had given her his chair at Christmas, and damned if Devlin hadn’t gone and married Stratford’s prize romance author, Emilie Shann.

J.P. had always had mixed feelings about Emilie Shann. She was beautiful, talented, and successful. Martin adored her, but J.P. had hated the sappy romantic drivel she had been writing. She had hinted broadly to Emilie’s agent, Aaron Fischer, that unless Emilie could write sexier, which was what the market was now demanding, she wouldn’t have a future with Stratford. And damn if the little prissy miss hadn’t gone and done just that. She had written one helluva sexy blockbuster. J.P. liked Emilie a little better for rising to her challenge. And when J.P. had taken her aside and asked her if she knew about a woman-only network called the Channel, Emilie had said yes, it was addictive but wonderful. She suggested J.P. try it. And she had.

God, how she wished she could get someone to write about the Channel. What a book that would be, especially if other women then tried it themselves. But J.P. was smart enough to know that if the secret of the Channel came out, it would destroy it. She was having far too much fun to do that. She had created a persona within the Channel that suited her perfectly.

As the widowed Duchess of Manley she was both outrageously beautiful and rich. She led a life considered shockingly scandalous by the
ton,
but was nevertheless accepted because of her wealth. Everyone thought that eventually some fortunate man was going to pin down the naughty duchess and find his way into her heart. But the Duchess of Manley had no heart. She was as cold as ice.

She had hated the arranged marriage into which she had been forced, and she privately rejoiced when her abusive husband broke his neck going over a water jump. Lady Jane had been the duke’s second wife. As he already had an heir and a spare, her wifely duties were to oblige her husband in any and every way he demanded. The duke, a sensual man, had taught her more than any respectable woman should know about sex. While he preferred having a wife to keeping a mistress, he wanted that wife to behave in their bedroom as a mistress would and in public like the Duchess of Manley should.

Lady Jane had not followed the proper etiquette for mourning, coming out of black three months after her husband’s demise. All of London was shocked. Her stepson protested, but she ignored him. He was a weak fool. The
ton
was shocked further when she appeared at the first ball of the new season clad in a scarlet gown. The gentlemen, however, were delighted—to the outrage of several mamas with nubile daughters to marry off. How could their virginal darlings compete with the magnificent duchess? And she did prefer younger men to older ones.

“They have more stamina in bed,” she was reported to have said. “One prefers a two-year-old stallion to one who is four.”

The beautiful dowager duchess soon grew bored, though, and sought an outlet to relieve that ennui. Lady Jane found it when a friend complained that she was never going to find a rich wife for her brother if he didn’t learn how to behave properly with the young ladies. Lady Jane heard herself saying, “Would you like me to train him? Young men, like young stallions, frequently need schooling.”