Guilty Pleasures (29 page)

When they had recovered themselves, he said to her, “I shall invite the caliph in Baghdad and the Great Khan to come to Sherazad to sign a treaty of peaceful coexistence between us all. And to seal this treaty, I shall share with them my greatest treasure: my Star of Cinnabar. When they have enjoyed your beauty and passion with me, we shall have peace between the four kingdoms.”

Ohhhh,
Tiffy thought.
A foursome! I’ve never had a foursome before, and none of them is going to have Joe’s face. Gee, if I hadn’t given my Sultan of Sherazad a different face, this would have never happened. Thank you, Carla, for making me see sense!

Then she turned to her bridegroom. “If I may be an instrument of peace, my lord husband, then so be it. I will do as you command, and gladly.”

“Your obedience pleases me well, Hestia,” he responded.

Ping! Ping! Ping! The Channel is now closed.

Too bad,
Tiffy thought as she rolled over in her own bed and fell asleep. But when she awoke the next morning, she realized that Joe was coming home. And if Joe was coming home, she was going to have a difficult time living out her fantasy of a foursome. Somehow she didn’t want to hide out in the den. Joe hadn’t been sleeping well lately. What if he woke up, found her down in the den apparently asleep, and turned off the television, which would just appear to be a snowy screen to his eyes? Would that end the fantasy and wake her up—or keep her prisoner in the Channel? She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to find out what would happen if she got stuck in the Channel. Damn! Why couldn’t her husband be gone just one more day?

Carla called and wanted details of the previous night’s adventure.

Tiffy supplied them, then explained her dilemma. “I just think about that foursome, and my clit starts twitching,” she told her best friend.

“Oh, dear,” Carla said. “What about hiding out in your craft room?”

“Same problem as the den. Joe wakes up and I’m not there, he comes looking for me. God, Carla, I want this fantasy! I feel like a kid who’s just discovered sex. I want more and more and more! This is absolutely the best fantasy I’ve ever had!”

“Keep calm,” Carla advised, “and let me think about it.”

“Think fast,” Tiffy said. “I gotta go. Joe wants to order the Friday pizza. Gah! I don’t want pepperoni! I want a sultan, a caliph, and a khan plundering my body with their great big cocks. I want to be licked and sucked all over. I want to lick and suck! Damn! I’m twitching again.”

Carla swallowed back the laughter that threatened to overwhelm her. “I’ll figure something out,” she said. “Just stop thinking about it.”

Then she hung up. Her laughter bubbled up now. Poor Tiffy! She had always been a reasonably sedate visitor to the Channel. She loved romance novels featuring harems. There wasn’t one she hadn’t read. Good or bad. Her fantasy had always been the same. It was simple in its creation. Tiffy was the beautiful slave girl who became the sultan’s favorite. And the sultan had the face and voice of Joe Pietro d’Angelo.

She never felt guilty about her fantasy because she was actually having sex with her husband in the Channel and not some handsome stranger. It allowed her to keep her libido in check and not end up with a half dozen children, like her sisters-in-law. She and Joe had had fraternal twins, Brittany and Max. They were great kids now, grown and out on their own.

But now, Carla considered, he’d unleashed a tigress, and Tiffy wasn’t going to be happy until she had gotten into bed with the Sultan of Sherazad, the Caliph of Baghdad, and the Great Khan of Samarkand. A foursome. Wow! Carla had to admire Tiffy’s suddenly unleashed creativity.

I don’t think I ever did a foursome,
she thought.
A threesome, yes, but not a foursome. How the hell am I going to help Tiffy attain her dream coupling?
she wondered.

And then it came to her. For years the five friends who lived on Ansley Court had owned a big old summer camp on a lake in the nearby mountains. The past few summers they had been renting it out. The rambling summer house had been for their children more than for them. But their offspring were grown. They hadn’t been up to Camp Cozy, as their kids had dubbed it, in a couple of years. The people renting it for the past two summers wanted to buy it. If she could get her Rick and Tiffy’s Joe to go up to negotiate the sale, then Tiffy could have her one night to experience that foursome she wanted.

“Honey,” she called to her husband, “I’ve had a sudden thought.” And when Rick had joined her in the den, she said, “I know we’ve been discussing selling the place in the mountains for a while now, so why don’t we do it? I could talk to Tiffy, Nora, Rina, and Joanne. We don’t go up anymore. We take grown-up vacations now.”

“I agree,” Rick replied. “Paying for upkeep and the taxes and collecting one-fifth from everyone is becoming tiresome. Go ahead and speak to the girls. I know Dr. Sam, Joe, and the others will agree. It’s past time we got rid of it, and the Chandlers love the place for their kids and their big family.”

“I’ll call Tiffy right now,” Carla said. “Then you and Joe can start setting things up. You’ll probably have to spend a night at the inn up there. It’s too far for a day trip if you’re going to do business. We don’t want to be greedy, but we shouldn’t give it away.”

“You’re a genius!” Tiffy said when Carla called to tell her the plan.

“Only if everyone agrees,” Carla said.

“They will,” Tiffy replied. “How soon can we get the boys up to the mountains?”

“Maybe next weekend if we can get everyone to agree,” Carla said. “I’ll make sure to be working at the hospital then, and you can say if I can’t go, you don’t want to go either. Let’s hope the Chandlers are still enthusiastic, and if they are, let’s close in mid-October. That way we can all have one final autumn weekend and maybe take one small personal item as a memory.”

“What if the Chandlers want to negotiate over the telephone?” Tiffy asked.

“Rick already thought of that. He wants to go up unannounced with Joe so they can check out the condition of the house. There’s a guy who does inspections up there, and they’re going to meet with him first,” Carla explained.

Carla called their friends the next day.

“It’s time,” Rina Seligmann said sanguinely. “Past time if you ask me. Hold on a minute. Sam! We’re going to sell Camp Cozy. Okay with you?”

“About time,” Carla heard Dr. Sam say.

“I heard him,” Carla said.

“Everyone else in agreement?” Rina asked.

“Tiffy, yes. I’ve got to call Joanne next.”

“They’ll okay it. The Ulrichs want to buy a condo in Vero for the winter, and while the hardware store is still doing okay, that Home Depot at the mall has taken some of their business,” Rina told Carla. “Where’s Nora right now?”

“Thanks for the tip about the Ulrichs,” Carla said. “I’ve got Nora’s cell number. Who knows where she is right now? But I’ll ask when I get her. Thanks, Rina.” She next called Joanne Ulrich.

“We had great times up there,” Joanne said, “but yes, we’re on board to sell it. There’s this condo in Florida we were considering buying. We trust Rick and Joe to get us all the best price. I know it won’t be a fortune, but we might at least get our down payment for the condo.”

“Rick says we can get at least two hundred fifty thousand for the place. It’s got three acres with it, three hundred feet of lakefront, and the house is in reasonable shape. The guys will do the deal, and with no agent involved, we should each come out of it with fifty thousand,” Carla responded.

“Sounds good to me,” Joanne Ulrich answered. “As Captain Picard would say, ‘Make it so!’ ”

Carla laughed. “You got it!” she said before hanging up. Then she dialed Nora Buckley. Nora actually worked for the Channel Corporation. Carla got her voice mail. God only knew where Nora was in the world. “Nora, it’s Carla. We want to sell Camp Cozy. Everyone is in agreement, but we need your vote too. Call me, and where the hell are you anyway? You haven’t been home all summer.”

Nora Buckley called late the next day. “Hey, Carla,” she said by way of greeting, “I’m in New Zealand. We’re going to be opening up another resort here.”

“The gorgeous Kyle with you?” Carla queried.

“Of course,” Nora replied, laughing. “In fact, we’re just about ready to go to bed.”

“Too much information!” Carla told her, but she remembered when Nora had been her best friend in all the world and they had met in the Channel with their lovers. Kyle had a world-class penis, Carla recalled with a lusty little sigh. Then she got back to business. “So you vote to sell the place too, right?”

“I vote to sell,” Nora said with a chuckle, for she had heard that sigh and knew exactly what Carla was remembering. “Rick and Joe handling the sale?”

“Yep,” Carla answered. “They can fax or e-mail the stuff to you at your office.”

“That’s fine,” Nora agreed.

“Listen, we’re doing one last weekend in mid-October. You know you and Kyle are invited.”

“Thanks, but no. My kids loved Camp Cozy. I never really did,” Nora said.

“I understand,” Carla replied, “but I’ll let you know anyway.”

“You’re still my best friend,” Nora said softly. Then she rang off.

When Rick Johnson got home from his office on Monday afternoon, Carla informed her husband that everyone was in complete agreement. Camp Cozy was to be sold, with the Chandlers having the first chance to purchase it. “Tiffy says the office is slow right now, so why don’t you and Joe go up this week?”

“Good idea,” Rick agreed. “It’s two weeks until Labor Day weekend. If the Chandlers are going to buy, this is the time to catch them. Make us a reservation at the inn for Thursday night. We’ll go up first thing Thursday morning and be home Friday night. I’ve been checking out the real estate market up there, and despite everything, it’s pretty good right now. The Baird place closed for three hundred thousand at the end of July, and they don’t have as much lakefront or acreage.”

“Is two fifty too low?” Carla asked.

Rick shook his head. “We bought the place for thirty thou, and while we kept it in good shape, we haven’t put a whole lot into it over the years. None of us wants too much of a capital gain, considering we’re all still working,” he told his wife. “I’ve kept a strict record of everything we’ve put into the place. You know Johnson’s Law number one.”

“ ‘Never mess with GOD or the IRS,’ ” Carla said, laughing.

She called Joe Pietro d’Angelo to ask if Thursday would be all right with him, and when he said it was, she made the reservation at the local mountain inn in the village near Camp Cozy. Then she called back to confirm it with him and talk with Tiffy.

“You are on, kiddo. Thursday night,” Carla told her.

“Thank God!” Tiffy exclaimed. Then she lowered her voice. “I don’t think I could hold out much longer. I tried to get Joe to give me a little action last night, but he said he was still tired from their trip into the city. I hope once I get him away this winter, he turns into the animal you claim Rick is now,” Tiffy said wistfully.

“Getting away for a couple weeks does seem to prime a man’s libido,” Carla said. “Trust me, it’s all going to work out. I got Rick started by some role-playing. He was the big bad pirate, and I was the helpless noblewoman whose ship he captured. He loved it. And eventually we didn’t have to role-play. He just wanted to fuck me. In the meantime, you have your Arabian Nights fantasy to play with, sweetie.”

“I’ll talk to you on Thursday,” Tiffy said and hung up. And to her relief, Thursday came quickly. She packed an overnight bag for Joe, gave him a kiss, and sent him off. “Drive carefully. Don’t you and Rick forget you aren’t kids in Camaros anymore.”

He grinned at her. “You know what they say about boys and the cars they drive,” he teased. “When I bring my Camaro home, I’ll stick it in your garage, baby. I promise. I’m sorry about the other night, Tiffy.”

“It’s okay,” she lied, giving him a quick kiss. “We’ll make up for it when you get home. Don’t exhaust yourself, Joey. It’s been a while, and I’m more than ready.”

“Gotcha!” he said, and then he was gone.

Tiffany glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just eight a.m. Twelve long hours until the Channel opened. The guys would get up to Camp Cozy by noon. If the Chandlers were still interested in buying, they would make the deal, but by then it would be too late to come home, and they’d stay at the Blue Hen Inn for the night. It was a nice place with a good little restaurant. They’d finalize everything in the morning, leave, and be home by sometime in the afternoon. It didn’t matter when. She would have had her adventure in the Channel by then and be satisfied.

Carla called in midafternoon. “You ready?” she said.

“I have never been readier,” Tiffy answered. “Just five more hours.”

“Rick asked me to call you. They got there safely. They’ve spoken with the Chandlers, who still want to buy.”

“Did they agree to the price?” Tiffy asked.

“Yep, and without even blinking. But I’ll give Bill Chandler points for honesty. He asked the guys if they knew how much the Baird property went for in July and reminded them, as if two attorneys would forget such a thing, that the Bairds’ Place had less property and lakefront,” Carla said. “Rick said yes, they knew, but that the Bairds’ house had been recently updated, and Quintet Corp. was content to take two fifty for Camp Cozy. They’ll sign the papers in the morning, and Chandler will give them a check for fifty thousand to be put in an escrow account. They’ve agreed on a closing date as well. It’s the Tuesday after the Columbus Day weekend.”

“So it’s all worked out,” Tiffy said, almost wistfully.

“You aren’t sorry we’re selling, are you?”

“Nah. It was time,” Tiffy replied. “Well, I’d better go. I’ll call Joe about six so he won’t call me when I’m not available to answer the phone.”

“Call me in the morning,” Carla responded. “I’ll want a full report before the guys get back, and I’ll expect every down-and-dirty detail, sweetie.”

“I won’t leave out a thing,” Tiffany promised as she rang off.

Four hours, fifty minutes to go. She ate a light meal, then took a long, luxurious bath, using a new bath oil that called Night Blooming Lily she had seen at the mall. Then she called her husband. “Hi, honey,” Tiffy said. “Carla said we’ve got a deal.”