White Diamonds (4 page)

The table was open on the side that faced the wall and Vicki reached inside, hoping that something wasn’t waiting to bite her.  She pulled out cash and lots of it.  Stacks and stacks of U.S. currency had been stashed inside the table and Vicki pulled out as much of it as she could.  When the light from the room was sufficient enough to see the money, she began counting it.  In one stack she counted ten thousand dollars.  She was no genius when it came to math, but she guessed there to be nearly a million dollars hidden inside of the old table.  She carried the stacks of bills up the stairs and into the kitchen where she crashed into Wilson.

“Wilson, what are you doing?”

“Your scream woke me.  What’s with all the cash, Vicki?”

“I heard something in the basement.  It was a mouse and there’s a table with stacks of cash inside it.”  She was talking so fast that she wasn’t sure she was making any sense.

“Really?”  Wilson sat down at the table, looking at her in disbelief.  “Tell me another one.”

“Seriously, Wilson.  You don’t think I have this kind of money, do you?”

“I don’t know, but it does seem that you’ve got a lot of big plans involving money.”

“I’ll prove it.  Come with me.”

Wilson followed Vicki down the stairs into the dark basement where eerie shadows seemed to assume the shapes of various haunting figures along the walls.

“What is this, anyway?”

“A wet stinky basement.”

Wilson tried to pull the table from the wall, but it had been well mounted.  “This thing was not meant to be removed, or perhaps it was not meant to be found.”  He eyed her somewhat suspiciously and Vicki bristled.

“I didn’t even know it was here until today,” she denied.

“Take it easy.  There’s probably enough blame to go around.  Got a flashlight?”

Vicki took the stairs two at a time and fished a flashlight out of the back of a kitchen drawer.  Nearly tripping on the way back down, she took a step back when she saw Wilson with her rifle in his hand.

“What are you doing with a loaded gun?”

“I…I guess for self-defense.”

Removing the bullets, he put them into his pocket and set the gun aside.  “It’s not staying here.  I’m locking it up…at my house.”

Vicki wanted to argue with him, but she could tell by the look on his face that it wouldn’t help.  When they had finally scooped out the stacks of money, they took the loot upstairs and laid it out on the kitchen table.  “Who do you think put it there?”

“Couldn’t say, but it’s old, and damn, there’s a lot of it.”

“Who left it here?”

“Oh, Vicki, stop trying to make this into some teen mystery novel.  This is a butt load of money and it has probably been in your basement for centuries, or at least decades.”  Wilson fanned a stack of bills and peered through them like some kind of mad man.

“You’re a nut.”

“I’m a nut you like to crack.”

Vicki took the stack of bills from his hand.  “Get serious.  What are we supposed to do with this?”

“Hmm, possession is nine-tenths of the law, so I would say it’s yours.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Yes, Vicki.  Look how old it is.  This house has been home to many families and it probably didn’t belong to any one of them.  Maybe it was left behind by a gangster couple, you know, like Bonnie and Clyde.”

Vicki looked at some of the money more closely.  It was fragile and the scent of money had been replaced by the pungent aroma of dust.  “It is pretty old.  How much is here?”

Wilson stacked the cash into neat piles.  “I’d say close to a million.”  Vicki could only imagine having a million dollars.  “If I were you, I would put it in a safe place, especially with your ex-husband hanging around.”

“He’s not hanging around, but you’re probably right about putting the money in a safe place.  There’s a cabinet in my bedroom closet.”

Wilson piled the stacks of cash into a laundry basket and carried it up the stairs.  When Vicki opened the closet door, she felt sick about the deed of sale she had found there earlier.

“What’s the hold up, Vicki?”

She turned around.  “Oh, nothing.  There’s not much in the closet.”  She took the basket from him and set it down inside the closet, sliding the door closed.

The following week was a long one for Vicki.  The days seemed never ending at her dead end job and she couldn’t wait to get home at night to see Wilson.  She knew he was bored at home all day, though he tried to keep it from her.  He cooked for her and they dined by candlelight at his tiny kitchen table, but it was the nights that Vicki looked forward to the most.  Careful of Wilson’s wrapped hand, she convinced him that he should not do a thing and let her take charge.  She couldn’t get enough of him.  Kissing him for hours led to overpowering lovemaking that lasted until the wee hours of the morning.  They didn’t discuss the money they had found.  They had made a pledge to each other not to speak of it for a week, when Wilson’s bandages came off, but they both thought about it.  It was all that Vicki could think about during her days at work and she knew that the large sum of money had to be on Wilson’s mind too.  A million dollars was difficult to ignore.

Vicki took Friday afternoon off from work so that she could take Wilson to get his stitches removed, and it was at that time when they once again spoke of the wealth that sat idle inside her closet.

“Are we paying cash?”  Wilson tried to lighten the somber mood.

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

The two of them felt like outlaws when they deposited one stack of the bills into Wilson’s account at the bank, hoping that the carefully stashed piles weren’t counterfeit.  But it would seem suspicious taking a wad of cash into the doctor’s office.  They left the bank, still fearful that they had done something illegal, paid Wilson’s medical bills, and returned to the neighborhood with Wilson’s stitches removed and his hand moving freely.

“This calls for a celebration!”  Wilson uncorked a bottle of wine he had chilling for this very night while Vicki tried to prove to her lover that she wasn’t entirely devoid of culinary skills.  Steak and wine was perfect to begin a new weekend for the couple, but neither could wait to share another night together.

Vicki was a little buzzed when Wilson carried her up the stairs to his bed.  “Aren’t we going to my place?”

“Tonight you will share my bed,” he replied.

Where she spent the night mattered little to Vicki.  All she wanted was to share her nights with Wilson.  In his arms she felt as though she could do anything.  He kissed her ever so lightly before laying her down upon his bed.  She reached for him, but he stood by the side of the bed and undressed while she watched his every seductive mood.  He was hard and Vicki stared at the prize that she had in some strange way won.  He undressed her slowly, kissing his way down along her body, until she lay naked beneath him.  When he looked at her, she was begging him with her eyes, and this woman he could never deny.  He entered her slowly, filling her just as she remembered, and she pulled him down to her.  Vicki wrapped herself around him, drawing him deeper inside of her, as they moved together.  She felt the warmth of his seed inside of her and he held her face in his hands.

Kissing her passionately, he stopped and looked into her eyes. “I love you, Vicki,” he said.

Vicki closed her eyes.  She had wanted to hear those very words, and she rolled her lover onto his back, spreading her legs across his beautiful body.  She lay on top of him and pulled his left earlobe into her mouth, sliding her tongue around it, and letting it back out.  With her mouth over his ear, she breathed the words, “I love you, too.”

The unexpected sensation aroused Wilson again.  “You know how to get things started, don’t you?”

“Only with you,” she whispered.  She leaned up and smoothed her hands along his broad chest, feeling him harden inside of her once again.  He bent his knees and began bucking into her and Vicki leaned forward and let him have his way.  She wanted to do everything with this man and be everything he wanted her to be.  She would be his lover, his wife, and the mother of his children if he wanted her to be.  Vicki was in love.  She slept in his bed that night, with his arms around her and the scent of his body mingling with her own.

After a month of living in blissful ignorance, Wilson received the final foreclosure note ordering him to vacate his home in thirty days.  Vicki had come home from work and found him on his third beer, holding the piece of paper in his hand.  “Wilson, this doesn’t matter now.  You can buy your house.”

Wilson pulled her into his arms and kissed her lips.  Vicki tried to resist him so they could discuss the matter, but her body wasn’t willing.  His hand was inside her slacks and he began a slow rhythmic stroking of her clitoris as she tried to talk.  She closed her eyes and he asked, “You were saying something?”

“Oh, Wilson, you know we…have…to…”  She slowly began to move with him as he did what he always did to her.  He laid his hand on her pelvis as he continued to pleasure her.  “Mmm, my cooking is giving you some curves,” he said, as he forced her slacks down her legs.  He unbuttoned her blouse with his mouth and pulled her dark nipples one after the other into his mouth.  “The little white tits aren’t so little.  Got me a mouthful now, woman.”

Vicki was as horny as hell and she pulled herself up and maneuvered her wet vagina down over the thick cock she had forced out of Wilson’s tight jeans.  Taking him by surprise, she couldn’t get enough.  She ran her hard nipples through the curly hairs on his chest and held her full breasts to his open mouth.  She watched as he took one large brown nipple into his mouth followed by the other and she too thought they were larger.  She felt more like a woman that Wilson deserved…a sexy, voluptuous woman to satisfy his hunger.

“What got into you?”

“You’re irresistible, Wilson.”

He slapped her on the bottom.  “Got more to hold onto.”

“I know you like it,” she teased.

While he was still vulnerable and his dark thickness buried deep inside of her, she laid her head on his shoulder, kissed his neck, and spoke softly.  “Let’s buy this place.”

After the words were out, Vicki felt the tenseness within the man she loved.  “With the stolen money?”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know I didn’t earn it.”

“You proud, proud man.  Perhaps it was a gift.”

Wilson took Vicki’s face into his hands and looked into her eyes.  “I don’t think so.”

Vicki couldn’t break the steel armor of this man and she didn’t know if she wanted to.  She would never break his spirit, so she decided to leave it alone, for now.  Anyway, she wouldn’t waste a moment of her evenings with Wilson.  It was the time of day when she felt most alive.  There were no distractions, no television because Wilson thought it was an unconstructive waste of time, and no telephone ringing because they turned the phones off when it was just the two of them.

A week later Vicki was struggling to zip her slacks when Wilson stood in the doorway with a stack of steaming hot pancakes.  “Breakfast is served,” he said as he poured syrup over the cakes.

Vicki stopped and stared at him.  “I am officially on a diet.  I’m serious.  It’s nothing but fruit and vegetables for me, and not a lot of those either.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he filled his mouth with a hot bite.

In her stretchy pants and an oversized sweater, Vicki went off to work.  When one of her coworkers asked her for a tampon, Vicki’s eyes grew wide.

“Oh, no!”

“Hey, no problem, I’ll ask someone else.”

“Cheri, no, it’s not you.  I haven’t needed a tampon for over two months.”

“You think you’re pregnant?  I didn’t know you were seeing someone.  This is fantastic.”

Vicki pulled her aside.  “You can’t tell anyone.  This was not supposed to happen.”

Cheri agreed to keep Vicki’s secret, shrugged her shoulders, and walked off, but Vicki was devastated.  Wilson would dump her for sure.  She had no money, or did she?  If only she could convince him to pay off his mortgage.  This could be the perfect incentive for him to spend the hidden cash.

When she returned home that night, Wilson was waiting for her with steamed vegetables and a big bowl of fruit salad.  “How’d I do?”

Vicki changed into a pair of Wilson’s sweat pants and one of his t-shirts and sat down at the table.  When Wilson sat down with a juicy steak in front of him, Vicki got up and plopped down on his lap.

Wilson slid his hand into the front of the sweats and patted Vicki’s growing belly.  “Come on, Vicki, you’re not fat.  I like your curves, and it’s about time you grew something on top.”  He placed his mouth over the breast that was pressing against him and exhaled, leaving a wet spot over it and causing the dark nipple to tent out the fabric.

Vicki was smiling.  “I just wanted to share your steak, and then I want to share the dessert I brought home.”

There was something different about Vicki and Wilson was both intrigued and scared out of his mind.  He fed her bite after bite of steak and vegetables, falling in love with her more with every bite.  Before he could offer her wine which she would have to turn down, Vicki pulled him away from the table and led him up the stairs.  “Hey, where’s that dessert you promised me?”