Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [66]
Maybe Coltrane was just trying to worm his way into Meyer’s family, to make himself indispensable.
But a smart man would know that Meyer didn’t give a damn about most of his family. And Coltrane was definitely a very smart man.
So what did he want? And how the hell could she get rid of him? By giving him what he wanted, whatever that might be? Chances were, it wasn’t in her power to give it.
She sat down in the damp sand, watching the waves, while Roofus came and collapsed beside her, his tongue lolling happily. Her choice was simple. Turn tail and run, or go back and brazen it out.
It was really no choice at all. She wouldn’t abandon her house, her siblings, or her life to him. Most importantly, she wouldn’t abandon her self-respect, and if she ran she’d never be able to look herself in the mirror again.
She’d survived Alan, dealt with him. Coltrane was a piker compared to Alan’s self-centered game playing. Wasn’t he?
Except the unhappy truth was that half sex with Coltrane was more arousing than the entire act with Alan.
The sun was moving slowly toward the horizon, and there was nothing Jilly wanted more than to stay there, watching until it turned into a bright-red ball and sank into the roiling Pacific. But the longer she put it off the harder it would be.
She rose to her feet, and Roofus immediately took that as a sign to play. “Come on, baby,” she said, starting back along the pathway to the car. “Time to go home and see that man.”
And Roofus, undiscerning creature that he was, barked with cheery enthusiasm, racing ahead of her.
15
“I wish I knew why I was edgy,” Brenda said, reaching for Ted’s omnipresent cigarette.
“Honeybunch, you’re always on edge on Saturday nights and you know it. It’s your Catholic blood. You want to be going to mass.”
She glared at him. “Hardly. I stopped going to mass once I got involved with you, you wicked creature. One can’t very well confess to the sin of adultery, accept penance, and then go right back home and do it all over again.”
“I’ve told you, I’m the one who was married, not you. I’m the one who committed adultery,” Ted said gently.
“The Catholic church doesn’t see things that way,” she drawled. “There’s not much bargaining room when it comes to penance. If you intend to keep repeating your sin then it’s a waste of time confessing.”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t be. You aren’t a wicked seducer, darling, I am. And I don’t regret a moment of it.”
Not even the moment of their death, she thought.
They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, her feet in his lap, and he was giving her the most divine foot massage through her silk stockings. She’d seen their girls pulling on panty hose, and while they certainly looked convenient, they were hardly as erotic. Nevertheless, it might have been nice to live long enough to try them.
She’d be an old woman by now, Brenda thought. A very, very old woman, wrinkled and ugly. She should count her blessings—Ted would never have to see her as an old hag. She’d stay throughout eternity as she’d been in her prime. Well, to be truthful, not quite in her prime. At seventeen she’d been perfect. At twenty-three almost as glorious. She’d been thirty-three when she died, and if she’d looked very closely in the mirror she could see her firm, gorgeous skin was beginning to lose some of its elasticity.
They speculated that was why she’d killed him, of course. She’d heard them talking about it, those wretched, smug, filthy creatures who’d taken over La Casa and destroyed its beauty decades ago. They said she was afraid of losing her looks, her career and her man, and so she’d killed him and herself. And they’d laughed at her, at the silly vain movie star with her shallow values, and she’d screamed at them, tried to hit them.