Chapter 3
The following Monday morning, Brandie Harper sat in the kitchen of her home, sipping slowly on her second cup of coffee and puffing languidly on a cigarette, deep in thought. Her galvanic encounter with Pete the previous Friday evening had affected her strongly. But the frenzied episode with the muscular delivery boy, exciting though it was, had become a source of keen regret to the older woman almost as soon as it was over. What if the youth began bragging about his exploits, spreading all over town the story of her lewd alcohol and drug-induced fling? That could destroy everything the flaxen-haired temptress had worked so hard for in the past few months. It would tear asunder the protective veil of mystery she had placed around herself and destroy all her hopes and plans for the future.
Taking a deep puff on her cigarette, she inwardly cursed herself for being so weak and eager for sex that she allowed herself to succumb to the muscular young man's advances. Once more, the twenty-eight year old blonde acknowledged ruefully -, she had given in to her lifelong fatal attraction to exciting males and the thrillingly barbaric brand of sex they offered, which threatened to remain the raison d'etre of her life. Brandie knew that kind of life was over for her now. It had to be. For, if she continued to prolong it, staving off the inevitable for just one more fling and then another, she would end up a fading and lonely old whore. It was too high a price to pay, and she was more determined than ever to do something about it, and soon.
Rising from her chair, she picked up her cup and saucer, walked to the sink and placed them in .a small pile of dirty dishes she had left from random meals the previous day.
"Well, baby," she murmured to herself as she began to fill the sink with soap and hot water, "looks like you're gonna end up a housewife after all."
She laughed mockingly to- herself, remembering how, in her flamboyant youth, she had promised herself that the last place she would end up would be behind a sink doing the dishes or washing her husband's laundry. And kids! Christ, who wanted kids. The young Brandie had wanted only to be a vivacious sexual magnet that no man could resist. She wasn't going to be tied down to a dead-end existence like the girls she'd grown up with. But now, the idea of marriage to a steady, reliable man was beginning to seem as alluring as the wild free life had been when she first cut loose from Clear Springs.
"Life is so strange," she murmured as she wiped clean the last of the dishes, "so damn strange."
She was about to go upstairs when she heard the sound of. a car starting up in front of the house across the street. Through a living room window, she saw Warren Wendt, her handsome brown-eyed new neighbor, drive off down the street, while his fourteen year old daughter waved animatedly from the doorway of their house. They had dropped in to introduce themselves the day before, and Brandie found the attractive widower interesting and extremely good-looking. She had some difficulty warming up to the daughter, who seemed cold and haughty, but then Brandie never had been particularly adept at dealing with children, so it didn't bother her. It was a perfect setup, the ravishing woman realized, almost too perfect.
"I think I'll pay them a neighborly visit soon," she decided as she watched the young girl disappear into, the house, "... 'cause, Brandie, baby, like the old song says, ' .;.. there's gonna be some changes made ...' And, the sooner, the better."
About five o'clock that afternoon, Warren Wendt drove his late-model Buick through the tree-lined streets of San Fernando Valley, heading back home. It had been a tough day, his first working day as advertising director for All-American Pharmaceuticals. He considered himself lucky to have been working for so long with the same company and even luckier that they had agreed to transfer him from their New York Office to the West Coast so he could help his troubled daughter find a new life for herself from the swelling perversion that threatened to overrun New York City. And Wendy did seem happier now, despite her unwillingness as yet to pursue new friendships. Yet, there was no denying that his job was hard, with endless hours of trying to convince dubious company executives of the value of good advertising. He was good at his work, but it was tiring, particularly since he also had the responsibility of being a parent alone - raising a teenaged daughter who was not only going through the normal difficulties of newly blossoming young womanhood, but was also deeply disturbed by her harrowing premature sexual experience a year earlier. It was too much, he realized, for one person. Wendy needed a mother's guidance, someone who could advise her as an older woman and help her through her emotional turmoil. Yet, since his wife, Harriet, had died, he had met no one he felt was even remotely qualified to take her place. Suddenly his brain filled with memories of his chestnut-haired buoyant wife, so radiant and charming. He still could not comprehend the cruel fate that had decreed her untimely death when their daughter was only four years old.
"I should have never let her go out on that modeling assignment," he reminded himself bitterly. "If I hadn't, she might still be alive."
Warren had met his future wife because of a skin-lotion TV commercial that his company was producing, and the bubbling auburn-haired girl, who was then the most sought after TV model in New York, was selected. It had been love at first sight, and Warren had been totally enthralled by her radiant wholesomeness and childlike manner. After two months, they were married, and, after a year of wedded bliss, their daughter Wendy was born. There seemed. nothing that could mar their life together. Warren was promoted several times with sizable increases in salary, and Harriet gave up her career to become a full-time wife and mother with even more enthusiasm and skill, her husband felt, than she had exhibited as a model.
Then, one day, her agent called with a tempting offer to do a commercial for a new line of hosiery. Harriet would model various styles of the hosiery against a series of dramatic on-location settings. Who could have anticipated that tragedy would occur, that she would be swept up by an unexpected gust of wind as she posed with all her usual charm at the edge of a high precipice in the Catskills and be hurled mercilessly down a seventy-foot embankment like a sack of wheat while the TV crew looked on in shock and horror.
Wendy, doubtless because of her youth and resilience, had adjusted to her mother's death with a minimum of trauma, but for Warren, the loss of his beloved wife was a heavy blow, one from which he feared he would never recover. In fact, it was only now, ten years later and after his daughter's traumatizing sexual experience that he even considered finding another mate. He had adjusted to the idea of remaining single and to his role of widower, satisfied only to see that Wendy was taken care of properly. But there was no doubt now that his daughter, so disturbingly the picture of his dead wife, needed a mother at this crucial stage in her life, and needed one quickly.
However, it wasn't only concern for his beautiful daughter that triggered these thoughts, Warren realized, as he drove down the street toward his new California home. No, there was something else stirring inside him ... the need to be with a woman again, to know the companionship and balancing harmony that only an understanding wife could bring to a man's life, and, of course, to satisfy his sexual needs. He had struggled to remain celibate after Harriet's death, for he really desired no other woman. It had seemed to him that his recent painful loss made the idea of beginning again the long road of courtship repellent, even dangerous at least emotionally. The handsome young advertising executive had decided never to remarry. But, lately, his physical needs had begun to gnaw at him, and, although he had brought down his frequent aching erections through masturbation and mental resistance, he knew only too well that his muscular body, still at the peak of manhood, was now demanding release, strong release, to satisfy its long-repressed basie needs.
As Warren reached the driveway of his split-level house, he made a determined effort to remove these conflicting thoughts from his mind and present a cheerful face to his brunette daughter. Parking the car deftly in the garage, he walked toward the back door of his house, and was surprised when Wendy came running out to greet him.
"Hi sweetheart," he called warmly as his curvaceous daughter ran toward him, her slender young body clad in a snug white blouse that revealed the budding pear-shaped mounds of her adolescent breasts, and a short cotton-print circle skirt that swirled around her lithely tapering legs.
"Oh Daddy, I'm so glad you're home," she cried as she flung her young arms around him tightly, clinging to him.
"Well, well, well," her handsome father said, laughing lightly. "It's sure nice to be greeted so enthusiastically."
"We've got company," the young girl said, breaking away from him, her voice becoming flat and a little annoyed.
"Company? Who is it?"
"That lady from across the street. Miss Harper."
"Oh yes? Well, it was nice of her to drop by. She's a very attractive lady, don't you think?"
"I guess so," Wendy replied matter of factly, holding her father's arm tightly as they walked to the house. "But she's not pretty like Mommy was. And she wears too much perfume."
"Wendy," her father said, stopping short, "that's no way to talk about someone you hardly know. I'm sure Miss Harper is a very good person, and I don't like to hear you talking like that. About anybody."
A petulant look crossed the young girl's pretty face as he spoke. Although she couldn't quite define why, the older woman's presence somehow threatened her. She had looked forward to a nice evening alone with her handsome father and even cooked a special meal for the two of them. Now, that woman was intruding herself into their cozy little world, and Warren's teenaged daughter didn't like it one single bit.
"I'm ... I'm sorry Daddy," she said finally, as they resumed their walk toward the back door, "it's... it's just... I don't know ... I get so scared sometimes ... I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Well, just put it out of your head, sweetheart. I'm sure Miss Harper just wants to be friends with us, and I think you should give her the benefit of the doubt. Okay?"
"Okay, Daddy ... if you say so."
"That's my girl."
As they went in through the kitchen door, Warren found himself strangely excited to see Brandie. Although they had chatted only briefly over the weekend, merely as neighbors getting acquainted, the sultry blonde's potent charms were not lost on the long-celibate young father. Indeed his voluptuous neighbor was one of the most attractive women he had ever met, and, although she was vastly different from his deceased wife, she seemed to call forth in him a deep sense of masculine desire that he had not felt for years. Briefly, he wondered if Brandie could be the woman he was looking for, someone to be a sensual loving wife to him and a good mother to his daughter.
Easy there, Warren old boy, he cautioned himself. You're way ahead of yourself.
As he walked into the living room, he suddenly found himself face to face with his sexy neighbor, and he caught his breath at the sight of her ravishing body enticingly clad in an azure-colored pants-suit, her thick blonde hair cascading around her exquisitely made-up face and flowing loosely to her shoulders.
"Hi neighbor," she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "I thought we should get to know each other a little better."
"Great," Warren replied, half-mesmerized by her spell-binding beauty, "I'm glad you came over." .
Behind them, standing in the living-room entrance, Wendy's heart began to beat faster, and the tips of her fingers grew cold as ice.
In the ensuing few weeks, Warren and Brandie saw each other frequently. At first it was a mutual exchange of dinners at each other's houses. Then they began to go out, to the movies, for cocktails, dinners, their relationship growing and deepening, much to Wendy's irritation. She had disliked Brandie from the first time she saw her, and she resented the fact that her own father was showering the sleek older woman with so much attention. But he always got annoyed when she spoke of her annoyance, and finally the young girl had been forced to mask her feelings and even pretend, for her father's sake, that she, too, liked the alluring blonde-.
On a Friday evening in early. September, Wendy found herself alone in the house. Her father and Brandie had left around six o'clock for dinner at a French restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard, promising to be back early. Warren's daughter had refused again to have a babysitter, insisting that she was old enough to take care of herself.
Bored now, she sat on the living-room sofa, gazing absently at the raucous television set, wishing things could be different, wishing her father wasn't seeing so much of that neighbor woman, wishing she didn't have to start school next week and confront people her own age.
"Oh, why does everything have to be so complicated?" she thought to herself.
Outside, she heard the sound of a motorcycle churning up the street and was surprised to hear it stop in front of her house. Racing to the window, she saw, in the light of the early evening, Pete Haney locking a lightweight Yamaha.
"Oh no," she said unhappily, "what does he want?"
The delivery boy for the supermarket had made it a point lately to drop by, and the curvaceous brunette teenager knew he was trying to get her to warm up to him. But she wanted nothing to do with boys and, especially, this arrogant youth who was sauntering up her front walk. Maybe in the future, when she was... better - then maybe she would go out on dates, but not now, and especially not with Pete Haney. There was something in his eyes she didn't like, a frank sensuality that made her shiver slightly whenever he drew near her. In the next moment, he was knocking at the door.
Wendy walked briskly to the door, her face a mask of cold disdain, and opened it.
"What do you want?" she spat.
"Just a friendly visit, baby."
"I am not your 'baby', and I don't want visitors."
"Now that's no way to treat a guy," he said, slipping past her and striding into the living room. "All alone tonight?"
"That's none of your business, Pete Haney," she snapped, slamming the front door and following him angrily into the living room. "Now you get out of here!"
"Ah, cool it, Wendy. I'm not so bad when you get to know me. Most of the girls in schooFd give their right arm to have me drop by."
"Well, I'm not one of them, Mr. High-and-Mighty, and, if you don't get out of here this minute, I'm going to get my father to throw you out."
"Your father? Your father's out on the town with that Harper broad. I saw 'em goin' into the Fleur-de-Lis Restaurant about forty minutes ago. Thought maybe you'd be lonesome here all by yourself."
"I'm perfectly fine, thank you. And what I meant was that I'd call him at the restaurant and tell him you're here."
"Hey, come on, Wendy," the youth said, smiling at her with unexpected warmth. "I'm not all that bad, am I? I was just sorta lonesome myself and thought maybe I could break the ice a little with you."
"Well... I guess I can't force you to go ... "
"Nice place you got here, ya know?" Pete said as he walked curiously around the living room. "That Harper chick has a nice place too ... real nice."
"Oh, I guess you're a friend of hers," the nubile girl taunted.
"Yeah," Pete said, laughing darkly, "I am. A real good friend. She's got a lot of friends, you know. Including your father. Can't blame him, she's a nice piece of ass!"
Wendy's body stiffened noticeably, as her lips tightened into a thin line.
"Don't talk that way," she spat at the hard-muscled youth, don't you ever talk that way to me! And don't talk about my father either!"
"Ah, who are you kidding? That dame's hot to screw anybody in pants, including your old man, and, from the looks of things, your precious father's hip to it and started getting his share, just like I did!"
"You're lying!" the shocked adolescent cried, "Lying!"
"Am I? Wake up, baby, you're 'living in a dream world. That Harper dame ain't keeping your father around with her brilliant conversation, believe me!"
"It's not true! How could you know? How?"
"I know plenty. I know everything that goes on in this neighborhood, stuff that'd make your pretty brown hair stand on end. Sure, I been making out with that bitch, just like your old man!"
Warren's teenaged daughter was shaking violently with a brutal combination of anger and shocked disbelief, her young brain reeling in a torrent of conflicting thoughts. Pete couldn't be making love to Brandie Harper! And how dare he imply that her father would ever - no - not like that, it was impossible, impossible!
"Get out of here!" she hissed through clenched teeth, "get out of here before I scream!"
"Ah, what do you want to do that for? Come on, babe, that's life. It ain't so bad. You got to grow up a little, you know that? Maybe old Pete can help."
Taking advantage of the girl's confused, distraught condition, he moved closer to Wendy, who stood paralyzed and uncomprehending in the center of the living room. The long-haired delivery boy's cock was throbbing wildly in his pants as his eyes roved with lusty desire over the fourteen year old's softly curving young body. "Looks like you're the only one not getting any, Wendy," he murmured softly, standing only inches away from her and eager to grab her luscious form. "But old Pete's here to see you get your share too."
Suddenly, without warning, Wendy slapped the youth hard on the cheek, sending him reeling back, stunned.
"What... what'd you do that for?"
The fired-up girl stared at him with such steely contempt that Pete was taken aback. He'd thought she'd be an easy mark, once the ground was broken, but he was beginning to realize that this little girl was different. She meant business, and there was an expression on her face that made him think maybe she was a little crazy, too.
"Now, you get out of here," she said in a voice edged" with ice, "or I'll call the police and tell them ... that you raped me."
"Hey ... look, Wendy ... I... "
"Get out, Pete Haney, now! I'm warning you!"
The stunned delivery boy bolted for the door.
"Sorry kid," he said, glancing back momentarily, before he slipped out of the front door and closed it hastily behind him.
Wendy stood frozen as his motorcycle revved up and then roared down the street. Then she walked slowly back to the couch and sat down perfectly still, breathing evenly.
"He was lying," she said quietly to herself, almost as if she were talking to another person, "He must be. But ... but maybe he wasn't... I'll have to ... to find out for myself. Because ... I have to warn Daddy!"