Chapter 4
The first thing that flashed through Susie's mind when she opened the front door and saw Jim standing there was how he had looked with his ass propped against the edge of that desk, with his hand full of hard cock, with his creamy male seed blasting . . . blasting . . . blasting.
Susie blushed as a result of her lewd thoughts. What was worse, she knew that Jim could see her blushing and wouldn't understand the cause of it. He had, after all, never realized Susie had been there to see what he'd done, had he?
"Your father sent me over," Jim said. He was a bit curious over Susie's reaction. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but certainly not this. Susie looked, at least for the moment, like a very naughty little girl who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
"My father?" Susie asked, stalling for time enough to regain some control. She felt like a tongue-tied adolescent.
"You do remember Talbot McKnight, don't you?" Jim asked, deciding once again that Susie was a thoroughly attractive young woman. He far preferred what he saw now-a young girl in shorts and a simple halter-to what he had seen at the coal mine yesterday-the little tart with unbrassiered breasts and a fake come-on smile.
"Why would my father send you here?" Susie asked. Finding Jim Folesom standing on her doorstep had been the last thing Susie had expected when she had told the maid she'd get the door herself.
"I get to play baby-sitter," Jim said. He confidentially wasn't too pleased with the assignment. He would have much rather been back at the mine, beating the shit out of any picketing miner who tried to get funny.
"You?" Susie asked, vaguely remembering her father had mentioned something about getting her protection until the strike was over. Susie had thought for sure he had been joking.
"And don't bother telling me to forget it," Jim said, moving past Susie and into the house. He had no intentions of letting her shut the door in his face. "I take my orders from Talbot McKnight and not from his little girl."
'This has to be a joke!" Susie said, closing the door and following Jim into the living room. "This has simply got to be a joke."
"Your father said you would say that," Jim said, smiling in spite of himself. Susie looked so fucking indignant, it was funny. "He said to tell you to call him at the mine office if you had any questions."
If she had any questions? Hell, yes, she had some questions!
Susie went to the phone and dialed. She asked to speak with her father and had to wait a good five minutes before he came on the line. Susie was made furious by the delay.
"I know why you're calling, Susie," Talbot McKnight said with no preliminary greeting. "And I don't have the time to argue the subject at the minute. So, just settle down and accept the fact that Jim might be around the house for a few days."
"You're not even going to discuss it?" Susie asked, knowing that her father had decided something, AND THAT WAS PROBABLY IT.
"I'd love to discuss it, Susie," Talbot said, "but if you'd turn on the television about now, you'd see that I have a few other things to contend with besides your protests against what's for your own good. So, do be a good girl and tell Jim that although we miss him here, I feel a hell of a lot better with him there at the house with you."
And, with that, Talbot hung up, leaving his pretty young daughter fit to be tied. Susie's disposition wasn't helped any by the asinine I-told-you-so expression of Jim Folesom's handsome face.
Susie simply refused to believe that she needed a baby-sitter. And that was what Jim himself had said he was. My God, Susie was certainly old enough to take care of herself. And, what could possibly happen to her in her own house? Everyone but her-it seems-was continually overreacting to things.
Susie placed the receiver back on its hook and headed across the room for the television set.
"Your dad tell you to be a good little girl and not cause me any trouble?" Jim asked, his face breaking into an amused smile. His teeth were startlingly white behind the sensuous stretch of his lips.
Susie didn't even give the bastard the courtesy of an answer. She switched on the television set instead, waiting impatiently for the damn thing to warm up. She began getting the sound first.
". . . about an hour ago. The trouble seems to have started when some office workers and 'scabs'-the latter being non-union mine workers-were crossing the picket lines together . . . "
The screen flashed, the picture giving a few hearty flips that also succeeded in garbling some of the sound. Finally, the picture and the accompanying sound emerged complete.
". . . problems here over the past six months . . . " the announcer was saying.
Susie stepped back to get a better look. What she saw was a bunch of angry miners shouting at a line of policemen standing before the main gate of her father's mine. It was evident that tempers on both sides were flaring.
"Looks like trouble," Jim said from across the room, wishing he were back at the mine instead of where he was.
The television camera had panned over to the corner of the main office building where Susie could see her father and several other men clustering around a woman with a bandaged head. The camera zoomed in for a closer shot, and the on-the-scene newscaster worked his way through the people, bringing with him his microphone.
". . . animals, animals. The bastards are just animals," the woman was moaning loudly.
"Mrs. Hanley and three other women were set upon this morning with a group of non-union mine workers who were trying to cross the picket lines here at the McKnight Mine. Mrs. Hanley? Mrs. Hanley, would you like to please say a word for . . . "
"What's a society coming to when they let grown men attack women in broad daylight and throw rocks at them," Janice Hanley interrupted. It was doubtful to whom she was speaking: to the men around her, or to the newscaster. She brought her right hand up to her bandaged forehead. "It was . . . it was . . . simply . . . " She started crying.
"She's a nice lady, too," Jim said. "I know her. She wouldn't hurt a fly."
Susie turned off the set, watching as the picture faded to a small period of light center-screen. She knew what Jim was going to say next; and, she wasn't disappointed.
"If they're so angry to do that to Janice, what in the hell do you think they'd like to do to the boss' daughter?"
Susie headed off through the living room, down a couple of steps, through the French doors, and out onto the flagstone of the patio.
Jim, undaunted, followed right behind. And, he didn't stop talking, either.
"I don't think you realize how desperate those men are, Miss McKnight. I mean, they're out of work. They've been out of work for over six months. Most of them are hard-pressed to even come up with the money for a loaf of bread . . . "
And Susie was going to say something like, "Let them eat cake," but she didn't. Marie Antoinette had beaten her to it; and, besides, Susie did feel sorry for those men if they couldn't really afford a loaf of bread. But, what in the hell was she supposed to do? It was her father, wasn't it, who was holding out? Susie didn't know anything about it."
"Oh, do spare me the grisly details!" Susie said, stopping at the edge of the pool. Jim had been in the process of telling her about several poor miners who had sent their starving wives and children to relatives hundreds of miles away.
"I just think you would be a lot better off if you realized this was no children's game being played here."
"So, now I realize it's no game. I, also, realize it's a beautiful day, and I'm going to take a swim. Since you're here, you might as well join me."
"I don't think so, thank you," Jim said. The water did look mighty inviting. And, Talbot had told Jim to make himself at home. It was just that.. .
"Oh, don't be an ass!" Susie said, obviously piqued. "Of course, you're going to take a swim. Why the hell not? Just because half the world is starving is no need for you to play the pompous .martyr. One little dip in a riclj man's swimming pool is certainly not going to make you less a man. Besides, what's all this concern about the miners? You're management now and have been for years?"
"My roots go back a long way into that mine," Jim said by way of defense. He hadn't been aware that he had been defending the miners. He'd merely been trying to put across the point that they were a threat.
Susie was going to tell him that Roots sounded like a good book title, but she didn't. They had already gotten off to an abysmally bad start, and there was no sense in making things any worse.
"Well, your father might have been a coal miner," Susie said, "and my great-great grandfather might have been one, too, for that matter. But you and I are not; so if we think of anything, we might as well think about what benefits the company and not the workers."
"But, that's just it. The mine is going deeper and deeper into the red every day the strike goes on," Jim reminded.
"Sometimes, one must give up the short-run profits to get bigger profits in the long-run," Susie said, quoting verbatim something she had heard her father-or was it one of his business associates?-say somewhere at one time or another.
Susie headed for the bathhouse at the other end of the pool. Halfway there, she turned back toward Jim who was still trying to decide if he should accept the invitation for a swim.
"Well, are you coming?" Susie asked, lifting her right hand to shield her eyes from the sun. "Or, do I call daddy and have him order you into the water? God knows, by what we saw on the television, my father must certainly have better things to do than listen to me bitch about my un-obliging baby-sitter."
"I don't have a swimsuit," Jim said, thinking that was one good excuse, even if he couldn't think of any other. Then he was immediately afraid that Susie might suggest something really silly, like their both swimming in the nude. Jim had read the stories about how the upper classes had their fun and games.
"Oh, for Christ's sake, we've got drawers full of swimsuits in the bathhouse," Susie said with a groan, wondering if Jim were somehow suggesting the two of them might enter the pool au naturel. Susie had heard stories of how the lower classes were really like animals. Not that Jim Folesom could be considered lower class since Talbot McKnight had taken him under his wing after Jim's father had died in the mine. But Jim was certainly of a more common and primitive stock than-say-Roger Rutledge. "I'm sure there's one in there that can even contain the -likes of you."
Susie blushed slightly, having once again been thinking of how she had seen Jim's massive, blood-engorged cock when the man had masturbated.
Susie turned quickly, not wanting Jim to see how flushed her face was becoming even beneath her tan.
"Come on, don't be shy!" Susie did deign call back over one shoulder. Then, without turning around, she proceeded to the ladies' side of the pool cabana. She opened the door and went inside.
Susie sorted through several of her personal swim-suits she had available, finally choosing a bikini was especially skimpy and revealing. She knew Jim would probably disapprove, and that was mainly why she chose it. She knew her father would certainly disapprove, too. As a matter-of-fact, he already had disapproved of it on two separate times.
"It's just for sunbathing around the pool when I'm home alone," Susie had told her father on both occasions. And, in truth, this would be the first time she had worn it with anyone around. Today, though, she felt somehow daring.
Her body tingling with an unexplainable excitement, Susie began to undress. She felt confident that Jim had decided to join her when she heard the sudden loud noise-like something falling-that came to her from beyond the door that connected the ladies' rooms to the men's side of the cabana.
Susie found herself wondering if she shouldn't check to make sure the door was locked. But then even she suspected Jim Folesom wasn't about to try anything funny with the boss' daughter.
"You playing bull in the China shop?" Susie called out, untying her halter top and peeling the white material away from her firm white breasts. She didn't get an answer. Jim was probably too embarrassed at his own clumsiness to give her any reply.
Susie shook her breasts, running the fingers of her right hand up between the cleavage to help evaporate some of the perspiration clinging there. She then unfastened the buttons on her shorts, hooking her thumbs in both her shorts and her panties waistbands in order to pull them jointly down around her firm hips.
Stepping out of the rumpled pile of clothing, Susie turned to face herself in the mirror. Satisfied with what she saw, she reached for the top piece of her bikini.
At that moment, the door to the men's side came bursting open; and, two men-neither of them Jim-came rushing towards Susie.
Susie too startled to even scream, immediately smelled the sudden medicinal aroma coming powerful and strong from the piece of folded white cloth which was hurriedly clamped over her nose and her mouth. Bitter fumes burned their way into her delicate sinus and throat membranes.
What was happening? What. . . in.. . the. . . hell . . . was happening?