Chapter 1
BETH HUBBARD didn't like it one bit, she thought.
Her husband Charlie was at it again, behind her in the bed, and although she knew she would enjoy it up to a point, the end result would be sheer frustration. Charlie was too mechanical, too fast and too casual. This was not, the honey blonde thought, how sex should be.
Besides, she was angry with him. There was that unresolved financial worry she had that Charlie had once again refused to discuss.
Nevertheless, in spite of herself, Beth was stimulated. Flesh against flesh, that kind of thing. She wasn't made of stone. On the contrary, she had big breasts, big nipples and a pair of hips that could thrash and scissor in the best erotic tradition, and she could feel herself starting to scissor.
After all, the touch of any man's fingers-although she had been faithful to Charlie since the start of their marriage-was catnip to her glands. Charlie was pushing in her nipples, nuzzling her flanks and, at last, flipping up her shortie nightgown.
Maybe, she thought desperately, it would be different this time.
Maybe she could speed herself up and reach the high country.
And Beth tried.
She lifted and she tightened, even though again she was repelled by the stubble on her husband's face and the stale odor of tobacco on his breath.
She tried very hard and, as usual, began to enjoy herself.
There was, after all, nothing like the special capabilities of a man.
For a few moments, then, Beth felt loose and languorous.
And for the next few seconds, she felt potentially explosive.
And it was then that Charlie was unable to govern himself. It was always the same, Beth knew. Charlie, for all of his years, was a mere adolescent when it came to sex.
She begged him. She whispered to him to control himself.
But Charlie, as always, ignored her.
In another minute or two the fact was finished, and Beth felt a mixture of frustration and relief. Charlie glanced at the clock on his bed table and decided he could sleep for another ten minutes. Beth rolled over, wearily hauled herself off to the bathroom for a quick shower and wondered for the thousandth time whether something was wrong with her, or whether Charlie was at fault or whether their marriage had settled down into such a dull routine that it was a waste to hope she would ever find real satisfaction in sex again.
Her sour mood persisted, and forty-five minutes later she controlled a desire to scream.
At the very least, Beth wanted to throw off her absurdly frilly, clinging negligee and dance naked on the dinette table. It was too early in the morning to do the Twist-she simply did not have the energy until she drank at least three cups of strong coffee. An old-fashioned nineteenth-century can-can straight out of the Second Empire would be even more startling, she thought, but such a dance would lose both point and purpose unless she were wearing a voluminous skirt and a pair of the absurd black bikini panties Charlie had bought for her and had insisted she wear when he was in the mood for fun and games.
The idea of doing a can-can struck Beth as ludicrous, and she giggled, then sighed and finished the last of her orange juice. An exhibition on the table would have no effect whatsoever, she decided. Charlie would undoubtedly complain that she was interrupting his reading of the morning newspaper.
A middle-aged male face, freshly shaven, appeared from behind the pages of the financial section. "What's so funny?" Charlie demanded.
Beth shoved a lock of hair into place. "Nothing," she said flatly.
He retreated behind his newspaper but was annoyed. "I can't read the market reports when you start yacking."
"Finish on the train into town," she replied mechanically, knowing every word of the limp dialogue they repeated every day of their lives.
"How can I? You insist that I leave the paper here, although I'm damned if I know why. All you ever read is the fashion news and the gossip columns."
She had disputed the point when they had first been married, but after three years she had learned it was wiser not to encourage an argument that could turn into a forty-eight-hour blood vendetta. "You could buy another paper at the station," she said.
"Impossible. I've got a half-dozen clients' reports to check before I pull into South Station."
The ritual completed, they lapsed into the usual leaden silence. Beth reached for the coffee pot, and was glad she had made a particularly strong brew today. Sandra and Bob Winterton served unusually potent highballs, and Beth wondered idly if Sandra, the cool goddess who never showed pain, pleasure or any other really human feelings, was suffering this morning, too.
"More toast or eggs?" she asked at last. A man's capacity for large quantities of food before eight o'clock in the morning invariably made her gag.
Charlie glanced at his watch. "No time," he muttered.
Beth took a deep breath, braced herself and faced him.
"You've got to make time for something that can't wait."
"My train won't wait."
"Neither will this. I need money."
"I keep telling you to stay within your household budget. That's why I give you an allowance."
"This has nothing to do with the household. I'm trying to protect my five-thousand-dollar investment." She placed her hands under the table as she clenched her fists, unwilling that he see how very tense and nervous she had become.
Charlie scowled darkly and rubbed his balding head. "When your father died, I told you to let me invest the money he left you. I just happen to be in the investment business, and I'm also your husband. But not you. Oh, no. You had to throw every last penny into some screwball venture-"
"It is not screwball. Phil Bates is my first cousin, and we grew up together. How could I turn him down when he asked for the five thousand to put into that new plant he bought? He knew I had just inherited the money-"
"Then tell him to start showing you a return, dollar for dollar, instead of whining for more."
Beth's sense of frenzy grew worse. "You saw his letter. The plant has been suffering growing pains. He even enclosed photostats of the reports from his lawyer and his auditor saying that his basic situation is sound. You understand these things and I don't, darling. You admitted yourself that he really doesn't have anything to worry about, provided he can raise more money. If we can just send him an additional five thousand in the next six months-"
"No!" Charlie pounded the table. "He'll make out fine, what with that and the other money he can raise himself. He doesn't even need it in a lump sum. We could even send it to him a hundred to two hundred at a time."
"I don't earn a fortune," Charlie said scathingly, "and I don't have a millionaire's portfolio, either. I'm damned if I'll see my own investment program all smashed to hell because Phil Bates is short on cash."
"You'd prefer to see me lose my inheritance," Beth replied sulkily.
He adopted the stern, paternal approach that she despised. "You acted on your own initiative, against my advice and without my consent. It was your money, you told me. Remember? Well, if you lose it, don't blame me."
There was a certain justice in his position, Beth was willing to admit. But he did have fourteen to seventeen thousand invested in stocks and bonds and, according to her concept of marriage, husbands and wives stood together in a time of crisis. Deliberately turning the full power of her enormous blue-green eyes on him, she formed her full lips in a provocative pout. "Please, darling," she murmured, "help me."
Charlie glanced at his watch again and gulped the last of his coffee. Relenting a trifle, he temporized. "We'll talk about it tonight," he said, offering her no more than the faintest ray of hope. Rising hurriedly, he stalked to the front hall closet for his hat and coat. Beth followed him listlessly, picked up the handsome calfskin attache case she had bought for twenty-nine, seventy-five at a post-Christmas sale and handed it to him.
Charlie's goodbye kiss was perfunctory, and so was his pat on her bottom to which she was supposed to react with pleasure. But today, of all days, she just could not bother. "Knock them dead in the marts of commerce," she said automatically.
As far as he was concerned, the storm clouds had broken, the sun was appearing and the subject of a further loan to Phil Bates was closed. "You bet," he replied, following their ritual. "Trust Papa, and Papa will trust you. I'll be home on the five-forty-one."
The door closed, and the morning-commuter suburban rite had come to an end. Nine hours and fifty-two minutes would elapse-assuming that the train would be on time, which was dubious-before the lord of the split-level ranch returned to his mortgaged domain from Boston.
Beth stood for some moments, staring at the door. "Charles Walter Hubbard," she said aloud, speaking distinctly, "I hate you. I think you're the stingiest man alive, and the most inconsiderate. You're not even any good in bed with me any more."
The outburst did nothing to relieve her misery. Her worry over the money was still wrapping her in its folds, and her yearning for warmth and understanding, for a rich and exciting and satisfying sex life was so intense that she wanted to break down into hysterics.
Instead, she wandered back into the dinette, cleared the table and stepped into the kitchen. Putting a fresh pot of coffee on the stove, she washed the dishes, a chore she loathed, and then sat down at the family counter, an ugly plastic slab, for coffee and a cigarette. She scanned the society gossip column in the morning paper, but found the doings of the very wealthy annoying. Their mere existence reminded her of her own need for money, and she knew her day would be miserable if she did not think of something else. The fashion pages, which featured the clothes being exhibited at the semiannual Paris showings, offered her no consolation, either, as she wondered how many women there were on earth who could afford to spend five hundred or a thousand dollars for just one dress without feeling the pinch.
Pouring herself still another cup of coffee, Beth felt very sorry for herself. Her life, she thought, was finished at the age of twenty-five. She was married to a penny-pinching miser of forty-eight who treated her like a servant most of the time, used her body when it pleased him and gave no thought or consideration to her own sex needs. She was caged, shackled and domesticated-condemned to spend the rest of her days in a succession of neat, easy-to-manage houses in Owendale, each a little more expensive and ostentatious than the last, status-symbol badges of Charlie's increasing success in the Boston investment house.
She would buy thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of containers of neat; bright, packaged foods at supermarkets with fluorescent lighting. She would cook countless meals on efficient, built-in ranges, supervise the sloppy efforts of surly cleaning women and, as a reward for her efforts, would accompany Charlie to a never-ending stream of identical parties. At each she would stand in someone's playroom, drinking Scotches or martinis, eating cheese dips and listening to the meaningless small talk of other condemned women whose husbands gathered elsewhere in the house to pontificate on American big-league teams.
Nor was that the worst. Eventually, her life would be further complicated by children who would have to be diapered and spoon-fed, then hauled off to scout meetings and to dentists and to schools. Later, there would be teenage parties and meeting with high school guidance counselors. When the children would finally go off to college and lives of their own, Beth would pay still another penalty by living within strict budgets so the children's tuition and dorm bills could be met.
After that, she would be free at last to do as she pleased, but by then she would be too old and tired to care. She and Charlie would retire and resemble the bronzed, elderly couples in the ads. Charlie would fish and play golf. She would survey her gray hair, lined face and ruined figure, and would want to slit her throat. But by then, she guessed, she wouldn't have the energy or the courage.
Hating the negligee that Charlie considered so sexy and she privately thought totally inappropriate for breakfast wear on a rushed weekday morning, she resisted the impulse to rip off the garment and tear it into shreds. She hated Charlie, all the frustrations of her dull life and, above all, herself.
"I wish," she said loudly, "that I had a husband who would really send me when he takes me to bed. I wish I had a husband who cared that much. The slob.
"I wish I had an extra five thousand dollars to send Phil right this minute. I just can't stand having to flatter and cajole and flirt to get the money out of Charlie. It's immoral and demeaning to make a-a tramp out of myself with my own husband for the sake of a few lousy dollars.
"I wish I were dead!" she concluded viciously.
The speech did not help in the least. She was still suffering from a hangover, and her prospects were dismal.
Hastily rinsing out the coffee cup and leaving the pot on the electric range, she mounted the stairs and decided to clear her fuzzy head with a shower. She stood under the stream of water for some minutes, sorry she had not taken a lazy tub bath laced with richly scented bath oil instead, and eventually she pattered around the bedroom aimlessly in bare feet, her body wrapped in a towel.
Catching a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror set in the bathroom door, she moved closer to it, threw aside the towel and examined herself critically. It was a little shocking and very discouraging to discover that, in spite of her misery, she was still exceptionally attractive. She was tall, almost five feet seven, and thanks to a nagging mother, Beth's posture was excellent. Her shoulders sloped at just the right angle, her breasts were as high and firm and full as they had been at eighteen, and her waist was still unusually slender. There was not an ounce of extra fat on her stomach or gently rounded hips, the consequence of the rigorous diet she forced herself to follow; and her smooth thighs and long legs were the equal of any model's.
Her face, which Charlie had called beautiful when he had been courting her, and which still caused men to turn and stare in restaurants and theatres, remained lovely in spite of the three years she had wasted in the suburban void. Her huge blue-green eyes were fringed with long lashes; her nose was pert and straight; her cheekbones were high; and her full, sensual lips invariably gave men ideas at country club dances. Experimenting with a gingerly smile, she saw that she still had a dimple about an inch and a half to the left of her mouth.
What a pity, what a waste, she thought, and wandered to her dressing table. Still completely nude, she made up with meticulous care, although she had nothing planned for the day. First she oiled and cleaned her face, then applied a delicate base that concealed tiny and inconsequential blemishes. Mascara made her lashes seem even longer and fuller, a soft pencil transformed her eyebrows into piquant arches, and the pale, glossy lipstick Sandra had brought her from Paris last summer seemed to turn a spotlight on Beth's mouth. Perhaps it was extravagant to use the lipstick, but she did not care. She was making up for the sake of her own morale, and it was irrelevant whether she saw another human being all day.
Brushing her blond hair vigorously, she patted it into place, then dabbed herself liberally with some of her most expensive perfume. The scent whirled around her, making her giddy for a moment, and she laughed a trifle savagely as she stood and moved again to the full-length mirror. Deliberately striking a seductive pose, she laughed again.
"Beth Hubbard," she said, "you're wasting your substance. Agreed? Agreed. You're ripe for adventure. You're ripe for real love. You're ripe for anything. You're also daydreaming. So if you have any brains in that pinhead, you'll go put on some slacks and get out the vacuum cleaner. Glamor Girl Has Spotless Home. Loves Domesticity. Ugh!"