Chapter 2
SUDDENLY Beth changed her mind and decided that housework could wait until another day. Perhaps she could persuade someone to go shopping in Boston with her, she thought, and donned a pair of her sheerest bikini panties, a wisp of a bra and her newest diamond-patterned black stockings. She hated taking the train, but Lynn was proud of her new sports car and might be persuaded to drive in, provided that Fred had not forbidden her to take it into city traffic. No one could blame him if he had, for Lynn was the world's worst insurance risk after a two or three martini lunch.
The telephone on the bedside table rang as Beth was adjusting her garter belt, and she hurried across the room to lift the instrument from its cradle.
"Hi, sweetie," the voice at the other end of the wire said. "Sandra."
"I was going to call you as soon as the boom lifted," Beth said. "What kind of knockout drops did you put into those drinks last night?"
"I have a husband who likes to fool himself into believing he isn't an alcoholic." Everyone knew Bob Winter-ton drank too much and that his wife was even worse, but Sandra spoke with matter-of-fact calm. "He has a theory that liquor evaporates as soon as a seal is broken, so he tries to empty a bottle as quickly as possible."
"Next time," Beth replied, smoothing her left stocking, "we'll bring our own elderberry wine. Anyway, we had a gorgeous time."
"Really?" Sandra's voice was expressionless, flat. "I thought it stunk."
Her candor was startling, and for a moment Beth did not know what to say. "I hope it wasn't the company," she managed at last.
"Yes and no. I loved having you, of course. You know that. Charlie was his usual, jovial self, quoting Dow-Jones averages-whatever they are-when he wasn't snarling at you."
"We were having a little upset," Beth said apologetically, but did not elaborate. It was no one else's business, she thought, that Charlie refused to advance the money to protect her inheritance.
"And when he wasn't snapping," Sandra continued, "Bob was jumping down my throat. You were a life-saver, really. If I'd had to spend the evening alone with Bob, I'd have committed mayhem. Tell me why I was stupid enough to marry him, will you, sweetie? I double-dare you."
Beth had enough troubles of her own and had no desire to listen to a friend's domestic woes, but there seemed to be no choice. "I'm sure it isn't that bad," she said limply.
"Don't sound so innocent, Pollyanna." There was a sharp edge to Sandra's voice now. "Even if you were wrapped up in your own troubles, you couldn't have missed all the tension between Bob and me. I even thought of cutting it with a knife and serving it for dessert with a brandy sauce."
"Well, it wasn't exactly a chummy atmosphere, I must admit." That was the understatement of the year, Beth thought. She and Charlie had been coldly polite to each other, but the Wintertons had not even bothered to put up a front. Sandra had been white-faced and taut, her usually magnificent poise shaken, and Bob, a husky giant who had once been an intercollegiate boxing champion, had looked as though he had wanted to break her in two with his bare hands, a feat he was probably capable of performing.
"That jackass makes me so mad that four days out of seven I want to leave him. Unfortunately, the other three days I'm too exhausted to bother."
Advice was futile, Beth knew, but she replied with an automatic, "Don't do anything reckless."
Sandra laughed coldly. "If I weren't reckless, life would become unbearable in no time at all. What do you have on your busy little schedule today?"
"Well-"
"How about lunch? I give you my oath as an all-girl girl that I won't weep on your shoulder. In fact, I promise I won't even mention the goon whose name I bear."
Beth was relieved. "I've been thinking of going into Boston. I have a yen for a knitted beige wool dress, if it isn't too expensive. We could have lunch at Ganely's
"I can't face a chopped nut, date and pickle sandwich on cinnamon bread today," Sandra said. "Let Boston wait until another day. We'll go somewhere around here."
Beth shrugged. "All right, but you'll have to pick me up, darling. My prince takes the car to the station with him every morning unless I salaam three times and beg him for the privilege of being allowed to use it for some purpose other than marketing. We are, I think, the only one-vehicle family in Owendale."
"Drawing and quartering is too good for Charlie."
"If only we still lived in the Middle Ages. I dream of exquisite ways to torture him. I honestly do." Unfortunately, Beth reflected, that was the truth.
"I'll come for you at twelve-thirty. Okay?"
"Fine. Where will we go-the Bower?"
"The Bower," Sandra said, "is too damned genteel for me. I lose my appetite when I see old ladies who look like my grandmother eating poached eggs and dry toast. I prefer a little more life. I was thinking of the Stamen Motel."
Beth was surprised. "The new place out on Corolla Boulevard? I didn't know the Stamen had a dining room."
"First-rate food, liquor and trimmings. The place fairly reeks of atmosphere. Terribly posh."
Beth hesitated. "Skirt and blouse, or sweater and slacks?"
"Neither. Climb into your fanciest silks and satins, and dust off the family jewels, sweetie."
"You're kidding."
"Like hell I am. You'll feel out of place if you wear anything that wouldn't be right for cocktails at the club. See you at twelve-thirty."
Beth hung up and turned to her walk-in closet, which was only partly filled with clothes. She quickly riffled through her dresses, not too difficult as she did not own an extensive wardrobe. Finally she decided on her black jersey with the low-scoop neckline. And if she added the black pumps with the skyscraper-spiked heels, she would feel comfortable.
The day was beginning to look up. At least she would be doing something other than worrying and feeling sorry for herself. Buoyed by the thought, she sat down at her dressing table and extravagantly splashed on still more of her most expensive perfume.
People usually used the word statuesque to describe Sandra Winterton. A brunette, at least two or three inches taller than Beth, she was big-boned and generously covered, although not overweight. "A guy takes one look at Sandra's upper story," Charlie Hubbard had once told Beth, "and he feels an irresistible desire to bury his face there and not bother to come up for air.
Sandra was well aware of her assets, and the friends who played bridge with her at the country club on Thursday afternoons accurately but uncharitably asserted that her necklines were the lowest in Owendale, if not in the whole county. Their comments were repeated to Sandra, of course, but she merely laughed and wore clothes still more daring. She was dressed in something radical now, a cream-colored tissue silk that revealed the cleavage between her breasts.
But Beth, climbing into the car beside her, was too busy gaping at Sandra's new fur coat to notice the dress. "Genuine, caught-in-the-wilds-of-northern-Canada mink!" Beth said in admiration.
Sandra fluffed her deep cuffs before backing out of the Hubbard driveway and roaring off down the street. "Not bad, huh? I was just dying to show it off to you."
That, Beth thought, was the reason for the dress-up lunch. "It's perfectly lovely." She made an unsuccessful attempt to conceal her envy.
"I'm a living, walking status symbol," Sandra said with a laugh. "And when somebody my size wears mink-sister, there's a lot of it."
Some day, Beth thought wistfully, Charlie might buy her a new fur coat to replace the shabby beaver that had seen her through the two years of college, a year at a job and three years of marriage.
Beth sighed.
Sandra glanced at her but made no comment. She waited a few moments, then said, "You look good enough to eat today, sweetie."
"Thanks, but you're a liar." Beth smiled ruefully. "Those drinks Bob mixed last night really gave me a frightful hangover. I spent hours wrestling with my conscience this morning after I began thinking of a huge vodka and tomato juice."
"Who won?"
"My conscience, of course. Morning drinking just isn't for me."
Sandra was amused. "What a little Puritan you are."
"Not really," Beth protested. "I-"
"Yes, sweetie, a Puritan. "Your New England upbringing is showing."
"Well, maybe," Beth conceded.
"I don't have your problems, I'm happy to say. Bob woke me up by warming his car in the garage, the slob. I know he was racing the engine deliberately to make certain I couldn't sleep. And I had a large shot of vitamin-destroying hooch before my eyes were half open. I keep a bottle in my bedside table for the purpose." Sandra glanced at the silent girl beside her. "That shocks you, I suppose."
"Hardly, darling. I'm not that naive," Beth said indignantly.
Sandra said nothing more as she sped up Corolla Boulevard.
The Stamen Motel consisted of a main building, done in imitation Scandinavian modern, with ten wings radiating to suggest the shape of a sunflower. Each wing had its own shrub-lined driveway and, near the main entrance, where Sandra found a place to park, there was a huge swimming pool, empty now in the off-season.
The deep-pile carpet in the lobby was luxurious, the oak-paneled walls gleamed and the indirect lighting was hideous. Beth's first impression was that the place was garish, and her feeling was strengthened when Sandra led her into the bar, a pseudo-intime room with chairs, tables and walls of blending dark woods. Seven or eight men were sitting at the bar itself, all of them surprisingly well-dressed in tailor-made suits, custom shirts and expensive neckties. They had what Beth always thought of as the barbered look, as though they had spent the past couple of hours being shaved, manicured and treated to a session under a powerful sunlamp.
About two-thirds of the tables in the room were occupied and, as Sandra had predicted, the women wore highly fashionable clothes, and were young, Beth noted as she shrugged out of her beaver.
Sandra draped her mink over the back of her chair with feigned carelessness, summoned a waiter and ordered two very dry martinis.
"Quite a dump," Beth said, hoping she did not sound too impressed.
"I told you, sweetie. Owendale has moved out of the ice age into the twentieth century in a single leap."
"There's Carolyn Anderson." Beth nodded in the direction of a petite blonde at a far table and started to rise, intending to say a brief word to a fellow member of her Thursday afternoon bridge group.
But Sandra addressed her sharply. "Sit down."
Beth was startled.
"The man with her," Sandra said succinctly, "isn't her husband."
Beth looked again and felt uncomfortable when she saw that Carolyn was not with Jim Anderson, but was completely engrossed in a conversation with a ruddy, middle-aged stranger. "Oops," she said. Then she asked curiously, "Do you know him, Sandra?"
Their drinks arrived, and Sandra waited until the waiter had gone before she replied. "Never saw him before in my life."
"You don't suppose-"
"I make it my business never to suppose. He's probably a long-lost uncle from Kansas City."
Beth accepted the rebuke. It really was unfair to suspect Carolyn on the basis of such flimsy evidence. "This is the biggest drink I've ever seen. If I finish it, I'll be on a merry-go-round until dinner time. And I'm sure I'll burn tonight's chops."
"Burning," Sandra remarked callously, "is too good for Charlie. Gung-ho."
Beth responded to the toast, and for the next few minutes they drank in a companionable silence. Then Beth saw Carolyn and her escort stand and braced herself, as she expected the pair to pass the table en route to the dining room. Instead the duo vanished into the lobby, reappeared beyond the plate glass windows, and a fascinated, horrified Beth watched Caroline and the unidentified man go into one of the motel wings.
"Did you see what I just saw?" she demanded breathlessly.
"No." Sandra was concentrating on her drink. "Carolyn and that man-"
"Carolyn is a big girl, and what she does is her own business," Sandra replied firmly.
They were interrupted by a ruggedly powerful man in his early thirties, dark-haired and suntanned, who was wearing a tailor-made suit of the most expensive tweed Beth had ever seen. He stared at her as he approached the table from the bar, but spoke to Sandra. "I've been wondering all morning what's been missing from my life, and now I know. You."
"Hi, sweetie." Sandra raised her face for a warm kiss. "Beth Hubbard, Bruce Gibson."
"Miss Hubbard," he said, bowing, 'you're all my dreams come true."
His gaze was so intense that Beth felt the color rise in her face. "I hope you don't dream often," she replied primly, grasping the stem of her glass with her left hand so he could see her wedding and engagement rings. "It's Mrs. Hubbard."
Bruce Gibson laughed, not in the least disconcerted. "If I'm not interrupting a conference of earth-shattering importance, I'd like to buy you modern reincarnations of Venus a drink."
One mammoth dry martini was enough for Beth, but Sandra spoke quickly before Beth could refuse.
"You're an angel of mercy."
He laughed, motioned to the waiter and pulled up a chair from an adjacent table. Beth shifted to make room for him and was conscious of his strong masculine charm as he sat close to her.
The next half hour passed swiftly. Beth's head was swimming from her second martini, and several times she imagined that Bruce was devoting all his attention to her, virtually ignoring Sandra, who sat back in her chair, coolly smiling and detached.
Eventually it dawned on Beth that, martinis or no, Bruce was indeed very much drawn to her. He told several amusing stories about experiences he had enjoyed on a recent trip to the Caribbean, spoke with enthusiasm about plans he had made for a skiing weekend and showed, too, that he was familiar with Boston's best restaurants and most recent plays. It seemed obvious that he was a man of means.
His interest acted like a tonic on Beth and, for the moment, at least, she was able to forget her worries about her inheritance and her deep sense of grievance over Charlie's selfishness in his love-making.
She could not help responding to Bruce and told herself that a mild flirtation hurt no one. Twice Sandra winked at her, but Beth pretended to be unaware of her friend's teasing. Beth was having great fun basking in Brace's unconcealed admiration and making out to herself for a little while that she was single again. Conscious of her beauty as she had not been for a long time, she listened avidly to Brace, made very gesture count and gave him her most ravishing smile whenever he lighted a cigarette for her.
As she was finishing a drink, his leg touched hers under the table, and the sensation was so pleasant that she made no attempt to pull away. Then she recovered and, reminding herself that she was a respectable matron, wondered if he were making a discreet pass or if his touch were accidental. She drew back her leg and felt a pang of disappointment when he made no attempt to renew the contact.
"How about another drink?" he asked.
Sandra would have agreed, but this time Beth spoke first. "I have enough gin in me to last for a week, thanks. If I had one more, I'd put on an exhibition."
"You tempt me," he said with a grin, but there was no hint of salaciousness in his attitude. Summoning the waiter, he paid the check, then helped Beth into her coat, leaving Sandra to straggle into her mink alone.
"Goodbye," Beth said, extending her hand, "and thank you."
He held her hand far longer than convention required, and his grip was firm. "We'll meet again, soon," he told her, staring hard at her.
She felt a slow, delicious tingling sensation move up her spine.
"I guarantee it," he said, bowed and made his way back to the bar.
Sandra shepherded a flushed Beth toward the dining room. "Touchdown, sweetie," she said cheerfully. "You've really made a conquest."