Chapter 5

The silence was heavy as they moved around in the bedroom. Jim couldn't really say anything and somehow Joyce seemed hesitant to ask too many close questions. It was as though she sensed her role even before she knew. Some primitive female instinct seemed to be telling her that her number had been called and that she must not resist.

Jim dressed before the closet mirror, slipping into comfortable slacks and a quality T-shirt that had cost him $24. It was to be a casual weekend, but he wasn't going to allow himself to think casually. He was going to be ready at all times.

He looked over at Joyce, who was seated at her dressing table. She wasn't thinking casually, either. He'd imparted the urgency of her presence to her. She knew that the next forty-eight hours on the desert were important to their future.

She was wearing a bra and pink pants and she looked beautiful. The sight saddened him. He was slightly angry, too, but his ambition overcame that each time it threatened to surface. After all, wasn't a wife supposed to help her husband get ahead? But he couldn't explain it all to her now. She might balk. Better to wait until after they'd arrived at the English weekend home. There she'd more readily see the necessity and more readily agree to do her part.

He watched her covertly as she reached high be hind her back to snap the bra into place. Her breasts thrust wonderfully. She was the most beautiful, sexiest woman he had ever known. So why wasn't she the most exciting in bed? It was his own fault, because he'd allowed their love-making to slip into such a dreary routine.

He looked at her flat belly, her plump thighs and slim ankles, at the way her bottom spread on the padded stool. He wanted to go over and put his hands on it, but they'd both be embarrassed and that wouldn't do at all.

Then she was glancing his way. "I still don't understand it, Jim. Won't you tell me?"

"Later," he snapped. "Later, when we're down there."

She pressed her lips together and he wanted to lass them until they softened. She was altogether desirable and he knew that if he weren't so inhibited he'd pick her up, throw her on the bed and fuck her. Then he'd call Palm Springs and tell old man English to shove his weekend up his ass. Then he'd fuck Joyce again. And again.

But he was too gun-shy now. He was too afraid of disappointing her and himself. Then they'd be even more embarrassed with each other, even more stilted in their relations. Christ, a marriage could go downhill fast in less than a year.

It was the middle of the morning before they were ready, dressed and packed. He got out the car and they put their two bags into the trunk. They didn't need much. It was to be a casual weekend. Their most important attire would probably be their bathing suits.

Joyce looked great in stretch pants and a crisp white blouse that she tucked in tightly so that her breasts thrust forward aggressively. The pants went up into her crotch and hugged her bottom and for a while Jim wondered if she were being sexy on purpose.

As they left the city and got on the freeway he never should have said what he did. "I never saw you dress that way for me."

He felt her staring at his ear as he kept his eyes on the road. "What?"

"You look pretty sexy. Something special for old man English?" He sounded like a whiny little boy.

He could see her golden head shake in disbelief. "Good Lord, you told me to look my best for him. I distinctly got the feeling I'm to be some sort of offering. Tell me if that makes me a disloyal wife. After all, darling, if it weren't for your precious career I wouldn't be going off to this weekend. And neither would you."

He glanced quickly at her, seeing that her eyes were shining. After all, she was a naive woman, a woman easily hurt, and he had no right to put her down that way. He put a hand on her knee and squeezed. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm just uptight, I guess. This is an important weekend."

She tilted her head. "Funny that the Englishes should suddenly invite us to their desert place eight months after our marriage. And you've never been out there before, even though you've been with the bank three years."

He tried to smile. "We have you to thank. Remember Mr. English only met you last week. I'm sure he was impressed. That ought to do us some good."

She frowned. "I have a feeling it's more than that. You seem to be tiptoeing around something I don't know about."

He licked his lips. "Well, we will be talking some business and it does involve you. You'll find out the whole story before long. And I hope you'll trust me, honey. Try to keep an open mind."

Her laugh was nervous. "Goodness, I feel as though I'm going to be a sacrifice or something."

"Don't ask any more questions."

Jim felt sick inside as he nursed the car up to the new low speed limit of 55 miles an hour. He held it there as they zipped north through the hills. Short of Riverside they went east, through the pass and below them they could see the great California desert. They began to drop down and the vegetation changed abruptly. Soon they were in sand, cactus and yucca.

They took the turnoff and in a few more miles they were entering the strung-out outskirts of Palm Springs. The place was busy for it was the winter season and the town would be full for the weekend.

They hadn't spoken in more than an hour and Jim knew each was thinking deep, dark thoughts, each wondering what would happen before their return to the coast Sunday night. An eternity will have passed by then, he knew, an eternity that would be vital to his professional and personal life. And to Joyce's.

The center of the town was crowded with tourists and winter dwellers. Each cold season thousands of people moved in for six months. When May came they almost all moved away again and the place turned into a virtual ghost town until the following October. Jim had been through the place several times and once, a couple of years before, had spent a weekend here at a motel with a girl.

On the other side of town they turned out on the desert once again before they came to the big estates, places with curving driveways, multiple garages and walls around property that was measured by the acre. They came to the English place, which Jim recognized from all that he'd heard. It had a low profile with white rock roof, cinder block walls to keep out the heat and the night desert chill. It was walled on three sides, as Sally had once told him, the fourth side open, looking across the desert to the mountains clear over in Arizona.

They drove in and pulled up in front of the garage. There was only one car, a big black Cadillac. Jim felt his envy rise. English didn't make all that much money at the bank-not in salary, anyhow. But his family was old money and he owned most of the bank stock himself. So he was paid according to his success, which was considerable. And he didn't need the money anyhow, not with the inherited English fortune to back him up. There had once been a costly divorce, but English had paid her off and kept the two children.

Now he had a new wife, a younger wife whom Jim had met at the retirement party. She was probably in her early thirties, some 10 years younger than her husband. A sleek, vamp type with lots of black hair and a snaky body. In type almost the exact opposite of Joyce. Jim found himself beginning to look forward more to their weekend. He glanced at Joyce as he switched off the engine.

"This is it."

"So I gathered. A resort hotel, at least." She lifted her eyebrows. "They do five well, don't they? Winters in Palm Springs, summers in Santa Barbara and in between he makes deals at the bank."

"Not a bad life," Jim noted. "And I want to move up with him."

"I know, I know. That's why we're here." She lifted a hand to cut him off and then she opened her door. They both got out and stretched. They peered about It was very quiet and very dry, the light desert air like lotion on their faces. God, he thought no wonder people came out to the desert to cure what ailed them. It felt wonderful.

They looked across the half hidden front of the house-the wall and the garage kept what was behind quite secret from the road-wondering which way to head for the front door. Then it opened, at one side of the garage.

Out came Scott English, a broad smile on his expansive face, his hand stuck out like a bowsprit on a sailing vessel. They had a chance to study him as he approached. The president of Southwest Merchants Bank wore a baby blue T-shirt and white bermuda shorts, tennis shoes and no socks. There was a long black cigar stuck in his mouth.

English was in his early forties, Jim knew; he was stocky and strong and looked like a football player. He was perhaps five ten and weighed 190. He was an Ivy League type in manner, background and education, and Jim seemed to remember that he had played for Brown or somebody in the East.

He had dark hair that was graying at the temples and his bare legs were heavy and hairy. He was beginning a small pot under that T-shirt, although now as he came toward them he was keeping it sucked in.

The cigar threw off clouds of smoke like a railroad engine as he bore down on them. Jim could see his eyes taking an instant measure of Joyce as he came up to them. Then he was pumping Jim's hand and touching Joyce on the shoulder in an awkward greeting.

"Well, so you found our desert hideaway. Wonder ful. Glad you made it before lunch. Come on. Helen's dying to greet you." He waved at the car. "Don't worry about it. We'll tuck it into the garage and get your luggage after a while."

He led the way through the door, which was really cut through the wall. There was a small front yard planted in desert foliage, including a beautiful smoke tree, and then he was pushing open the door to the house, which was under a broad overhanging roof that helped keep the sun off.

It was cool and almost dark inside after the bright sunlight outside. The place was rambling, it appeared, with room after room in progression, each filled with dark Spanish and Mexican style furniture. English took them to the draped glass wall at the rear of the large living room and there he pulled a cord. The drapes opened.

They looked out on the rear yard. In its center was a swimming pool with water the color of Indian turquoise. The house was a U shape around it with the living room at the base of the U and rooms on either side. There was a row of hedge on the far side of the pool, cut low so that the distant desert view wasn't obstructed.

Joyce gushed dutifully and English was pleased. Jim saw his boss keeping his eyes on her, his glance darting up and down her body when he thought she wasn't aware. Yes, he was going to be a genial host, too much of a host, Jim feared. Well, they had made their deal and there was nothing to be done about it-except to break the news to Joyce.

"Well," Scott exclaimed as he rubbed his hands together. "I wonder where our hostess is. Helen," his voice boomed through the house.

They heard an answering call from somewhere deep in the house. Then they waited and after a minute Helen Enghsh joined them in the living room. Jim gulped when he saw her and he heard even Joyce draw in her breath in admiration.

Mrs. English was indeed 33, but she could have been ten years younger. She was about five feet six and she had the face and body of a vamp. Dark, long hair that came over her shoulders, high cheek bones and interesting hollows below, heavy dark lips, dark eyes that gleamed under sheltering lashes. Her body was sinuous, bulging in the right places and deeply tanned from the desert sun.

She wore a startlingly white bikini that didn't begin to know how to cope with its assignment, for her breasts bulged over the top and below there was a generous expanse of deeply golden flesh below her navel before the bottom strip of white started. Part of her was covered for she wore an open robe over her shoulders-but still Jim didn't need to use much imagination to know that she was a total package.

Jim heard a sound and he realized it was himself, clearing his throat. Even Scott seemed impressed by the sight of his own wife. He recovered fast, for surely he was accustomed to such a view.

"Sweetheart, you know the Babcocks. Jim and Joyce. I believe you met Helen at the party last week."

Jim and Joyce smiled but Helen English seemed to be looking down her nose at them. But while she was looking down that nose she also seemed to be looking over Jim. Then her manner changed and she hurried forward to kiss Joyce quickly on the cheek. Then she took Jim's hand.

'It's wonderful that you could make it on such short notice. Yes, I remember you from the party."

She actually batted her eyes at Jim. "Very well I remember."

"Wonderful," Scott said unnecessarily, rubbing his hands and looking from one guest to the other.

At once they had lunch, which was served in a low-ceilinged dining room in one of the wings, a delightful Spanish room with white walls, dark furniture and one of those Southwestern corner fireplaces. The food was brought by a tiny maid, a curvy little thing in a black satin uniform with white apron, which astounded the Babcocks. A French maid looked so out of place on the desert.

They ate Mexican food which, Scott explained, was prepared by Maria. The food was washed down with heavy Mexican beer that washed away the weariness of the drive through the mountains.

At last Scott pushed back his chair and smiled at his wife. "We're very informal today, darling. A bikini at lunch."

Helen smiled, perhaps with a brittle flash of teeth. "We're always informal down here, dear, even with guests."

He nodded. "All the more reason to talk business now and get it over with. Helen, why don't you take a dip while the Babcocks and I discuss ... urn, their future?"

She got up at once, as though she were accustomed to obeying orders. After all, it was his money, his house, his two children who would be arriving from school in the city later in the day. Helen was only Mrs. Scott English the Second. She smiled around the table and swished out. Jim caught a glimpse of her body again as the robe swirled. Yes, her ass was good, packed into its white sling.

They got up and followed Scott into a rather small study. It had only one window which looked out on miles of empty desert. It was all-male furniture, dark, heavy with the accent on leather.

Scott slumped behind a desk and waved Joyce and Jim to chairs at either side. Then, dragging deeply on his cigar, he sent blue smoke rising.

"Jim, have you explained things?"

"Um ... no." He felt hot as his face flushed. "I thought you ... we...."

Scott held up his hand. "Just as well. Let me take charge. I'm an expert at propositioning women."