Passionate Pleasures (13 page)

“You lived with your parents?”

“Only after my mother died. Dad was retired, and I didn’t like the idea of him being all alone in the house at night. He was fine during the day with Helga, and Rowdy for company. I don’t have much of a social life, so I figured why waste money on my condo when there were four bedrooms in the co-op,” Tim explained. “Dad was glad for the company. We played a lot of chess and Monopoly in the evenings. And with a portable wheelchair I could get him to a couple of concerts. My dad loved Mozart. And we went to the park a lot. My dad loved the lake and the fountains there.”

Kathryn was surprised by the love she heard in his voice as he spoke. “You really loved your dad, didn’t you? I guess I loved mine, but he didn’t have a great deal of time for a daughter. St. Johns want sons. Even my mother was disappointed when I was born. She had had Hallock six years before, then miscarried a second boy two years after that, and then I was born. I think if that second son had lived, it might have been better for me. Then she died, and I was left to raise myself.”

“No nanny, or someone like an aunt?” he asked.

“Nope. Just Hallock the Third, my grandfather; Hallock the Fourth, my dad; and my brother. And we had a houseman, Mr. Todd. He taught me to do my laundry when I turned thirteen. He said it wasn’t proper for a gentleman to be laundering a young lady’s personal undergarments now that I was a teenager.”

“Let me guess,” Tim said. “You had just gotten your first bra.”

Kathryn laughed, surprised he had figured it out. “Yes,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for Mavis’s mother, I would have been in great trouble. She was always filling in the gaps for me. The men in my family assumed I came by all my feminine knowledge naturally, for after all, I was a St. John.”

“It must have been difficult for you,” he said sympathetically, picturing a little girl with pigtails all alone in a house of men.

“It was when I was small, but then when I was about eight I figured it out, and did what I had to do to survive the male-dominated world in which I lived,” Kathryn said.

They had reached the library now and he walked through the back garden with her to her cottage. She had left a light burning and he waited while she pulled her keys from her pocket, and opened the door. “I won’t ask you in,” she said. “I think you understand why. Thank you for walking me home. It was unnecessary but very nice of you.”

“The cinema at the mall is having a festival of old movies,” he said. “
The Best of Everything
is on the schedule. Would you like to go with me on Friday night? I’ve discovered a great little Italian restaurant there too.”

Dinner and a movie. God, how long had it been since she had had dinner and a movie with a man? And now that she had spent an evening with Timothy Blair, she was a little more comfortable with him. Temur the barbarian was not quite as vivid in her memory right now. Of course Hallock would have a conniption fit when he learned she had been seen out with a man at a movie, but to hell with her brother. Mavis was right. It was time for her to have some fun. If not now, then when? “I’d love to go out to the movies Friday night. I haven’t been out in ages. You realize, however, we’ll start the gossip mill turning, because sure as hell, someone is going to see us.”

“I think I’d enjoy being the subject of a little gossip with you,” Tim told her, smiling down into her green eyes.

“Good night, Mr. Blair,” Kathryn said, stepping into her cottage and closing the door as she did.

“Good night, Miss St. John,” he replied. Then he turned and went off down her walk, whistling.

Gracious, what had she done? She had made a date with a man five years her junior. Well, she didn’t care! Mavis was right, and there was nothing wrong with the town librarian and the Middle School principal being friends. She was entitled to friends, wasn’t she? Everyone was entitled to have friends, even Kathryn St. John, damn it!

A call from her brother the next morning before she left for her office infuriated her.

“Good morning, Kathryn. Hallock here. Someone saw you bringing a man into your cottage last night. Really, sister, at your age? You have to remember who you are. Who was this man, and why was he in your home?”

“He was not in my home, Hallock. I had Sunday dinner at Mavis and Jeremy’s yesterday. They had invited Mr. Blair, the Middle School principal. He was kind enough to walk me home. And he did not come past the front door stoop. Your informant was incorrect. And just so you are aware of it in advance, Mr. Blair and I are going to a movie on Friday night. And we will have dinner prior.”

“Kathryn, I really don’t think this behavior is very wise on your part,” he said.

“Excuse me? Hallock, I celebrated my forty-eighth birthday in August. What gives you the right to speak to me in such a fashion? You are absolutely insulting!”

“You mustn’t forget who you are, Kathryn,” her brother said coldly.

“I am well aware of who I am, Hallock, but being the town librarian doesn’t mean I have to cloister myself off.”

“You had best remember who holds the purse strings, sister.”

“And you had best remember that I know where you go, and what you do every Thursday afternoon at three P.M. precisely, Hallock.” She heard him swallow hard.

“I don’t know what you think you know, Kathryn,” he began.

“My information is very reliable, Hallock,” Kathryn told him. “Don’t test me. You will regret it if you do. And don’t ever call me again about my behavior.”

“You are such a bitch,” he snarled at her, slamming down the phone.

K
athryn laughed, and then heaved a sigh of relief. She should have done this years ago, right after she found out about Hallock’s little assignation with Mistress Betsy.

It was common knowledge that Betsy Travers was the local dominatrix. She lived on the edge of the village in a neat little house with a picket fence. Mavis, who knew everything, had told Kathryn who she was after Betsy Travers became a regular library patron. She adored romance novels, and was always first on the list for the newest Emilie Shann or Shirlee Busbee or Thea Divine novel. Her taste in romance ran to sexy and historical. She was not at all into contemporary.

One day, after Betsy Travers had departed the library with three new novels, Mavis chuckled and said, “Considering what she does for a living, her taste in literature is funny to say the least.”

“What does she do?” Kathryn asked.

Mavis had told her.

Kathryn was astounded. “And the police haven’t arrested her?”

“Why? She’s not doing anything illegal,” Mavis said matter-of-factly.

“How on earth do you know?”

“She buys stuff at
Lacy Nothings.
They order it special for her. I was in the changing room one afternoon and heard her talking to Nina. She’s very discreet, but at least a dozen guys in town go to her regularly. Nina didn’t know I was there, and believe me, I didn’t come out until Betsy had gone. I didn’t want her to know I’d overheard. Nina was upset, but I promised not to say anything. I never told anyone except Jeremy, until now. It’s too good not to share with my best friend. Jeremy knew, of course. He says your brother goes there every Thursday at three P.M.”

“Hallock? No! How does he know?” Kathryn asked.

“He wouldn’t tell me, but because he didn’t believe whoever told him he drove past the Travers house a couple of Thursdays right after three o’clock. And there was your brother’s car.”

“Hallock would never park his car in such a place where it could be seen,” Kathryn said. “If he’s going to this woman, he wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

“She’s got a back drive where her clients go. They put their cars in an open shed. Jeremy took down the license plate number, and then went by your brother’s office later. Same car. Same license. He was so fascinated by the whole thing he went every Thursday for a couple of weeks and your brother’s car was there at Betsy’s place.”

Kathryn had been amazed by this revelation. She had looked up what a dominatrix did and was even more astounded. Her brother wanting to be spanked and otherwise humiliated? It was difficult to believe. After she had learned of her brother’s predilection she had done what Jeremy Peabody had done. She had checked out Betsy Travers’s back shed for a couple of Thursdays, and sure enough, it was her brother’s car.

And this morning she had used her knowledge to make her brother back off. She was too old to answer to him, and why she hadn’t done this years ago, she didn’t know.
You like him,
a little voice in her head said.
You want to go out with him, not just this Friday, but after that.
Do I? Kathryn wondered. A male friend. Someone other than Mavis. Mavis, who had a husband and family and couldn’t be the kind of friend she had been when they were younger and there was no Jeremy. She didn’t blame Mavis. Mavis had moved on with her life. Kathryn St. John had not.

As the week progressed she thought more and more about what it would be like to actually go out on a date again. She hadn’t been on one in years. She went with friends to concerts in the city. But they went in groups, and more often than not Rina Seligmann’s brother and his life partner met them in town. She and Mavis went to the movies together as Jeremy wasn’t a particular movie fan. No one really noticed that Kathryn St. John didn’t date. She was past the age where people cared. She was the town’s old maid librarian. Would she even know how to behave on a real date anymore? So much had changed for dating couples. Good grief! Kathryn thought. When had life become so damned complicated?

“What should I wear?” she asked Mavis, and she felt like a fool having to ask.

“It’s dinner and a movie. Be comfortable,” Mavis said.

“Slacks and a sweater?”

“Fine,” Mavis replied. “Why are you so darned nervous?”

“Tell me the last time I went out with a real-live man,” Kathryn said.

Mavis thought. And she thought. And she thought. “I give up,” she finally said.

“Precisely!”

Mavis couldn’t help laughing. “He’s probably just as nervous. You’re pretty formidable, you know. I’m surprised he got up the nerve to ask you, Kathy.”

“I am too. I’m more surprised I accepted, but you were right. Hallock’s silent influence has been coloring everything I do, to the point where I have no real life outside of the Egret Pointe library.”

“Is Tim still showing up in The Channel?” Mavis wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Kathryn said.

“What?”

“I haven’t had the nerve to go back to The Channel since the episode with the barbarian,” she admitted.

“Kathy St. John, I don’t believe it!” Mavis exclaimed. “You’re afraid!”

“Mavis, don’t you dare judge me,” Kathryn said. “If he had shown up in my Tom Jones fantasy, or in my Roman fantasy, or even the Highwayman fantasy, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Even as Rapunzel’s prince again. But he showed up as a leather-clad barbarian with the most spectacular dick I had ever seen. He fucked the ears off of me when he wasn’t smacking my butt with a leather tawse or pulling me around by my hair. It was all I could do not to cut and run at dinner the other night.”

“But Tim Blair is a nice guy,” Mavis said. “He isn’t your barbarian.”

“I know,” Kathryn answered. “That was why I didn’t run. Walking home we really got talking, and it was dark except for the streetlamps, which don’t throw a lot of light. That made it easy. I didn’t have to look at him, which helped. He is a nice guy, but he’s big, and I can’t help but wonder if the fantasy matches the reality.”

“Maybe you’ll find out eventually,” Mavis said softly.

Kathryn smiled. “You’re really a terrible person, Mavis Peabody.”

Mavis chuckled. “Let’s go over to your cottage on our lunch break, and go over your wardrobe. We can pick out something together like we used to do as girls.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Why not?” Kathryn replied. Mavis was obviously enjoying this whole situation, but then what were best friends for, if not times like this?

“Ohhh, this is yummy,” Mavis said, pulling a fluffy pink sweater with a wide cowl neck collar from a drawer. “Wear it with those light gray wool slacks.”

“It’s too girly,” Kathryn protested.

“You bought it, Kathy,” Mavis said. “Must have been a moment of weakness.”

“No, I did not. Debora gave it to me a couple of Christmases ago. I’ve never even worn it. Baby pink? On me?”

Mavis held the sweater up in front of Kathryn. “It’s absolutely gorgeous with your hair and eyes. It’s a perfect pink for someone with red-gold hair. Debora has a very good eye, Kathy. Lord, it’s soft.” She looked at the label. “Angora and cashmere.”

“You don’t think it’s too . . . too . . . Oh, hell, Mavis, you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t think it’s too-too, Kathy. You shouldn’t look like the town librarian when you go out on a date.”