Jinxie's Orchids

by Maren Smith

  JINXIE’S ORCHIDS

  By

  MAREN SMITH

  Jinxie’s Orchids

  by

  Maren Smith

  A Red Hot Romance Erotic Novel

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2012 © by Maren Smith

  This book may not be reproduced, in whole

  or part, by mimeograph or any other means,

  without permission of the author.

  thetarantularanch@yahoo.com

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons,

  places and events are purely coincidental.

  Cover image credit:

  www.romancenovelcovers.com

  Cover designed by:

  Thaigher Lillie at Bubble Gum Designs

  Also by Maren Smith:

  Angel of Hawkhaven

  B-Flick

  Bippity-Boppity-Boo

  Black Sheep

  Daughter of the Strong

  The Diva

  Enemies

  The Great Prank

  Kindred Spirits

  Life After Rachel

  The Locket

  The Miner’s Wife

  Mistress

  Morogh the Demon

  The Mountain Man

  My Lady Robin Hood

  The Next Ex

  Saga: Constance’s Story

  Spanking Tails I-VII

  The Suffragettes

  Treasure

  Varden’s Lady

  Writing as Denise Hall:

  A Brief Education

  The Companion

  Judgment

  Judgment: Mercy

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Jinxie, no!”

  The shout came out of nowhere, startling Levina Augusta Wainwright (of the Boston Archeological Society Wainwrights) so badly that she almost fell off the top of her ladder. She grabbed onto the highest rung with both hands to stabilize herself, but in doing so dropped the Pre-Inca death mask she’d been trying to place on the highest storage shelf. She realized her mistake instantly. “Oh no!”

  Grabbing convulsively after it, she lost her balance and fell. Behind her, Parnell Ellery knocked over an unopened crate to catch the mask. Two gaudy purple and gold-trimmed pillows meant for the Middle Eastern harem exhibit broke Levina’s fall, although not completely. It was still a jarring landing, one that hurt her dignity more than her bottom, although they ran a tight race.

  “Jinxie!” Quickly—and very gently—putting the mask down, Parnell dropped to help her up. “Are you all right?”

  Levina stood sheepishly, one hand reaching back to give her ‘dignity’ a rueful rub. “Yes, yes I’m fine.” She looked up at the ladder, and then stole a peek at her fiancé. She winced, instantly wishing she hadn’t. Already Parnell’s look of concern was melting into a frown of grim displeasure. It was a look that pulled at his already thin mouth, stiffening the set of his narrow shoulders and turning the piercing blue of his eyes all but icy with ire.

  “What,” he calmly demanded, letting go of her arm in favor of grabbing up the ancient mask again, “were you thinking?”

  Levina cringed, clutching and wringing at her fingers. “I-I just wanted to help…”

  But Parnell wasn’t listening. He turned the Peruvian artifact over in his hands, checking all sides for injury before giving her another hard look. “Jinxie, darling, I love you absolutely to pieces, but you and ladders just do not mix. I can’t understand why you insist on doing these foolish and risky things!”

  Shoulders sagging, Levina quietly said, “But I was fine until…”

  “Fine, bah.” Shaking his golden head, Parnell climbed the ladder himself and put the mask carefully upon the highest shelf. “This is deserving of two good licks, at least. Disaster follows you, my darling. You know that. Everybody knows it.”

  “But I was just helping,” Levina said softly. She cringed inward at the look he tossed her over his shoulder. Her hands crept back to clasp behind her back, and she wondered if those ‘two good licks’ had now become three because she had dared to argue with him. Licks in her experience were never good, and she wished Parnell weren’t so very fond of administering them.

  “Help?” Parnell turned to face her, his frown thinning even further. “Like when you ‘helped’ set up the new dinosaur exhibit and somehow the ladder got knocked out from under poor Jacques Petain. While I am terribly grateful that he managed to grab onto the skeleton in order to avoid a broken neck, the incident did result in a mess of significantly older bones shattering all across the marble floor when the wire snapped. The most complete Agathaumas skeleton known to man and we broke it. The American Museum of Natural History still isn’t speaking to us.”

  Levina flushed unhappily and, picking at her fingers, looked down at her small hands. Jacques still couldn’t look at her without shaking his head and muttering unkind things under his breath. Fortunately, most of it was said in French, so she was spared the added indignity of understanding exactly what he was saying. Judging by his usual tone alone, she was inclined to think it quite unkind.

  Seeming not to notice the chagrin with which she stood there, soaking in his scolding, Parnell came down off the ladder. Folding his arms across his chest, he drew himself stiffly upward and faced her. “All right then, darling. One more time, let’s go through it. What is your job?”

  “To write your papers, fill out catalog cards and record the new exhibit pieces as they are given to me.” When he only stood there, expectantly arching his eyebrows in search of more, a soft breath puffed out of her and Levina added, “Without touching them.”

  “Exactly. Cataloging; a nice, safe occupation for a lady of your delicate nature and refinement. Safe for you.” He spread his arms as if this were for her greatest benefit. “Safe for our exhibits and our museum, not to mention my personal sanity.” He sighed and looked at her again. “We’ve been over this, Jinxie darling. Why must you insist on…handling?”

  Jumping at the chance to explain herself, Levina stepped toward him, her hands clasped as if in prayer. “I just want to help.”

  “You are helping.”

  “No, I mean, I want to help where it matters. I want to do something important for the museum. Something meaningful!”

  “Cataloging is very important,” Parnell said, slowly and with the same level of muted enthusiasm that one might use to convince a small and disagreeable child. He didn’t sound quite so forced when he added, “And it’s better for our exhibits. Do you remember the time you tried to help Gloria clean for our fifth annual fundraiser? And somehow, mysteriously—” He gave her a knowing look. “—that statue of Isis fell over, sliding down the front steps like a toboggan on snow, right out the front doors and into the street? The museum can’t afford mistakes like this, Jinxie. Thank heavens no one was killed.”

  “But—” Levina wilted. There was little point in trying to refute his claims. Trouble did follow her. It had all the days of her life. She was the most trouble-prone person that even she had ever met. It was only through a lot of hard talking and because, as Parnell so often said, he loved her that he’d successfully talked his father, the owner and creator of the Ellery Horticultural Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, into allowing her to work here in the first place, something that had scandalized her father and brothers and which had concerned her mother no end.

  “They have swords and sharp things in museums, don’t they?” she’d asked, nervously fingering her ruby broach.

  And yes the museum had a good many sharp things. Levina had nearly been killed by at least two of them before Parnell relegated her to writing papers and filling out catalog cards in the basement.

  Levina’s shoulders sagged in defeat and, confiden
t that his point had finally been made, Parnell drew himself stiffly upright. Clasping his hands behind him, his expression turned quite somber. He looked around them, and then gestured for her to start walking. “Come then, my darling. Let’s get this over with.”

  Two good licks. So, he had been serious about that part.

  Head down, Levina led the way across the basement storage room to the night watchman’s desk on the far side. In the two years since she’d been relegated to this room, she had yet to actually sit at this desk. Usually she did her writing at the little table across the hall. No, all her associations with this particular article of furniture were of a much more personal and, consequently, painful nature. She faced the front of it, her head bowed and her fingers fidgeting at the lacy ends of her sleeves in growing dread.

  “I really hate being forced to do this,” Parnell told her from the doorway. Already he was bent over the umbrella stand, shifting her parasol and two walking sticks out of the way in favor of withdrawing the arch nemesis of Levina’s whole world: a thin, crook-handled cane, smaller in diameter than her tiniest finger and which no one in the world would even have mistaken for use in walking. He gave it two sharp swishes through the air before he returned to her, standing behind and little to the left of her. Briskly, he stated, “You know the position, Jinxie, my love.”

  She grimaced. Oh yes, she knew the position quite well. Slowly, reluctantly, she bent over to brace her hands upon the desktop, rounding her bottom out behind her. The days of wearing bustles were well and truly over, and although it had been a fashion more popular in her mother’s day, Levina truly missed them. Not that Parnell would have let a little thing like a bustle get between him and the administration of two good licks.

  Without preamble, he bent to catch the bottom hem of her skirt and petticoat, drawing both up high enough to drape across the small of her back. Her bottom was now clad only by the thin white fabric of her bloomers. Her face colored as it always did when they took up this position. But they were, after all, engaged to be married and, as he had already said quite practically once before, as lovely a bottom as she did have, that was not where his focus lay whenever he was forced to take up the cane.

  “No more ladders, darling. Am I understood?”

  The desk blurred before her. Levina swallowed hard, forcing herself to relax as much as she possibly could. “No more ladders,” she promised.

  The cane ripped through the air with a sound like the tearing of paper before landing with a terrible, thh-WHUP! It cut a line of fire across her bottom that she could feel burning all the way up into the breath she sucked into her lungs. Her ears rang, a high-pitched whistling sound as she gasped, coming right up onto her tiptoes.

  She fought not to squirm; she didn’t dare squirm.

  “Jinxie, darling,” Parnell reminded, lightly tapping the end of the cane against the side of his shin.

  Her pent-in breath shuddered out of her, and very slowly, she made herself come back down off her toes to resume the proper position. Only her voice trembled when she dutifully counted out a clear if quiet, “One.”

  Thh-WHUP!

  Another gasp, sharper this time, and another line of fire that seared into her less than an inch below the first growing welt. Both began to throb in tandem, making her ears ring even louder. Making it very hard to breathe slowly, evenly, unmelodramtically, just the way Parnell preferred. He was a big believer in even and unmelodramatic females, and throughout the last year, Levina had become an incredibly big believer in not letting two good licks become four.

  Only when she knew she could manage it without breaking down in wild sobs, Levina finally lifted her chin enough to clearly and softly count out, “Two.”

  “Bravely done,” her fiancé congratulated and let her skirts fall back into place again.

  Levina stood up slowly. She clasped her hands tightly before her, her fingers interlocked, every inch of her fighting the desperate need to reach back and rub, soothing her poor burning flesh. Even worse, her bottom lip began to wobble. She bit it until the rising threat of tears dissipated and finally she could make herself turn and face him.

  Laying the cane on the desk, Parnell gave her a small, but searching smile. His hand cupped her chin, tilting her gaze up to meet his. “Are we all forgiven?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t be silly.” Her voice still quivered, but she managed a small smile of her own, mostly in order to hide the renewed wobble of her bottom lip. When he angled down his cheek, she rose onto her toes to press a chaste kiss upon it.

  “Good girl.” He chucked her fondly under the chin. “Now.” Once more all business, he said, “What I really came all the way down here for was to see if you had my speech ready. The Society will be gathering in the north wing within the hour, and I’d like the chance to peruse all those wonderfully long scientific words you’ll have me saying while I’ve still time enough to learn how they should be pronounced.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes.” The first two steps she took towards her small writing desk made the heat burn and flare sharply in those throbbing lines behind her. She winced only when she was sure he couldn’t see it, and once she’d retrieved her few sheets of paper and turned back to him, her face was again as serene as Cleopatra’s bust. “Here they are. I included pronunciation keys behind all the Latin names because I wasn’t sure which you might be unfamiliar with.”

  He took the pages from her and looked each one over. “Jinxie, your penmanship is impeccable. Let’s see, A Wealth of Greenery in the Amazon Basin: A Study of Ten Tree Species Never Before Known to Man.” He looked over the pages, smiling and nodding once before laying his hand back beneath her chin for another fond chuck. “You are the best amateur botanist the Ellery Museum has ever known. If only you would dedicate yourself to putting paper to pen instead of this disastrous need of yours to…to touch…why, you’d almost be the most valuable employee we have on staff.”

  Because she knew it was expected of her, Levina managed another smile. “Thank you, Parnell.”

  “We’ll have to see how this afternoon’s conference goes, but keep putting out papers like this one and maybe in another year or so, after we’re married, I’ll see about arranging to move you up out of these dreadful tombs and into, oh—” His eyes brightened, struck by inspiration. “—into a corner of my office. You’ll have a window to look out, sunshine on your pretty face, but not too much, eh? We don’t want freckles. And I will have all the opportunities I require to keep a much more watchful eye on you.”

  She wouldn’t have minded a window. Her smile wasn’t quite so forced now as she said again, “That would be lovely, Parnell. Thank you.”

  Although he never quite lost his smile, somehow his look still turned severe. “Stay off the ladders.”

  “Right.” She watched him stride away, whistling cheerfully as he perused the papers all the way back to the stairs and up to the museum’s main floor. Leaving her alone, finally, to rub her bottom and lick her wounds.

  Her hands unclasped and dashed to catch at the back of her skirts, her eyes welling up with all the tears she’d refused to cry earlier. She bowed, holding her wounded, throbbing backside, gingerly tracing the aching lines that were swelling up beneath her clothes.

  “Oh!” She almost wept but then made herself stand up, shake out her hands as if she could shake the pain off just as easily, and get herself back under firm control. She had no mirror down here, and if her make-up was flawed from tears when the formal and impeccable Parnell, whom her parents adored because he was so good for her, returned to take her home that night, he’d be very disappointed in her.

  Sniffing hard twice, Levina breathed deeply until the threat of crying had passed. Needing to do something, she cleaned up the slight mess made by her ignoble fall, put away the ladder, and re-fluffed the harem pillows before setting them up on their proper shelves. It was almost an afterthought when her wandering gaze settled on the small packing crate that Parnell had accidentally knocked over in his mad
dash to save the mask. The packing slip read Dr. Theodore Calvin, Amazon Basin, Brazil. It was fairly light-weight and so, on the pretense of verifying that nothing had broken within, she collected a hammer and crowbar to open it.

  Inside, beneath a liberal cushion of wide palm leaves, Levina discovered a collection of bug specimens. She recoiled sharply, brushing her hands squeamishly against her skirts, her skin already crawling. She hated bugs, and it didn’t help matters much that these were already in jars and quite dead. Still, she supposed she ought to make amends somehow. Parnell hated bugs, too. If she cataloged them and placed them in Dr. Calvin’s office—none of which required the use of a ladder—so her fiancé wouldn’t have to (and even more importantly, if she did it without incident), then maybe she could finally prove some small measure of usefulness to both him and the museum.

  “Ugh,” she breathed, her face scrunching into a look of supreme distaste as she reached in to withdraw specimen jars and packing leaves alike.

  Thirty-seven different specimens of insect made their way to her small writing table. She made a list of specimen numbers, cross-referencing them to the packing list and then crept quickly down the hall to fetch all the volumes of Amazonian entomology that she could find from the research library. It took her hours to identify them, but with Parnell occupied by the Boston Botanist’s Society upstairs, he wasn’t shuffling any work down for her to do anyway. In the end, she identified all but three.

  She took her notes, the packing list and the specimens to Dr. Calvin’s office so he’d have them on hand to examine first thing when he returned from his trip, and then returned to the storage room to clean up. The crate she set aside to be used elsewhere; the packing leaves she gathered up in her arms and carried to the basement incinerator. One small handful at a time, she fed the packing leaves into the fire. She was mindful of her long skirts—one only had to set oneself on fire twice before one learned that vigilant care must be maintained at all times around the exterior of this very hot contraption—and almost didn’t notice the peculiar leaves of an almost crushed flower crammed in amongst the rest of the palm fronds.