“Sure. The living room is this way.”
“Yeah, let’s leave that for last. Why don’t you show me upstairs?”
He followed me up the stairs, still carrying his wineglass. I had mine with me too. Since he’d just poured it, I couldn’t think of a polite way to leave it behind. I didn’t want to insult him. I showed him the bathroom first, apologizing that there was only one, but he assured me it didn’t matter.
“I grew up in a house with two parents, four kids, and one bathroom, and I turned out fine. And this is a nice size,” he said, flipping the fan, then the faucet to the tub. “Good water pressure too.”
I smiled gratefully and showed him Olivia’s room. It really did look nice. The clouds on the wall were so pretty, and the little white bed looked fresh and bright with the new quilt spread neatly on the top. I told Geoff about the quilt, about how my friends had all contributed blocks to it, hoping he’d pick up on the fact there were a whole cadre of wonderful women in this town who were more than eager to love my niece and make her feel at home. Maybe I didn’t have a husband, but I had a “village,” and I knew they would help me raise Olivia.
“Very nice,” Geoff said before opening the closet door and peering inside. My house is old and the closets are small, but Jake Kaminski, who owned the hardware store, had helped me pick out a collection of baskets, shelves, shoe racks, and an extra rod, all in a matching white metal, to maximize the available space. He closed the door and smiled. “What little girl wouldn’t love a room like this?”
Wineglass still in hand, Geoff extended his arm in a gallant gesture, indicating that we were done here and could move on. He followed me to the top of the stairs, but stopped me when I started to descend.
“Where is your room? Isn’t it upstairs?”
“Oh. Well, yes. Right over there.” I nodded toward the other end of the hall. “But I didn’t think you’d care about that.”
“But I do. I want to see everything,” he said.
I walked him past the bathroom again, and the linen closet, then into my room. I switched on the light and set my still-untouched glass down on the top of my bureau. “This is it.”
My bedroom isn’t large, so I moved to the far side of the room, sandwiched in the three feet of space between the bureau and the foot of my bed, feeling awkward.
Geoff came into the room, partially but not completely closing the door behind him, and turned in a slow circle, stopping and facing the wide mirror that hangs over my bureau. “This is perfect. Very nice.”
After taking a drink, he put his glass down next to mine, took three long steps toward me, which is all it took to get from that side of the room to mine, and kissed me. Not a peck, not a friendly or questioning kiss or even a romantic one, but a hard, demanding kiss with half-open lips and a probing tongue, with hands bent on doing the same thing.
His breath tasted like wine and old coffee. The feel of his tongue in my mouth, thick and wet and uninvited, made me nauseous. I was shocked, stunned actually, and for a moment I honestly couldn’t move. It seemed so unreal. But when one of his hands slid down my hip and started moving up under the hem of my skirt, I came to myself. With one hand, I clamped my fingers around his wrist and with the other I pushed his body away from mine.
“Stop that! What do you think you’re doing?”
He smiled languidly and took half a step back, still too close for comfort. “Well, I should think that would be obvious, even to you. I know you’re innocent about these things, Margot, I heard that around town, and I think it’s sweet. In fact, I find it incredibly arousing. But innocent or not, you can’t pretend you don’t have some understanding of what’s going on.” He grinned. “If only in the broadest general principles. Don’t worry. I’ll help you fill in the details. I’ll be a very good teacher; promise.”
He leaned forward as if to kiss me again, but I braced my hand against his shoulder, blocking his move. “What? You heard around town …”
“Don’t act so offended. Word gets around. Even in a city, the supply of virgins over the age of consent is limited.” He reached his hand up with two fingers, brushed the hair out of my face, letting his fingers run down my cheek, to my jaw. “Especially ones as pretty as you. In a town the size of New Bern, where the supply is even smaller, even nonexistent, word spreads quicker.”
The last thing I wanted to do right then was cry, but I couldn’t help it; I’ve always been emotional, even more so when I’m angry. And when I thought about Arnie, who I had trusted, who must have been talking about me, I was furious. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I blinked hard to keep them back.
Geoff, almost as if he could read my thoughts, said, “Don’t get mad. It wasn’t Arnie. He’s too much of a gentleman to spread rumors. And so am I. I promise you, Margot, I won’t say anything to anybody. It’ll be our secret. I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who probably heard it from another guy who you used to date, or maybe whose wife you know. It doesn’t matter. You know, I didn’t actually believe it at first, but the more I’ve gotten to know you, the more I figured it must be true.”
He paused and smiled, a strange mixture of excitement and fascination on his face. “It is, isn’t it?”
Before I could say anything, he put his two hands on either side of my face and kissed me again, more softly than he had the first time but still insistently, then shifted his weight forward, pushing me down, easing me toward the bed. I pushed back, hard, so hard that his backside hit the bureau and he darned near smacked into the mirror.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I don’t think you heard me before,” I said. “I told you to stop it. I am not interested in sleeping with you. I’m not interested in you at all!”
I got up and moved toward the door, but Geoff stuck out his arm, blocking my exit. His expression was angry, but he fought to soften it and his tone of voice. “Come on, Margot. I’m not buying that. Okay, so you’re nervous. I get that. Having remained … shall we say … intact for so long, I can see how you might have second thoughts. But there’s no use in pretending you’re shocked. You knew why I was coming here tonight. You wanted me to come. You’ve been leading me on for weeks.”
“I did not! I never led you on!”
“No? What about all those lunch dates? You think most parties in a custody case meet the guardian ad litem once a week, sometimes twice, for cozy lunch dates? I didn’t take your parents to lunch every week. And what about the way you flirted with me?”
“I never flirted with you.”
He smirked. “Who are you kidding? All those questions you asked me about my work and my hobbies? You were hanging on to my every word. And the giggling? How you’d laugh at my jokes? Even the ones that weren’t very funny.”
“I do that,” I protested. “When I’m nervous. I giggle.”
“And the way you let me go on about my wife,” he said, continuing as if he hadn’t heard me. “And what about tonight? I told you that my wife was out of town this weekend. That’s why I kept canceling, because she kept canceling her weekend visits to her sister. You can’t tell me you didn’t pick up on that. Conducting a home study on a weekend isn’t exactly usual procedure. You knew what was going to happen. You had to. Nobody is that innocent.”
No. Nobody is that innocent, not even me. I didn’t remember him saying anything about his wife being gone for the weekend, but something had bothered me about the idea of him coming over after office hours. But wanting to believe the best about everyone, even Geoff Bench, and, yes, wanting him to like me, not because I liked him but because I was desperate for him to recommend me as guardian, I had ignored the red flags and my own feelings, the discomfort I had felt whenever I was in his presence.
“You misunderstood,” I said. “You misinterpreted—”
“Uh-uh. I don’t think so.” He took a step to the right, putting his body between me and the door, and picked up one of the abandoned wineglasses. “I think that after all those years of waiting,
you got curious and wanted to see what you’d missed. And now that the moment is here, I think you’re just scared.
“It’s okay, baby,” he said in a low, even voice, the sort of voice you use when trying to slip a bit and bridle over the head of an unbroken horse. “It’s all going to be okay. Shhh. Just relax and let me take the lead.”
He draped his arm over my shoulder and down my back in a half hug, and with his spare hand, he lifted the wineglass to my mouth, tipping the glass up high so the liquid splashed against my lips. I twisted my head to the side, refusing to drink. In one swift move, Geoff put down the glass, slopping wine over the edge, and clamped his arm low around my back, pulling me close. He shifted slightly to the left so he could watch himself in the mirror. The look on his face was lewd and proud and his voice was hoarse. He rocked his hips hard into me.
“Feel that?” he asked.
I didn’t think about what I did next; my response was pure instinct. I pumped my leg back as best I could and then forward, as hard as I could, driving my knee straight into his groin. With him standing so close, I wasn’t able to get much leverage, but it was enough. He yelled, doubled over, and dropped to his knees, cursing.
“Feel that?” I asked as I stepped over him.
Downstairs, I wiped away my tears and tried to collect myself. My first thought was to call someone—the police, my parents, Arnie, someone—but when I picked up the phone and started to dial, I had a second thought—the hearing. And Olivia. That was still the most important thing.
I closed my cell phone and laid it on top of the television just as Geoff, grim-faced and smoldering, descended the stairs. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking. I was scared. Surely, after what I’d done to him, he wouldn’t want to, perhaps wouldn’t be able to, pounce on me again, but I kept a good distance between us, just in case.
“Don’t come any closer. If you touch me again, I’ll call the judge and your law partners and—”
“Oh, trust me, the moment has passed,” he said in a flat voice. “But if anyone should be worried about someone saying something to the judge, it’s you, at least if you want to have a prayer of getting custody. Judge Treadlaw is the laziest judge in the county. He’s going to grant custody to whoever I recommend because that’s what he does, relies on the guardian to do the work and tell him what to think. So if you don’t want me to tell him that Olivia should go to your parents—with a side recommendation that you be denied visitation rights—you’d better keep your mouth shut.”
I swallowed hard. Much as I dislike Geoff Bench, I would never have believed he’d do something so low. On the other hand, I would never have imagined that he’d walk into my house on the pretense of doing his job and then try to coerce me into bed. The flint edge set of his jaw told me he meant what he said. And I knew what he said about Judge Treadlaw was true; Arnie had said as much from the first.
Geoff stood at the bottom of the stairs, a safe distance away from me, studying my face as I considered my options. “And if you do say anything, even if they were to believe you—which I doubt—it’d end up being a case of he said, she said. The worst that would happen to me is I’d end up with a slap on the wrist and a scolding by the judge. For you, however, it would mean starting the custody clock all over again—new guardian, new round of interviews, new home study. It could take months.
“Olivia can’t stay in the hospital much longer. But if I’m out of the picture and you have to begin the process again, Olivia will have to leave the hospital and go to a foster home—maybe for months. Maybe forever. Think about it, Margot. This whole thing could backfire on you. And Olivia. Are you willing to risk that?”
He was silent for a moment. “Didn’t think so. Let’s make a deal. You don’t say anything and I’ll not only promise not to write you a negative custody report, I’ll never press my … unwanted attentions on you again,” he said, unable to keep the smirk from his voice.
Even a knee to the groin hadn’t convinced him that I had no designs on him sexually. Amazing. Geoff Bench was undoubtedly the most arrogant man I’d ever met.
“Of course, if you insist on talking about this ….” he said, shrugging as though it made very little difference to him what I did or didn’t do.
“It’s a deal,” I said quickly.
His lips twitched in triumph, revealing a narrow crescent of too-white teeth. “Very wise. I’d shake your hand to seal the bargain, but I’d have to touch you to do it. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
He strode toward the door, pausing briefly in front of the foyer mirror to smooth his hair. When he was done, he opened the door and turned toward me.
“Just for the record, Margot, I don’t think you’re an innocent. I think you’re a frigid b****.”
51
Margot
The doorbell rang. Heart racing, I peeked through the living room curtains, afraid that Geoff Bench was back. When I saw Paul, I ran to open the door.
“So? How’d it go?”
I couldn’t answer. I burst into tears.
A minute later, I was sitting on the sofa—I really don’t remember how I got there—and Paul was sitting next to me, looking into my eyes. How had he known to come when he did? It didn’t matter. I was just grateful for his presence.
“Talk to me, Margot. You can trust me. Really you can.”
Of course I could. I knew that. In other circumstances I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him everything, but Geoff was his boss. It wouldn’t be fair to put Paul in the middle of this.
“I can’t tell you, Paul. I can’t talk to anyone about this.”
“Sure you can. I won’t tell anyone else, not unless you say I can. Promise. And just to make sure,” he said, “have you got a dollar?”
52
Margot
Sitting in one of those uncomfortable office chairs with the curved backs, the kind shaped like a crosscut barrel, and listening to Arnie and Paul go at each other like attorneys from opposing sides instead of what they were supposed to be, my team of legal advisors, I wished I had never let Paul talk me into telling Arnie about what happened.
Arnie’s ears turn red when he’s mad. Just then, it looked like you could have lit a match just by holding it next to one of them.
“I told her to be nice to him, that’s all! Why not? Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my shoes.”
Paul put both his hands flat on the desk and leaned toward Arnie, who was standing on the opposite side. “No. I’d have told her to be cooperative and pleasant and nothing more.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Paul moved his head slowly from one side to the other. “It’s not. And you know it’s not. If Margot had been a man, you would not have told her to be nice. You realized that Bench would find her attractive and you implied that she should trade on her sexuality.”
“I did not! I would never do that. I don’t even think of Margot that way!”
Looking up at Arnie, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well. Thank you.”
Arnie glanced down as if he’d only just realized I was in the room, which might have been true. He and Paul had been arguing over the top of my head for a good five minutes, as if I weren’t even there! It was like they were jousting or jealous or I don’t know what, but it was crazy. What had come over them?
“Sorry, Margot. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. But I never figured Bench would go after you like that.” He raised his head, looking Paul in the eye. “I didn’t.”
“Why not? You should have.” Paul thrust his hand in my direction, an impatient gesture. “Look at her! She’s beautiful! Who wouldn’t be attracted to her?”
I froze for a moment, wondering if I’d heard Paul right. I’ve frequently been called cute and sometimes even pretty, but no man, except my father, has ever called me beautiful. Maybe in wanting to hear him say it, my mind had tricked me into thinking he had. Either that or he was using hyperbole to try and score some points in this weird
game of legal one-upsmanship he and Arnie were playing.
Paul leaned even farther across the desk, a vivid picture of what the phrase “in your face” means. “Didn’t you know Bench has a reputation as a womanizer? I’ve only been in town a couple of months and even I know that.”
Arnie’s neck started to turn a little red, not as red as his ears, but more pinkish.
“Well … I’d heard one or two things, but you know how people talk around here. I didn’t think there was anything to it. And, anyway, he’s married.”
Paul’s head hinged back and his eyes went wide. He threw up his hands and barked out a single skeptical cough, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He was very expressive. Was this the sort of technique he used when arguing a case? If so, I wouldn’t want to be on the opposite side from Paul in a courtroom. It was beginning to look as if poor Arnie felt the same way. Paul really was picking on him too much. But it was kind of nice having somebody stand up for me, even if I was paying him to do so. That was the best dollar I ever spent.
“Married? What’s that got to do with it? I mean, seriously! Are you a lawyer or a scout master? A wedding ring doesn’t mean a thing to a scuzzball like Bench.”
“I didn’t know he was a scuzzball. I told you that!” Arnie walked around the end of the desk and stood toe to toe, actually more like chest to chest, with Paul. They looked like a couple of bucks, warring over the same turf. If Arnie had bent down and tried to ram his head into Paul’s stomach, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Unlike some people,” Arnie growled, “I’m too busy attending to my clients to spend time keeping up on the latest gossip. Maybe that’s a little easier when you’ve just gotten to town, but I happen to have a thriving practice!”
“If you tend to the rest of your clients like you did Margot, you won’t have it for long. She told you she was uncomfortable around him. She came to you for help and you didn’t listen, just patted her on the head and told her to be ‘nice’ to him and that if she wasn’t, she might lose Olivia!” Paul wasn’t quite yelling, but almost, and the veins on his neck stood out. “You left her vulnerable, completely unprotected!”
Ties That Bind Page 29
