by Peggy Gaddis
“I hope you will be comfortable,” said Phyllis politely.
Anice looked at her through a mist of tears.
“Oh, I don’t care about being comfortable—I’ll j-j-just be so g-g-g-glad that you won’t be b-b-bothered by me any more,” she stammered childishly. “You’ve—been so g-g-g-good to me, Cousin Phyllis, and I’m terribly ashamed that I’ve annoyed you so much. I only wanted to—to be helpful.” Sobs overcame her and she put both shaking hands over her mouth, and her eyes spilled tears.
Phyllis was touched in spite of herself.
It’s an act, she raged inwardly, feeling herself melt. It’s just an act, admit, and don’t let it take you in.
“I’m s-s-s-sorry to be s-s-such a fool,” stammered Anice, fighting down the tears and managing a tremulous, appealing smile. “But I’ve loved it here. It’s s-s-such a b-b-b-beautiful place—quite the nicest place I’ve ever seen—and I was so h-h-happy living here. And I’ve—I’ve loved taking care of things.”
Phyllis kept her teeth tightly set and fought down the compassion and the little feeling of guilt. After all, she was practically throwing the child out; New York could be very big and very terrifying to a helpless kid from a little country town, alone and without friends.
“I just hope you’ll let me come and see you now and then, Cousin Phyllis,” Anice stammered after a moment, struggling to control her tears, smiling pathetically through them. “And—maybe you could sort of s-s-save up your mending and let me do it for you. You have such lovely clothes—I just adore handling them. And maybe you’d let me come and cook dinner now and then. I love to c-c-c-cook.”
Phyllis said crossly, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anice, stay—if you want to so badly.”
Anice gasped, and a look of such utter radiance spread over her alluring little face that Phyllis felt the room aglow with it. For a long, stunned moment, Anice stared at her while the tears dried on her lovely face and her eyes grew wide and starry.
“Oh, Cousin Phyllis!” she breathed, as though someone had turned back the edge of the blue sky and showed her a glimpse of Paradise itself. “Cousin Phyllis, do you—do you honestly mean it? I can stay?”
“Of course, if you want to so badly,” repeated Phyllis, and because she was angry with herself for being such a softie, she was curt. “The only thing is you’ve got to mind your own business and keep your pretty little nose out of my affairs. Is that clear?”
Anice was wide-eyed with hurt.
“Oh, but Cousin Phyllis, I never meant to meddle,” she protested.
“Well, you did a mighty fine imitation of it,” snapped Phyllis crossly. “Anyway, from now on, you’re to mind your own affairs and stay on your own side of the fence. What I do is my business, not yours. Understand?”
“Oh, but yes.” Unable to control herself, Anice sprang to her feet, ran to Phyllis and threw her arms about her, giving her a hard hug and kissing her. “Oh, Cousin Phyllis, you’re just the sweetest thing, and I simply adore you. And I’ll be so good and so quiet, you won’t even know I’m around!”
“That,” said Phyllis, a little of her annoyance with herself easing up, “is something I’ve got to see.”
“You will,” Anice laughed gaily, and danced toward the bedroom. “And now I’m going down to that awful room, and tell them I don’t want it and get my first week’s rent back!”
“A neat trick, if you can do it,” said Phyllis dryly, but Anice only laughed again and danced out of the room.
Phyllis, left alone, lit a cigarette and scowled at the wall. Damn it, she had let herself be pushed into a corner again, and Anice had won. If only, Phyllis groaned, she could have held herself together just a little longer, a few more hours, Anice would have been gone…. She sighed, found the cigarette tasteless and flung it away from her. She knew that if Anice had departed in tears, and had maintained her act, she, Phyllis, would never have known another peaceful moment. She would always have felt guilty of inhuman cruelty, even while her sober common sense—what was left of it—would have told her that Anice was like the cat that always falls on its feet. Anice would take beautiful care of Anice; nobody needed to worry about her. Fighting her was like punching a feather pillow; it gradually wore you out, but the pillow was quite undisturbed….
When the doorbell rang she thought wearily that Anice had been too excited to take her key with her and so she had locked herself out. But when Phyllis opened the door, it was Terry who stood there. Terry, holding an enormous bunch of roses up to conceal his face, his other hand extending to her an expensive five-pound box of her favorite chocolates. Mutely pleading to be forgiven. Phyllis laughed and said, “Idiot! Come on in.”
Terry dropped the roses and beamed at her joyously.
“Boy, are you beautiful!” he said happily.
“I look like the tail-end of a misspent life and you know it,” she told him, catching a glimpse of herself, white and weary, her hair a little tumbled, the pale blue taffeta housecoat crumpled where she had been sitting curled up on the couch.
“To me, you will always look beautiful, even when you’re ninety and have lost all your teeth and your hair,” said Terry firmly.
“What a romantic thought!” said Phyllis teasingly. “Let’s dwell upon it!”
Terry leaned and kissed her lightly yet lingeringly, and said, his voice a trifle husky, “Let’s not—there are so many other things to dwell upon.”
She took the roses from him and arranged them in a big blue jar on a console table beneath a mirror. Terry watched her happily, as though just the sight of her were soothing and deeply refreshing.
“Where’s the blond menace?” he asked at last, looking warily about him. “Don’t tell me she’s moved out?”
“I won’t,” said Phyllis grimly. “She not only hasn’t moved out—she no longer intends to.”
Terry was unpleasantly startled.
“What? Oh, come now, love, there’s a limit to what anybody has to stand. That’s why they give you time off for good behavior even in jail,” he protested. “What’s her alibi this time—that I’m not going to believe, anyway?”
Phyllis faced him defiantly.
“I told her she could stay,” she stated flatly.
Terry stared at her, his eyebrows going up a little.
“So she put it across again, did she?” he said mildly.
“Just that,” admitted Phyllis. “I knew all the time it was an act, but it was such a damned good act, and—well, after all she’s only a kid, and pretty young to be knocking around rooming houses alone, friendless.”
“She was born old in the wisdom of the serpent, that one,” said Terry grimly. “Well, what happens next? Or are you just sort of brushing me out of your life altogether?”
She went to him and put her arms about him and pressed her cheek hard against his.
“I couldn’t brush you out of my life. Terry—it’s just something that couldn’t happen,” she told him huskily.
For a moment, above her dark head, Terry’s face wore a look of radiant hope; but the next moment the look was gone and his arms held her gently with the touch of a kind elder brother.
“Sure, good old dog-face—always in there punching, but never getting anywhere,” he said dryly. “I don’t suppose you’d care to consider that little journey to City Hall that I’ve maybe mentioned a few thousand times?”
“I couldn’t, Terry,” she told him gently, and there were tears in her eyes. “I wish I could, Terry, I’m terribly fond of you, but that’s not good enough. You’re too grand a person to marry a woman who doesn’t adore you.”
“I’m perfectly willing to be satisfied with a woman who is just ‘terribly fond of me’—even if I know she’s passionately in love with another guy. If I’m that kind of a fool, angel-face—and without shame I admit I am—then what?” he asked her, and now his arms were tighter about her, and his mouth sought her own.
“It’s still not good enough for you, Terry,” she told him huskily.
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Terry held her away for a long moment, and then he put her a little away from him, and said with an air of brisk cheerfulness that was not quite convincing, “Well, at least we can split a drink, don’t you think? Don’t bother to show me; I know the way to the kitchenette.”
Phyllis went into the bedroom, smoothed her hair, powdered her face and drew a fresh mouth. She slipped out of the crumpled housecoat into one that was fresh and neat.
When she came back, Terry was pouring the cocktails, and as he handed hers to her, he said quietly, “Well, I see the big news is out—though you’ve probably been expecting it. Or had you heard?”
Phyllis tensed a little and then said evenly, “You mean Kenyon’s engagement?”
Terry looked relieved.
“I was afraid it might come as a shock.”
“I’ve watched it developing,” she told him. “She’s very beautiful and she has a lot of money of her own, and Kenyon is terribly afraid of being married for the Rutledge millions.”
Terry relaxed a little.
“When I saw the announcement in the evening papers, I was—well, afraid you might not have known, fool that I am. Being his—well, his office wife, I doubt if there’s much about him you don’t know.”
“Not much,” admitted Phyllis wearily.
Terry was silent for a moment and then he burst out explosively, “For the Lord’s sake, Phyl, why don’t you give up the damned job, and go somewhere else where you won’t ever set eyes on the guy again?”
“I couldn’t, Terry. Oh, I’m ashamed to be so spineless and such an utter damned fool, but just being with him five days a week, working with him, sharing his every business thought—that’s the half loaf that is better than no bread at all.”
Terry said grimly, almost furiously, as though so hurt himself that he could only ease his own pain by lashing out at her, “Then why the hell don’t you go sleep with him, and get it out of your system that way?”
Phyllis winced and went white. But she met his eyes squarely. “You think that would help?”
“Hell, yes,” exploded Terry sharply. “They say most secretaries are a little bit in love with the boss—unless he’s middle-aged and fat and has ulcers and is hag-ridden by a domineering wife. And it’s not unusual for a secretary to build up an unreal background around her hero—imagine all sorts of things—when if they could go sleep with the guy a few times, she’d be so disgusted—”
Phyllis was looking at him, startled, with an odd speculative look in her eyes. Terry saw it and the spate of his words dried up and he looked at her, sharply alarmed.
“Oh, for the love of heaven, Phyl. I didn’t mean it. I was only shooting off my mouth. Cripes, forget it, will you? You couldn’t possibly do anything like that.” He protested that look in swift alarm.
“I wonder,” said Phyllis softly. “Though of course it might be a bit hard to manage. After all, he has never looked at me as anything but an office machine. I doubt if he is even conscious of the color of my hair or my eyes.”
“Don’t talk like a damned little fool,” said Terry sharply. “If the man is human and normal—and he must be reasonably so, or you wouldn’t be so steamed up about him—he’s entirely aware of you. And not as an office machine, either. You’re—well, you’re pretty potent, my girl. No man in his right mind could ignore you completely!”
Phyllis was studying him with a curious intentness, her eyes narrowed and thoughtful.
“Do you really think so, Terry?” she asked after a moment.
“Hell, yes, I think so,” snapped Terry, and added savagely, “And I’m the damned fool that’s sending you off to make a harlot of yourself.”
Phyllis said swiftly, “Terry, don’t you see? I’ve got to get rid of him somehow. I’ll go crazy, sitting there watching him, eaten up with longing for him—knowing he’s married to Letty, who’s pretty potent herself. If I could get him out of my mind—out of my heart—Terry, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do. Barring maybe murder. Perhaps I wouldn’t even bar murder, if I thought I could get away with it.”
Terry said in alarm, “Hi—have a heart—snap out of it. You’re talking like a fool.”
“Terry, don’t you suppose I hate the way I feel about him?” she burst out at him, on the edge of hysteria. “It’s robbing me of everything any sane woman wants—a normal life with a man who loves her, a home, children. I’ve watched private secretaries, secretly in love with their bosses, eat their hearts out in loneliness and grow into embittered old maids, following a dream that was destined never to come true from the time they were born. I don’t want to be like that, Terry. I want to rid myself of Kenyon Rutledge. I’ve got to. And if this is the only way—” She broke off, her voice shaking dangerously.
Terry put his arms about her, compassionate rather than passionate, and heaved a sigh and said drearily, “Me and my big mouth!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE THOUGHT TERRY HAD PUT into her mind obsessed Phyllis. There were times of moderate sanity when she told herself she and Terry were both fools, and that the one sensible thing for her to do was to give up her job and go to another place—California, or Chicago, or even Mexico—where she would always be able to find work. To cut herself clean away from Kenyon Rutledge and any mention of him. That was the one sensible thing for her to do.
But when, she asked herself bitterly, did a woman caught in the web of a hopeless love ever do anything sensible? The newspapers were always relating stories of women who had screamed, “If I can’t have you, no one else shall,” and making with bullets, or poison, or something equally deadly. That, of course, was beyond Phyllis. But if, by yielding herself to Kenyon—a wry humor corrected that to “forcing yourself on him”—she could rid herself of that ghostly, unreal yet burning desire; if she could steal a few hours with him and thus be rid of him in her heart—it was worth it many times over.
The only difficulty was that it wasn’t going to be easy to lure Kenyon across the boundary he had very firmly set between himself and any employee in his firm. Whereas some businessmen look upon the female members of his employee force as legitimate stalking prey, Kenyon considered such men beyond the pale. To him, the very fact that Phyllis was a valuable and trusted employee set her apart from women, to whom he would normally look for pleasure.
In the five years she had worked for him, Phyllis had learned that lesson very well. And now, faced with the thought of removing that barrier between them, she was puzzled and knew her task was going to be a difficult one. That realization only spurred her on, however, and crystallized her determination.
So absorbed was she in her campaign for Kenyon that she almost forgot about Anice and such annoyances as that young lady might offer. Phyllis was thoughtful, abstracted—and she went shopping, subtly altering her clothes for the office. So subtly that probably no one—save Anice—took any note. After all, the summer was very hot, and even though the Rutledge offices were air-conditioned, the fact that Mr. Rutledge’s exceedingly efficient secretary took to wearing shortsleeved frocks with low necks and a snug cut across the bosom passed unnoticed. Dark sheer frocks with brief sleeves and a frill of immaculate white outlining the round, youthful necklines were vastly becoming. And if a faint, vague flower scent clung to her, it was one that was light enough not to cling to the memory.
She thought that once in a while Kenyon looked at her with an odd expression, almost as though he really saw her. Her heart leaped a little with hope at such times; but usually before the hope had time to do more than extend tiny frail green tendrils, Letty called or dropped in to take Kenyon to lunch, or in some other way demonstrated her claim upon him, and the tiny hope wilted and died.
Until there came a humid evening in early August, when Kenyon said apologetically, “I’m afraid we’re slated for a couple of hours overtime tonight, Miss Gordon. I’m terribly sorry. I do hope it won’t interfere with any of your private plans.”
Phyllis smiled at him radiantly.
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��Of course not,” she said eagerly. “And even if it did. I shouldn’t mind in the least.”
Kenyon answered her smile pleasantly, his eyes warming a little. Her thin black frock with its brief sleeves revealed the milky whiteness of her throat and shoulders. The under-slip of black was cut fairly low, and as she leaned forward on the desk, there was an enchanting revelation—the warm upper curves of her beautifully shaped breasts and the intriguing little hollow that lay between them.
Kenyon guiltily tore his eyes away from such enchantment and cleared his throat and said brusquely, “Well, thanks a lot, Miss Gordon, I appreciate your—er—devotion to duty.”
Phyllis, who had caught his glance riveted to her soft, satiny-smooth flesh and the flush that had darkened his handsome face, was joyous, but she only said demurely, “Thank you, Mr. Rutledge. I’m deeply interested in my job and I enjoy my work.”
Kenyon nodded, and consulted the little heap of papers on his desk and began dictating and Phyllis bent her head above her notebook and her fingers flew over the page….
At five o’clock there was a great clatter of typewriters being covered, desk drawers being banged shut and voices raised, as the large office staff began to depart. Phyllis waited until the office was empty, then she stopped her flying fingers on the typewriter and telephoned the restaurant downstairs, ordering a very choice little meal to be served upstairs within an hour.
She was seated at Kenyon’s desk, and they were working busily, when the waiter arrived with the laden tray.
“What’s all this?” protested Kenyon sharply. “I didn’t order food.”
Phyllis said apologetically, “I did, Mr. Rutledge. You only had a glass of milk and a sandwich for lunch and you’ve been working terribly hard all day. I think you’ll be able to work more efficiently if we take a little while off and eat a real dinner. I do hope I ordered something you’re fond of.”
