Taken

by Mia Ford

  Kurt respected the Furses for sure; in fact, the two families would probably always be friends even as the new generations grew up differently. If he was honest, however, he would have to admit that he expected the meet up to be a bit tedious. So, he was a full nautical voyage away from being able to predict that the evening would indeed result in a detour into stormy waters.

  None of that was obvious as they arrived. Clive and his wife Beatrice greeted Kurt’s parents, Earl and Brenda, and the three of them were welcomed inside where they sat down at the dining table. A glass of wine each was poured as they awaited the roast and the Furse’s two young boys, Michael and Dennis (13 and 9 years old) joined them at the table also.

  After a few remarks on how big the boys were getting (unfortunately in width as well as height, Kurt couldn’t help noticing), the two co-owners kicked off a typically safe and dry conversation about business. Clive was always obsessed with discussing how everything had changed now that the Internet was everybody’s port of call. That was hardly new at all, though Clive still talked as if the online world was wild and adventurous. Fortunately, he had an able team of skilled office staff who were able to ensure that business kept up with the ways of the world, otherwise he would have had trouble treading water.

  As all this went on, Kurt sat like a good guest, having painted a polite smile on his face that he intended to keep intact for the rest of the evening, regardless of how bad the jokes were. But fifteen minutes in and something arrived that would see him sit up and start to pay proper attention: and that something was Darlene.

  With not having seen the girl for three years, when she had been eighteen, Kurt was aware that she was going to have changed a little. All the same, he would not have believed anyone had they told him that an image of pure lust was about to walk into their leaden evening meal.

  She entered without introduction, Clive not even seeing her approach as he rabbited on about algorithms. Kurt saw her before anyone else and genuinely could not believe the transformation. His memories were of a stick-thin girl with a nice smile but relatively little else going for her in terms of appearance. Either a student’s life had done well for her or else she was just a late developer, however, because the young lady he beheld was quite the opposite.

  Darlene had the kind of curves that a twenty-five-year-old male notices whether he wants to or not (unless he’s another way inclined). It was not even that she was dressed to put on a show, wearing only a casual V-neck sweater and jeans, but both of which fit her so perfectly that the fabric hugged her curves from her shoulders to her ankles. If her waist was out of shape in any way, like the two young boys, then Kurt’s eyes would have seen. Instead he saw nothing but loveliness, alluring and desirable.

  Seeing her approach, Kurt had to be grateful that people had always judged him as laid back. If he was not good at keeping his reactions inside, then he might have completely lost his cool and made a fool of himself. Countless horny students must have succumbed to such instincts over the last few years and so he was thankful to be able to collect his wits and look casual.

  ‘Ah! Here’s the confident graduate,’ said Clive, after turning to see that his daughter had joined them. ‘Say “hello” to some old friends.’

  ‘Hello Mr and Mrs Wyden; hello Kurt,’ Darlene said, greeting them all with a smile that was too shy for her looks.

  ‘Darlene, congratulations!’ his father offered and the conversation then took a detour into polite questions about how her studies had gone.

  Relieved to not have to say anything for a time, Kurt sat back and had the convenience of observing Darlene further as she was the centre of attention. After a little while he realized he was not really listening to what she was saying, however, having been waylaid by the shores of his imagination.

  Eventually he caught up and discovered that, though she might look the part, Darlene was still very much her father’s daughter. Hellraising student days had not really found her and she had rejected the accommodation of the residence halls almost on arrival. No doubt whatever sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll she witnessed there temporarily was repellent, as her parents intervened and found her a house with three mature students instead. They were all strict Catholics, Kurt would learn and, though it was none of his business, he could not help but speculate on whether sexual liberation had completely passed Darlene by.

  The thought served to confound and excite him at the same time.

  His ears would then perk up again on detecting what might have been a possible contradiction, in that Darlene had in fact accepted an offer of engagement during her time away.

  This revelation was revealed mischievously by young Michael, who was then reprimanded by his father and had to sit with a sulky face for the next ten minutes.

  ‘She nearly married a country boy,’ he had announced, with a snigger.

  ‘Mikey, you behave from now on or none of the fine roast your mother is serving will ever make it into your stomach,’ Clive ordered.

  ‘I’d have noticed if there was a ring on your finger, Darlene,’ said Kurt’s mother, trying to spare the girl’s blushes.

  ‘That’s OK, Mrs Wyden,’ Darlene replied, for some reason deciding to explain herself. ‘I was in a relationship for a little while; with the son of a priest, but it was a big mistake.’

  A priest? Kurt thought, trying to picture how much sex a girl who lived in a house full of Catholics and the son of a priest might manage and finding it hard to conclude it could have been anything more than your average choir boy.

  ‘Oh! I hope it wasn’t difficult for you,’ Brenda commented.

  ‘In a way it was,’ Darlene admitted. ‘His mother was a little overbearing and, erm… manipulative. Luckily I saw it wouldn’t work and called it off.’

  ‘A lucky escape,’ Kurt offered, with a smile, realizing that he had not said a word to her as yet.

  ‘Well… yes! You could say that,’ Darlene replied, blushing a little and then casting her eyes down at the table.

  As subtle as her reaction was, it enthralled him. He trusted that the older generation sitting nearby were too ancient to pick up on it; the boys too young (though Michael was smirking a little), but he picked up on it alright. Darlene was shy of him.

  If she had been before then he hadn’t noticed, but then he hadn’t found her interesting enough to scrutinize back then. She was only human though so why not presume that there were reasons for her being nervous about seeing him again? Although her choice of clothing was restricted because of her parents being present, she had certainly made an effort with her makeup and her hair was perfectly straight. Kurt preferred female hair to be wavy, but she looked exquisite all the same.

  Having expected to find nothing of interest in the evening, here was a fascination that Kurt wanted to learn more about. Was the Furse’s suddenly hot daughter completely uncharted by man? Or was her outward show of pureness hiding the trail of some adventurous souls who had already embarked? If so did that make her damaged goods, or did it mean that treasures had been left behind for others to enjoy?

  Kurt had no way of knowing what interpretation to favor without setting out to find out for himself, but that was the way he liked it. A question that was less tantalizing, however, was whether or not she was taboo.

  The Furse family had structured their lives so as to keep their daughter away from loose living and bad influences. They were hardly likely to welcome a rogue like him coming along and sweeping her off her feet. The respect between the two families probably meant there was a presumption that he would restrict his fast living to other localities.

  Unless he could get Darlene out of his head then that social harmony risked being tested – and that was easier said than done when she was sitting barely a reach away.

  ‘So tell me, Darlene,’ he asked, when there was a lull in conversation, ‘now you’ve lived on both do you prefer the West Coast or the East Coast?’

  Though in conflict over the possible consequences, Kurt c
ould not resist seeing how she responded to him again. The more she blushed and appeared self-conscious, the more perilous his course of action was likely to become.

  ‘Oh, this is my home, I guess,’ Darlene replied, looking a little uncomfortable that everyone was looking at her. ‘The East Coast is busy and exciting for sure, but I guess I’m an Oregon girl.’

  ‘You can’t beat coming home, huh?’ said Kurt, with a raise of his glass. Darlene smiled back at him. Strangely, he then noticed, what had originally been her best feature was the only one that was now less vibrant: her smile. It used to be carefree but now it had a melancholic quality. Something had changed her since she had been away but, being hidden from the opposite sex as she had been, Kurt was at a loss to guess what it was.

  ‘Kurt would know all about that. Tell her about some of the places in Europe you’ve been on your travels,’ his father then put in, inadvertently encouraging him to brag and impress her. ‘Which were the most impressive?’

  ‘The most impressive?’ Kurt considered. ‘Cologne, Vienna, or Prague perhaps, but I think Darlene would love Florence or Paris the most. Girls prefer the romantic places, so I believe.’

  ‘Whereas you prefer the places with the best beer is what you’re saying?’ his father added correctly.

  ‘But I’m an Oregon man too, after all,’ Kurt continued. ‘And our clients prefer cocktails, so I’d better get used to finer living.’

  Mentioning clients inevitably directed Clive back to business talk, but Kurt was satisfied he had impressed Darlene. There was some kind of chemistry across the table he was sure of it, though he was underestimating just how much his curiosity was about to soar.

  After the first course, he excused himself to go to the bathroom and, before heading back downstairs, found that he was enticed by being in close proximity to her bedroom. The Furse’s had a fairly large house but it was obvious from a nightgown hanging from the end of a single bed, whose this bedroom was.

  The upstairs had thick carpet and, because there were no squeaky floorboards, Kurt found himself daring to step inside.

  How he would love to be in that room alone with Darlene when her family were absent. The idea was so dangerous that it caused intense nerves in the pit of his stomach, only they were good nerves and the kind he desired more of.

  Whether such a liaison could ever happen was fraught with complications and, knowing the chance might not come, Kurt was desperate to discover something new about her before leaving the room. Did she have a diary he could read an excerpt from maybe? If so it was hidden away and the room was fairly tidy except for the one suitcase in the middle of the room. Darlene had not been back long and so had probably been rummaging for clothes or makeup in there and had failed to zip it back up.

  Seeing that there was easy access, Kurt decided to lift the lid to find out what he might see. Some fancy underwear might have sent his pulse racing even more, though all he saw at first were two neat piles of jeans and t-shirts. That was un-amazing until he saw that something was lodged between them. Moving the jeans to one side, Kurt then couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Were, they handcuff?

  Yes, they were and something else too. Perhaps he was the naïve one or else that was a pair of black nipple tassels.

  An evening that was already rated nine out of ten on his intrigue meter was suddenly off the charts. For Kurt, there could be no holding back anyone, regardless of familial concerns. He simply had to find out what this Darlene had become since leaving. Was she really a man-shy religious nut who would make the Virgin Mary proud, or else a closet nymphomaniac with a ravenous sexual appetite?

  Someone would find out first hand eventually and he wanted that man to be him.

  Back at the dinner table, his eyes lit up opportunistically on seeing that their dessert was cherry-pie with stripped pastry. As Clive continued to yap away about brochures, Kurt surreptitiously manipulated the pastry in order to spell out ‘DATE?’, before turning his plate in Darlene’s direction and gently tapping the table cloth.

  Darlene paused halfway through a mouthful upon seeing the question, then looked up into his eyes to see if he was being serious. In response, he gave the slightest of cheeky smirks and a shrug of the shoulders, then was thrilled to see she had to look away for fear of smiling too much in front of everyone.

  It took him a few minutes to get his answer, because she was a bit more paranoid than him about how to arrange the pastry. When she had finished, however, it read a big ‘YES’.

  Despite the positive reply, Darlene seemed to grow shyer of him after having accepted. There was a look on her face that suggested she did not quite know what she was doing, but that only proved all the more enticing to Kurt.

  Darlene was both a fascination and a puzzle to him. On the one hand, she was up for a date and had nipple tassels in her bedroom; on the other she looked to be as timid as a mouse and had a history that suggested very little experience of men – if any. A voyage of discovery was ahead, as long as he could figure out the logistics of setting sail. Darlene might have accepted the idea, but no means of discussing where and when presented itself at the time. Plus, the more Kurt thought about it, the more complicated a date seemed. Especially as it seemed safe to presume that she did not want to give her parents a single clue that she had anything of the kind planned. Certainly, they would not be revealing to their families that they were having any kind of liaison, but it was also likely that the returning goody-two-shoes hardly went out and met men at all. Hopefully she would prove resourceful enough to come up with an excuse for getting out of the house one evening, but before that Kurt had still to figure out how to go about contacting her. Calling up the family home and asking to speak with her was just not the way to go; the Furses were far too Victorian and would be onto him like a finely-cast reel.

  After heading back home with his parents, while nursing a state of unclear anticipation, Kurt decided that tomorrow would be a good day for finding a solution. He was back at work and there is nothing like a good sea air for clearing the mind and offering some clarity.

  Aqua Yachts boasted some fine vessels and he had dedicated the whole day to the maintenance of his favorite; a 50-foot, one-million-dollar fly-bridge called Arial, requiring only one or two crew members depending on conditions. The company had larger and more expensive vessels, but this was the kind he could often take out for personal use also and, so long as you knew what you were doing, it suited him completely. Its three cabins meant he could invite his best friends to join him on the ocean – or not – and he had complete control over what was on the itinerary.

  Although the day was only for maintenance, Kurt enjoyed spending time on Arial anyway and thought he would have time to test its performance out on the water at the end of the day, so long as the weather remained calm. He had always felt grateful for the company’s market position; in that they were neither at the high nor the low end of the market. Their clients were rich enough so that they did not have to scrape around in order to stay afloat, while they did not have to worry about maintaining the giant vessels that the super-rich billionaires craved either. That would have meant supervising a massive team of people and having little time for the solitude he enjoyed. As it was, however, the company only needed to employ half a dozen maintenance engineers, whom he was able to personally train and build up strong and trusted relationships with, as well as a dozen cleaning staff. The crews that clients required to take them out on the water were employed on a per-job basis – though he occasionally did that himself also.

  All in all, the job and the demands upon him were just how he liked them. Kurt knew he was very lucky and had no complaints. Although there was a certain doubt that something was missing. It would have been self-indulgent to complain or linger over what that might be, but he would occasionally find himself looking around as if he was not one of the luckiest guys in Oregon.

  Whenever he got that feeling it had become a habit to go looking for girls to obscure whatev
er the problem was. Being in great shape – and with a selection of luxury yachts to choose from – Kurt did not find drawing female attention very difficult. Deep down he knew that the money, the ocean and the cocktails made that a lot easier than it otherwise would be, though it was also safe to say that he was pretty confident with the ladies anyway. Sexual conquest was as much a part of the landscape as the sea and the sky. The only complication being, because everyone knew where to find him, that of avoiding several bitter ex-girlfriends who had thought to accompany him and his lifestyle a bit more permanently.

  Darlene represented something different, however. That much was clear from the start.

  It was not that he had not gone for girls who could be considered ‘hard to get’ before, but they had usually come with the surroundings. Darlene might have had a direct connection with him as a Furse, but she clearly came from a part of society unlike his own. Her family lived its life very differently to what he was familiar with and, if it was not for business, the two of them would probably never have met.

  Why was he singling her out for the extra effort, therefore? It was not an easy question to answer, despite how attractive she was. Even without the complication of risking upset to inter-family unity, the flirtation might have seemed unfeasible. For some reason, he couldn’t get her out of his head all that day, however, and thinking on how to get near to her was clearly clouding his vision as to why she was worth the effort when there were more convenient hot bodies to go chasing.

  As predicted, getting in touch with her was not as easy as contact is with most people these days. Without the chance to ask for her phone number, he was reliant on social media. However, he was right to predict, before even checking, that the Furses had not developed much enthusiasm for that side of things either. Though in that sense they were very much alike (Kurt thought of Facebook as a waste of time unless all you cared about was being nosey). But he did have an account nevertheless and Darlene having one would have made matters simpler there and then. All he found was an empty icon next to the name Darlene Furse, which suggested that she might have had an account at some time and deleted it (or else someone of the same name), but that was all and of no use. Twitter and Instagram then seemed like long shots and proved to be so, with Kurt even thinking he would have to resort to some Romeo and Juliet-style calling up at her bedroom window instead. That was before he thought of LinkedIn, however, and there she was.