by Geena Maxon
PLEASURE MY LUSTFUL HEART
A Romance Novella
By Geena Maxon
Copyright Blazer Books, Inc. All rights reserved
CHAPTER 1
I am a smart-ass.
Quick with a stinging reply. Sarcastic. Sometimes funny, though not everybody thinks so. It should come as no surprise, then, that I have a hard time relating to people who don’t understand my view of life. That group often includes men I might like to get to know better, if only I could learn to keep my mouth shut.
Take Gregg Monsell, for instance.
The word in town was that Gregg was coming back from the army to manage Superior Apparel. Employment at Superior put food on the table for the families of forty workers, so there was more than a casual interest in what kind of a boss this decorated former army captain would be. Those who knew him before he graduated college as an ROTC officer said he was a hell-raiser who loved, and soon left, local girls who caught his eye. Which of course only made him only more appealing to any girl who hadn’t yet sampled his know-how. Did you ever notice — some babes love playing with fire, actually hoping to get burned?
Now here he was, after completing five years of service to Uncle Sam, sitting in my father's office on a summer morning, listening to Pa talk passionately about — what? At first I couldn't tell what the subject was, but it was clear this was more than a simple say-hello meeting. Pa, whose dress, as always, included a crisp white shirt, striped tie and suspenders, was leaning across his desk toward his visitor. When he saw me come to the doorway, he waved me in, without stopping his animated lecture. From what I heard as Pa went on, it had to do with the enviable reputation of our company, Porteous Limited. It was one of Pa’s favorite subjects.
Pa stopped for a moment, and said to me in a disinterested way, “This is Gregg Monsell,” and to his visitor, “This is my daughter.” So much for introductions.
I took a good look at the man. Black hair, cut long. Dark eyes. Slender but broad-shouldered. Gorgeous gray pin-stripe suit. All in all, a compelling presence. He stood and reached to shake my hand. He was tall, at least six-two, and close up, he towered over me. I got a whiff of his after shave. Citrus-y and not too sweet. Delicious.
"Katherine, isn't it?" he said.
"Only my father still calls me Katherine."
“Oh?” he said. “What should I call you, then?”
“Call me Ishmael.”
He laughed. “No, really.”
“How about Kit.”
"Kit it is, then," Gregg said.
"You were an army officer, I hear. Were you in the Middle East?"
"Yes, I was there" he said, but went no further. A short answer.
"Well, then," I said, "you must be used to giving orders."
"And taking them." He smiled. But it was a pinched, unnatural smile, not from the heart. He didn't want to talk about the army.
"I'm sorry you lost your dad," I said. "A nice man. You have some big shoes to fill."
"He has his work cut out for him, that's sure," Pa said. "He's got some mess to clean up there at Superior." It was a shocking thing to say. But Pa wasn't himself lately, saying things that ruffled people, and sometimes infuriated them. I was embarrassed for my father, and for myself. I hoped his remark would pass, but Gregg picked up on it.
"Why 'some mess to clean up'?"
"Well, you know about your father's problem there at the end, don't you? He made some bad deals, just before he went into the hospital. Look, I'm just telling you, as a friend, that's all. Nobody in your firm talks about it, because they're afraid for their jobs."
"It's hard to believe what you're telling me. Dad was a shrewd businessman," Gregg said.
"Not so shrewd. Check out his cut-and-sew contracts for the last year," Pa said. "Alex bid too low on the Woman's Wearhouse blouse and shirt lines. He couldn't cover his costs."
"How do you know that?" Gregg said.
"Look, I know. I know what I know. We're in the same business, and I hear these things. He came in too low, and that was part of the problem."
"Part? Are you saying there's more?"
Pa just shrugged. I could feel the tension between the two men. This is not going well, I thought.
"I'd like to know," Gregg said.
"There are union reps stirring up trouble. A wage issue that’s been stewing for a year. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it."
"Really?"
"Alex let it get out of hand. Turns out your dad was not much of a businessman, after all." Another embarrassment from Pa. A big one.
There was a silence that seemed to go on forever. With each second that ticked away, I felt more uneasy. Finally Pa broke the quiet. “Things like that can destroy a company. Remember Al Starr — Starr Industries in New York? When business turned bad, in just six months he lost his company, then his home — everything. The day he settled with his creditors, he walked to the subway station and stepped in front of a train.”
Pa was staring straight ahead. He appeared to be looking at something, or someone, we couldn’t see. “I, uh, just heard.” His voice was low and sad. ”A heartbreak, Al. I was always fond of you. Of course, I don’t blame you. I respect your decision.” Then, slowly, he returned from his reverie. “And there were plenty of stories like that. But in good times and bad. Porteous Limited did business. We took home paychecks every week. Nobody ever missed a meal.”
Gregg moved toward the door. Pa had spooked him with his gloomy talk about problems at Superior Apparel, and by commiserating with the ghost of a man who had been dead for twenty years. Gregg wanted to leave, to get away, and I couldn't blame him. It was so melancholy. It had all gone wrong. Gregg looked into my eyes. He knew what had just happened. "I understand," he said to me, almost in a whisper.
"Understand what? What is it that you understand?" Pa said defensively.
"Just that you were absolutely right about Kit. She’s a lovely woman," Gregg said, changing the subject. He made a perfunctory goodbye and left, turning to say to Pa, "Think about it." Then he was gone.
I went to my father and reached over the desk to touch his hand. "Pa—"
He pulled away. "Don't look at me like I'm a crazy person."
"No, it's all right."
"I was just telling a story, for God's sake."
"It's all right, Pa."
"Don’t worry about your father. Believe me, I know this business. I'm smarter than those Monsells. Always have been." He paced to the window and back, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. He appeared shrunken, somehow, and his brow was furrowed. Back again to the window. "You know why he came here, that arrogant soldier boy? He thinks I need help running this plant. He wants to take over Porteous Limited. Oh sure, he calls it a merger of our two companies, equal partners, but that's a joke. He wants to manage the whole show. Can't manage his own business, and now he wants to manage mine, too""
"Did he say that?" I said.
"He didn't have to say it. It's as plain as the sun up in the sky. Think about it, he walks in here wearing thousand dollar suit, tells me he can show me how to start our own line of ladies' leisure wear. Does he think that's what I want? We made our reputation in cut-and-sew for the big labels. We have relationships that go back thirty, forty years. I'll stick to who I know and what I know, thank you."
"But so much of the cut-and-sew business is going to China, and Bangladesh, and other places" I said. "The industry here can't compete. Some plants have had to close their doors. Maybe it's smart to look for new ways to make money."
"Apparel manufacturing businesses are failing because they were never that strong to begin with. That's th
e trouble with Superior. Why do you think that soldier boy is so eager to take over here? Because we have money in the bank, and he doesn't."
"How do you know he doesn't have cash?"
"Because I know," Pa said. He pointed a forefinger at me. "And by the way, I don't like the way he was leering at you from the minute you walked in."
"Was he leering? I didn't think so."
"He was. Absolutely. A man like that, you have to watch out for."
Pa was rolling now, pacing faster around his office, getting more steamed up. His face was red and his eyes shifted this way and that. To hear him tell it, he knew everybody's secrets, didn't trust anybody, resolved again and again that he would run Porteous Limited the way he always had. There was a time I could discuss matters with him, calmly and quietly. But no more. Not for several months now. He was often confused, confrontational, ready to argue about the simplest things. I knew it was useless to talk with him right now. "My work's piling up," I said. "I'll see you later."
I walked to my office, a glass enclosed space in a corner of the sewing floor. My head was spinning.
Asking Pa about Gregg's plan would only get him angry again. If I wanted a straight answer, I'd have to get it directly from Gregg Monsell. Well, why couldn't I just call him on the phone and talk with him? Why? Because Pa would go ballistic if he found out. Because I really didn't know yet what kind of man Gregg was. Because my reaching out to Gregg would put Porteous Limited in a weak negotiating position, if a merger was ever going to happen. All good reasons.
And of course, there were bad reasons: Gregg Monsell was a hot item, and I was in need of male company.
Still, Gregg had made the first move by coming to visit Pa. I'll just be following up, I thought. Gregg's reputation as a lady-killer troubled me. I tried to convince myself that my interest would not constitute a romantic invitation. It's business, right? But of course, I admitted, it’s been such a long time since I had someone touch me in a way that stirred me, down deep. No chance a new someone would be Gregg Monsell. But, I supposed, you never know.
I decided I'd call him the next day, and see for myself what he really wanted. If I didn't, I thought, I might never know.
I heard my answering machine beeping when I got home to my apartment, so I pushed the playback button. I recognized the voice as soon as the message began. It was a southern accent out of my past, a halting, deep rumble. It was Lucien Goodhue.
"Hello, Kit, it’s Lucien" he said. "I know you thought you'd never hear my voice again. And I never thought I'd have the courage to call you. You know I was never long on courage." He was talking slowly, choosing his words carefully. Was he just nervous, or had he been drinking? "The truth is, I think of you, have thought of you, ever since…” He hesitated. “Since I ran away. I see you in my mind’s eye. The time we had together was the best time of my life, before or since. I'm hoping you feel some of that, too. Maybe just a little. Enough to let me come to see you. All I'm asking is that you think about it. I'll call you again, Kit. I hope to see you soon."
My time years ago with Lucien was strange and wonderful — right until the end. Lucien's voice from the answering machine brought memories flooding back, memories that had faded from my mind year by year. It was a part of my life that had changed me dramatically, made me more sarcastic, more abrasive. It was because of my adventure with Lucien back then, that I had to try hard to not be a bitch today.
CHAPTER 2
As a young girl, I’d gone from one disappointment to another. I’d give up on my playmates, and later boys would give up on me. I hoped that I’d meet exciting people and do forbidden things. But when I tried, it didn’t happen, and in the end I was still home with Pa, disillusioned — but of course, safe.
I was convinced that I hadn’t ventured far enough from home. So when it came time for college, I chose Tulane, in New Orleans. It was far from Pennsylvania and it sounded exotic — jazz and spicy food and people who talked with that sensual drawl. Pa didn’t like my going so far away, but because I hardly ever asked him for anything, he gave in and agreed. He flew with me down to New Orleans, and before he left to come back, he gave me a chain necklace with a big diamond — over two carats — in a gold setting. He said, “The stone is from your mother’s cocktail ring. Not every young girl should wear a diamond, Katherine. But you, you’re a Porteous.”
I couldn’t imagine myself sitting in class with that diamond around my neck. What would they think of me? But Pa was always so certain of himself. I told him it was elegant. Then I put it away, and never wore it.
Maybe it meant something to be a Porteous in Pennsylvania, but not at Tulane. The southern girls, they stuck with each other, and they shut me out. And the boys — there was nothing about a Yankee girl who looked like a hippie, that made their Confederate hearts beat faster. Once again I was looking for something that wasn't there. My adventure turned out to be a bust.
Misery does love company. Lucien Goodhue and I fell into each other’s arms, each thrilled to discover another truly unhappy person. Lucien, a gentle, withdrawn misfit from Birmingham, was in New Orleans to learn engineering. Our relationship happened so suddenly and so intensely that we understood from the very beginning that intimacy was inevitable, and for me, the sooner the better.
On the first day we met, after talking for barely two hours, we hurried to his shabby student apartment off campus. The afternoon sun was pouring through the two windows of the studio. Without saying a word to him, I pulled down the window shades. The sunlight against the shades cast an amber glow on the room, and on us. It was surreal, and unbelievably exciting. I wanted to be naked, and I wanted to see him naked. I pulled off everything I wore, as Lucien stripped down to his white briefs. I went to him, hooked my fingers inside the briefs and pulled them to the floor. He stepped out of them. He was even skinnier without his clothes than he was with them.
He wasn't yet as aroused as I was, and seemed embarrassed that his sex was still limp. "I'll be ready in a minute," he said, almost in a whisper.
"I can take care of that," I said, thrilled at my own boldness. Standing there in the middle of the room, I took him in both my hands and massaged him gently until he rose up. He was right. He was ready in a minute.
We stumbled to his unmade bed and fell into it. Lucien hesitated, almost as though he didn't know what to do next. I climbed on top of him, and we rocked together in a frenzy. I looked down at his boyish face, and his long brown hair against the pillow. His eyes were closed tight with the effort he was making. Then I saw him arch his back off the bed. "Are you ready?" I said.
"Oh, yes. Yes," he said. We rocked faster and faster, almost as if someone or something was chasing us. Finally, I felt him shudder as we climaxed together. It was sublime.
We made love again that afternoon, and regularly in the months that followed.
While Lucien was always a willing partner, it was usually I who initiated our frequent episodes of sex. It wasn't so much the satisfaction of sex that drove me. It was the knowledge that I was finally doing something adventurous, something daring. I told myself that Lucien belonged to me, fulfilled me. I had what I wanted — a boy who was as disdainful of the world as I was.
The closer Lucien and I drew to each other, the more we distanced ourselves from everyone else. One night I said, "Why are we staying here in this place we don't like at all, and be with people we don't like, either? Let's go away together — leave Tulane behind." It was the boldest thought I'd ever had. But once I said it, I couldn’t let go. Being off together with a lover, for the first time in my life. The idea was irresistible.
But not for Lucien. It frightened him. "Yes, of course I love you," he said. "Yes, I want to be with you. But where would we go? How would we live? And what about our parents?"
"We'll drive through Texas to Mexico," I told him. "Living is cheap there, and I can get some money, don’t worry. Our parents will love us anyway." I wasn’t sure about any of it — just pulling it out of the air. B
ut I knew if I kept at it, I would convince him. Other people had been making up his mind for him all his life.
Finally, he grinned in that innocent way of his, and said yes. Next day, I took the diamond Pa gave me to a jeweler and sold it. Then we bought a decrepit 11-year-old Chevrolet from an equally decrepit used car dealer, with most of the money. We would leave for Mexico on Saturday morning.
But when Saturday morning came, Lucien was gone. The couple in the adjoining apartment said he’d left suddenly, hitch-hiking back to Birmingham. Oh, and here’s an envelope he left. The message inside said only this: “I’m not the right one.” He hadn’t signed it
I should have known from the start that Lucien was not a boy for an adventure. He didn’t have the courage to leave with me — or even to stay and face me.
Now I had no Lucien, no one at all. When I took the car back to the dealer, he gave me only half of what I'd paid to buy it. And my mother’s diamond was gone, sold by the jeweler hours after I’d brought it in. When I told my father, he never passed judgment on what I’d done. "Come back to Pennsylvania," he said , "and finish your degree here."
My adventure with a sweet, spineless boy from Birmingham was the most profound disappointment in my life. I promised myself then that it would be the last.
* * *
And now here he was, that boy from Birmingham, after nearly five years. Did he really think I'd see him, let him back into my life again? I remembered that he'd sent me a letter several months after I'd left Tulane. When I saw it was from Lucien, I threw it away without reading it. Other letters came for a while, then they stopped. He hadn't tried to contact me again, until now.
It wasn't that I hated him, or even merely disliked him. I pitied him, not for what he did, but what he lacked. And I knew that was something that would never change. But my number was in the phone book, and I couldn't stop him from calling. I'll think about that later, I told myself. Right now I have to find out if Mr. Gregg Monsell can make business magic for Porteous Limited. Just be careful.
