Sacramento home. The bitch had the audacity to give her address and telephone number to Kate at the barbecue.
His anger drove him to run even harder.
He came to a gradual halt outside the small ranch style house. It was a corner plot and still had the for sale sign outside that hung from a post buried in the lawn close to the sidewalk. Bent over with his hands on his knees, he panted heavily. Sweat fell from his forehead and hair, the droplets splashing on the sidewalk.
He crossed the short path to the front door and
pressed the doorbell. No one answered. He pressed the doorbell again. This time he kept his finger on the button, which made the chimes drone tunelessly. He heard movement and took his finger off the bell. He disliked its sound as much as the person who moved unhappily inside the house did.
The door opened and Josh didn’t wait to be invited inside. He barged in, knocking the door from the occupant’s hand. If she could barge her way into his home
uninvited, then he could do the same to her.
“Good morning, Josh. You found me. Thanks for the wake-up call.” Bell showed no sign of annoyance at the abrupt entry. In fact, she smiled.
Josh looked about him, staring at the starkly furnished living room. “I suppose my money went to buy
this place,” he said.
Bell looked at him approvingly. She closed the door and leaned against it with her arms crossed over her electric blue silk robe. “Don’t flatter yourself—you didn’t give me that much money. No, I have a friend who’s a realtor and I’m staying here while they sell it.
It’s a repo from a family that couldn’t keep up with the payments. They just couldn’t keep up with the changing pace of life.”
“Is that last remark supposed to mean anything?”
“Read into it whatever you want.”
Not waiting for a response, she walked into the
kitchen, retying the belt to her robe as she went. Her feet made sticking noises on the vinyl floor. She filled the coffeemaker with water and grounds before switching it on. “Do you want coffee?”
Josh followed her into the kitchen and stood against the sink behind her. “No, I’m not here for a social visit.”
“Shame,” she said.
She stood on tiptoe to retrieve a mug from the cupboard in front of her. The robe climbed up the backs of her thighs to expose more of her slender legs. The material clung to Bell’s stretching body. It accentuated her waist and buttocks hidden beneath the rich blue silk, becoming nothing more than a second skin. Josh’s gaze crawled over her body—its structure, proportions and form. Her body moved gracefully, almost in a dance, all so very enticing. Once. She removed the mug and placed it on the counter next to the coffeemaker.
“Still attracted to me, Josh? Still want to fuck me, Josh? You can if you want.” Her back still faced him.
The remarks took him by surprise. She knew him so well. He cursed himself for still being caught by her stupid games. Nothing about Bell was innocent. Everything she did was carefully calculated. She was tempting him. She knew he’d look, and look lustfully. She
knew exactly how to pull his strings. But that was then and this was now. He was no longer her plaything. He was cutting the strings. “No thanks. Like I said, I’m not here to socialize.”
Bell turned around to face him and met him with a grin. She pulled the sides of the robe apart, exposing her small firm breasts and erect nipples. Leaning against the work surface, she slid her right leg up her left and the flimsy cloth fell from her smooth legs, exposing her completely. “Are you sure? Are you sure I
can’t offer you something from the dessert cart?”
The coffeemaker coughed and spluttered as boiling water dropped onto the grounds. Steam rose through the vents and a rising cloud appeared from behind Bell’s head.
Josh ignored Bell’s offer, but not her exposed body.
He cast a glance over what his senses had already experienced, then looked Bell in the eye. “I’m here about the
latest television scoop on Channel Three.”
She blurted out a laugh. She lowered her leg to the floor and her naked body disappeared behind the curtains of swaying silk. She wrapped the robe around her
and retied it. “Is there more sweat on your brow than I remember seeing earlier, Josh?”
“Channel Three, last night. Was that you?”
“What do you mean? Is your past coming back to
bite you in the ass?”
“You know exactly what I mean..
“Well, I cannot tell a lie. Yes, it was me.”
“Why? I paid you.”
Bell dropped the smile in favor of a sneer. “Yeah, but you thought you could push me around. So I thought I would apply a little pressure to ensure you don’t do something stupid again.”
“So, what’s the next step, leak them my name?”
“No, you keep your end up and I’ll make sure that they don’t find out any more.”
Josh knew that one day the money would dry up. It wasn’t far off. “But what happens when I can’t?”
She leered. “What do you think will happen?”
“So be it. If you’re going to skewer me, it might as well be sooner than later. Go to hell. I’m not paying you anymore.”
Bell looked as if he’d slapped her. “How dare you speak to me like that.”
Josh was in no mood to listen to a tirade, and headed back to the front door. He ignored the expletives that followed him.
He opened the front door, but stopped in the doorway.
“Here’s the deal, Bell. I’m willing to give you a one-off payment that will buy your silence for good.
After that, I never want to hear from you again. Let me know your answer in your own time.”
She followed Josh out into the front yard. Her response mostly never graduated higher than four-letter
words. “You’ll be sorry, Josh.”
Josh didn’t know if he would, but he felt good. He liked pushing people who pushed him. He broke into a jog.
Bell shouted after him from the lawn. Her threats soon lagged behind his pace somewhere in the distance.
Josh’s run back home invigorated him. He felt
stronger and more positive than he had in some time.
Finally, he’d taken some control of the situation with Bell. She would no longer screw him up. He’d tipped the balance of power in his favor. Not even the notion that Bell could go straight to the media with his part in the Mountain Vista Apartments scandal could dampen his spirits. His inner strength came from the ability to bring closure to the subject. He no longer had to hide behind a wall of cash to keep the truth from coming out. He would take his chances and deal with whatever consequences arose.
Josh sprinted the last hundred yards to his home and shaved five minutes off the two and a half miles from Bell’s. Although sweat ran down his body and he
breathed like an asthmatic wood saw, he felt good. Josh took the key from his zipped pants pocket and opened the door.
“I’m back,” he called out to anyone who would listen.
Not waiting for anyone to answer, he started pulling off his sweatshirt and made his way to the bathroom to shower. He had the sweatshirt over his head and one foot on the first stair when he was called back.
“Josh,” Kate said.
He had completely pulled the aptly named sweatshirt over his head but still had his arms through the sleeves as he turned to face his wife. She sat on the couch in the living room with Abby and Wiener. The image reminded him of Russian dolls. Each doll removed from
inside the others and stacked in descending order of size—Kate, Abby and Wiener. Like the dolls, the three of
