was equally certain he was going to do. Diana Lee Cooper didn’t object. Going to bed with him was a foregone conclusion, the reason she’d agreed to come to his apartment in the first place.
She knew he wanted her again, that he couldn’t get enough of her, and Diana Lee Cooper was willing. In fact, she was more than willing.
As she meandered around the room, looking through the collection of books-volumes of poetry and philosophy, a Middle English version of
Here was someone she wanted-a man of intellect, a man of some refinement and grace, a man she could respect, who was, as far as she could tell, as different from her own backwoods father as he could possibly be. That difference was exactly what she’d been searching for-someone not the least bit like Max Cooper.
And if “spreading her legs,” as her father would have said, was all it took to win him, then bring on the double bed and spread away. She knew what those words meant now, and she was beginning to have some sense of her own power. She’d show her father, all right. If sex was the bait and Gary Ladd was the prize, she’d screw until Garrison Ladd couldn’t walk or talk or see straight, if that’s what he wanted. She’d do whatever he asked and more besides.
As she stood there in the apartment’s small living room waiting for him, Diana Cooper couldn’t see that the furnishings were relatively cheap. Compared to what she knew from Joseph, it was palatial. What she saw convinced her that she’d found the man of her dreams, one worthy of her undying loyalty, someone she could afford to lavish her love on, someone who would give her love and laughter in return.
She was so smitten, so convinced by her own initial, naive assumptions, that it was years before she began to question them. By then, it was too late.
“You can come in now,” he called.
As she’d suspected, the bed had been hastily made, with lumpy covers pulled up over pillows but not properly tucked in. He was closing the closet door when she walked into the bedroom.
For the first time, Garrison Ladd seemed slightly unsure of himself. “The couch isn’t very comfortable,” he said hesitantly. “I thought we could lie here and watch television or something.”
The fact that he seemed nervous filled her again with that headspinning, newfound sense of power. Without a word, she kicked off her shoes, slipped out of her jeans, and peeled the University of Oregon sweatshirt off over her head. When she looked up from unfastening her bra, Garrison Ladd was still standing with his hand frozen to the knob on the closet door. He stood unmoving, his eyes feasting hungrily on her nakedness.
“Well?” she said airily, moving toward the bed and turning down the covers. “Are you coming or not?”
He jumped away from the closet.
“You didn’t want us to watch television with our clothes on, did you?”
“No,” he said with a startled laugh. “No, I guess not.”
He hurried out of his own clothes then, dropping them on the floor as he went, and flipping on the switch of the tiny television set as he came to the bed. Gradually, the picture appeared, but the sound stayed off.
Laughing, Garrison Ladd fell across the bed and landed on top of Diana, knocking the breath out of both of them, making them both laugh some more. He kissed her once and then settled his head on the pillow beside her.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “the ‘Playboy Advisor’ always said there were girls like you in the world, but I never believed it. Not for a minute.”
“Girls like what?” Diana asked, feigning innocence, as though she had no idea what he meant. She wanted to hear him say the words.
“Girls who like
She bit him gently on the exposed side of his neck, and was gratified to feel under her fingertips the fine layer of gooseflesh that rose at once on the bared skin of his chest.
She remembered how, during one of their Rodeo Royalty weekends in Pendleton or Omak or one of those places, her attendants had explained to her in gory detail exactly how biting affected men, how it turned them on. It was one of those all-night gabfests with the chaperon fast asleep in the motel room next door when Diana finally confessed to the others that the current year’s queen of the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo was still a virgin. Shocked runners-up Charlene Davis and Suzanne Lake took it upon themselves to give Diana Lee Cooper the benefit of their own somewhat wider experience.
“If you really want to drive a man crazy,” Charlene said, “you bite him all over. Most men can hardly stand it if you do that.”
“Or lick ’em,” Suzanne added mysteriously. “Like an all-day sucker.”
The other two girls rolled on the bed with laughter, although Diana didn’t quite understand what was so funny.
“And then. .” Suzanne said, still laughing and gasping for breath, “. . and then. . when they’re all excited, you leave ’em high and dry. I did that to stupid Joe Moore, remember him? I’ll never forget. His little prick was standing straight up in the air, waving like a rabbit’s ear. When I got out of the car, he started to cry, I swear to God. I mean, he was literally bawling like a baby. He came after me and begged me to get back in the car and finish it, and I said to him, ‘I don’t know what kind of a girl you think I am.’”
And Suzanne and Charlene laughed some more. Diana joined in, but only half-heartedly. It wasn’t so funny to her, because she knew then for the first time what her father had meant when he called her that-a prick-tease. Once more she swore to herself that she wouldn’t be that. If she teased a man, it would be because she intended to do something about it.
She bit Gary Ladd again, harder this time, just at the base of the neck, her sharp teeth leaving a line of small indentations in the smoothly tanned skin. He groaned above her, and she could feel the hardness of him pressing at her through the covers.
He pawed at the sheet and blanket and pulled them away from her, then he fell on her, burying himself deep inside her body. Bruised and sore, she nonetheless raised welcoming hips to meet him, while behind them, on the silenced television set, Jack Ruby mutely gunned down a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald.
It was a weekend where no one got quite what they bargained for-not Ruby, not Oswald, and certainly not Diana Lee Cooper.
Because Toby Walker had essentially stolen a county car, Brandon was reluctant to report it through regular channels. He called Hank Maddern at home and asked for advice.
Maddern’s suggestion was succinct. “Report it,” he said at once. “That’ll get word out to the cars so everybody’s looking. In the meantime, I’ll come over and we’ll see what we can do.”
Leaving Louella with strict instructions to remain by the phone, Brandon escaped from the house and his mother to the relative sanity of Hank Maddern’s Ford F-100. Maddern drove through the neighborhood in ever- widening circles while the younger man brimmed over with self-reproach.
“It’s all my fault,” he fumed. “All of it. I never should have left the damned keys there in the first place, but I just didn’t think about it. In our house, car keys have been kept on that pegboard for as long as I can remember.”
“He’s never done anything like this before?” Hank asked.
“Never.”
“There’s always a first time,” Maddern said with a shrug.
One-handed, he shook two cigarettes out of a pack, passed one to Brandon, and then punched the lighter. “And for Chrissake, forget about whose fault it is. Fault doesn’t matter. By the way, what was your old man wearing when he took off?”
“Pajamas,” Brandon answered. “Red-and-white-striped cotton pajamas.”
“Somebody dressed like that shouldn’t be too tough to find. How were you fixed for gas?”
“Gas? Almost empty, actually. I should have filled before I left the office yesterday, but I didn’t want to take the time. I drove all the way out to Sells and back last night.”
“And didn’t come home until late, either,” Hank added with a mischievous wink. “Did you get lucky?”
“Look, Hank, it wasn’t anything like that,” Brandon said quickly. “Diana Ladd needed help with the boy, that’s all.”
