Chapter One
The phone rang. She answered quickly. Kathryn was routinely in a rush—the life of a stockbroker with far too much to do and so little time.
“Kathryn. Thayer here,” the voice on the other end spoke abruptly.
“Yes, I recognize your voice, darling.” She smiled to hear her husband’s deep baritone, then flipping her dark hair back with a flick of her head, she cradled the phone on her shoulder and went about poring over the client’s file before her. “So, we’re going to dinner with Rob and Lauren tonight?”
“No. I canceled, although we will be going out.”
“Wait, those plans were made weeks ago—” She opened a file on her computer while waiting for her husband’s reply.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
“Could you be less vague?” she said absently, as her eyes scanned the screen.
“Less vague? No. I’ll pick you up at work. I’ll have your clothes with me; you can change in the car.”
As this last piece of pertinent information dropped into place, a half dozen small cues in the short exchange between husband and wife had melded into a single fact.
Her face paled, drained of its vibrancy as if a ghost had just passed through her body. She stiffened briefly, then all the nervous stockbroker energy that took over at eight o’clock every weekday morning seemed to melt from her body. Her eyes were strangely dreamy now. If one were looking on they’d have seen the svelte thirty-something female take off her black rimmed glasses, and emerge from her cocoon of proper business protocol to become the fluid Kathryn of the evening hours.
She took the phone in her hand, her voice deepening as she spoke. “I’ll be waiting for you on the curb, six o’clock.”
“Five-thirty,” he countered.
“Yes, of course. Five-thirty.”
In another part of town, Jewel Brody was bent over her sewing machine, turning the hem on a pair of suit trousers, when Billy Brignace placed his hands on her hunched shoulders.
“I got a call,” was all he had to say, to have his girlfriend seize up and turn enough to see his face.
She looked alarmed. “Darlin’, I have a stack of stuff to do? I could never—” she bit off the last of her retort before she finished.
Billy just smiled and moved away, sitting on a nearby table so that his feet dangled a foot off the cement floor. “So what? You hang out here for another three hours, then go home to Frank, huh? That’s how you want to spend your weekend?” He was smug and brash and all knowing, sporting a cocky smile.
The picture of her beer swilling, pot-bellied husband jumped into Jewel’s mind.
“Besides,” Billy went on, looking almost evil now, “You’re as pent-up as a caged flea.”
She let her thoughts fix on Billy’s caged flea, and her big chest heaved and her eyes started to smolder darkly. A shiver shook every bit of voluptuous flesh. Though her thick blonde hair was a tangled mess and her clothes a little rumpled she was still a stunningly sexual woman.
All around her sewing machines were humming, just as hers should be. But she couldn’t be less interested now that her concentration was broken. “You know how much I want to fuck you, baby,” she told Billy in a breathy whisper. She looked around self-conscious
