Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

For a brief description of what takes place in the previous chapters, visit this page.

For a list of the characters from the story you are now reading, visit this page. 

For a list of the characters from the previous two stories that you will encounter here as well, visit this page.

And now, dear readers, we make our way into the next installment. Read on…

 

by Rachael Yukey

No no never turn your back on a stranger
No no never turn your back on a friend
Evil lies lurking leaving you alone and in danger
Waiting in shadows just to steal your soul away
Angel Witch, 1985

“Melissa Brentshaw speaking.”

Nettie opened her mouth, but no words came. It struck her all at once that the woman she’d just phoned up was a blood relative of Anna’s murderer, and her carefully planned introduction whooshed straight out of her head, leaving Nettie with violent tremors in her hands, accompanied by a sudden wave of nausea. She slumped forward, bent over her desk, staring at the blank first page of the notebook she’d bought earlier that day.

“Hello? Who is this?” The tone was strong, confident. The woman behind this voice was clearly accustomed to people listening when she spoke.

Nettie took a deep, steadying breath. Don’t blow this, damn it. “I’m sorry,” she got out. Her voice was surprisingly steady, and she took courage in that. Lifting her head, she pressed forward. “My name is Antoinette, and I’m an investigations consultant. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to meet with me in person within the next week or two. I have some questions regarding—”

“Is this about my brother Jacob?”

Nettie hesitated, caught off-guard. She’d intended to introduce the subject matter with finesse. Then she gave a mental shrug. “It is,” she said. “I was recently involved in the investigation of a kidnapping in—”

“Minnesota,” the woman on the other end finished for her. The voice was utterly composed, devoid of inflection. Nettie knew at once that she’d never be able to get a read on this person over the phone.

“I saw it in the news,” Melissa Brentshaw went on. “That is the case you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Once more, Nettie found herself at a loss for words. The woman on the other end of the line had her completely off-balance. With an effort, she found her voice. “Ms. Brentshaw, it’s important that I interview you in person, and at the earliest—”

“I can’t imagine why,” Melissa Brentshaw broke in. “If you’ve done your homework, then surely you know my brother is dead. How could he possibly be involved in anything that’s happening now?”

“Yes, I do know that, thank you,” Nettie was getting mad now, and it did her a world of good. “There have, however, been some indications that there might have been one or more accomplices involved in his earlier activities, and we’re thinking they might be responsible for the incident earlier this month.”

“And what do you suppose I’d know about that? I was a senior in high school when he was arrested.”

“Still, he was your brother—which means you might know more than you think.”

“Okay, look.” At this sharper tone of voice, Nettie allowed herself a smile. Melissa Brentshaw sounded genuinely exasperated, marking the first real break in her composure. “Jacob was sixteen years older than me, okay? He was out of the house before I was even old enough to remember him living there. I barely knew him. One of my older sisters might be able to help you more, if you can even get them to talk to you. Probably you can’t.”

Nettie saw her opening and went for it. “They’ll end up subpoenaed sooner or later, then,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “So will you, for that matter. But I might be able to spare you that. If we could spend part of an afternoon together—a few hours at most—just the statement you give me might be enough, since you and Mr. Brentshaw weren’t particularly close.”

There was a long silence from the other end of the line. Finally: “What did you say your name was?”

“Antoinette.”

An impatient sigh. “You have a last name?”

Nettie let out a carefully calculated chuckle. “Sorry. Antoinette LaJean.” LaJean was her middle name, which she was nearly certain had not been included in any of the press surrounding her own abduction case.

“All right, Antoinette LaJean.” That indefinable air of command crackled through the phone speaker like a whip. “You can have your interview. But not right away. I’m boarding a plane this afternoon that’s taking me down to Curacao. That’s an island in the Carribean, where I’m going to spend the next two weeks enjoying the triple S. We can meet after I get back.”

Blindsided, Nettie sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry—triple S?” she asked, mostly buying herself a few seconds to think.

“Surf, sun, and sex.” The voice was utterly deadpan. Nettie had to bite the inside of her cheek to avoid spraying nervous, schoolgirl laughter into the phone. For one wild moment she entertained the notion of flying out to the Caribbean to get her interview, then scaled it back to doing it over the phone, before rejecting that notion, too. No, I need to look in this woman’s eyes when I talk to her.

“Can we make an appointment now, Ms. Brentshaw? For when you get back?”

There was a moment’s pause. “Noon on the fourteenth of July,” The tone left no room for negotiation. “That’s a Thursday. Bradford’s Diner in downtown Cedar Rapids. They have private booths there. Your treat. I trust you can make that work?”

“I certainly can. Er, enjoy your vacation, Ms. Brentshaw.”

“I intend to. Goodbye, Ms. LaJean.” The line went dead.

Nettie sagged back in the chair, a hard knot of anger tightening in her belly. Mostly at herself, for not coming up with a better solution. Two whole weeks! She stabbed at her phone. Within minutes she had a conference call established with Bridgett Ramscone and Latisha Miller.

“I blew it,” she muttered, still fuming.

“Blew what?” asked Latisha.

“I booked an interview with Melissa Brentshaw, but she’ll be in the Caribbean for two motherfucking weeks. I can’t meet with her till the fourteenth.”

“I’m sorry, Nettie,” said Bridgett, “but so what? At least you got the meeting.”

“So what?! How long do you think we have until that fucking knob goes after more little—”

“If we’re still assuming there’s a connection with the Brentshaw murders, then at least seven months,” Latisha broke in.

Nettie, just launching into a full-on tirade, was brought up short. “How do you figure?”

“Because that’s the shortest gap between Brentshaw’s past crimes. He always waited for the previous case to go cold before moving on to another victim.”

Nettie shook her head, belatedly realizing that nobody could see. “Maybe, but did he ever have to run before he finished? That might change things a bit.”

“If anything it’d make a perp more cautious,” Bridgett countered. “He’ll wait awhile, make sure the heat is off—or at least on simmer. He came very close to getting caught, so he’ll be more careful for awhile.”

“Listen, Nettie,” said Latisha. “I can already see that your biggest hang-up as an investigator is going to be patience. On most cases, you have to let events play out in their own time. We’re all trying to catch bad guys before they get a chance to act again, but rushing things is the surest way to skip over clues.”

“So I just sit around with my thumb up my ass for two weeks? Seriously?”

“If you were a full-time agent,” said Bridgett, “you’d be working on other cases. But there are things you can do in the meantime. Compile information. Get your notes together. Dot the I’s and cross the T’s. Work out what you’re going to say to Melissa Brentshaw and have it down cold. Where are you meeting her?”

“A downtown cafe in Cedar Rapids.”

“Perfect,” said Latisha. “Not gonna lie; I’d be nervous if she wanted to meet you anywhere private. Still—watch your ass. This grass might have snakes lurking in it.”

“I’ll be careful,” Nettie assured them.

***

Mallory emerged from the bathroom of her father’s old farmhouse, grimacing at her complete inability to start thinking of it as her house. She and Julie had pulled into the farmstead late the previous evening, having spent most of three days in Bronning.

She made her way down the hall and into the kitchen, expecting to find Julie there, but she was nowhere to be seen. Poking her head into the living room, she glanced about—no Julie.

“Babe?” she called out. No reply, and the house was small enough that Julie would have heard it no matter where she might be. Mallory reversed course, ambling through the entryway and onto the front porch. The chill morning breeze tugged on her two-piece pajama set. Felt like rain.

Belatedly, she realized the dimness of the light was due to overcast, not the early hour. She glanced at her watch, then rolled her eyes. It was quarter to nine already. Slugabed Mallory strikes again. Turning her gaze to the sky, she watched the thunder-bumpers rolling in, heard the rumbling in the distance. It would be pissing down rain any time now.

She scanned the yard. The Buick was parked in its usual spot. So where the hell is Julie? She was about to duck back into the house and go for her phone when she spotted light in the dingy window set into the entry door of the machine shed. Raising her eyebrows, she descended the porch steps, picking her way up the dirt trail towards the large metal-sided structure. The soil, liberally interspersed with grass now that nobody was driving farm machinery on it, felt good beneath her bare feet.

As she traversed the hundred yards or so from the house to the shed, a flash of lightning split the sky ahead of her, a grumble of thunder rolling through just moments later. Idly, she wondered how long they were going to be stuck in the shed waiting for the rain to abate. Oh, well.

Maybe we’ll find some way to occupy ourselves, she mused with the hint of a smile. I think that old Star Wars blanket of mine is still in there…

The entry door was set into the wall directly to the left of an enormous garage roll-up that was large enough for a good-sized combine to fit through with the header detached. Mallory pushed the smaller door open, realizing with distaste that she now had to walk barefoot on the gritty, oil-soaked concrete of the garage floor. With a resigned sigh, she stepped inside.

At the other end of the cavernous space, in the back left corner of the shed, was Julie, her head halfway beneath the hood of the old two-cylinder John Deere diesel tractor Mallory’s father had never gotten around to restoring.

At the sound of the closing door, Julie straightened, looked over her shoulder and flashed her world-brightening smile. “Morrning, sweetie,” she called out, beckoning with an enthusiastic come-hither gesture. “Get your buns over here and check it out. This thing is so cool!”

Shaking her head at the notion that anyone might find a greasy old tractor this exciting before at least lunchtime, Mallory took a cautious step forward.

Julie held up a hand. “Whoa, Mal—are you barefoot?”

Pausing in mid-step, Mallory shrugged elaborately. “Didn’t think of it till I’d already walked over here.”

Julie shook her head. “Look to your left,” she said. “I think there’s a pair of old sandals or something.”

Trying and failing to imagine her father in sandals, Mallory looked down at the floor. Sure enough, tossed carelessly into the corner were a pair of worn paisley Crocs. Mallory frowned. Not only would her father have refused to wear such a thing had his life depended on it, they were clearly not his size. The answer was, of course, obvious. Her dad and Agatha Kershaw had become much more chummy than either would have acknowledged in public.

Grinning, Mallory shoved her feet into the things, then made her way across the floor to where Julie was fiddling with something bolted to the engine. Mallory’s smile got bigger as she approached, taking in the view of her lover. Julie managed to make raggedy-ass jeans, a smudged Starbucks tee left over from a briefly-held college job, and a plaid do-rag look sexy as hell.

She was using a line wrench to loosen a metal hose attached to what was most likely the injector pump. Mallory was by no means mechanically inclined, but she’d lived around farm machinery for long enough to have a pretty good idea of what she was looking at. Most of the time.

“Take a look, Mal,” Julie enthused.

“At what, precisely?” Mallory was taking care to stand a few feet to the side, knowing her partner’s tendency to gesticulate when excited. She had no desire to get the dirty old oil caked into Julie’s hands and arms all over her PJs.

“All the important parts are here,” said Julie. “I think. And check this out.” Setting aside the wrench, she put both hands on the large side-mounted flywheel, the protective cover of which she’d removed and leaned against one of the rear tires. Giving the flywheel a heave, she got it to rotate a few inches counter-clockwise. It rocked back when she let go. “Know what that means?”

Mallory folded her arms. “Means the insects have a Ferris wheel?”

“No, dummy!” Julie slapped at her with grubby fingers, but Mallory danced adroitly out of the way. “It means the engine isn’t seized up! It’s tough to turn, but that’s good; means we’re getting compression.”

“Sounds great—or it would if I had a crop to bring in. Julie, what are you trying to accomplish here?”

“I bet I can get it running, Mal! I can’t get the pony engine to turn over, but once I get the gunk out of these fuel lines and some fresh diesel in the tank, the big engine might pull-start.”

Mallory found herself wishing for somewhere she could sit that wouldn’t stain her pajamas. “You’re so adorable. You know I have no idea what a pony engine is.”

Julie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “It’s a little engine that starts a big engine. The model R was John Deere’s first diesel tractor, and they were still figuring out the best ways to get the things fired up. Instead of an electric starter, there’s a little gasoline engine called a pony engine. That has an electric starter. You fire up the pony engine, let it run for a minute or two, then there’s a clutch that engages the big engine. As soon as the diesel is running, you kill the pony engine.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry I asked.”

Julie didn’t break stride. “Anyway, the pony engine isn’t working—I’m pretty sure the starter is shot. But even without that, I’ll bet we could get my dad’s pickup out here and pull-start this bitch.”

“What for?”

Julie looked nonplussed. “Well—why not? You hung onto this thing Mal, when you sold all the other stuff. Wouldn’t it be cool to see it running?”

Mallory realized she was being bitchy because she was still half-asleep. No coffee in the morning was going to take some getting used to. She smiled at her partner. “It would be cool. Will be. Sorry. I’m not awake yet.”

Julie’s lips twisted into a sideways grin. “Goes without sayin’, pumpkin.” Taking up the wrench again, she returned to the half-loosened fuel line fitting.

Mallory’s brow furrowed. “How do you know so much about this thing, anyway?”

“I came out and took a look at it last week—kinda got interested. Then I started reading up online about two-cylinder Johnny tractors, and the early diesels in particular. I got to thinking while we were up in Bronning that it’d be a fun project to at least get the engine running.”

Mallory chuckled. “You know you’re a crazy lady, right?”

A loud crack of thunder outside was followed at once by what started as a light pattering of rain on the metal roof, but rapidly escalated into a deluge.

“Sounds like we’re stuck here for a bit,” Julie murmured, not looking up from her work. “Might as well sit down, Mal.”

Glancing around in vain for her old blanket, Mallory spread her hands. “On what? Everything is gross out here, and these are new PJs.”

Julie jerked her thumb towards a desk tucked into the opposite corner of the back wall. It squatted next to an empty bookshelf that once held service manuals for the various bits of farm machinery Dan Kalvornek had owned. An office chair was tucked in under the desk. “That chair doesn’t look too grubby,” said Julie.

Mallory wandered over, pulled the chair out, and gave it a once-over. It had clearly seen better days, but there weren’t any obvious grease or oil stains. Mallory’s father had usually washed his hands before coming over to look something up.

Grabbing the chair by the back, Mallory rolled it across the shop to where Julie, now wielding a ratchet, was loosening the mounting bolts for what was probably the injector pump. Mallory plopped her butt into the chair, leaning back and stretching with a yawn.

“Christ, I want coffee.”

Tossing a glance over her shoulder, Julie rolled her eyes. “The doc did say you can have a little bit.”

Mallory shook her head vehemently. “Not gonna go there.”

Julie turned back to her work. “Other than jonesing for caffeine, how’re you feeling?”

“Not bad. Just that the ‘off’ feeling I’ve had since just a few days after I hooked up with Terry seems more pronounced. But maybe that’s all in my head, because I know what it is now. Other than that—” she shrugged. “No morning sickness so far, but it’s a bit early for that, anyway. I still seem to have all my energy.”

“Such as it is.”

“Fuck you.” They both laughed.

Putting her ratchet down, Julie turned around, parking her butt on the tractor’s front tire. She met her partner’s eyes. “How are you with it for real?”

Mallory pursed her lips, gazed up at the ceiling, then looked back to Julie. “Scared. Excited. About a thousand different things all at once. What you’d expect, I guess. I’m okay, hon. What about you?”

Julie cracked a grin. “Now that you know what you want to do, I can tell the world. I’m so fucking excited I could explode. But then, I’m not the one who has to carry and deliver this critter.” Her smile faded. “Wish I knew what we were going to do about the baby daddy situation, though.”

Mallory grimaced. “You and me both. It’d almost be easier if Terry was being a dick about it.”

“I hear that. But he’s not. I like the guy. He’s a lot to take at times, but I do think he’s a good man.”

“Pity we can’t talk him into moving to Colorado,” said Mallory with a grin.

Julie shrugged a single shoulder. “It’d be just as easy for us to move back here.”

Mallory blinked. “I was joking.”

“Don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind.”

Mallory sat back, a little dazed. Stuff that had been swirling around her head for weeks was coming into focus. “I guess it has, even before I found out I was knocked up. But Julie—our lives are in Boulder. Our work is in Boulder.”

Julie was gazing across the shop, her eyes unfocused. “Is it, though? I mostly run my team from home anyway; most of them don’t even live in Boulder. We only do in-person meetings every month or two, so long as everything’s going smoothly. I could carry on without breaking stride. You’d obviously have to switch jobs, but it’s not like you’d have trouble landing a teaching gig pretty much anywhere. And one thing I’ve realized over the last few weeks is that most of our real friends are still right the fuck here.”

“You sound like you actually want to move back.”

Julie looked back to Mallory, her lips pursed. “I honestly don’t know. There are big pros and cons to both. I’m nowhere near ready to say fuck it and jump. But it’s been on my mind a bit, and I’m pretty damn sure it’s been on yours, too.”

“I guess it has.”

“I know. And adding the baby might even tip the scales. Completely aside from solving the Terry problem, raising the kid here means we have a lot of family around.”

Mallory chuckled. “I thought it was Feminism 101 that having a baby shouldn’t change your whole life.”

Seeing the glint in her partner’s eye, Julie laughed with her. “Biggest fallacy of the modern world, if you ask me. Having a baby changes everything, for men and women both. Speaking of which, when do we start spreading the glad tidings?”

“Nettie already knows—”

“Yeah, but I don’t think anyone’s going to hear it from her.”

Mallory shrugged. “If you want to tell your folks, we can do that.”

Julie nodded. “I think we should. What about your side?”

“I think I’ll tell Grandma before I talk to Mom. I need to have a conversation with her anyway—about Mom.”

“I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.”

“Can’t say I’m looking forward to it,” Mallory replied with a sigh. Then she looked at her partner sidelong. “So that’s the real reason you’re out here working on this pile of scrap at the butt-crack of dawn.”

Julie snorted laughter, casting her eyes to the floor. “You’re right. When I have things I need to think through, I like to work with my hands. I guess you know me pretty well.” She looked back up at Mallory, a smile on her lips. “And since when is nine in the morning the butt-crack of dawn? Lazy-ass.”

Mallory peered at her watch. “Closer to nine-thirty now. Did you eat anything before you came out here?”

“Naw, I was waiting for you.”

Mallory shook her head. “Sounds like it’s stopped raining, at least for the moment. I’m gonna go throw some breakfast together. Coming?”

Julie jerked her thumb toward the washbasin. “I’ll be right behind you. Gotta wash the crud off my hands first.”

Mallory rose, then leaned in for a kiss, taking care to avoid touching any part of Julie’s grease-smeared person but the lips. “I love you, Julie.”

“Love you.” Julie made as if to place a greasy hand on her lover’s chest, and Mallory fled, shrieking with laughter.

***

“Absolutely not. If you’re doing this, you’re doing it alone.” The woman’s eyes were stony, her jaw set.

The thin bald man paused in his tracks. He’d been pacing back and forth on the rundown carpet for the past fifteen minutes. “I thought you said I could count on you,” he said, looking down at her reproachfully.

“You can,” she said, “so long as I get my piece of it at the end. But not this soon. In case you missed it, you almost got caught. Try anything right now, half the damn detectives in the country will be trying to track us down.”

“I didn’t get there,” his tone was mournful, and he resumed his frenzied pacing. “I had them. So close, and it didn’t happen, Do you have any idea fucking long it’s been?”

“It’ll be longer if we end up in prison.”

The creature flung himself into a chair. The woman on the couch stifled a sigh of relief. “We’ll get there. We have to give it some time, is all. And next time, we use the van. At least it has tires that aren’t likely to blow any goddamn second.”

“It wasn’t just the tire.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Huh?”

“They were onto us. Dude at the shop told me the cops were on their way. We need to figure out how they got on our trail.”

The woman on the couch nodded slowly. “They’re usually not that smart. We have to plan more careful, for sure. And we need to wait. At least a few months, okay?”

“Fine.” He was trying for an air of belligerence, but it came out sounding like the ranting of a petulant child.

***

“Hey, Vicky! Wait up!”

Victoria Hanson came up short, twisting around to face the person calling her from halfway down the block. The bag of cleaning supplies she’d picked up for her mom at the Dollar General on the edge of town swung from her right hand.

Chrissy Moen quickened her stride to a light jog, coming up alongside Vicky and throwing an arm across her shoulder. “Hey, girl, how’s things?” said the willowy girl with the curly blonde hair.

Vicky returned the embrace, wrapping her free arm around Crissy’s waist. She reflected momentarily on how ravishing her friend was in retro stone-washed bells and a tasseled white blouse. Realizing she was lingering over the scent of Crissy’s perfume, she dropped her arm, hoping she hadn’t been too obvious.

Crissy seemed to hold no such inhibitions. Arm still draped around Vicky’s shoulders, she began walking again, propelling them both forward. “Heading for home?” she wanted to know.

Vicky gave her friend a wry smile, a thin cover for the strong visceral reaction she had to the nearness of Crissy’s body. She hadn’t realized until right this second how desirable her friend was. Deciding two could play at this game, she enfolded Crissy’s waist once more with the arm that wasn’t holding the shopping bag. The two ambled down the street in this fashion, arms around each other.

“Yeah, I’m on a mission for Mom,” she heard her voice say. “The new puppy is peeing everywhere. Thank God we don’t have carpets.”

“Ick,” was Crissy’s only reply.

“You can say that again.”

“Ick,” Crissy repeated, with feeling. Both girls laughed.

“So anyway,” Crissy went on. “Wanna hang tonight? Come for dinner, maybe sleep over?”

Vicky’s eyebrows arched at this out-of-the-blue invitation. Her first inclination was to say yes, but then the painful and humiliating conversation she’d overheard at Crissy’s birthday sleepover flashed through her mind. She wasn’t sure she could stand another night in the company of Sarah Spencer and Patricia Spisak. “Ummm—maybe. Who’s gonna be there?”

Crissy shot her a rueful look. “Not Sarah, if that’s what you’re thinking. I told her she can talk to me again when she figures out how to not be a bitch.”

“Whoa!” Ducking out from under Crissy’s arm, Vicky stopped in mid-step, turning to stare at her friend. “No kidding?”

“No kidding. It’s been coming for awhile. Her being a massive jerk at my birthday party was just the last straw.”

Vicky realized her mouth was hanging open, and closed it with a snap. Crissy and Sarah had been besties since the second grade.

“Anyway,” Crissy went on, “I might invite Patty, but not if you don’t want me to.”

It took Vicky a moment to find her voice. “Why do I get to pick?”

Crissy shrugged, looking faintly embarrassed. “Because I want to hang out with you. You’re one of the coolest people I know. You just do you, and you don’t seem to give a shit if people don’t like it. You just have—I don’t know. A strength, I guess. I don’t know how you do it.”

Crissy was blushing now, but Vicky felt even more embarrassed. She was enormously flattered, but wondered if Crissy would still be praising her strength if she’d seen her weeping over Sarah’s bitchiness at Jamie Nelson’s house. She decided she had to be honest.

“I’m not always that strong. Sometimes I do care, a lot. When Sarah was talking shit—”

“It hurt? I’ll bet it did. But you—you can take the hurt, it seems like. You don’t let it change you.” Crissy took Vicky’s arm, turning her in the direction they’d been headed and starting to move forward again. “Anyway, I know Patty was part of that thing with Sarah, but she came and talked to me about it later, and she felt terrible about it. I mean, she was actually crying. I think she’s too ashamed to come talk to you. You gotta understand…”

Crissy took a deep breath, mulling over her words. “Patty’s not like you. She’s not that strong. She’s really insecure, so she just goes along with whatever so people will like her. It’s like—she wanted to tell Sarah to get fucked, but she couldn’t do it on her own. You know?”

They were only a block away from Vicky’s house now. They could see Vicky’s mother crossing the street with leash in hand, a black chihuahua puppy yipping at her heels.

“Perfect timing!” Crissy proclaimed. “Let’s ask your mom if you can stay over tonight. If you want to, I mean.”

“I want to.” The words were out of Vicky’s mouth before she even realized she was speaking.

“Sweet!” Crissy waved an arm above her head. “Hey, Ms. Mayor!”

Lisa Hanson stopped at the front walk of her home, bending over to lift the puppy from the ground, snuggling it to her breast. The other hand she placed on a hip, standing with feet apart and looking saucy.

“Christina Moen,” she declared in haughty tones as the two girls came near. “Enough of that ‘Ms. Mayor’ crap already. I don’t even get that much respect at council meetings, and besides, I’ve known your mom since kindergarten.”

Lisa Hanson was still an attractive woman in her late thirties. The lines around her eyes and mouth were good lines, those of a face given to much smiling. As she was doing right now..

Crissy was smiling, too. “I guess you won’t be mayor anymore once you’re in the legislature, huh?”

Lisa snorted, idly stroking the puppy’s head. “As if I have a prayer. I’m on the wrong side of the political fence for this district. I wouldn’t bother running at all if my opponent hadn’t been caught—ummm—”

“With his boy parts inside of his wife’s sister?” Vicky finished for her.

Lisa gave a rueful smile. “Yes, that. And honestly—he’s still probably gonna win.”

Crissy cleared her throat. “So, Ms. May—” Lisa threw her a warning glare. “Fine, Lisa. Can Ms. Mayor Junior come to my place for dinner, then spend the night?” Vicky gave her a playful thwack on the shoulder.

Lisa made a face. “Hmmm, now, let me see…”

“That’s a yes,” Vicky said, before her mother could drag this routine out any further.

Lisa was now pulling on her bottom lip. “No boys, drugs, or alcohol, right?” she inquired in a teasing tone.

Crissy waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “You specified boys. Does that mean you’re okay with men?” Vicky tried to hold it in but couldn’t. She exploded into laughter.

Lisa chuckled. “Well, so long as there are no boys.” Now all three were laughing.

Crissy got herself under control, then turned to Vicky. “Show up around four?”

Vicky ran through a fast mental checklist. “Four works.”

Crissy cocked her head. “Should I call Patty…?”

Vicky nodded. “Yeah. That’d be cool.”

“Awesome! See ya at four!” Crissy threw an arm around Vicky and pulled her close, then turned around and strode off before Vicky had a chance to return the hug.

“Well,” said Lisa, “That sounds like fun.”

“Yeah,” said Vicky, suddenly feeling a bit breathless. “Here’s the stuff you asked for, Mom. I have to go practice now if I’m gonna be out all night.” Giving the pup a quick scratch behind the ears, she handed the plastic shopping bag to her mother and made her way up the steps and into the house.

She didn’t feel like practicing right then. Not with the warmth, the smile and the scent of Crissy lingering in her mind. No, she was in a mood to touch herself, to get lost in a sexy fantasy involving her friend.

I probably should, she told herself. A quick one, at least. Otherwise, it’s gonna be hard to relax when I’m at Chrissy’s.

Entering her room, she locked the door, then unfastened her jeans and took them off. She stretched out on the bed, slipping a hand into her panties.

Soon to come: Chapter Twenty-One!