She glared at him defiantly, her full red lips forming a Bardot-like pout.
“Give me your hand,” he said sternly, picking up a small wooden ruler. When she saw that he was quite serious, she extended her trembling left hand towards her former employer. Hugo took it and turning her palm upwards smacked it sharply with the flat side of the ruler. She tried to pull her hand back but he held her wrist fast in his other hand and struck her two, three, four more times across her palm, hard enough to sting her and bring tears to her large, dark eyes.
“Wipe your eyes,” he ordered, letting go of her hand. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for acting like such a brat?”
Looking in the mirror behind the counter Pamela delicately dabbed her eyes with a white handkerchief. He came around the counter and hugged her briefly to him, his own heart beating fast at the enormity of having made her fall in love with him.
“Pamela, I’m not going to let you disturb your beautiful relationship with Sloan or mine with Laura, but that doesn’t mean I plan to neglect you,” he said, examining her hand, which was pink now. “Now go and run that under water,” he told her. “And we’ll continue this discussion at a later date.”
Pamela was in tears and told herself severely in the bathroom mirror, “You have no pride.” But when she looked at the palm of her hand she felt a terrible thrill of excitement.
Garda came out in a square necked, long sleeved, wasp waisted, straight skirted, flounced cocktail dress of which Hugo entirely approved. He handed Damaris his credit card.
“We thought we’d let you discover just how charming the corset looks later, yourself,” said Damaris, and Hugo smiled, glad that Pamela had left the floor. That young lady’s temper tantrum had almost cast a pall on the evening but the solution had been very much in hand and now a kind of order had been restored.
“I might as well give up even trying to do the honorable thing with regard to my buddy Sloan,” Hugo confessed to Garda, while walking her back to the inn. “Basic chemistry is making that impossible.”
“Sloan is?”
“Pamela’s boyfriend. He runs the bookshop across the way from my store and he’s a very good friend of mine. Anyway, he’s got a pretty assistant who was driving our Pamela crazy with jealousy. So I decided to take her mind off that entire situation by being the boss from modern Gothic hell, kicking off the program with a spanking.”
“And she promptly fell in love?”
“I would call it a crush that has developed over several weeks.”
“I see the distinction,” Garda laughed.
“Stop by my house on the way to Randy’s and I’ll get you stoned,” Hugo promised, writing down the address on the back of his business card.
“Oh Hugo,” she replied, fondly squeezing his arm, “nothing has changed, has it? I’ll come now!”
Garda brought all the things she needed to Hugo’s house in the woods and dressed for dinner in his playroom, in front of a gold scalloped cheval glass, while sharing a joint with Hugo as in the old days. He helped her hook the form sculpting new corset while sitting on the edge of a leather sofa, with Garda standing in front of him, enjoying their reflections in the mirror.
Garda said, “I think we look better together now than we did before, Hugo.”
“Marvelous the way you kept your figure,” he complimenting her, giving her a pat on the bottom before pulling her down on his lap to embrace her properly. “I’m glad you live in California. I could easily fall in love with you again,” he told her. “Now put your stockings on and I’ll hook the suspenders for you.”
“You certainly know your way around foundations,” Garda remarked with admiration.
“You were the first girl I ever met who owned anything even remotely fetishistic,” he told her.
“Oh yes, my rubber corset. It always made me dizzy after twenty or so minutes.”
“You never told me that.”
“You wouldn’t have let me wear it.”
“That’s true.”
“You were so paternal with me,” Garda smiled, seating herself on a leather pouf to pull on the seamed stockings gracefully.
“Goes with the territory,” Hugo told her, entranced by the way she put on her ultra high, black velvet, tapering, stack heeled pump and extended her long leg to admire the effect.
“Is that why all the girls in town follow you all around?” she gently mocked him, slipping on the blue gown.
“Not all, but maybe one more than is necessary at the moment,” Hugo replied, zipping her up then hooking the suspenders to the tops of the real silk stockings he had bought her as an additional present.
“I wish I didn’t have to go to this dinner,” she pouted, sitting down on his lap and impatiently wriggling her slim, muscular bottom while winding her arms around his neck. “Oh, it’s so good to feel you just as you were, only more so!”
“Make it a short dinner and come right back to me,” he ordered, patting her bottom through the velvet gown again.
She purred against his ear, “I love it when you tell me what to do.”
A few minutes later, while putting her into her rental car Hugo allowed her to take a last hit. “You’re so sweet,” she murmured, checking her makeup in the mirror. She was back to dark red lipstick and her russet hair was twisted up and held in place by a velvet clip.
“Remember what I told you about Randy, Garda. If he makes a move on you, brush him off. He’s developed the knack of pressuring women into giving him sex better than anyone I know, but there’s nothing in his bag of tricks to interest the likes of you.“
“Hugo,” Garda laughed, “do you even know how old I am?”
“Are you saying that in L.A. no woman over a certain age gets the make put on her?’
“Yes, Hugo. That is what I’m saying.” But Garda drove off gaily, merrily lit and looking forward with intense pleasure to the later portion of the evening.
Garda took the narrow coast road to Randy’s estate, warmed by Hugo’s compliments, but never expecting his predictions to come true. Randy Price was five to seven years her junior, frighteningly rich and according to Hugo, a ruthless operator. She expected to dine briefly, tour the shooting areas, get her contracts signed and leave without much ado.
Randy was tall, arresting and detached, but not unfriendly, as he showed Garda around and introduced her to their only other dining companion, his sister Marnie Price, a tall, raw boned blonde, very much in the New England mode, good looking, butch and crudely charming.
“I notice a remnant of an ex-punk past,” said Garda, tapping her own earlobe, which like Randy’s, bore the faint, ancient perforations of four piercings. “I’ll bet you used to have a Mohawk, huh?”
Randy admitted he had and stories of bands and clubs were exchanged. Garda thought, “What was Hugo talking about? Randy’s not so bad. And I love his sister!”
But less than three hours later, when she lightly rapped on Hugo’s front door, he opened it to a badly shaken redhead.
“You warned me, but I didn’t believe you,” she confided a few minutes later as he took her into his prettiest sitting room and handed her a glass of burgundy. “I feel stupid!”
Hugo felt a terrible arrow of jealousy pierce his heart. “Garda, you didn’t let Randy