Passionate Pleasures by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online Page B

thanks for the lunch. Me and the boys don’t usually get treated so nice.”
    “You’re good workers, all of you,” Mrs. Bills said with a smile.
    Tim then tipped the men and thanked them while Mrs. Bills gave the driver a bag of her cookies for the road. “You really are an angel,” he told the cleaning woman.
    She chuckled. “Get into my car, Mr. Blair, and we’ll go get that runner for your hallway. It’s not quite four, and the carpet shop doesn’t close until five thirty.”
    She didn’t take him into the village, but rather drove the several miles to the nearby mall. In the carpet store they found a plain beige hemp runner with a geometric design woven into it for the center hall of the house. He purchased it
    “Just right!” Mrs. Bills approved when they had gotten back to the house and laid it down on the polished wood floor after she had mopped it free of the movers’ shoe prints.
    “Now you don’t have to pay me today, but so you know, it’s eight hours. Once a week, on Fridays, will be fine. Find the draperies and curtains you want hung. I’ll send my mister over tomorrow to put up your rods. I opened the box marked bed linens and made your bed, Mr. Blair. And I’ve left those cinnamon rolls for your breakfast in the morning. Good afternoon. See you Friday!” And she was gone out the door.
    Timothy Blair went into his now perfectly arranged living room, and sat down with an audible sound of relief. Rowdy came and put his head in Tim’s lap with a sigh. Tim laughed softly. “Well, boy,” he said, “here we are. This is home for at least the next two years. I know I did the right thing resigning as assistant headmaster at Kensington Academy. David Grainger was going to remain headmaster there till hell froze over. And then the board would have considered me too old.” He scratched the dog’s head. “Better we make a fresh start out here in the boonies, but from what I can see, Egret Pointe isn’t too bad a place to be. I just hope its citizens aren’t all like that starchy librarian we met yesterday at the IGA. Still, it was nice she was worried about you, you old faker.”
    Rowdy whined, looking up at Tim with liquid chocolate eyes.
    “Yeah, she was kinda hot for an older woman, wasn’t she?” Tim mused. “Maybe we should pay a visit to the library and find out what kinds of programs she offers for the Middle School students. We all know reading is the key to everything, but with all the distractions these kids face today—cell phones, BlackBerrys, texting, and Twittering—a lot of them forget books. We don’t want that to happen now, Rowdy, do we?”
    Rowdy barked as if in agreement with Tim. The man stood up and began to look about him. It was amazing. Yesterday this house had been empty, devoid of an inhabitant. Now it was all furnished again. He needed the draperies and the curtains up, true. And there were boxes to be unpacked, but he could fix himself a meal and he would sleep in his own bed tonight, not on the floor in a sleeping bag. With a few more hours of daylight left on this latesummer’s day, Tim began to unpack the book cartons and immediately saw a problem.
    An only child, he had inherited his family’s co-op apartment in a prestigious old prewar building in the city. The apartment had had a big wide foyer, a walnut-paneled formal living room with a working fireplace flanked with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a formal dining room, a kitchen with a butler’s pantry and maid’s quarters with a bath, a paneled library with a second working fireplace and built-in bookshelves, four large bedrooms, and four bathrooms. It was a corner apartment facing west and north over the park. It was the only home he had ever known.
    Born to older parents—his mother was in her mid-thirties and his father over fifty when he appeared on the scene—he had first gone to school in the city, then to prep school in New England, and finally college in the same region. From the time he was