Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe Read Free Book Online Page A

with such force it sent him flying backward. Losing his footing, Robbie cracked the back of his head against the glass of the window, then fell to the floor, stunned.
    For a few seconds, father and son stood frozen in shocked silence. Then Peter spoke.
    “I’m sorry, Robert. I shouldn’t have done that.”
    Robbie’s eyes narrowed. His cheek glowed livid red from the blow.
    “No. You shouldn’t have.”
    Scrambling to his feet, Robbie pushed past his father, head down, and stumbled toward the elevator.
    “Robert! Where are you going?”
    Seconds later, Robbie was back in the lobby. He pushed through the revolving doors and out into the cool, fresh air of the street. Tears streamed down his face.
    God?
    Mom?
    Anyone?
    Help me. Please, please help me!
    Running blindly down Park Avenue, Robbie Templeton began to sob.
     
    The depression had started in earnest at the age of twelve, with the onset of puberty.
    Before that, Robbie remembered periods of great sadness. Times when he missed his mother so badly it registered as a physical pain, like acute, grief-induced angina. But these were only temporary interludes. By playing the piano, going for a walk, or goofing around with Lexi, he could usually shake them off.
    Once he turned twelve, however, something seismic seemed to shift within him. An inner blackness took hold, and this time its presence was constant. Robbie felt as if he’d descended into a tunnel without end, and then someone had blocked off the entrance. There was nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other, hopelessly, for eternity. Voices, sweet voices tempting him to suicide, followed him everywhere. If it weren’t for Lexi, he would have heeded their call years ago. As it was, he struggled for his little sister’s sake to go on. On and on and on, deeper and deeper into the never-ending darkness.
    Once, he’d confided to his uncle Barney about his feelings. Thenext day, his father came bursting into his bedroom, pressing Prozac into his hand and forcing him into sessions with a therapist three times a week. Robbie listened politely to the therapist for a year and flushed the Prozac down the toilet. He didn’t know much anymore, but he knew that his father’s guilt pills were not the answer to his problem.
    That was the last time Robbie Templeton sought help from adults. From then on, he was alone.
    As if the blackness weren’t bad enough, Robbie was painfully aware that he was not “normal” in other ways either. Girls were a problem. His so-called friends, the group of kids who hung around him because he was rich and good-looking and who knew nothing of the tortured boy within, were all obsessed with girls. Specifically with their breasts, legs and vaginas.
    “Did you see the tits on Rachel McPhee this semester? Those babies have, like, tripled over the summer.”
    “Annie Mathis has the sweetest, tightest little pussy in tenth grade. Talk about the Tunnel of Love!”
    “If Angela Brickley doesn’t wrap those lips around my dick by the end of this year, I swear to God I’m gonna kill myself.”
    Of course, there was a lot of bullshit being talked. A lot of bravado. Robbie knew full well that most of the boys in his class were still virgins, for all their talk about pussies and blow jobs. But that wasn’t the point, or the problem. The problem was that they were all interested in girls. All of them.
    Robbie Templeton wasn’t.
    He remembered how his heart had stopped a few weeks ago when Lexi announced blithely: “I know why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
    Skipping around the kitchen in her favorite neon-pink princess dress, sipping cherry Coke through a swirly straw, she fluttered her eyelashes at Robbie like Mae West.
    Four years old, and already she’s better at flirting than I am.
    “No you don’t, Lexi.”
    “I do.”
    Did she? Was it that obvious?
    Robbie tried really hard never to look at other boys in public. So hard it sometimes made his eyes ache. Certainly he never