Wheels by Arthur Hailey Read Free Book Online

their work-were still abed. One who remained there by choice was Erica Trenton. In a wide, French Provincial bed, between satin sheets which were smooth against the firm surface of her young body, she was awake, but drifting back to sleep, and had no intention of getting up for at least two hours more. Drowsily, only half-conscious of her own thoughts, she dreamed of a man . . . no particular man, simply a vague figure . . . arousing her sensua lly, thrusting her deeply-again! Again! . . . as her own husband had not, for at least three weeks and probably a month. While she drifted, as on a gently flooding tide between wakefulness and a return to sleep, Erica mused that she had not always been a late riser. In the Bahamas, where she was born, and lived until her marriage to Adam five years ago, she had often risen before dawn and helped launch a dinghy from the beach, afterward running the outboard while her father trolled and the sun rose. Her father enjoyed fresh fish at break fast and, in her later years at home, it was Erica who cooked it when they returned. During her initiation to marriage, in Detroit, she had followed the same pattern, rising early with Adam and preparing breakfast which they ate together-he zestfully, and loudly appreciative of Erica's natural talent for cooking which she used with imagination, even for simplest meals. By her own wish they had no live-in help, and Erica kept busy, especially since Adam s twin sons, Greg and Kirk, who were at prep school nearby, came home during most weekends and holidays. That was the time when she had been worried about her acceptance by the boys-Adam had divorced their mother earlier the same year, only a few months before meeting Erica and the beginning of their brief, jet-speed courtship. But Erica had been accepted at once by Greg and Kirk -even gratefully, it seemed, since they had seen little of either of their parents over several preceding years, Adam being immersed in his work, and the boys' mother, Francine, traveling frequently abroad, as she still did. Besides, Erica was closer to the boys' own age. She had been barely twenty-one then, Adam eighteen years her senior, though the differences in ages hadn't seemed to matter. Of course, the gap of years between Adam and Erica was still the same, except that nowadays-five years later-it seemed wider. A reason, obviously, was that at the beginning they had devoured each other sexually. They first made love-tempestuously-on a moonlit Bahamas beach. Erica remembered still: the warm, jasmine-scented night, white sand, softly lapping water, a breeze stirring palm trees, music drifting from a lighted cruise ship in Nassau harbor. They had known each other for a few days only. Adam had been holidaying-an aftermath to his divorce -with friends at Lyford Cay who introduced him to Erica at a Nassau night spot, Charley Charley's. They spent all next day together, and others afterward. The night on the beach was not their first time there. But on the earlier occasions she had resisted Adam; now, she learned, she could resist no longer, and only whisper helplessly, I can get pregnant .”
    He had whispered back, "You're going to marry me. So it doesn't matter .”
    She had not become pregnant, though many times since she wished she had. From then on, and into marriage a month later, they made love frequently and passionately -almost unfailingly each night, then expending themselves further (but, oh, how gloriously) on awakening in the morning. Even back in Detroit the night and morning love-making persisted, despite Adam's early work start which, Erica quickly discovered, was part of an auto executive's life. But as months went by and, after that, the first few years, Adam's passion lessened. For either of them it could never have sustained itself at the original fevered pace; Erica realized that. But what she had not expected was that the decline would come as early as it had, or be so near-complete. Undoubtedly she became