Impulse

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After lunch, Chas pulled Amy to her feet and said they were leaving. They made their goodbyes and went back out into the bright afternoon. They strolled through the marvelous myriad latticed walkways, around and over and throughout the complex, through the open and sometimes on hidden, secret stairs.

As they chatted quite casually, Chas said, “Since you’re a cousin, I wonder if you’d volunteer to help out the family. My cou— our cousin Robert and his family, with four kids, haven’t a reservation.”

Chas explained in an aside, “The eldest didn’t have chicken pox after all. If you wouldn’t mind, I could bunk with you, and they could have my place.” Chas’s face was bland and logical.

He elaborated, “If we can’t double up enough, they’ll have to stay at another hotel, and they’ll miss half of the fun. I can give them my suite, but I don’t want to move away from the hotel, either. How about letting me sleep on your living room couch?”

Now that was fast! In the space of a couple of hours, she’d not only been accepted as a cousin into their clan, but now Chas was using “family connections” to move into her suite. Good grief!

Amy’s mouth fell open and she gasped. Then as her blue eyes hit his very green, very steady watching eyes, she thought: In this situation, a man would jump at the chance! Really? This wasn’t... She hadn’t planned... This was really very fast. She said, “Uh...”

“We’re cousins,” he reminded her mildly. “It would be okay.”

“Well... Uh...”

“Some problem?”

“No, no. I just...” But she couldn’t think what she just. He was going to move into her suite— just like that! If he did move in, it would make the maximum opportunity syndrome very maximum, all right.

She couldn’t get her conscience-stricken vocal chords to do anything. But with some concentration she got her head to go up and down— once each way.

He accepted that lame movement as agreement and said, “Robert and Jean will be so glad. This way, in my suite, they can close the door on the kids and have the living room sofa bed all to themselves and not have all of them jammed together into one room. That’s restrictive for couples with kids.” He added that thoughtfully.

He still held her hand as they walked along. She’d met him about— what— five hours ago? And here they were, walking along, holding hands. He’d already kissed her within the first minute, and now he was going to move into her suite.

Her seduction was really going along very quickly. She ought to be jubilant with things working out so well. But instead, she felt rather as if she’d stepped on a merry-go-round and was having a little trouble balancing to its speed as it carried her around quite madly.

He said with quick efficiency, “I’ll just run upstairs and nab Robert to tell him the good news, and I’ll be down to your suite with my things in about five minutes. If we go by your place, you can let me have your lock card and wait for me there.”

So that’s what Amy found herself doing. They took the garage elevator up to the third floor and walked around the deck to her place. She unlocked her door, handed him the card and he left.

Bemused, she wandered on through the bedroom, down the bath hall and stood in the living room. She was feeling as if she’d just now stepped off that merry-go-round and was unsure which direction she was supposed to go.

It did occur to her then that surely some of Chas’s clansmen had an extra bed. But if she was intent on seducing Chas, this certainly presented a remarkable opportunity. Another handy opportunity.

She had snatched the first one, and now here she was, that much closer to her goal. Any man would be dancing and grinning and exuberant!

Her prize was at hand! And there she stood, wide-eyed and astonished. It would begin. So easily! Actually, it had started. How would it end?

Her deck door opened, and Chas busily wheeled in a double-ended hanger luggage cart. He efficiently emptied it as she simply stood there and watched, with her arms hanging from her shoulders.

He put things in the bath, in the bedroom closet and in the vacant bottom drawer. He added things to the refrigerator. He was moving in.

He smiled, gorgeously. “We’ll have to go down to re-register me with you. I’ll split the bill. No long-distance calls without my okay. Know anyone in China? India?”

Very seriously, she shook her head.

“Peru?” He was being funny and enjoying it.

But he was also laying down rules. She understood that. He was. It was her suite, and he was laying down the rules.

Well, that was good. There had to be some ground rules if they were going to share the suite. He in the living room, and she in the bedroom.

Three

Chas and Amy went back up to the sixth floor to find out if there were any specific clan plans, which they might want to consider. They found a rather organized chaos. Some of the kin were planning to fish in the Gulf the next morning, and some were driving over to Disney World.

And as they moved around, they encountered another cousin, Kenneth Cougar, who was promising Sally he would be back the next night for the bachelor’s party.

“Leaving us, Ken?” Chas asked.

“Just a quick trip.” Ken named the city. “I have to see a rising kingpin, Martin Durwood, and this is a good opportunity.”

“Martin Durwood?” Amy found herself asking.

“Yes. Know him?”

To leave the festivities, the meeting with Martin Durwood would have to be important to Ken, her new “cousin.” Amy replied, “Yes.” Then she inquired carefully, “Do you know him?”

“No. Not really.” Ken gave her a steady, measuring glance.

She cautioned, “Be careful.”

Both men focused on Amy almost as if they had opened second eyelids, their gazes were so intent and piercing. Ken asked, “Why?”

Chas asked, “How do you know Martin Durwood?”

Tellingly, she replied to Chas first, “A...survey.” She frowned a little at Ken. “What I have is privileged. Just be careful.”

“You don’t like him.”

“There’s a saying. Let’s see. Yes, ‘If you shake hands with him, count your fingers.’”

“Oh?” said Ken. He lifted his head a little, intensely alert. Then he lowered it as he pushed up his lower lip and nodded several very small movements.

Chas then told Ken, “Listen to her.”

And Ken smiled at Amy. “Thanks, cousin. I’ll let you know tomorrow night what I find out.” He gave Amy a rather formal nod with a warm smile. As he left, Ken clapped Chas on his shoulder and quite cheerfully said, “You lucky bastard.”

And for some reason, Chas laughed.

It was just as Elsie always said: Men are different.

It was amazing for Amy to be absorbed into the wider group of strange people and accepted by them as one of them, without any effort on her part. Again she understood it was Chas who had maneuvered the phenomenon. So it was their trust in Chas that was involved. He had accepted her, therefore the rest did.

* * *

The most startling thing was how freely they spoke of the most intimate things. As Amy had thought once before, in listening to them in the elevator, they were fortunate she wasn’t from a gossip magazine.

As sometimes happens in a crowd, a quiet fell, and one conversation suddenly became general. A cousin was saying, “Well, after that they couldn’t allow her to be buried in the family plot. She’s off to one side, at the edge of the cemetery.”

“Who?” someone asked.

Another cousin hastened to assure them, “She wasn’t an in-law. That would account for several who never made the family plot, but Letty was a Cougar. Letty Cougar Milstone Wiggins LaCross Bernard. Those are the ones she married.”

“It wasn’t her interest in men that shocked everyone,” a female cousin said in a fact-keeping way.

“No. You’re right,” agreed another cousin. “The Cougars have always had a strong attraction for the opposite sex.”

That caused a good, indulgent chuckle among those cousins and siblings in the crowded suite.

But then the subject was changed, the different areas of the completely opened suite complexes led to more separate conversations.

Amy never did find out what Letty had done to be forbidden the family burial plot. Think of being shunned even in death! She wondered if Letty wouldn’t have wanted to be planted in another place entirely.

Before long, the cousins and siblings drifted outside. Especially the northerners wanted to be outside in the lovely March day. They shed jackets in the sunshine to walk and stroll the beach and select shells or play some of the games available.

* * *

Amy had never been anywhere in all her life where she suddenly knew so many people. It was marvelous fun to hear shouts of encouragement when she and Chas were in one of the paddleboats. Or to be watched by others as they used the putting course. And the critical observation with snide remarks when they were a part of a tennis foursome.

Men can feel competitive in sports with women, but Chas didn’t. She could never match his physical strength, but he paced himself so that their game was fun, and she could show off. He was an unusual man.

Only the Yankees joined her and Chas to swim. True Southerners know full well only Yankees and idiots swim outside that early in the year. Chas was so warm-blooded he could probably break ice and dunk himself without realizing the cold.

How marvelous it would be to sleep with a man like that. And she would soon know what it was like. By Saturday. The day after tomorrow.

Although Amy was dark haired, she had a redhead’s complexion. Her skin burned and didn’t ever tan, so she used sunscreen, and she didn’t sunbathe. Therefore, she seldom swam outside.

So it wasn’t remarkable that she swam at an indoor club and her suit was a practice Speedo. It was perfectly comfortable. Although it was cream colored, it was cut high in the neck, front and back, and it fit down over her hips for swimming comfort.

It was, indeed, comfortable. However, as feminine attire, it didn’t begin to compare with the other suits on display.

Chas smiled at her as she reluctantly took off her toweling robe. Then he gasped, “My God, you could be naked! It’s like a second skin.” His eyes glinted and his smile widened.

She blushed in pleasure. But for a modest woman, why should she like it that she looked almost naked to him? She reasoned she liked his saying that because he might not be too reluctant to submit, if it pleased him to look at her.

It certainly pleased her to look at him. She had to do it in quick glances because she had to resist the need to stare at him. He was something! He was so beautifully male. No one would mistake him for anything else. A no-waist-wedge. Nicely hairy. Muscles. His bathing shorts were like those of all males.

She was getting a little excited about him. Some unusual licks of feelings coiled and uncoiled deep inside her body. She had to swallow and blink.

She could swim quite nicely and she didn’t mind getting wet, so they played recklessly. She tried vigorously to drown him. He handled her without any effort at all. He chuckled. He had a great laugh.

His hands were a little careless but not groping. He let her take a breath before he pulled her down in the magic waters, and he kissed her very uncousinly.

She might be able to get him in twenty-four hours! That would be some sort of record, she was sure of it. Men weren’t the only ones who had their wily way. So did Amy Abbott Allen, the man-izer.

They said men notched their bedposts. How would she keep track? A pencil mark on her closet wall. A perfect solution. That would be discreet.

Then only she would know the full extent of her conquests. Her reputation would remain intact, and her mother wouldn’t start searching for a Presbyterian convent.

Now why wouldn’t people be as tolerant of a woman, who was a man-izer, as they were indulgent and titillated by a man who was always after women? Prejudice. Everyone should fight prejudice.

It rather pleased Amy to think she was taking up the Women’s Cause in seducing Chas. It gave a nice tone of unselfishness to her indulgence.

She sneaked a peek at him. How brave of her to seduce him for womankind. She laughed.

He looked up and grinned back. “What’s funny?”

She replied, “The day. The sun. Your ineptness in swimming?”

He took her to the bottom of the pool again. And again he kissed her. As they surfaced, and she pushed back her black hair, her blue eyes were almost hidden by her water-spiked lashes. She said, “See? You’re on the bottom of the pool all the time. You don’t know how to stay on the surface!”

She almost made it to the edge of the pool before he caught her. She laughed and gasped for breath, knowing what he’d do— again— but instead he held her across his arms and moved her about the pool in the most charmingly peaceful way.

He was powerful. His muscles roiled as he used them in handling her. His movements were so effortless. Seemingly effortless.

It no longer pricked her conscience when his family called her “cousin.” How quickly she had adjusted to being a part of them. From her lazy pool bed, with Chas her movement and buoyancy, Amy saw Connie and Matt walking along the latticed path as it wound near the pool.