say something,
although she had no idea what might come spilling out. But before she could
shape the words she heard a sound.
A slamming door from the front of the house.
Her mouth shut with a snap. And she sat
straight up in bed when she heard a muffled female voice call out, “Dad?”
Greg stiffened beside her, his face growing
unnaturally still.
“Dad?” the voice called out again. “Dad? Are
you here?”
The bedroom door was closed, but Victoria
still felt utterly exposed.
She’d just fucked the man beside her. His
finger had been in her ass. And now his teenaged daughter had come home.
Victoria gathered the sheet and pulled it up
around her shoulders in an instinctive gesture she would have found silly at
any other time.
“Fuck,” Greg muttered, heaving himself out of
bed and looking around blindly. “Fuck!”
Victoria saw the sweat pants he’d been
wearing earlier tucked under the comforter and she tossed them over to him.
As he pulled them on, his daughter’s voice
sounded again—this time closer than before. “Dad? What’s going on? Whose car is
that out there?”
Victoria felt her vision blurring with an impending
knowledge. Her mouth was dry, and she felt sick to her stomach.
Greg made a grab for a gray t-shirt thrown
across the chair and pulled it over his head as he took four long steps toward
the bedroom door. His dark hair was tousled—sticking out in all directions—and
the one-day’s growth of beard made him look even more unkempt.
He was a mess, and he looked adorable. But
that was the last thing on Victoria’s mind at the moment.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d
been fucking just a few minutes earlier.
And that his nineteen-year-old daughter was
in the hall.
Darting one last anxious look back at
Victoria, Greg left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“Carrie,” she heard him say. “You’re back a
day early.”
“What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“Carrie,” Greg tried again, his voice barely
muffled through the closed door.
“Is someone in there with you?” Carrie’s
voice grew shriller and louder. “She’s in there, isn’t she? As soon as I leave
town, you bring that slut to—”
“Don’t!” Greg’s voice snapped out like a
whip. “She’s not a slut. I know you’re upset but you can’t—”
“I can’t believe you brought her to the
house!”
Victoria was still sitting in the bed,
shaking and squeezing her eyes shut. It sounded like Greg was trying to get
Carrie back down the hallway and toward a more distant part of the house, so
they wouldn’t have this conversation only a door away from Victoria.
But Carrie was shouting so loudly Victoria
could still hear her.
She put her hands over her ears, trying to
block out the sound.
A buzzing started to grow in her head as she
pretended this wasn’t happening.
It was just supposed to be sex. Great sex
with an attractive, experienced man.
It was supposed to be free of complications.
It was never supposed to lead to a screaming
teenaged daughter, calling Victoria a slut.
When she couldn’t stand it anymore, Victoria
forced herself out of bed. As she hurried into the bathroom, she could hear
Carrie saying, “She’s like fifteen years younger than you! Is she after your
money?”
Victoria felt like she might choke as she
closed and locked the bathroom door. Then she turned on the shower as hot as
she could stand and stepped under the spray.
She sobbed a few times into her hands,
unable to resist the involuntary emotion.
Her life had always been lived with a certain
degree of peace and sanity, and this incident had disturbed the very fabric of
her identity. This kind of thing didn’t happen to her.
She’d never been this woman.
By the time she’d finished scrubbing down
her body, she’d regained her typical quiet composure.
And she knew what she needed to do.
The screaming had stopped when she turned
the shower off and toweled dry. As she went into the
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