Chapter 2

"Mr. Alexander is engaged right now, Mrs. Cummings, but he'll be free to see you in a few minutes, if you'll be kind enough to wait here."

Lost in her own thoughts, Kathy Cummings was startled by the sound of the blonde receptionist's voice, but after a moment, she murmured absently, with embarrassment, "Oh yes, of course, I'll wait. I know he's a very busy man."

By the time Henry Cummings' young wife had collected herself sufficiently to speak, the pretty receptionist had already returned to her desk and was answering one of the insistently buzzing lines on the switchboard in front of her. With a fleeting, nervous glance around the spacious, modern waiting room, Kathy ascertained that, curiously, there was no one else in line to see the president of Alexander Steel. She stiffened with irrational apprehension as she wondered again exactly what she would say to the powerful mysterious man who was her husband's boss. Now that she was here, sitting in the very building in which Henry worked, the nervous young woman wondered if perhaps she had made a foolish mistake by coming here. For the flash of an instant, she was tempted to turn right around and go back home again, to its relative safety, but the mental image of her and Henry's home made her remember exactly why she had come downtown today... and why she would not go home until at least some small step had been taken to set their marriage straight again.

But what on earth would Mr. Alexander think when she attempted to explain why she wanted to get a job, she wondered nervously. How could she ever make him understand that perhaps the very future of her marriage with Henry depended upon whether or not she could really prove herself to be a contributing, productive member of their marital partnership?

Kathy shifted anxiously in her chair, picked up a magazine from a nearby table, then quickly put it down again, deciding instead to make a last-minute check of her makeup in a tiny mirror which she withdrew from the expensive shoulder bag now on her lap. It would not do, she knew, to walk into Mr. Alexander's office with smudged lipstick or a grimy face from the long bus ride she had made from their suburban home into the industrial section of Los Angeles.

It took Kathy but a minute to pat her long, shiny strawberry blonde hair into perfect place and then apply just a touch more of pale beige lipstick, adding a slightly more pinkish color to her already full, sensuous lips. The thin line of eye makeup around her wide brown eyes was still perfect, though, and she knew from experience that, no matter how determinedly she powdered her face, the light smattering of golden freckles across her nose and part way down her cheeks would show through anyway. Even though she was almost twenty-two years old, those puckish freckles gave her the appearance of a teen-aged tomboy, despite her alluring curves, but she had learned to live with them over the years consoling herself with the memory of Henry once having said that they were "cute" and made her actually prettier. Despite what was to her the annoyance of the freckles, she could see in the little compact mirror that she was indeed a very attractive young woman, the kind of young woman whose sweet, almost childlike facial features were a direct contrast to the delectable, curvaceous symmetry of her sensuous-looking body. The long, lucent swing of her shoulder length reddish-blonde hair tended to sophisticate her pixyish beauty, so that she almost looked her age.

Replacing the mirror in her handbag, the exquisite young wife shook her golden hair ruefully. It was disconcerting to look always so cherubic and inexperienced, especially at times such as this afternoon, when she was determined to impress Henry's formidable boss with her maturity and potential efficiency-- impress him enough to land a decent job. With an involuntary gesture of nervousness, she reached down to smooth out the short skirt of her crisp, navy-blue cotton dress over her silky, suntanned thighs, hoping that the prim little frock with its lace cuffs and collar was proper and demure enough to help her in her plan. It was the longest dress she owned now, one left over from high school days, and yet it still exposed a fairly daring expanse of shapely, sun-browned leg well above the knee, and its slim figure-hugging design did little to hide the lush contours of her body, the high-set, swelling breasts and firm, circular buttocks that accentuated her tiny girlish waist to such good advantage. Well, so what if she did look a little daring, she rationalized, it could not hurt her chances for the job--though, God knows, it had not been doing her much good in her own home.

At the thought of her dismal home-life with Henry, her bright, ambitious husband, the slight, satisfied smile that had begun to play across her perfectly-formed lips faded away and her high, clear brow wrinkled with anxiety. In the six months since her marriage to Henry, the beautiful strawberry blonde had been forced to arrive at the conclusion that something was basically wrong with their relationship, something serious, and until last night, she had been unable to put her finger on precisely what it was. Now she knew and the realization had spurred her on to the desperate action she was taking today. She would get a job and show Henry once and for all, that she too had a mind, a mind probably just as good as his, and that she was perfectly capable of making some decisions concerning their marriage--even if she did occasionally make a mistake.

The mere memory of what had happened after dinner last night made Kathy's heart race furiously and she felt the blood rushing to her pretty face at the humiliating recollection of her own husband's cold, objective lecture about her "irresponsible conduct"... as though she were some sort of capricious school child who needed to be rapped across her knuckles for naughtiness. All she had done was take advantage of a "once-in-a-lifetime sale" on needed household goods in a local department store, considering very carefully before she had bought the bathroom scale and... well, an electric blender. They were things they should have and no doubt would have bought sooner or later anyway, but Henry had acted as though her decision had driven them to the verge of total bankruptcy. The whole thing was almost too silly to take seriously. After all, Henry made more than enough money to live on--and, really, who needed a bank account anyway after less than a year of marriage? Seriously, who did, she fumed to herself, thinking with resentment of her husband's cautiousness.