Chapter 5

"Where have you been, honey? I've been home for nearly an hour and dinner isn't even started yet!" the youthful masculine voice came from inside the living-room as Kathy stealthily pushed open the door of their attractive suburban home. She had made infuriatingly slow connections on the buses out of Los Angeles and had hoped to be able to sneak into the house and make some plausible excuse to Henry about gossiping away the afternoon with a neighbor. But now, as she heard the sound of her husband's footsteps coming toward her from their living room with its big picture window facing the street, she knew that he must have seen her hurrying up the sidewalk from the bus-stop at the corner.

"I'm sorry, darling. I went into the city today," she called back, meekly lowering her voice as Henry's slender, solid form appeared in the doorway from the living room. "I got back as soon as I could."

"Dammit, have you been out shopping again, Kathy?" he interrupted, his blue eyes glowering beneath his thick shock of unruly dark brown hair. "I don't see any packages, so I assume you've bought one of the larger so-called necessities of life. What is it this time, a baby grand piano or a mink coat that they're going to deliver tomorrow?"

"Oh, Henry, don't be silly," the sweet-faced blonde girl giggled nervously as she suddenly felt an unreasoning fear that her husband might somehow guess what had really happened to her in his boss' office that afternoon. Her slender fingers gripped more tightly the handle of her leather purse which contained the envelope that Max Alexander had given her. Gazing timidly up at Henry through her long, golden lashes, she tremulously explained, "I... I went in for something else, darling... to see someone."

"Sure, sure, you always go in for something else," he said, shaking his handsome head skeptically. "But someone always manages to sell you something while you're there. Whatever it is, you're going back into town tomorrow and get your money back. I don't work forty hours a week in the Alexander Building so that we'll starve when we're old, Kathy. It's about time you started remembering that."

Kathy raised her eyes to silently protest his automatic assumption of her extravagance, but it was too late. Having completed his tirade, her husband turned on his heel and strode back into the living room, and a moment later, the house was filled with the sound of the nightly television news broadcast.

For the briefest second, the shapely young wife was sorely tempted to march right into the middle of Henry's precious news program and tell him how very wrong he was about what she had done that afternoon, tell him about her new job and the envelope that was in her purse. But guilt and fear held her back. She was afraid that once she began to tell the story of her meeting with Maxwell Alexander, she might accidentally let slip some incriminating detail, alerting him to the fact that his seemingly trust-worthy young wife had made a grave mistake that day, had lost the innocence and virtue that he had always so delighted in. Just the thought of how she had behaved in Mr. Alexander's office, willingly allowing that filthy old man to take the most indecent liberties with her body, made tears of shame spring into Kathy's big brown eyes and she rushed back into the kitchen to busy herself with preparing Henry's dinner before she broke down altogether.

For a moment or two, the pretty young blonde bustled around her bright, modern kitchen, pulling cans from the cupboards and pork chops from the refrigerator, trying to pretend that this was a day just like any other, but her vision kept returning to the kitchen table. As she opened the canned peas and poured them into a saucepan, her thoughts kept going back to that moment on the bus when she had remembered the white envelope that had still been clenched tightly in her hand. Wanting to throw the unwelcome reminder of her horrible afternoon out the window of the moving bus and yet wondering how highly Maxwell Alexander had valued the afternoon's experience, Kathy had impulsively torn open the envelope. One glance at the contents had left her white with shock and she had anxiously stuffed it deep into her handbag, not wanting the other passengers on the roaring vehicle to see the tangible proof of her guilt.

But now, in the kitchen of the home she had shared for six months with her husband, still smarting from the tongue-lashing Henry had so unfairly bestowed upon her, Kathy's thoughts returned to the envelope with a slightly different attitude. There was now money in her purse, a great deal of money, and after all, what had Henry been so upset about? Why else had she gone to Maxwell Alexander's office in the first place, if not to find an opportunity to help with her and Henry's financial situation. The beautiful young woman reasoned carefully as she slowly peeled potatoes over the sink. It was vile and disgusting to make love to other men behind her husband's back, she knew, but if it could save their suddenly shaky marriage, was it too great a price to pay?