Chapter 4

Rudolph was staying home tonight and once again I was helping my lovely date into the passenger seat of Mistletoe. Holly couldn't keep her hands at rest as she let then roam all over the interior and especially the stick shift. The memories of past years, and Holly's near constant erotic play with this phallic instrument certain brought back a lot of happy memories from the past and we just looked at each other and smiled. For a minute or so, I almost thought that Holly had missed my car more than me, but the loving look in her eyes as she placed her hand over my right one more than assured me that I was foremost in her current affections.

As I turned on the car radio to the local 24/7 Christmas music radio station, once again the first holiday song that we heard was 'Old Blue-Eyes' crooning out our favorite song, our song!

Oh, by gosh, by golly
It's time for mistletoe and holly

Once again, a decade later, we were just two kids in love once more, as if no time at all had passed in our absence from each other.

Everyone, especially Holly, said afterwards that the holiday party was wonderful but I'm damned if I can remember much of any of it! Holly was still the perfect arm accessory all evening, clinging close to me and with obvious smoldering affection. I'm sure that I had a shit-eating grin on my face all evening long, knowing that the most beautiful woman in the room was either at my side or dancing in my arms. A few of the old timers remembered me (and even Holly) from nine years ago and assumed that Holly had traveled with me to the various plants I'd worked at since I was last here. We didn't try to correct any misunderstandings about our relationship status.

Holly was especially popular with the local executive wives and she was being 'escorted' off to the ladies room for gossip with frightening regularity. In the past Holly had hated this, returning from each private visit more noticeably perturbed and upset. Tonight, things seemed to be much the opposite, as Holly seemed to stand up even taller in her long legs and high heels and she positively strutted her stuff walking across the floor as she returned to my side with a prideful smile on her face.

"The wives' club isn't scaring you too much tonight?" I whispered into her ear while giving her a small supportive hug.

"Not nearly as much as they should be!" She admitted. "I seem to amuse them greatly and already I've been invited to half a dozen luncheons, tea parties, candlelight supper soirées and an invitation to join the Tuesday night card group. Bridge, I think, but I'm not too sure. I hardly could get a word in edgewise."

"Ack! Worse than I feared. You politely fended them off?"

"Certainly not! Women have duties for the men they have a real and proper relationship with, and that includes being nice to the wives of the big VIPs that actually endorse your annual performance reports. They all say unanimously that you're on-track to become the plant manager here and that's just going to be but another stepping stone for a bigger job at corporate after that. You do, of course, want to be in a real proper relationship? An official, real boyfriend-girlfriend 'I love you madly but let's not quite run to the church yet', sort of relationship?"

"Well ... I'd never quite ever thought about that," I joked with a mock look of astonishment, "but I guess ... if you're quite willing, I could make a stab at it. I'd so hate to disappoint all of your ladies that lunch and the card club too!"

"Ooooo..." she hissed, giving my earlobe a kiss and a sharp bite. "You'll pay for that remark later. I've got such a mean boyfriend! I don't know why I ever agreed to take you back again!" She laughed.

"You? Taking me back? Now that's an interesting but historically challenged viewpoint." Just to make my point clearer, I gave her lovely firm ass a rather forceful pinch. Nope, definitely no panties, not even a thong under that gown!

"Stop while you're behind, and leave mine alone! They're watching us! Of course I was in the wrong and I've got a lot of apologizing and explaining to do but I'd rather save it for later, so smile – we've got more company approaching!"

Of course I was smiling. Holly was there holding my hand and we found lots of opportunities to manage to accidentally stand under the hanging mistletoe until we worried that too much of a loving display would make the others a bit too jealous!

Leaving the party, I assumed that Holly would prefer to go back to my hotel, to become closer acquainted with its big bed. She had been giving it thoughtful glances earlier while I had changed and I had assumed she'd prefer our more intimate re-acquaintance to take place there, where it was undoubtedly more comfortable, but she had other delightful and more nostalgic ideas.

"Driver, let's take a promenade over to the bay and then up the shore just a little bit. I used to remember a nice little place to park along there, to enjoy the sea's breezes ... and some affectionate company I then didn't appreciate then nearly as much as I ought to have done."

"Someplace familiar and rather traditional?" I smiled and she just laughed.

"It's certainly one of our old holiday traditions that my dress somehow ends up on the sand. It would be such a shame to miss such a wonderful opportunity to restart that tradition once more."

I certainly was in complete agreement!

With the warm weather holding, I kept the roof down on Mistletoe during our drive to our familiar trysting spot along the bay, but once I'd parked at our usual location I found that Holly wasn't quite ready yet for any amorous exertions. We kissed a few minutes and my hands did get a nice feel of her breasts under her gown, but she wasn't ready to make with the lovemaking just yet.

"Mike, now that we're here, I need to tell you a few things and more or less confess that I was the stupidest women in the state for not leaping into your arms that last night we had together and making you take me with you everywhere you went. Let's take a walk down to the edge of the sand by the salt marsh and I'll try to explain everything. Probably doing a shitty job of it, but you deserve to know why I did what I did. I'll try not to make excuses, but I was stupid and entirely in the wrong. I knew at the time that I was making a dreadful mistake, but I did it anyway ... now I can only say how terribly sorry I am for how I acted and how I treated you!"

"A blanket apology will in fact quite do ... and I do in fact have a blanket in the trunk of the car, if you agree that this is in fact a rather soft and comfortable location to spread one."

"There! That's probably the only thing that I can get really and truly mad at you about! You're always joking about things that are important to me! Your blanket stays in the car and my dress stays on ... until you've heard me confess completely and everything to you. Then ... if you still want me to be your girlfriend, this time I'll say 'Yes' and never leave you again after that. But you have to understand how sorry I am that we wasted the last nine years of our lives ... and what could and should have been."

What could I say? So I nodded and let her tell her story.

"I'd like to blame everything upon my fucked up mother and upbringing, but it was my decision to agree with everything she'd taught me. She married for the first time young, just in her early twenties and it was a terrible mistake she always regretted. They'd had me, but divorced not long afterwards. She married my stepfather, Earl Henderson years later when I was almost a teenager but the bad mistakes she'd made in her first marriage had haunted her. She made me promise that I'd not fall in love with the first boy that even looked at me and most importantly she'd made me promise on her deathbed to not marry at all until I was at least twenty-five, and that thirty would be even better.

"She was a proud woman who taught me to stand up for myself and be independent of any man, and that having a career, even repairing cars, was a proud occupation for an independent young woman. She taught me to never accept charity and to stand up for myself at all times. She tried to teach my stepbrothers this too but they were already nearly grown and out of high school before she married their dad and their ways were pretty much set. Lung cancer from her chain-smoking took her after just a few years with him anyway. He was a better man than my father and that just convinced her even more that waiting to marry again later in life was the smartest and wisest decision she'd ever made, and I believed her.

"Now regardless of what stories my stepbrothers might have told you or hinted at, I was never that much of a slut! I did have a few other male friends on the side that I did date and sometimes spread my legs for, occasionally, but nothing ever serious happened until you came along. I knew that you were the one for me the minute I saw you and I was already in love with you before we went out together that first night, to your first holiday party. That first experience that night shocked me back into sanity, sort of, to where I could then just barely restrain myself from just entirely surrendering myself to you. I'd only known you for a few hours and I knew that you were going have it all in life, to be hugely successful ... and all of the other women at the party knew it and kept telling me so, over and over again! How long had I known you? How serious was he? Had he proposed yet? If not, that I should start trying to make him do so immediately if not sooner! It soon became all too much to handle! It was too much, too fast!

"Everyone kept telling me that you were a prize corporate acquisition and that right from the start you going to be put onto the fast-track for promotion. I kept hearing the word 'genius' from everyone and how grateful and fortunate they were to get you! This just made me feel even more inadequate. They treated me like I was just property to be seen under your arm, another favorable notation in your personnel folder, a young lady of apparent suitable appearance that could be also groomed to join the private affairs of the executive wives, to be a suitable accessory ... a girlfriend and perhaps a wife – but not a 'lover' and a equal partner in life with me!

We fucked that first night because I thought it would also be our last night together, and it was impossibly good. A brilliant man good at his job and also now equally good in bed! It just made me want you more ... and want to push you away from me in self-protection even harder! But I had your car to restore and I seemed to see or hear from you nearly every day. I couldn't get away from you and I couldn't give in to my true feelings, that I wanted a relationship with you, but couldn't ... because I was positive that I'd just burn up like a moth in your bright flame and utterly surrender myself to you.

"Once the car restoration was done and you still kept returning to see me, I knew I was then trapped. I needed to fulfill my promise to my mother and I also truly believed that I was too young to get permanently attached. I was just twenty-four, just a bit older than you by about six months, but that wasn't really the main issue. I wanted to be with you, to move in with you the moment you asked, but then I'd be completely trapped for good, unable from that point to deny anything else of myself to you. I'd then break that vow and become your wife, then becoming little by little as I feared just another possession of yours. I know this feeling was unworthy of me, that you would have indeed cherished me and not just as an ornamental decoration, but I felt already trapped and I was desperate to find a way to escape without hurting your feelings or breaking your heart. I had to go, to be free of you, but I couldn't bear the thought of being the bad girl and cutting you apart from me in any direct manner. Instead, in my misery, I tried to just push you away, slowly at first and then nearly callously so ... but still you remained.

"I had been awful to you those last few months, and intentionally so, and finally I had reached my breaking point. I thought I was going mad, both yearning for you and yet trying equally hard to drive you away from me. By the night of the last Christmas party I'd reached some sort of mental calm in my emotional storm that surged around me still like a hurricane. I had decided to give in, to surrender to my stronger emotions and to let you into my heart as a true lover and not just a sexual companion. But once again what I saw and heard again at that party hardened my resolve to remain firm and deny myself. If anything that night, everyone just spoke your praises even higher than the year before. Again, the word 'genius' was used by everyone, that you had already proven yourself worthy for future considerations to attain someday the highest executive offices in the entire corporation. The wife of one division president went so far to tell me that I couldn't have chosen a finer man to hitch my wagon to, that by the time you turned thirty you'd be a senior manager. By forty you'd be a VP ... at fifty, a president of some division of the corporation or even higher.