Chapter 4: Redemption and Girlfriend’s Sister Sex

Mark

Elsa fired about a hundred questions at me like rifle shots at a carnival, expecting me to instantly respond with the first answers that occurred to me. I did, but I wasn’t sure I was giving the answers that would keep me in her good graces. Some of her questions and comments confused me, especially where involving her sister was concerned. I couldn’t fathom what she was suggesting.

Elsa had started to smile a lot, and the initial sad look on her face had given way to glee about nailing me with some of her questions. I figured this was penance and part of the groveling process.

The entire time we’d been talking the limousine had been taking a slow and circuitous route to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. This was the top of the line hotel in the city, and it also had a ballroom that could seat five hundred or more for dinner. I’d instructed my driver to make the ten-minute trip take at least thirty or forty minutes until I signaled that I wanted to arrive. With Elsa’s consent, I tapped on the glass to indicate we should head to our destination.

The limousine finally pulled up in front of the main entrance. A doorman immediately opened the door for us as the chauffeur raced around the long car to help extract us from the plush vehicle. I noticed a familiar face standing in the crowd of other people milling around the hotel entrance. I took Else and Cindy over and introduced Lucas, my security man, to them. He was more focused on the crowd than any of us. Lots of flash bulbs went off as we reached a red carpet from the limo.

As we entered the hotel lobby, there were other people standing there in groups – the men in tuxedos and the women in ball gowns. I took each girl’s arm and led them through the grand foyer, down an ornate hallway, and into a grand hall just outside the ballroom.

A half-dozen people raced to greet me. “Mr. Worthington, we are so glad you could join us this evening. We have you seated at the head table. I hope that is acceptable.”

I glanced left and right at the two beauties with me and replied, “Only if these two gorgeous ladies are on either side of me.”

“Certainly, Mr. Worthington. We will make sure that is the situation. I know we planned on your bringing one other person.”

Another younger man stepped forward, “Ms. Conners, Ms. Conners, and Mr. Worthington, may I bring you some drinks. We have some excellent wines that we have set aside for our VIPs.”

Before I could reply, Elsa spoke with authority, “I would like to have a glass of the white wine that everyone else is enjoying.” Cindy agreed with her.

I looked at them with wonder and repeated the same order, adding that I would like some ice in my glass as well. When the aide had vanished, I turned to Elsa, “That was a wonderful thing to do. I wish I had thought of saying that at so many of the prior events like this.”

Elsa asked me as the three of us stood there, “Are you spoiled?”

I laughed, “Yes, probably; more so these days. I was anything but as a kid – my parents were poor but strict. The part of me that struggled to get to where I am wants the privilege. Another part of me doesn’t want to distance myself that much from the rest of civilized people. As the old saying goes, I still have to put my pants on one leg at a time.”

The aide rushed up with a tray with three glasses on it. He served each of us, bowed, and moved away.

Elsa commented, “I can see how you can quickly get spoiled with this level of service and attentiveness.”

I nodded. “It can wear thin. People also attribute opinions, possessions, and other things to you that aren’t accurate or possessed. I’m supposed to own two huge ocean liners for my personal use; I don’t like to travel on the water except occasionally to swim, water ski, or use a kayak. Paddle boards look like they might be fun but I’ve been too busy to try those.” He laughed. “I’m also supposed to own the rights to some kind of auto carburetor that would let a car get hundreds of miles to the gallon; I don’t and I doubt there is such a thing. The Laws of Thermodynamics auger against it.”

Cindy asked me, “How do you get out to your oil rigs in the Gulf?” The question indicated that she had done some research about me and Worthington Industries.

I laughed again. “Usually, I don’t. I have taken a helicopter out there a few times, but on most of those trips we didn’t even land; we just flew over the rigs so I could see their scale.”

A man walked through the lobby ringing chimes that I took to be the call to take our seats for dinner. I led Elsa and Cindy into the ballroom, and towards a long dais on the room’s stage. As we got to the front of the room the social matriarch Patricia Scott Kendall greeted me with polite hug. “Mark, we’re so glad you could accept our invitation.”

I chucked, “And my money.” I turned, “Patti, allow me to introduce my friends Elsa and Cindy Conners.” Patti made welcoming noises, and pointed to three seats on the stage. I noted that we were not on the end, and as I usually requested, not next to the podium.

I helped the ladies up the five steps to the dais. I commented with a touch of sarcasm, “The price of fame is that you get to eat before everyone else, and they all watch you with drool coming from their mouths.”

Cindy asked, “Does everyone get the same chow?”

“To my knowledge we do. I believe they set a few plates aside for vegetarians, vegans, kosher, gluten free, and so on, but otherwise it’s what I call rubber chicken or mystery meat.”

Elsa asked, “I’m embarrassed that I don’t know the cause we’re supporting other than something at City Hospital.”

I nodded, “Forgive me. This is for the City Hospital, in particular a new pediatrics wing focused on children’s cancer. Just so you know, ‘we’re’ giving ten million to the cause. You ladies are haloed in on that donation, so enjoy the luster. I’m serious about the cause. I had an associate years ago that lost a child to leukemia and the illness and death made a huge impact on me not to mention the devastation in their family.”

Cindy said a couple of minutes later, “And we dance afterwards?”

“There’s a smaller ballroom next door,” I pointed to a moveable wall. “Most of these lovely patrons of the hospital will go home after dinner, but maybe a quarter or so will stay to dance. I promised you dancing, and dancing you shall get.”

Elsa commented to Cindy, “He is a good dancer. You’ll see.”

That little comment coupled with several others earlier, got my brain churning. Elsa seemed to be going overboard to include her sister with us. She’d even teased me about her being part of my ‘making love on the beach’ fantasy. That was a pleasant thought, but not if it meant screwing up my relationship with Elsa. I’d have to be careful in these shark-infested waters. I understood what the concept of being on a short leash meant. Elsa was doing a lot of testing and teasing that I figured I shouldn’t respond to except with total neutrality.

We stood and chatted, met several of the other VIPs, mostly doctors and hospital administrators. Patti eventually came by and asked us to sit so the rest of the room would get the message. We did, and a major part of the conversational din in the large room dissipated as people scrambled for their seats. Patti did make a ‘Please take your seats’ announcement.

I sat between Elsa and Cindy.

To break some of the tension between us, I leaned over to Elsa and said, “You should prepare a few brief remarks to say when the microphone is passed to you.” I quickly turned away and repeated the remark to Cindy. I immediately directed my attention to a man at the table on the ballroom floor directly in front of me. “Hello, Fred. Good to see you and Sally here. Thank you for supporting this cause.”

Before further words could be exchanged, Elsa was poking my midsection very hard. “What did you say? You mean I have to say something? I don’t have anything to say? Oh, God. What’ll I do?” There was genuine panic in her voice.

I smiled at her. “Elsa, I love you. I also love to tease you ... and your sister.”

I turned back to Cindy. She looked pale. She told me, “You are a prick, you know; a nice prick, but nevertheless a prick. My heart just spent a full minute in my throat at having to speak in front of all these important people.”

Elsa agreed.

“Just so you know, I may be asked to speak and to even introduce you, so don’t be surprised. I am their largest donor, so I think the probability is high.”

Elsa leaned in and kissed my cheek. “You are a good tease. On another note, you introduced us to someone as your ‘friends.’ Cindy and I would both prefer the term ‘girlfriends, ‘ if you don’t mind.”

At that pronouncement, Elsa engaged the man on her other side in conversation – the head of pediatrics at the hospital. I was left wondering how I’d moved from one girlfriend, to none, to a friend, to two friends, and now, apparently, two girlfriends. I also wondered again what Elsa and Cindy were pulling off at my expense with the girlfriend moniker.

Cindy and I chatted politely about the hospital. I think I surprised her with how much I knew about the project. My full motivation for understanding had come weeks earlier when I committed to the donation and as I understood what the funds would be used for.

Elsa

Cindy and I had agreed to tease Mark about the two of us being in a deep relationship with him, even a sexual one. I seemed to be doing better at spotting the nodes in our conversation where I could toss in some remark, expanding his thinking from just about the two of us – Mark and me, to including Cindy. I had a few comments planned for over dinner and during our dancing too.

If we were going to be completely open about everything in our relationship, in the very near future I needed to clue Mark in that Cindy and I were bisexual lovers, and I suppose, since we were sisters a year or so apart, we were incestuous ones at that.

The week off from work thinking about Mark and our whole relationship had gotten me really thinking about any relationship I got into with a man. Ultimately, I wanted him to accept Cindy into that relationship as well. Cindy and I had talked at length for years; we were what she called a ‘two-fer’ special.

I loved Cindy and she loved me – mind, body, and spirit. We were soul mates and lovers – and incidentally sisters. We knew every nook and cranny of each other’s bodies, and how to play each other like a master with a rare violin.

Both of us had always believed that we could love more than one person. I thought I was that way about Malcolm, but in hindsight I was infatuated but not in love. I’d been in love with love.

Mark Worthington was another story. I fell hard for Mark when I thought he was Mark Worth, a lower level manager with a large company who helped out on special contracts. I loved Mark, and then we had this huge hiccup when I discover that he was THE MARK WORTHINGTON, as in the multi-billionaire that headed the whole friggin’ Worthington Industries – a conglomerate of companies, some public and some private, that had a combined worth just north of a quarter-TRILLION dollars. Mark owned a lot of the stock.

I got pissed that he hadn’t told me about his wealth or status, not that it would have made that much different, or so I thought. So, I stomped around for half a week until my mom convinced me that a relationship had to have give and take. I should forgive but not forget, as she put it. Be careful he didn’t back slide and do that again on some other issue.