Chapter 26

Robin played a quick and tidy run on the piano and then dropped her fingers onto a perfectly-timed chord, then ended the Chopin piece with a flourish. Turning slowly, she looked at Desirée, sitting at her left elbow. The older girl smiled.

"You'll soon be teaching me, Robin," Desirée said warmly.

The young brunette reached over and squeezed her friend's hand. "I don't think so Dez," she said with a laugh. "But do you really think I'm improving?"

"Since I saw you last, you've improved a lot," Desirée reassured her. "I bet you've been practicing hours every day."

"Quite a bit," Robin averred. She turned back to the piece. "This passage took a lot of work."

"Practice is what it takes."

Robin smiled, then hesitantly asked, "Do you think we're going to have time to go riding in the hills the way we did last summer?"

"I don't see why not." Then Desirée paused. "Though I've heard that it's not safe for a woman, out there in the hills."

"Why ever not?"

Desirée's face clouded over, as if she were trying to remember something, but what she was trying to remember, her own personal experience with Lobo, had been clouded in her mind, mercifully, by Dr. Hemmings.

"There's a wild dog, a pack of them, I've heard, that attack women." Her face clouded again. "Sexually. They've raped one girl that they know of."

Robin's mouth dropped open. "Raped? Really raped? I mean, literally?"

Desirée nodded. "That's what they say. I know it's horrible, and just the thought of it has given me the most vivid nightmares." Desirée's eyes seemed to be far away as she said, "I don't know how any woman could survive such an experience."

"That's terrifying," Robin said. "It sort of puts me out of the mood for horseback riding."

"You'll probably want to stay in all summer, or at least until the sheriff hunts the dogs down. And he's not doing too well, I hear."

Robin closed the music book and put it in her lap, folding her hands over it. "I was so surprised that you'd gotten married. I mean, when I left last summer, you didn't even have a boyfriend."

"I'd only just arrived from Chi town. Didn't know anyone but you and Liz."

"How is Liz?"

"Fine, I guess. But the leader of the dog pack was her pet, and she trained him to... to do what he did to Nancy Pace."

"Liz... trained him?"

"That's right. She told me herself." Desirée swallowed hard, trying to sort fact from fantasy in her mind. She recalled myriad dreams of herself involved in the same kind of ordeal Nancy Pace had suffered, choking fear and panic, the grasp of hairy forelegs around her tender body and the repulsive thrust of the animal organ, and then, nightmarishly, blinding pleasure, orgasms, and complete sexual satiation.

"It... it was horrible," she went on. "Finding out that my best friend was so perverted and animalistic. As much as I like her-and I've always liked her-I'm warning you, Robin, to stay away from Liz Clark."

Robin gave a nervous, little, tittering laugh. "You don't have to worry about me, Dez. I've never had the chance to be friendly with her, and now that you've warned me, I'll stay clear."

"Good girl," Desirée said, feeling like an old auntie, at the age of twenty-one. "Just stick to your piano, voice, and dancing, and you'll be just fine. I feel that there's more going on around Pickford's Meadows than meets the eye. Much more than last summer when you were here. Then, it was peaceful, simple, no problems, no wild dogs, no sticky politics. Now, everything is changing."

"What about boys?" Robin asked with some interest. "I mean, men?"

"Well, I wouldn't know much," Desirée said. "Now that I'm married, my eyes are closed, but as I remember, there wasn't much before that. This is kind of a retirement community. Young people go away to school and find careers elsewhere. I only came here because my father made me. A friend of mine that he didn't like. I was too young then to rebel, but now I'm with Mark and everything is wonderful." Desirée's brow knitted again in perplexity. Thoughts and images were crowding in on her mind, ideas that things were not well between her and Mark, but she could not sort them one from another. She knew she loved Mark and she was sure that he loved her, but now there were so many doubts flying through her mind.

Shaking her head to clear it, she said to Robin, "Let's have some hot chocolate or something."

Robin smiled and gave Desirée's hand a warm squeeze.

Priscilla Devereaux couldn't forgive Robin her visiting Desirée and studying piano with her. How could her peachy-cheeked little cousin betray her in this way? Had she no taste, no loyalty? Priscilla was furious that her carefully plotted orgy, where Desirée had been soundly and lastingly fucked by Clete Anderson, had borne no fruit. By subterfuge, Clete had obtained the pictures and video tape so that she had nothing concrete with which to pressure Desirée or bring about the public shaming she had planned to use to separate her from Mark Denning. Things were difficult now that the two were married and Mark would be adverse to a divorce for political reasons, since his career promised lately to assume much more grandiose proportions, so she couldn't push for that right now. A public exposure of his wife's perversions might not, as Clete had warned, bring about a desirable result.