Chapter 6

Misty was mildly astonished when he drove the truck up to the mansion. That was what it was. There was no other word for it. The place was gorgeous, with carefully tended lawns and gardens, and trees all over the place. That he felt welcome in a place like this was obvious when, instead of knocking and waiting, he just opened the front door and walked in.

“Anybody home?” he called.

There was a muffled female squeal and Misty watched in shock as a uniformed woman ran and jumped up on him, wrapping her legs around his hips. Her uniform skirt rose to show a pair of black panties under it. She kissed Bobby firmly, for a long time, before pulling back. Then, the maid saw that he wasn’t alone and clearly panicked.

“Oh no!“ she gasped, as her face flamed bright red.

“This is Misty Compton,” said Bobby, smiling for some reason that Misty had no clue about. “She’s going to give a concert over in Hutch tonight. Is Felicity home?”

“Ohhhh you should have told me you weren’t alone!” moaned the maid, still blushing, and unable to look at Misty. With her eyes lowered she turned toward Misty, obviously mortified. “I’m so sorry, Miss. I’ll see if Madame is free.”

She scurried off, while Misty looked curiously at Bobby.

“She’s kind of sweet on me,” he said, grinning.

“I guess so!”

Things got more confusing when a blond woman perhaps in her late twenties, came into the hallway and began walking toward them.

“Wait!” came an anguished cry, softened by distance in the big house.

Two toddlers, a boy and a girl came running, in that almost falling down way that very young children have, that requires them to keep running, because they haven’t learned quite how to regulate speed yet, but they know if they try to stop they’ll topple forward. They passed the blond woman, who stopped, and then started up again, obviously trying to catch the two children.

Then, further baffled, Misty watched Bobby take a knee and hold his arms out. He caught the two children about the same time as the blond woman caught up with them, and scooped them up into his arms, standing up with them. They giggled and squealed as he began raining kisses on their cheeks and faces.

Misty looked at the blond woman, who was standing and watching too, smiling. The maid came running down the hallway.

“I’m sorry!” she wailed. “They got away from me!”

“No harm done,” said the blond woman, her voice throaty. “They just wanted to see their...” She looked startled, for some reason. Then she finished. “Bobby.”

Meanwhile Bobby was asking the children if they’d been good. Both proclaimed loudly that they had, as he lifted them into a more comfortable position, with their legs straddling his sides. Both began talking a mile a minute.

“Wait a minute!” he proclaimed. “I have to talk to your mommy,” he said, kissing the boy on the nose. “Then we’ll play, okay?”

In a surprising economy of words Bobby explained why they’d come. What made it all so mystifying was that, during the speech, he said, “I thought about that outfit you wore in Kansas City.”

Then he was gone, carrying the children off, and Misty stood there, her mouth open.

“Hi,” said the woman, holding her hand out. “I’m Felicity Chumley. Welcome to our home.” She grinned. “Bobby can be a little ... odd sometimes.”

“You can say that again,” sighed Misty.

“He thinks about things a little differently than most men. He wouldn’t understand how you might not want to wear another woman’s clothes.” She looked at his retreating back as he disappeared around a corner. “He means well, though.” She looked Misty up and down. “You’re performing at the festival over in Hutchinson?”

“Yes Ma’am,” said Misty. She recognized that she was in the presence of an important woman. She hadn’t seen much of Granger, but she’d seen enough to know that it didn’t have many houses like this one. No place, except maybe Hollywood, had a lot of houses like this one for that matter. She’d bought her mother a fine, fancy house, but this one made it look shabby by comparison.

“And your luggage was misrouted?”

“Yes Ma’am,” said Misty, feeling drab and plain beside this beautiful woman.

“Felicity ... please,” said the woman. “I could have someone go and see if they’ve gotten it back yet,” she offered.

“Um ... Bobby was going to take me shopping in Wichita, or to see if they found it, but we’re running out of time. I have a photo shoot, and I need to rehearse.”

“Ahhh,” said Felicity. “I see now why Bobby thought of me. He can be very clever sometimes.” She cast another appraising look at Misty. “I do have an ... outfit. I got it to go dancing in. I actually have two outfits, but Bobby doesn’t know about one of them. It’s not really my style. Not really. It’s a little fancy for me. Would you like to see them?”

What Felicity was talking about were the two western ensembles that Bobby had, in fact seen her in. He had picked them both out. The first, she had vetoed. It was a lavender sequined tank top, with a denim skirt with fringe on the hem. The skirt was very short and when she had complained that her panties would show if she bent over in it, he had calmly said, “That’s why you don’t wear panties with an outfit like that.” She had kept the purple boots and hat that he’d chosen to go with that outfit, but had made him choose something else for her to wear in front of her high school friends. Since then, however, her relationship with Bobby had changed drastically and she had returned to the store and purchased the original ensemble. She’d been holding onto it, with a somewhat vague and unformed idea that there would come a special occasion to spring it on Bobby when it was her turn to have him for a night in bed.

The other outfit was the one she had worn when she danced with Bobby at a western club in Kansas City. It was a doeskin shirt, with built in cups for her breasts to go in, but which left them free to wobble enticingly. It had almost no back, other than soft strings that crisscrossed the bare back of the wearer. It went with a dark maroon skirt with a weighted hem so that when the woman wearing it was spun, the skirt flared out and rippled, showing all of her upper thighs.

When Misty saw them, she had mixed reactions. Performance clothing, by and large, is cheaply made, and intended to be worn only once or twice before being discarded. While flashy and glitzy, the person wearing it can both see and feel the poor quality of the construction.

Felicity’s clothes, though, while skimpy, were expensive and well made. Misty could tell that instantly. While a part of her mind noted that she’d feel almost naked wearing either outfit, her performer’s sensibilities knew immediately that the crowd would love something like this.

“They’re beautiful,” she sighed.

“What there is of them,” chuckled Felicity. “You are most definitely aware you’re a woman while wearing them.” She grinned. “So is every man in sight.”

“I can see that!” sighed Misty as she held up the doeskin shirt.

She looked at Felicity, her critical eye running up and down the older woman’s body.

“You’re bigger than I am,” she said. “This would hang loose on me.”

“We can take care of that with a little alteration,” said Felicity. “The strings in the back can be tied differently. The tank top isn’t a problem. It’s really too tight on me anyway. It’s your choice, though. I’d be happy to send you in my car to Wichita. My driver knows all the right places to go.”

Misty tried to imagine herself, bare-backed, singing and turning on stage in these beautiful clothes. She couldn’t, but that didn’t stop her.

“No, I need the time for other things,” she said. “If you really don’t mind, I’d love to borrow these.”

“I’d be honored,” said Felicity. Her voice carried the truth of that comment to Misty, who felt the thrill of being honestly complimented. “Annie bought your album, and I’ve been teaching my husband to two step to some of your songs.”

“Really!” squealed Misty. “That’s great!”

“You’re pretty good,” said Felicity. “Not that I’m much of a critic of your kind of music. I never listened to it at all before Bo...” She stopped, and frowned. “Before I learned to two step,” she finished. “You want to try them on, so we can make the adjustments?”

That took only fifteen minutes, as it turned out. The tank top was snug, but didn’t crush Misty’s breasts, like it did when Felicity wore it, and the strings on the back of the doeskin shirt were easily retied to pull it tight against her front. Both skirts fit her perfectly.

“I’ve always had a big butt,” she said, arching her neck to look at how the maroon skirt fit her. She suddenly realized she had just suggested that Felicity had a big butt too, since this skirt fit her, and covered her mouth with her hand. “I didn’t mean that you...”

Felicity just smiled and waved her hand. “I don’t get any complaints,” she said. “I prefer to think of it as my mommy hips.” She grinned. “It looks good on you.”

That business taken care of, Misty changed back into her other borrowed clothes and Felicity took her to find Bobby.

They found him in the den, and stopped in the doorway, to survey what was going on. He was on his back on the floor, and had taken his shoes off. The maid was sitting on the edge of a chair near him. The little boy Misty had seen earlier was running around Bobby, while he held the little girl aloft on his feet, which were raised straight above his stomach. His legs were waving slowly to and fro and the little girl’s arms were stretched out as she giggled.

“You’re flying, Junior! Look at you!” Bobby sounded excited.

His leg movements got wilder. “Watch out!” he said, with false panic in his voice. “Turbulence! Turbulence! You’re going to crash!”

His feet suddenly snapped apart, and the little girl fell shrieking to be caught by his hands and pulled into a hug.

“Gotcha!” he laughed.

“Me, me, me” called the little boy, grabbing a foot and trying to pull himself up.

Bobby rolled the girl off of him and pulled the boy onto his feet, raising the boy up like the girl had been. The little girl levered herself up and toddled erratically toward the maid.

“I crashed Mommy!” she said brightly.

The maid scooped her up and pretended to examine her for injuries, kissing her on her hands and cheeks and head, while Bobby “flew” the little boy, like he had done with the girl. Again there was “turbulence” and Bobby’s feet went up and down erratically, until the boy, too, fell to be caught and hugged while he laughed.

“Anyway,” said the maid, obviously picking up a conversation that had been interrupted by the play that was going on, “when he just walked up to me and asked me to go out on a date with him, I didn’t know what to do!”

“I thought you said you went to school with him,” said Bobby, putting the boy back up on his feet. He held the toddler’s hands until he was comfortably arranged, and then began weaving his feet back and forth slowly.

“I did,” said the maid. “But he never even talked to me back then.”

“Is he a nice guy?”

“I think so,” she said. “He was in the model rocketing club, and I saw him around school. He was pretty quiet back then.”

“I think you should go out with him,” said Bobby, starting the “turbulence routine” with the boy on his feet. “Just get to know him a little and see what he’s like.”

“I haven’t been on a date in years!” sighed the maid.

“You’ll do fine,” said Bobby. He stopped to call “Turbulence! Turbulence!” and the little boy started shrieking “Ima crash!”

In the process of dropping and catching the boy, Bobby rolled and saw the two women standing in the doorway watching.

“Hi!” he said.

The maid turned her head and she looked pale, suddenly.

“That’s what I told her too,” said Felicity, stepping forward. “She never listens to me, though.” It was said with no anger or chastisement in her voice. To Misty it sounded more like what one friend would say to another, joking.

The little boy rolled to the floor and levered himself up, with a little help from Bobby. He, too, ran to his mother, squealing “I crash Mamma!”

“I saw that,” said Felicity, kneeling to pick him up and hug him. “Bobby caught you and saved you! Did you say thank you?”

“Tankoo,” said the little boy, turning his head toward the man, who was getting up off the floor.

“You’re welcome!” said Bobby, jumping up off the floor and landing with his knees bent and his arms out.

“Nooooooo,” squealed the little boy. “Mamma! Mister Buzz Buzz!”

Bobby extended one finger, pointing it at Felicity and her son. He began making a noise that was, basically “Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz”, and his finger began weaving around as he stalked toward the boy.

Then he poked the boy, making the “Bzzz” louder when he touched him, tickling him. Misty watched, almost in awe, as this man also poked the woman holding the boy.

“Stop that!” barked Felicity, slapping at his hand. “Misty is ready to go!”

Somehow, it seemed to Misty that her name had been used not so much to inform him she was ready to go, but to remind Bobby that she was actually there.

Instead of stopping, though, Bobby turned and advanced on the little girl, who was in the maid’s arms, and poked both of them too. Misty blinked as it looked like Bobby actually pinched the maid’s breast briefly!

“Bobby!” squealed the maid.

Then, almost as if magic was involved, he was suddenly standing and looking completely normal. He retrieved his shoes and pulled them on. Then he stood back up, looked at Misty, and said “Okay, where to now, Boss lady?”

Where-to-next turned out to be a house on a cul-de-sac, instead of a photo studio, like Misty expected. She glanced, a little dismally at the sign in the window: “Brown Photography”, but kept her silence. Several things Bobby Dalton was involved with had turned out wildly different than she had expected.

On impulse, she stood to the side, where someone opening the door would not see her. She couldn’t have explained why she did that, but that’s what she chose to do. She was therefore mystified when, as he had done at the Chumley mansion, Bobby simply turned the knob and walked into the house.

“Anybody home?” he called out.

Misty stepped in behind him to hear squeals of excitement, and saw two children, a boy and a girl, running toward Bobby. Again, he went to one knee and scooped the two children up into a bear hug that was made more real by growling sounds he made as he roughly nuzzled their necks. They squirmed, but held on to him as if he were a life raft.