Read Online An Idol for Others by Gordon Merrick - Free Book Online

likely to spank her. It’s what she needs.”
    “If you think she’ll go for the rough stuff, don’t hesitate. This is her second summer. We don’t want her to get bored.”
    They went back to David’s office and worked another couple of hours. Walter was able to make useful suggestions about various administrative details. Already he knew he could run the theater as well as David.
    There was little time for personal relations, but Walter had a spare moment. He was more intrigued than attracted by her, if he could shatter her regal manner, that might change. The fact that she was a Washburn didn’t count against her. She had connections that might prove useful. If nothing else, he wanted to make enough of an impression on her so that they would go on seeing each other when they left in the fall. They never had time for a real conversation. He hoped for a free evening so that he could make a firm dinner invitation, but almost a week had passed before he caught her as she was leaving for the evening. He suggested walking her home. David could struggle along without him for half an hour.
    She gave him a long, reflective look. Her mouth worked. “You look so ridiculously young. Rather overgrown, of course, but a perfect baby. It makes it difficult to take you seriously as a suitor.”
    “Is that what I am?”
    “Well, aren’t you? You’re paying quite a lot of attention to me. Did David tell you to?”
    “David doesn’t want you to get bored. I think I’d probably bore you as a suitor.”
    She uttered her abrupt laughter. “You’re really very clever.”
    He had scored. He didn’t expect her to let him go to bed with her, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to if she did. She was too formidable for him to think of her easily in those terms. He wanted to meet her challenge, best her, establish his mastery. Nobody had ever made him feel like this. He didn’t see how he could do it without going to bed with her.
    She moved majestically into step beside him. In repose, her features might have been too perfect and symmetrical to be interesting, but they were never in repose. Her eyes mocked and challenged, her mouth looked as if it were about to do something startling, the place where her chin and neck met invited a tender caress.
    “I suppose you know all about me,” she said as they turned into the street toward the ocean. “Who are you? I don’t even know what your father does.”
    “He’s a dentist,” he said.
    She missed a step, caught off-guard. “A dentist!” She uttered a hoot of laughter that ended in a gurgle of delight. “How divine. To think I’m with a dentist’s son. I can’t wait to write my parents. They’ll probably want me to come home at once. Oh, dear, why couldn’t you be black too? Or Jewish maybe? They’d like that.”
    Walter smiled at her, not minding in the least. His father existed only because everybody had to have one. “What’s yours?”
    “Mine? Oh nothing. He runs things.”
    “And what about you? Are you going to be an actress?”
    She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I am an actress. I don’t know whether I’ll go on being one. I’ll be quite rich someday. I might want to put money in the theater. Anyway, I like it here once the season gets started. I like theater people, and I adore the theater. You don’t want to be an actor, do you?”
    “No, everything else. I want to have a theater of my own. When are you going to be rich? You might come in handy.”
    “It won’t start for ten years. That’s when I get the first slice.”
    “That’s too bad. I can’t wait that long.”
    “You still have another year of college, haven’t you?”
    “Yeah. It’s a bore.”
    “I shouldn’t be wasting my time on you. I like people to be established, doing things.”
    Just when they were getting to be friends, she hit him below the belt.
    “Are you established?” he demanded.
    “Of course. I had a part on Broadway this winter. It lasted only three nights,