Read Online The Seduction - Art Bourgeau by Art Bourgeau - Free Book Online Page B

death and her parts then
spread across the desert.
    Pointing to them, she said to Kate, "I assume
you had them brought in by the private entrance."
    "That's right. The office limo has been busy all
morning going back and forth to the airport to pick them up."
    "They're back in the examining rooms now?"
    "Right."
    A pause, during which Kate was waiting for her to
begin some girl talk, to share confidences of the past month. It
didn't come. It was enough that Missy knew Kate was sleeping with one
of the younger physicians in the practice and didn't fire her. No
reason, she figured, for them to start sharing picnic lunches and
lipstick.
    Walking to the linen closet, she thought about how
different it was going to be here without her father. The practice
had been like an oasis . . . in her mind their Tara—he the master,
she the mistress. He'd wanted her to be a doctor, something she
couldn't possibly do . . . it meant putting herself on the same level
with him, exactly what she didn't want, couldn't and didn't presume
to. Besides, it wasn't medicine she cared about, it was him, being
near and pleasing him. He, of course, never understood her
resistance, and she had never been able to repress it. She wanted
them to be a team, to work side by side, which was why she became a
nurse and ran the administrative functions of the practice. Yes, here
they were a team, father and daughter . . .
    In the linen closet was a stack of her father's lab
coats, the name "Wakefield" embroidered in red over the
left pocket. She traced the name with her fingertips, then on impulse
put it on, turned up the collar and turned to look at herself in the
mirror on the back of the door. How long had it been since she'd worn
anything of his? Twelve years ago. She had just turned sixteen, and
as a birthday present he had taken her to their cabin in the Poconos
for a fishing trip. The first day a rainstorm had come up and he'd
given her his jacket. What a special feeling that had been, walking
back to the cabin all bundled up, his arms around her . . . She
thought now of wearing the lab coat, in his memory, but quickly
rejected the notion, feeling guilty even considering it. He would
never have allowed it . . . nothing like that sort of intimacy had
been possible after that trip . . .
    What had happened, she'd told herself again and again
over the years, was not her fault. It was that damn Roy Curtis; the
seventeen-year-old son of the banker who owned the next cabin. He'd
made it happen and she got the blame.
    She only wanted to go fishing with her father, be
with him. But everywhere she turned there was Roy, a pup in heat.
Actually she'd willingly lost her virginity three years earlier to a
twenty-seven-year-old cowboy on a Montana dude ranch and wasn't much
interested in sex. Horses and being with her father took precedence.
Roy, though, wouldn't back off or even be discouraged. He buzzed
around her as though he was a fly and she a honeypot. Finally, to get
him off her back by her getting on it, she gave in.
    It happened in the boathouse, and Roy was as inept as
she knew he would be. She was doing her best to move with him, help
him finish and get him off her when she idly glanced at the window to
see her father's face. Their eyes met and held as Roy pumped away on
her. She wanted to die, would have welcomed that as an out. And by
the time her father turned away she was ill from the terror building
in her. When she was finally able to push Roy off and run outside,
her father was gone. In more ways than one.
    Hours later, when she gave up hiding and slunk back
to the cabin, he was sitting there. The car was packed. Not a word
was spoken. She huddled in her corner of the front seat the whole
trip, cold and sick. If only he'd wrap her up in his old fishing
jacket and tell her that it was all right, that he forgave her. But
of course he didn't. Didn't even look at her, didn't speak . . . In
the twelve years since that day, no matter what she did, he had