Dair (The Wild Side #3)(26)

It was a heady feeling.

It was later when Iris suddenly left my arms, rose from the bed, and went into the bathroom.

Curious, I followed.

I came up behind her, watching her in the vanity mirror.  Her face was downcast, her always thick lashes brought up to pinup status with some heavy mascara, her lipstick wiped clean, but her mouth still swollen and red.

She looked so vulnerable, and I wanted to ravage her again, just like that.

“Heath found us,” she said quietly, and my entire body stiffened.  “This house is being watched.”

“I don’t understand.  How?”

“He made you the night you went out with Lourdes and has had eyes on us ever since.  He was actually being considerate, letting me have a little time with you, as long as I wasn’t risking myself, but he spoke to me tonight and said it’s time to go back.”

I shut my eyes tight, fists clenched.  “No,” I said firmly.

She didn’t argue, just washed off her makeup and got back into bed with me.

I must have slept deeply that night, because I didn’t rouse when she left.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was sitting through one of my rare phone conversations with my mother.  She was going on about something, and all I could think, as I usually did, was what a strange woman she was.  Or strange to me, at least.  I’d never understood her.  It was hard to even relate in the most superficial way, most of the time, though luckily she didn’t require that of me.

We weren’t close; she’d always been too busy for that, even when I was in diapers, but you wouldn’t know it by our infrequent phone conversations.  At least on her end, the flow of information seemed endless, as though we did this every day, not every six months.

Though it should be noted that, for my part, I hardly got a sentence in.

She’d been an English professor at Columbia for over forty years—starting at a time when it was rare to see women on campus, let alone teaching—and showed no signs of ever retiring.  It was consuming work, always had been, and when she decided she had time to talk to me, she expected me to listen, even if we hadn’t spoken a word to each other in months.

She was the epitome of successful not only in her career, but in her marriage and her personal associations.

The one thing I knew with certainty about her, more than anything else, was her need for the world to admire her and her accomplishments.

When the notion of a woman having it was mentioned, Susan Johnson-Masters should have come to mind.  Married to a man as successful as herself, best friends with the first female vice president, a force to be reckoned with in academia, a feminist trailblazer, and the mother of a very successful author, to boot.

Of course, you couldn’t look too closely at that mother part.  A nanny or six had made sure that I, her only son, was fed and cared for, because she sure as hell hadn’t been around for even one waking hour of each day to do it.  And while I was a successful author, in her circles it couldn’t help but be noted that I wrote fiction.

It wasn’t that I was bitter about my mother’s role in my life.  I was a few decades too old to hold onto any mommy issues.  But her part in my upbringing didn’t need to be over-exaggerated.  Even she would have emphasized that her priorities had never included being a caregiver.

And even when I’d been very young, I hadn’t been bitter.  I’d always been made aware of the fact (by her) that my mother had a mission in life that was far more important than just being one boy’s mommy.

She had so much to live up to.  Coming from a distinguished family, married to old money, and close childhood friends with two of the most notable women in the nation, one who grew up to be the VP of the United States, and the other the outspoken activist wife of a powerful senator.

If I was brutally honest with myself, Tammy had been something of a rebellious statement to my mother, which accounted for some of her attraction, at least in the beginning.  She was no Susan Johnson-Masters, in fact many would say she was the polar opposite, with very few personal ambitions.

Back then, Tammy had fed me some lines about wanting to live a life with an emphasis on family, and my young, already work consumed self had eaten it whole.  Wouldn’t it be great to come home to someone who wanted to take care of my needs?

Years had turned into decades, and Tammy, who’d waxed poetic about wanting to be a mother, had somehow never quite been ready just yet for that step.

Twenty years later, and I was well aware that joke had been on me.

My mother’s voice brought me back to our conversation.

“. . . As though that poor, dear woman hasn’t been through enough . . . ”

Ah.  I didn’t have to wonder who the dear woman was, though I hadn’t been listening prior.  My mother and her two closest friends had achieved such a prominent, noted level of success that my mother had become accustomed to updating other people of each of their statuses before she was even asked.  She did this when she spoke to me not because she even assumed I cared, but out of pure habit.

Though, incidentally, I did care.

The purpose of the automatic, obligatory update was for two reasons, as I saw it.  One:  To remind one and all about her important ties.  Two:  To assure everyone that the three influential women were as close as ever.