The Ninth Step by Sissel Barbara Taylor

Author:Sissel, Barbara Taylor [Sissel, Barbara Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, Mystery
Goodreads: 12503350
Published: 2011-08-30T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The first time was three weeks after the miscarriage. She dressed in a slim, shimmery-red, body-clinging sheath that swept over her right shoulder leaving the left shoulder bare and red sandals to match, the pair Stella had found in her closet. The man Livie had gone home with that night had slid onto the barstool on her left side and bought her a Manhattan and then another. Livie remembered the tantalizing feel of his breath against her bare shoulder; she remembered the damp imprint of his mouth there, the shock of her instant arousal.

He brought her to his apartment and he’d scarcely closed the door before she was yanking at his tie, the buttons of his shirt. She pulled the dress over her head. He shucked her out of her panties and lifting her, he had her first against the small foyer’s wall. They’d knocked into a table, sending the dish where he deposited his keys, the odd pair of cufflinks and loose change to the floor. She remembered the clatter when it broke. She remembered stepping on a cufflink.

She remembered lying naked underneath him in his bed and opening her legs to him, the hot demand of his tongue, the hard shaft of his penis. She’d taken him inside her mouth; he had taken her from behind. She had done it all without thinking, without remorse.

He’d been a stockbroker, that first one, and successful. One of the wealthier brokers in Houston, he’d announced with pride. He’d built himself up in an attempt to entice her to stay. Whatever she wanted, he promised. “Just tell me your name,” he begged.

But she never did that. She never told any of the men she picked up anything about herself because she wasn’t herself when she was with them. She was no one from nowhere. A genie from a long-lost lamp, a mermaid from an ancient sea. She was grief and despair and loneliness masquerading in a red dress. A whore, scag, cunt--

--her mother--

“Livie?”

She lifted her chin, met Kat’s perturbed, somewhat perplexed glance in the bathroom mirror.

“The front door was open. Didn’t you hear me calling?” Kat’s gaze fell to what Livie held in her hand. “What’s that?”

“Pregnancy test.” She dropped the small wand into the bathroom wastebasket.

Kat’s eyes widened.

“It’s positive.” Livie caught her breath. Her head felt dangerously light, as if it might float off the stem of her neck.

“Is that good news?”

Livie made a noise, something between a laugh and a groan. “I don’t know. I can’t think. . . .” She turned to the mirror, an antique beveled oval extravagantly framed in a gilded bouquet of roses twined around a gaily fluttering ribbon. It had been a gift from her mother who had paid more for it than she could afford. When Livie had protested, Gus had cupped Livie’s face in her hands, eyes dancing with affection and said, “Sugar, the instant I saw it, I saw you. I couldn’t leave it. I don’t care how many manicures I have to do without.

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