Minerva's Ghost (7 page)

“The bed smells of roses and sex. I’ll always think of roses in this context, now. Before the scent only made me think of the flower.” he said with a smile. “I still want more.” He went to the bathroom for a towel and cleaned up some as he walked back to the bed. He was still semi-hard and obviously interested. He reached for the rose scented lotion and poured some on his hands. His arms and shoulders were roped with muscles that flexed and bunched as he rubbed his hands together. Her mouth watered and her pussy dripped moisture as she watched him.

“Turn over,” he suggested. He finished rubbing his hands together to warm the lotion and then began an erotic massage on her backside from her neck to her ankles. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Why haven’t you had more lovers?”

“No one made me feel the way you do,” she said, “and I think some men aren’t patient enough to wait for a woman to get hot. I wouldn’t settle for less than wonderful. This is the first time I ever felt this wanton and turned on by what a man did to me.” She was very turned on again and said demandingly again, “I want you.”

He turned her over and kissed her mouth, careful not to put too much weight on her injured shoulder. He was slow and gentle and thorough. By the time he left her mouth she was trying to pull him over her. He kissed his way down her writhing body lingering at her breasts. He kept kissing lower and lower, past her waist and belly until she tensed up when she realized where he was going. He soothed and gentled her with his hands and went where he wanted with the most intimate of kisses.

When she discovered her delight in his feasting tongue she twisted her fingers in his thick, silky dark hair and held him to her. She was moaning in pleasure. He reached for her left nipple then her right, rubbing them gently and firmly with his fingers and wringing a gasping scream from her. As his fingers fondled her hard nipples his tongue flicked across and around that special pleasure nub while his lower lip moved around her opening. Amanda was dripping wet with excitement. Her juices flowed over his tongue and down over his chin. The sensation was too much for her to handle. In just a few moments she screamed in earnest as another intense orgasm ripped through her. When she went limp he crawled up her body and gathered her in his arms, pulling the spread up to cover them. He turned her to hold her spoon fashion as she drifted into sleep.

She woke, hours later feeling stiff and sore from the accident and still relaxed from lots of sex. She could still smell his scent on her body, but of the tantalizing aromas of cooking food made her realize she was ravenous. Tom had spoiled her lunch and they had missed dinner, doing things that made her flush with remembered pleasure. She got up and went to the bathroom for her robe. She showered quickly, brushed her hair and teeth and then headed for the kitchen.

He was there with food ready to eat and the table set.

“You can cook?” she said.

“I can get by in the kitchen. My mother made me learn the basics. I’ve learned more over the years because I like it.”

“Minnie did most of our cooking. I make a lot of desserts, but that’s all.” She felt a little embarrassed at the admission. She really did not have a lot of feminine accomplishments.

She sat down and he served her a cheese omelet and whole-wheat toast. “I cleaned out the refrigerator. The funeral food was too old to eat any longer. The dishes are in the dishwasher.” He turned his own omelet onto a plate, wrapped his big hand in her hair and kissed her. Then he sat down.

“Is the data Minnie was using still here?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s by her desk in her room. It’s a bunch of raw computer data, reams of it. We usually only see prepared management reporting. I was planning to go through them this afternoon, but someone distracted me,” she told him.

He had the grace to look a little sheepish. “I know I haven’t had my mind on business. I’m usually a lot more focused. You also ought to look and see who Tom made your heirs. I can’t believe he actually thought you would sign that document without reading it. How can he not know you’re a lot smarter than that?” He looked her over, flushed and lovely in her peach terry robe. His eyes ran over her and he reached out and pushed her robe opened enough to see her bruised shoulder and then her breasts.

“Tom’s never had much respect for me,” Amanda said. “Minnie always acted as a buffer between us. He really doesn’t know me well at all. He never was interested in me…only in Minnie.”

“I really think he didn’t have Minnie’s best interests at heart, either,” Amanda said. It made her sad and angry for her aunt. Minnie had trusted in Tom’s love, as flawed as it was.

Gabe looked distracted. He said, “We need to get some rubbers before we get in bed together again,” he said, sleepy eyed with arousal, “and we need to figure out what’s going on so you don’t get hurt again. If Minnie’s business were less important to you, I’d walk away from the whole thing and take you with me. We could just leave it to whoever wants it and go. The only problem is, I don’t want to be like Tom. For one thing, I want a bunch of kids.”

“Where do you live?” She wanted to know about him, so she asked.

“I have a log home on a farm east of Chattanooga. It’s beautiful country and not as hot in the summer as it is down here. And, before you ask, yes I do farm like I did when I was a boy. My sister laughed herself silly when I bought the place.”

“How do you keep it up when you’re working? It must be a big responsibility.” She wanted to know for her own interests. He had a life in one place and she had one in an entirely different place. What if they wanted to be together always? She felt it couldn’t work.

He answered,  “I have a caretaker who looks after things when I’m not around. He and his wife keep things going. I would like to slow down the consulting travel and spend more time there, but I get a lot of work from people who are now friends. It’s impossible for me to say no to some of them. I was delayed getting here for Minnie and look what happened to her.”

He looked grim and worried.

“You’re more worried now than you were before aren’t you? Why now?” she asked him, fearing with all her heart what he would say.

“I’m getting a bad feeling that Minnie might have been eliminated for someone’s convenience. Tom, your employees and Minnie’s other relatives all knew where we would be today. We could have died out on that road. All of them could have motive and opportunity. The guys driving the truck were just hired muscle. It seems too personal a threat for them to be joy riding. The key has to be in what Minnie discovered. Tom knows something, too.”

“But Tom had little or nothing to gain financially from hurting Minnie.” Amanda said. “I can’t see what his motive would be for this type of craziness.”

“Let’s look and see who he appointed as your heirs. That will tell us something.” Gabe went into the bathroom and got the copy of the will Tom had written off the counter where he’d tossed it before they got in the shower.

“Tom and Gena are your heirs,” Gabe told her.

“Now there’s a conflict of interest if I ever heard one,” Amanda said. “I don’t like either of them. I’d leave my share of the stock to the employees before I’d leave it to those two.”

“It’s highly likely that they’re both involved in what happened to Minnie,” Gabe observed. “We probably have enough evidence to take to the police, now…especially after what appears to be an attempt on your life today.”

“Neither of them could be behind the embezzlement, though,” Amanda pointed out. “That has to be someone inside the company.”

“They…whoever they are…have been both clumsy and greedy,” Gabe said. “Tom obviously feels justified in what he’s doing. People find all kinds of justifications for their less admirable behaviors, and they’re all self centered. Minnie and I shared that opinion.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Amanda agreed grudgingly. “The operative words are ‘I, me and mine’. I know it. I just don’t want to think about it.”

“I have the feeling we’re not going to have time to think about much else, pretty soon ” he told her. “The motivator is nearly always greed.”

She reflected morosely that he was probably right. “Yuck!” she said, “I hate this. I hate having to be suspicious about people.”

“Well, we have little choice except to deal with it” he said. “Let’s get started. Show me those reams of computer papers. They’re a good beginning. It was apparently where Minnie found something.”

Amanda said nothing else. She just led him to Minnie’s rooms. 

Chapter 4

She held the doorknob for a moment before she pushed it open.

Sensing her unease, Gabe said “I’ll go in alone if you don’t want to tackle it today.”

“No, I’ve been going in every day.” Amanda told him.

“She always did most of her work here. I keep getting the feeling she’s still here and that she’s worried about some things. It probably sounds crazy to you. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. I know I’m not ready for her to be gone. She keeps commenting on things. I hear her in my head all the time, but no one else seems to hear. Minnie would have edited herself very little about how she felt about what’s been going on since she died. It seems she’s helping me run the company. I’m sure she knew I wasn’t ready to run it without her.”

“She chose you to run it.” Gabe pointed out the obvious. He didn’t seem especially shocked that Amanda was hearing voices.  “She had reasons and she was a smart person, not easily fooled and savvy about her own goals. She apparently did not trust anyone else the way she did you.”

“My first meeting with all our managers is tomorrow morning.” Amanda said. “I don’t expect much cooperation from them. Michael will be there and Allison, his assistant. She’s his liaison to the world. He doesn’t talk much to anyone except her.”

“I was in the park when he escorted you out of Tom’s office. He doesn’t get along with his mother?” Gabe said.

“No.” Amanda confirmed. “His relationship with his mother has always been strained. His brothers are the products of her connection with her ‘true love’. She resents that Moon is his father. Additionally, he’s so much more competent than his brothers are. He wants badly for her to love him. I don’t think she’s capable of loving anyone but herself. Their family life is so unhappy, and I think Michael is the most unhappy of them all.”

“How’s your relationship with him?” Gabe asked.

“It’s not bad, but we’re not really close at all.” Amanda said. “We’re like coworkers who have no other connection. The only time I’ve felt any family feeling from him was the other day in Tom’s office.”

“What happened there?” Gabe asked.

“Pete touched me in a way I didn’t like. He always takes his opportunities. Michael risked his mother’s displeasure to rescue me. She encourages Pete to hit on me, but I find his efforts too crude. They can’t seem to accept that I’m not attracted to him.”

Gabe went absolutely still and then slowly and obviously forced him self to relax. “Let’s go and find him, ” he suggested. “If he touches you in front of me I’ll have a good excuse to act like an ass and pound him into the dirt.”

“I would like to pound on him myself.” Amanda said.

“I’ll give you some lessons especially designed to teach cave men some civilization.” Gabe said. “Nothing would give me more pleasure.” His teeth were gritted together behind an evil grin. “How often does he touch you inappropriately and where?” he ended in a strained growl.

“Use your imagination.” Amanda said. “Don’t worry, I can handle him. I’ve had a lot of men grab my body parts. Pete pretends to want me. I know he really doesn’t. He likes the way I look but he doesn’t like me…you know, my personality at all. He bores me, too. We have nothing in common except Minnie. I wish I were more conventional looking. As little as I date, I would think men would give up. I’ve never dated anyone around here.”

“You never dated anyone from your home town?” Gabe asked. He was stunned.

“Men seem to want more from me than I can give them, so I don’t date.” she said. “I can’t explain it, but I hate dating and fighting men off. They don’t really like me except as a sex object. They just want my body. I need more or maybe I’m too shy. Minnie said my body was mine to give, not someone else’s to use or take. I can tell what they’re thinking. I hate dating.”