“Where’s Jarvis?”
“He ran off.He’ll be back in a week or two.Always is.”
“It’s her own damn fault,” John snapped.“He was beating her before they got married, still she went ahead with it.It was a stupid thing to do.”
Pam turned on him.“She had her reasons for marrying him.”
“Sure.She wanted someone to warm her bed, so she picked the first man who came along.”
“Maybe she was lonely.Maybe she was scared.Marcy was just a baby.Honestly, John, can’t you imagine what she was feeling?”
“Frankly, no.It was a stupid thing to do.So now she’s living with the decision.”
“She doesn’t deserve what he does to her.”
“Then she should kick him out.”
“She does, and he keeps coming back.”
“Then she should go to court.”
“She doesn’t have the money to do that.”
“So she sits there and takes it.She’s as stupid now as she was back then.Some people just don’t learn.”
Pam made a face.“You’re a pill, John.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” John said and stepped on the gas.
He made record time back to Boston.While the speed took the edge off the worst of his anger, enough remained to keep him geared up.He kept thinking of Cutter, then of Eugene.Then he thought about Patricia, and kept thinking about her, so that by the time he parked the car in the courtyard of the townhouse on Beacon Hill, he was sexually excited.
Pam and Marcy took off as quickly as they could, which was just fine with John.Dropping his bag by the back door, he took the stairs two at a time.Patricia was in the parlor, sitting at the roll-top desk, writing out invitations for a party she planned to give.Having alreadypaused to greet Pam, she raised her eyes when John appeared at the door.
Tossing his head toward the upper floor, he turned and took those stairs two at a time also.He went straight to Patricia’s bedroom—Patricia and Eugene’s—and began to strip.By the time Patricia slipped through the door, he was naked and fully aroused.She barely had time for a whimsical smile before he pulled her to him and began to shove her clothes aside.
“John?”she asked.
He knew that she was puzzled; he was usually more urbane in his approach to her.He also knew, as he tugged one piece of clothing after another from her body, that she was a little frightened, and that suited him well.He was the one in charge.Eugene could do whatever the hell he wanted with his will; he could be smug and cocky, make fun of John, put him down without a care.But the final laugh was on Eugene, because here in his bedroom, on his bed, between his sheets, his wife was putting out for John.
Over the next few months, John sought out Patricia more and more.She became a vindictive compulsion for him, the only source of satisfaction he had in his war with his father.Eugene wouldn’t change his will; John argued and argued, tried reason again and again, but the more he went at it, the more it seemed Eugene dug in his heels.Likewise, Eugene dug in his heels when it came to the business.He wouldn’t hear of branching off into activities other than mining, and when John even mentioned the possibility of taking the company public, Eugene left the room.
So John left, too, and took out his frustration in Eugene’s bedroom, on Eugene’s wife.
Sometimes she protested.On the day he returned from Maine with Pam and Marcy, when he took her without even a moment of foreplay, she complained that he wasn’t considerate.
“I’ll stop,” he said tightly, holding himself up on his fists while he was buried deep inside her.“I’ll stop if you want.I’ll get out of this room and never come back.I’ll even move out of the house and take a place of my own.That’s long overdue.”
But she quickly relented, as he’d known she would.Just as she’d become an obsession for him, he was her addiction.With Eugene rarely there, John gave her peace of mind.She depended on him.He was her ally, the one who was going to convince Eugene to take the steps necessary to provide her with the security she needed.
John didn’t always agree with her on what those steps should be.She remained fixated on real estate.She saw men in Boston making millions buying property and then renovating or tearing down and building from scratch.Restoration of the waterfront was just beginning.She was sure that St.George Mining could thrive in property development.
John had other ideas.Those men making millions in real estate were, in his opinion, relative upstarts.Some were from out of town.Others were local lawyers and politicians who had spotted a good thing and were capitalizing on it.None had real class, and he had no intention of aligning himself with people like that.
What he had in mind was something more sophisticated.He spent enough of his time with the upper crust to know the kinds of things that impressed them.Old wealth impressed them, but he didn’t have that.Excessive wealth impressed them, but he didn’t have that either.What he had was access to some of the finest tourmaline in the world, and while it wasn’t worshipped as diamonds, rubies, and sapphires were, he had become deeply enough involved in the gem trade to know that jewelers were beginning to branch out.Tourmaline was a rising commodity.He could deal with it and other gemstones as well.
He wanted to build something exclusive and elegant, an establishment that would be to jewelry what Dior was to clothing, Gucci to leather, Chanel to perfume.Patricia thought he was dreaming far too narrow a dream, but he knew that given the choice between one of their plans or nothing, she would opt for his against Eugene’s insistence on the status quo.
In the meantime, she grew more and more dependent on him, and he encouraged it.When they were in bed, she clung.He wouldn’t have stood it from another woman.God only knew Hillary didn’t.
