Nightmare Child Read Online Free

appealing young woman named Brenda Kohl, who was an assistant art director and had been Jeff's lover for the past seven months. Red of hair, green of eyes, sumptuous of body, Brenda could most often be found straddled on top of Jeff in the overstuffed chair. As now.
    "Oh-oh-oh," she said, tossing her head back, closing her in eyes in what Jeff took to be ecstasy.
    "Oh-oh-oh," Jeff said right back, closing his own eyes in what he took to be ecstasy.
    Finished a few minutes later, the skirt of her fashionable gray Jaeger suit pulled into place with fierce modesty, she said, as she always said, "Did you get a chance to talk to Barney yet?"
    Now they were seated sensibly across from each other. She held a Coca-Cola, he a Diet Pepsi.
    He smiled. "I'm sorry, babe."
    "God, you did it again."
    "Oh, I'm sorry. 'Babe,' you mean?"
    "Yes. I hate that."
    "I'm sorry."
    "And stop apologizing. It's so…unmanly."
    Jeff McCay had long had this dream of having an uncomplicated relationship with a woman. Other men, over drinks, always told him about their uncomplicated relationships with women. But somehow it never happened for Jeff. Certainly not with Mindy, who could be like living with an entire psychiatric ward all at once. And certainly not with the ten—or was it twelve?—women at Foster Dawson with whom he'd had "things" over the past four years. A little hot, quick, garter-snapping sex; that was all he asked for. But it quickly became so much more, sunk in that morass of failed expectation and enmity. Take gorgeous Brenda, here. She was one of those women who seemed basically to hate men. But, knowing it was men who more than not still dominated the business world, she was not in the least averse to sleeping with one of them now and then to get what she wanted.
    And what she wanted was simple enough in agency terms: a full art directorship with all the commensurate salary increases, the real and imagined perks, and the real and imagined prestige that went with such a position.
    In the beginning, part of his seduction scheme, Jeff had hinted (but was careful not to promise) that he would talk to Barney Graves, the Chief Art Director, and put in several million good words for Brenda. But all along, Jeff knew that he would not do this because he kept his own job only because the agency's largest client was his uncle-in-law. He was resented enough already; if he started getting his girlfriends promotions, he would be in dangerous waters indeed.
    The second problem was that he was in love with Brenda and did not want her to get the promotion because once she did, she'd say good-bye for sure. In love. He thought about that as he stared across at her perfect white legs and her perfect white posture and her perfect tumbling red hair. God, he did love her; she could destroy him he loved her so much, and that made him feel both wonderful and terrible—wonderful because she made him feel so good, and terrible because he knew, deep down, that she'd dump him without a care and he would be maimed in some spiritual way forever.
    "I checked his calendar," Brenda said.
    "Oh?"
    "Yes. He's free for lunch tomorrow."
    "Oh—you mean Barney and—"
    "Barney and you."
    "Oh."
    "Why do you keep saying `oh'? It's almost as annoying as your saying 'babe.'"
    "I'm sorry."
    "God. There you go again."
    Each time now, her distaste for him was more apparent. He wanted to have some kind of personality transplant—Why not? They were transplanting everything else these days—and emerge from surgery as just the kind of non-annoying man Brenda Kohl liked.
    "I'll talk to him."
    "When, Jeff?"
    "Tomorrow."
    "How about today?"
    "If I get a chance."
    "You're that busy?"
    "I'm afraid I am."
    "I'm tired of your lies, Jeff."
    Hearing her harsh words, seeing the anger in her green gaze, he thought again of how other men, particularly in bars, spoke and felt about women: as breasts, as bottoms, as legs and as laughs. Leave it to Jeff McCay to fall in love