Words of Seduction Read Online Free

thoughts.
    Rick rested his arm on the length of the couch and dared her to challenge him. Instead his mother reached for her carton of cigarettes and held them out to him as a peace offering. “Wanna smoke?”
    “I quit, remember?”
    “When?”
    He sighed, annoyed. “Five years ago.”
    “Oh, yeah.” She puffed on the cigarette, taking the smoke into her mouth and then exhaling. “Now I remember. I didn’t realize it’d been that long.”
    Rick stared at the smoke as it drifted up to the ceiling. The new house he’d bought her had nine-foot highceilings, fine wooden floors and the right address. But except for the size, it was still too similar to the cramped house he’d grown up in. Despite the expensive furnishings the place smelled of old cigarettes, stale beer and plastic flowers. It still held too many painful reminders of his past, except for one. He no longer needed to worry about getting his head bashed in by his father.
    “Rickie, promise me not to get into any trouble now that you’re back here.”
    He hated when she called him that and she knew it, so he didn’t correct her. “Yes, ma’am. I know why I’m here.”
    “You always had a weakness for women.”
    “No,” he said with a laugh, “they had a weakness for me.”
    “Is she as pretty as before? Like when she was crowned Miss Anadale?”
    “Yes.”
    “I could have been crowned Miss Anadale once, but her mother beat me out because she was from the right family.” Frieda Gordon angrily stubbed out her cigarette. “Even though I was prettier. I was the prettiest girl in town at the time.”
    Rick knew it was best not to reply. His mother may have been a beauty once, but her hard life, hard drinking and chain-smoking had stripped her of most of her good features. Her once vibrant cocoa skin was now a dull muddy brown, and her notable high cheek bones looked like hollow shells. His mother had long ago resorted to wearing wigs, since her thick black-brown hair, which was her pride and glory, began thinning and falling out. Her hair had been her main source of vanity, and although she was now in her late sixties, she could not let go of heryouthful image. As a result she only wore one wig style. Unfortunately for his mother, cascading black, shoulder-length hair was unbecoming and only emphasized how far she was from the beauty she had once been.
    “Does Suzanne look the same?”
    He tapped a beat on the back of the couch. “She looks like her picture.”
    “Hmm, so she’s skinnier. Not that sad little porky thing she’d become when she married that Lyon boy. Remember when she got married? Oh, wait, you weren’t there.”
    “Yes,” Rick said in a distant voice. “I was there.” The only reason he’d been at Suzanne’s wedding was because he’d been working two jobs that spring and the company he worked for had been hired to set up the equipment for the stage show. A famous singer had been flown in to perform. He remembered the hundreds of guests and Suzanne in a stunning white gown becoming another man’s wife.
    “Oh, that’s right, you left the year after, so you didn’t see her change the way I did. Not that I felt sorry for her. She did just like her sort always does—marry for money and prestige, even though everyone knew that boy dropped his pants for anything with breasts and you know what. Did she look happy?”
    “Momma,” he said with growing impatience. “Her father died only a few weeks ago and she has to sell their house.”
    A sly grin touched his mother’s lips. “And we know why.”
    Rick rubbed his arm, a feeling of restlessness seizing him. For a moment he wished he were back at 468Trellis Court surrounded by the fresh smell of flowers, the pristine wood furniture and history. In a way he and Suzanne still lived in different worlds. Although his apartment was nothing like his mother’s place, it did not have the casual elegance of 468 Trellis Court.
    Frieda waved her cigarette at him. “Don’t let