Damaris’ warmth.
“Years and years before I met even Marguerite,” Hugo confided, glowing in a way that made Pamela ill.
“Who is Marguerite?” asked Garda.
“She writes as Alma for my magazine.”
“Do I get to meet her too?” Garda asked.
“Luckily for Hugo, she’s in New York with Laura right now,” said Damaris impertinently.
“Yes it is, but you oughtn’t to have said so,” Hugo agreed, thumbing through a rack of cocktail dresses.
“She would have been intolerably competitive with Garda,” Damaris observed, “And it all would have ended in tears. She’s a redhead too, you see and there’s never been a second one in Random Point.”
“Girls, won’t you find me a perfect corset for this lady?”
“We just got some incredible ones in!” Damaris cried with excitement, going behind the counter to pull out a tissue packed box containing several black lace over beige nylon sewn full corselets, echoing the glory days of the Irving Klaw studios. “This small should fit Garda perfectly. Come with me, and we’ll try it on,” Damaris took Garda by the arm and led her to the lavishly appointed fitting rooms.
“You’re buying me a corset, Hugo?” Garda asked over her shoulder with a bemused grin on her face.
He winked at her as she disappeared with Damaris. Pamela folded sweaters and sulked behind the counter.
“Well,” she said, “I’m sure you hardly miss me.”
“Sweetheart, of course I miss you,” said Hugo gently, “but we couldn’t go on working together. Things had gotten out of control. And by things I mean you.”
“If I didn’t love my new boss I’d hate you now,” said Pamela. “As it is, I feel hurt and rejected! And now this, flaunting some blue-eyed redhead in front of me! Torturing me by forcing me to see her in a beautiful corset before imagining you together!”
“Pamela, I haven’t seen Garda in 22 years. She was my first submissive. She’s only in town for the weekend and she still likes me. Can you blame me for being happy?”
“Yes!”
“Pamela, you’re not being reasonable. You belong to Sloan. What you are feeling for me is some sort of mild infatuation brought on by me spanking you.”
“And fucking the daylights out of me!”
“Just that once.”
“I haven’t been able to forget it.”
“That’s why we couldn’t go on working together.”
“I thought when girls had sex with their bosses they got to keep their jobs,” said Pamela recklessly.
“You’re lucky we’re not somewhere I could give that remark the reply it deserves,” he said forcefully.
Damaris came out with a smile. “It’s a perfect fit. How about a glorious new cocktail dress to go over it?”
“Do bring her something to try on, Damaris,” said Hugo, unable to fully enjoy the experience because of Pamela’s sulking. When Damaris disappeared with another dress over her arm Hugo lifted Pamela’s chin, forcing her to look at him. “You’re behaving like a very wayward girl,” he told her.
She glared at him defiantly, her full red lips forming a Bardot-like pout.
“Give me your hand,” he said sternly, picking up a small wooden ruler. When she saw that he was quite serious, she extended her trembling left hand towards her former employer. Hugo took it and turning her palm upwards smacked it sharply with the flat side of the ruler. She tried to pull her hand back but he held her wrist fast in his other hand and struck her two, three, four more times across her palm, hard enough to sting her and bring tears to her large, dark eyes.
“Wipe your eyes,” he ordered, letting go of her hand. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for acting like such a brat?”
Looking in the mirror behind the counter Pamela delicately dabbed her eyes with a white handkerchief. He came around the counter and hugged her briefly to him, his own heart beating fast at the enormity of having made her fall in love with him.
“Pamela, I’m not going to let you disturb your beautiful relationship with Sloan or mine with Laura, but that doesn’t mean I plan to neglect you,” he said, examining her hand, which was pink now. “Now go and run that under water,” he told her. “And we’ll continue this discussion at a later date.”
Pamela was in tears and told herself severely in the bathroom mirror, “You have no pride.” But when she looked at the palm of her hand she felt a terrible thrill of excitement.
Garda came out in a square necked, long sleeved, wasp waisted, straight skirted, flounced cocktail dress of which Hugo entirely approved. He handed Damaris his credit card.
“We thought we’d let you discover just how charming the corset looks later, yourself,” said Damaris, and Hugo smiled, glad that Pamela had left the floor. That young lady’s temper tantrum had almost cast a pall on the evening but the solution had been very much in hand and now a kind of order had been restored.
“I might as well give up even trying to do the honorable thing with regard to my buddy Sloan,” Hugo confessed to Garda, while walking her back to the inn. “Basic chemistry is making that impossible.”
“Sloan is?”
“Pamela’s boyfriend. He runs the bookshop across the way from my store and he’s a very good friend of mine. Anyway, he’s got a pretty assistant who was driving our Pamela crazy with jealousy. So I decided to take her mind off that entire situation by being the boss from modern Gothic hell, kicking off the program with a spanking.”
“And she promptly fell in love?”
“I would call it a crush that has developed over several weeks.”
“I see the distinction,” Garda laughed.
“Stop by my house on the way to Randy’s and I’ll get you stoned,” Hugo promised, writing down the address on the back of his business card.
“Oh Hugo,” she replied, fondly squeezing his arm, “nothing has changed, has it? I’ll come now!”
Garda brought all the things she needed to Hugo’s house in the woods and dressed for dinner in his playroom, in front of a gold scalloped cheval glass, while sharing a joint with Hugo as in the old days. He helped her hook the form sculpting new corset while sitting on the edge of a leather sofa, with Garda standing in front of him, enjoying their reflections in the mirror.
Garda said, “I think we look better together now than we did before, Hugo.”
“Marvelous the way you kept your figure,” he complimenting her, giving her a pat on the bottom before pulling her down on his lap to embrace her properly. “I’m glad you live in California. I could easily fall in love with you again,” he told her.
