and singularly dashing father.”
“I’m horrible,” said Amanda with conviction.
“Never think that,” Susan reassured her friend; “What’s happened since you’ve come into Hugo’s life has simply taught my sister to take nothing for granted.”
Several days later, Amanda accepted Anthony’s invitation to come and swim again, but this time Susan was away from home. It was after six in the evening but still quite light and Amanda had just come from the shop. She donned a white two-piece swimsuit with blue anchor accents and white Lycra swim cap in the cabana and dove in at the deep end. The water seemed colder than on her previous visit and Amanda shivered at the end of the lap. A lean, young Latino gardener in low rider jeans and a sleeveless white ribbed undershirt that set off his tanned, muscular torso to advantage, looked up from his Birds of Paradise and smiled.
“Is it too cold?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Go in the hot tub for a few minutes and I’ll turn up the pool,” he suggested.
Amanda warmed up nicely in the Jacuzzi beside the Aphrodite fountain for several minutes, then dove back into the pool and began swimming laps. After a few laps she floated on her back, looking up at the cloud dotted deep blue sky through the clear dome of the greenhouse. The water was perfectly warm and Amanda felt suddenly restless. It had been a week since Colby had gone back to California. She’d spent every night alone in Hugo’s house, in the guest room that looked out on the woods, a charming room, but it felt very empty without Colby there.
Amanda rolled over and over in the water, arching up her bosom and stretching out her long legs. She began stretching and twisting her lithe, small waisted form around and about in the water, staring up at the flowers and vines that intersected in a fragrant bower above the pool where she floated and dipped.
Then, the Latin boy came back into view, pushing a cart of soil and pretending not to look at Amanda. Amanda halted her shadow flirting display at once and felt herself flushing pink at having been seen behaving in such a manner by the good looking gardener. Then she swam a lap or two and covertly looked for him over her shoulder. He was pretending not to notice her but she could tell he was tracking her every stroke.
“I was just missing my boyfriend,” Amanda explained, swimming up to Jaime.
“Lucky boyfriend,” he said, with no trace of an accent.
“Thank you,” Amanda replied.
“Well, have a good swim,” he said, reluctantly attempting to avert his eyes from her lissome form in the well-behaved and thus completely obscene nautical two-piece.
“Aren’t you hot? Don’t you want to cool off in the water?” she asked absurdly, but so there could be no mistake. She patted the water with a graceful hand and pulled off her swim cap, allowing her long, blonde hair to tumble down in a single braid. She tossed the cap up on the deck and smiled at him. A second later he was in the water and she was in his arms. They clasped each other tightly, looked into each other’s eyes and kissed. He cradled the back of her head in his hand and devoured her ears and throat with his lips, his hands going from her waist to her bosom, then down to her bottom and inner thighs. There was no part of her he didn’t want to handle.
“So, are you a nice girl or a crazy bitch?” Jaime asked her.
“Nice and crazy but not a bitch. Oh please, just slip it in me for a minute, right here,” she insisted, her hand sliding across the bar of iron that had emerged to tent the front of his shorts. Jaime freed his cock with impressive speed and while doing so, slipped his finger into the front of her bikini bottom to probe her tight, velvety slit.
“You really want me to? Here and now?”
“Please! But first, tell me your name?”
“Jaime.”
“Amanda.”
Jaime pushed Amanda up against the side of the pool and pulling her bikini aside, thrust his cock into her pussy. Reaching down to spread her labia, she helped him to cram his manly member up inside her.
“I’m not a slut,” she protested, allowing his tongue into his mouth. “But it’s summer, I’m 18 - ” she added, clamping one of his hands to her bottom under the bikini. “ - And you’re such a pretty man.”
“Tell me how you want it,” he murmured against her throat.
“Just like you’re doing, slow and deep,” she urged him, pressing her bosom hard against his chest as he thrust into her under the water. She closed her eyes, but he kept his open to watch for intruders. This went on for two or three minutes before she moaned against his ear with a full body shudder and the spasmodic clenching of her vagina heralded her climax. He pulled out of her a second before his ejaculation and thus spared her a month of anxiety.
They held each other close for a couple of minutes, shared a final kiss and then he got out of the water and disappeared into one of the dressing cabanas. Amanda backstroked up and down the length of the pool until the throbbing in her clitoris began to ebb.
As she switched over from the pool to the sauna she told herself, “Who am I kidding? I am a slut.”
On the following Sunday afternoon, Pamela invited Amanda to come over to her house for lunch and to watch Pandora’s Box, which Amanda had never seen. They were sitting in a deep, butter soft camel colored leather sofa in Pamela’s bedroom suite, slowly savoring a simple meal of French rolls, cheese, fruit and wine while mesmerized by the image of Louise Brooks on the large screen opposite.
“You should cut your hair like that,” said Amanda to Pamela of Lulu’s shingle bob.
“Ambrose wouldn’t like it,” said Pamela reflexively. Her new husband was a stylistic perfectionist who clearly preferred long hair on younger women.
“Don’t you like giving him excuses to spank you?”
“No. He spanks too hard when he’s irritated.”
Amanda knew that.
“You would look adorable. It would change everything,” said Amanda “I’ll go with you and cut my hair as well,” Amanda offered impulsively.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I am. I’m just dating a jock and he couldn’t care less about my hair as long as I let him fondle my breasts. I could get an Annie Lennox cut,” said the fair-haired, soon-to-be sophomore.
“Are you insane? Cut off a beautiful head of straight, long, naturally blonde hair?”
“It’ll grow back. And it’ll be so much easier to take care of.”
Pamela looked at Louise Brooks.
“I see what you’re saying. That cut would suit my face,” Pamela said decisively.
They decided to meet on their next afternoon off, which was the following Tuesday. First they lunched at the Café in Bartlett’s, then walked out into the village. Ambrose Bartlett happened to be at the window of his office three stories above Main Street, Woodbridge when the girls exited
