Woman Alone by Gabrielle Vincent - Chapter 01

1962 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Vacation Resort

SHE LET HERSELF BE TAKEN ON A TEST BASIS!

The lovely, all-but-hidden Carmel Valley on the California coast. Attractive and unmarried Andrea Ames had gone there to stay at Rancho del Sol and to determine an answer after her wealthy employer offered to set her up in a plush apartment...in exchange, of course, for after-business-hours privileges. That was where she met the handsome college man, Lance Kendall.

A second-floor apartment on San Francisco's Clay Street. This was her "same old apartment” which she returned to, accompanied by Lance ... and in which she planned to live with him without the benefit of clergy.

What would her next address be? That was the big question facing Andrea when Lance—the man she was calling her husband—began to look for another woman.

Where does any single woman go next—when her body is afire with a passion only a man can quench? This novel dares trace out the answer in a taut story of...a woman alone!

Chapter 1

There ought to be a law against a woman ever being alone, Lance Kendall thought—and smiled, because he did not believe it. Far from being against unattached women, really, Lance was all for them. He was not averse to sponging off them in a small way and, indeed, looked forward to the day when one would support him handsomely. Not that he was against working. If he were, he would not be spending the summer as lifeguard at Rancho del Sol, the vacation hotel in all—but hidden Carmel Valley, just back from the California coast. But those lone women...

He laughed. 

Sitting down to breakfast, he was still thinking of how he had spent the night with the very blond Kitty Rinaldi. A woman in her mid-thirties, Kitty not only hated to be alone at night, but was the kind of guest who tipped well for favors shown her by members of the staff. As Lance had left her cottage a few minutes earlier she had seen to it that more money was in his pocket than had been when he had arrived. He patted that pocket affectionately now, then reached for the stack of wheat cakes the cook held out to him. 

He had eaten a couple of syrup-heavy wedges when cute Martha Colins walked into the kitchen. Like Lance, she had been working through the summer earning money so she could go back to college in September. She would be a sophomore at New York University, while Lance was due to go into his junior year at California State in San Francisco. There was also the difference that at Rancho del Sol she lived in a girl’s dormitory while he roomed with Jimmy Jackson in one of the older cottages no longer used by guests. She and Lance had had a thing going between them in July, but the affair had wilted with the summer heat. Now she was all business. 

"Two Bloody Marys, two grapefruit, two toasts and two five-minute eggs for Number Eight," she reeled off to the cook. Then she added, "Lance, there's a girl in the pool, swimming. I yelled at her but she either didn't hear or didn't want to. I think you'd better pull her out before you get a bad time from the Kramers." 

"Oh, God!" Lance wolfed the rest of his breakfast, syrup dripping from his chin. He mopped at it with a paper napkin and went out. 

The greenish blue of the pool was barely ruffled by the lone swimmer. She swam a smooth four-beat crawl. About all he could see of her was the white bathing cap and the flashing arms. She turned in her own wake at the far end—a perfect racing turn—and came back. He blew his whistle. She ignored the blast and turned again. He blew shrilly, but she did not stop. 

Martha watched from a dining-room window, silently daring him to go in after the girl and to assert his authority, knowing that if there were any complaints the Kramers would side with the cash customers. 

He did the next best thing. As the girl reached the shallow end this time, he squatted down and caught her arm. She slipped from his grasp and stood up, laughing at him out of slanting green eyes. 

"Have we been introduced?” Her voice was clear, nicely modulated. 

He fought to keep his temper. "There's no swimming before nine o'clock." 

"Oh? What time is it? I rarely wear a watch in the water." 

He pointed to the clock above the pool house and the sign to the left of it. 

"I can't see a thing without my glasses.” The kid floated lazily, her breasts in the tight white suit like ripe honeydews. "You mean it isn't nine yet?” 

"It is not!" 

She abruptly swam toward the ladder and climbed it. She shook herself like a dog. "You don't happen to have a towel? I forgot to bring mine." 

He brought her one from the pool house counter. She had taken off her cap he saw that her hair was red-gold, cut quite short. She was small, not much over five feet, and slightly built. But she was a grown woman—a lovely one at that—not a child. Her breasts, too big for the rest of her, were accented by a tiny waist; still the hips were maturely rounded over the slim legs. She dried herself methodically, from nape to soles. 

"I apologize," she said, "for being snotty. But it's galling at my age to be treated like a teen-ager." 

"Even if you look like one?" She nodded.

"It's a curse."

"You won't think so in twenty years." 

She shrugged. "I won't look like one by then." She picked up her cap by the strap, and strode away. There was a swing to her walk that was provocative without being obvious. He watched her until she was cut off from sight by a clump of pampas grass. 

Going back to the kitchen, Lance asked his roommate what he knew about the little redhead. As bartender, Jimmy often doubled as late-hour desk clerk. 

"Quite a dish, isn't she? Checked in around two last night, when I was closing the bar." 

"Is she alone?”

“That's right. I'll flip you for her." 

Lance grinned. "I've already flipped. I'll give you a package deal for her—Kitty and Martha." 

"I could do worse," his roommate allowed, pretending to ponder the exchange. “I'll let you know. Don't call me, I'll call you." 

It had been a dull morning for Lance at the pool. Kitty Rinaldi had taken her dip, crawling down the ladder and wading waist-deep. She bounced up and down and splashed water on Lance, but by agreement, he had not splashed back lest he wet her hair. Then she had reclined on a lounge chair on the terrace for coffee. Martha served her there willingly, because Kitty's tips always were large. In the bright sun she looked older than she had during the night. Her face seemed pasted on, and her flesh bulged over the top of the butterfly suit. 

Lance had escaped from her finally and gone to the office. There he had learned the redhead's name was Andrea Ames and that she was registered from San Francisco. If he decided to go back to State, he thought, matters might become real cozy—if he had made out with her here at Rancho. 

He returned to the pool house. Yesterday he would have joined Kitty, since there was no one in the pool but kids frolicking at the shallow end. But today he had Andrea Ames to wait for. 

Finally he saw her at a distance in Levis, boots and a pink-and-white checked shirt. She was headed for the corral. He swore not entirely under his breath and Kitty disengaged herself from her chair and walked over to him. 

"Too early for a beer?" she asked. "It is for me. I don't know about you."

"You know all about me, Lance."

"Yeah, except I don't know if you want a beer." 

"You're being nasty," she complained. She picked up her sunglasses, her tan oil, her towel, her book, and shoved them into her out-sized beach bag. She departed, going toward her cottage. 

Thereafter he sat like a minor god, blowing his whistle when the kids rough-housed or ran around the slippery edge of the pool. He also patted backs, blew noses, and dispensed coke and popsicles. Finally the Ames girl came back from her ride. He had hoped she would be limping, but she strode up the path in no visible pain. She did not look in his direction. 

Later, when he could expect the wrangler was taking a coffee break, Lance went to the kitchen. A tall, thin teen-ager, the wrangler duded horses from his family's breeding farm as a summer job. 

"Miss Ames get along okay?" Lance bit into a homemade doughnut. 

"You can say that again! I had to break out Missy for her. She jumped Missy on a four-bar gate. Missy loved it, and so did she." 

"You got sort of a crush on her?" 

The youth grinned. "I sure could have if she were younger. She's twenty-three. I'm still eighteen." 

"She tell you anything else about herself?" 

“Oh, sure. She's a secretary at Halliday's up in San Francisco." 

"She must be some secretary to stand the tariff here." 

"The way she handled Missy, that gal can do anything." 

For some reason Lance had not expected to see the redhead again that morning, so it was a surprise when she came down for a swim before lunch. She was friendly, but not effusive. Without planning it formally, they raced each other for four laps. He won by inches, but suspected that she had let him do so. When she went up to change, he watched her narrowly. Secretary, hell! Poor little rich girl who wanted to be loved for herself alone, so she was vacationing incognito, Lance told himself. 

In the small but smartly furnished living room of her cottage, Andrea Ames gazed out through the angled slats of the window blind and absently pulled a brush through her red hair to remove dust picked up during her ride on Missy. Since there were a few persons strolling past, headed down the path to the main building, she could only hope she was shielded by the window blind. Having shucked her riding clothes, she was standing stark naked. 

Her attention was not on the passersby, however. Beyond them, across the path, she had a full view of the swimming pool and the lifeguard who had put an end to her early-morning swim. In her line of sight, too, was a blonde who was obviously—so much so that her efforts were apparent even at a distance-making a play for the lifeguard. 

Andrea had had a closer look at the blonde while walking back from the stables. Andrea knew the type attractive in a way, well-financed through divorce or widowhood, totally without occupation and mad for male companionship. Andrea had seen enough of the breed when she had been growing up in Hollywood, after having been something of a baby-star the first couple years of her life. In fact her own mother had come rather close to fitting into the same category as the blonde—except that her mother, the sometime actress, Suzi Greer, had never managed to be well-financed for any extended period. It had been to get away completely from all that, after she had decided she wanted nothing to do with an adult acting career, that Andrea had be come a secretary in San Francisco. 

On top of everything else, she thought indignantly, the blonde was too old for the lifeguard. The age difference was even less wholesome than that between Roger Halliday, her employer, and herself, for the blonde was older than the clog-wearing young man at the pool. And ... Andrea caught herself up short. Why was she taking her feelings out on the blonde? Was her own position so blessed with virtue that she was free to condemn some other single woman? 

Ostensibly to do dictation, Roger Halliday had called her into his office on Monday following their weekend together at Lake Tahoe up on the California-Nevada border. He was forty or so, and a strikingly good-looking man with prematurely white hair over arched black brows. The hair on his chest was black, too. Usually he had impeccable manners, but on this occasion he had brushed aside amenities, and had said from his side of his desk: 

"I don't dare get close to you. Both the spirit and the flesh are only too anxious that I do so." 

"I think," she had replied, instantly catching the direction of this thought, "that I should hand in my resignation. The truth is that I didn't sleep much last night, thinking about us." 

"Neither did I," he had admitted. "Helen heard me barging around, and she got up and made me take a sleeping pill." 

Helen was his wife, the mother of his two sons. In the year Andy had worked at the Halliday Department Store as Secretary to its vice-president, she had seen Mrs. Halliday only twice—a handsome, well-corseted woman who seemed always in a hurry. 

Before they had embarked on their adventure he had been doggedly honest. "I don't love Helen anymore, but I'm still very fond of her. We haven't slept together for months and then neither of us enjoyed it. However, I love our boys, as perhaps only a fairly stem parent can. My father was a pal to me. He took me to my first whore house. I don't pretend that I represent the Deity to my kids, but I am a symbol of authority. I think they respect me. They might even like me. That's why divorce is out of the question." 

"Yes, Andrea had agreed quietly. 

But she had gone with him to Tahoe and they had had a pleasant weekend. He had demonstrated that he was gentle, considerate and experienced. 

"—what I'm getting at," he had said, there in his office, "is that I'm perfectly aware you aren't to be trifled with, as they used to say. I want you on a permanent basis. We can work out an annuity or a cash settlement of some kind." 

"Won't your wife find out?" 

"Possibly, but I doubt it. And I don't think Helen would mind too much, as long as we're discreet. She's always so damn busy with her damn committees." 

"I still think it would be better if I resigned." 

He had gotten up and come around to her, taken hold of both forearms. "I can't let you go so easily. Won't you think it over? You have a vacation coming and there's a resort down the coast, quiet remote. They have swimming, horses and tennis. The food is out of this world. You can stay as long as you like. I don't mean to hold you to any kind of bargain..." 

"You make it sound rather dull—this resort."

"You didn't think I'd turn you loose on some muscle boy beach? I'm playing to win!” His hands passed from her elbows to her waist, slipped down her thighs. 

She stepped out of the embrace, tugged at her narrow skirt. "You just might win," she had said. "Where is this virgin's home away from home?" 

"East of Carmel, up the Valley." 

"All right,” Andrea had said. She was due for a vacation, and having a man foot the bill was not unheard of for a woman alone. "I promise to weigh your proposition carefully. I'll let you know my decision." 

So here she was at Rancho del Sol and already beginning to feel uneasy about her situation. She might do well, she thought, to mingle with guests and staff at Rancho and get her mind on other things. She had been surprised by the storybook good looks of the lifeguard. Who knew what other surprises there might be?