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  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  Imagine the excitement when everything you thought you knew about love becomes so much…more.

  An anthology of sensual love stories about women sharing passion, surprises, and secret desires. Discover the thrill of love as you never dreamed it could be with more than twenty selections from best-selling romance authors: Colette Moody, Lesley Davis, Lesléa Newman, Meghan O’Brien, Clifford Henderson, Merry Shannon, Erin Dutton, Ali Vali, Carsen Taite, VK Powell, Julie Cannon, Yolanda Wallace, Andrews & Austin, D. Jackson Leigh, Nell Stark and Trinity Tam, KI Thompson, C. J. Harte, Lisa Girolami, Clara Nipper, Shea Godfrey, Kim Baldwin, Lea Santos, and Radclyffe writing as L.L. Raand.

  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  Brought to you by

  E-Books from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  E-Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman

  Erotic Interludes

  Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments

  Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love

  Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions

  Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games

  Romantic Interludes

  Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery

  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  edited by

  Radclyffe and

  Stacia Seaman

  2009

  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  © 2009 Bold Strokes Books. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 10: 1-60282-116-XE

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-116-3E

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Bold Strokes Printing: September 2009

  “A True Story (Whether You Believe It or Not )” copyright © by Lesléa Newman from Secrets (New Victoria, Norwich, VT). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Art: Barb Kiwak (www.kiwak.com)

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Moonlight Serenade - Colette Moody

  The Twelfth Rose - Lesley Davis

  A True Story (Whether You Believe It or Not) - Lesléa Newman

  Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Meghan O’Brien

  Boiled Peas - Clifford Henderson

  The Whisper - Merry Shannon

  Better Than Fiction - Erin Dutton

  Hooked on Quack - Ali Vali

  Privileged and Confidential - Carsen Taite

  Return to Me - VK Powell

  Masquerade - Julie Cannon

  Saturday Night at the Dew Drop Inn - Yolanda Wallace

  Madame Broussard - Andrews & Austin

  Box Full of Surprises - D. Jackson Leigh

  Tenebrosidad - Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  Constant Companion - KI Thompson

  Crossing Over, Jordan - C.J. Harte

  Finding Grace - Lisa Girolami

  Sentimental Fool - Clara Nipper

  ’47 Cheval Blanc - Shea Godfrey

  Meeting My Match - Kim Baldwin

  The Lies That Bind - Lea Santos

  When Hearts Run Free - Radclyffe writing as L.L. Raand

  About the Editors

  Books Available from Bold Strokes Books

  Introduction

  Love is one of those rare, elusive states of being that defies definition, and yet is universally recognized and often the object of lifelong quests. We don’t understand it, but we write songs and poems and love stories about it. Love is not only “a many splendored thing,” it is also infinite in expression and changes with us as we risk and lose and dare to love again. Twenty-three celebrated authors explore the hidden layers of love, reminding us that no matter how many times we fall in love or how many years we’ve been in love, each moment has the potential to bring new wonder and surprises. Romance is as varied as the individuals captured by it, and these stories reflect the diversity of our experiences with humor, poignancy, and sometimes, by imagining whole new worlds entirely. Surrender to the unexpected, succumb to secret desires, and embrace the hidden power of our most intimate associations…no matter how near we come to understanding the mysteries of love, there will always be another secret to savor.

  Radclyffe 2009

  With love comes secrets. There are the secrets individuals hide from the world, from forbidden love to hidden identities; the secrets couples hide from others, from role reversals to secret fantasies; and the secrets lovers hide from each other. In the stories contained in this anthology, join the authors as they explore—and celebrate—the secrets of love.

  Stacia Seaman 2009

  Colette Moody is a resident of southeastern Virginia. Her turn-ons are classic movies, witty banter, politics, and women with big sexy brains. Turn-offs include rainy days, frowns, misogyny, and the blind renouncement of science or human rights. Her first novel The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin was published by Bold Strokes Books in March of 2009. Her second novel for BSB is The Seduction of Moxie, a historical romance (September 2009).

  Moonlight Serenade

  Colette Moody

  I had always been in love with Marjorie Stein—always. At least since eighth grade when her family had moved to town. Of course, I’d never shared that with her.

  There were two main reasons for that. One was that in the America of the early 1940s, lesbianism was not only never discussed in polite company, but sex of any kind was completely taboo.

  The young women of my generation seemed perfectly content to wait until they married to see what their “wifely duties” entailed. But it was the women who didn’t wait—who were out late at night with their underpants around their ankles—who were my friends. I envied how easily their sexual experimentation came to them, perhaps because they were straight. Had I known another lesbian in my town, I would have experimented too—until my tingly bits just rubbed clean off.

  The only “good girl” I associated with was Marjorie—which brings me to the second reason that I’d kept my love for her to myself. Marjorie was profoundly and heartbreakingly heterosexual.

  As the years passed and we both grew up, I stood by and longingly watched as Marjorie’s mother arranged dates for her with all the eligible Jewish boys in town. I listened to her as she pined over the boys we went to school with who weren’t Jewish, lamenting that her parents would never condone her seeing someone outside her faith. It therefore seemed utterly impossible to dream, knowing that not only was my family Protestant, but that I had supple woman-parts where my circumcised penis should be.

  With every crush that she shared with me through our high school years—every admission that she found some fella handsome—I died a little inside. In her senior year of college, when she told me that she and her steady beau Alan had gotten engaged, I wept on and off for two weeks. I exerted a Herculean effort to appear hap
py for her, and when Alan was called up into the Army to help fight the war and shipped off to Europe before their wedding day, I tried just as hard not to feel elated…well, maybe not just as hard, but I did try.

  I, on the other hand, had not bothered with college, instead choosing to work at the hometown bar my father owned—which I was now running single-handedly while he too was off at war. When I wasn’t consorting with the town sluts, or hanging on every breath that Marjorie’s magnificent body exhaled, I was driving over two hours to Mo’s, a small lesbian bar on the outskirts of the city. It was there that I was able to meet women like myself, learn how to flirt with them, and experience my sexual education. But my sprees never amounted to more than flings to sate my hunger and loneliness, because after all, none of those women were Marjorie.

  One breezy spring night at Pop’s bar, I was busy wishing that I had closed early and gone into the city to sow my wild oats. It was the middle of the week, and though everyone was still deep into war rationing and penny-pinching, I can say with certainty that somehow people still managed to do plenty of drinking—except for this night. By 9:30, all of my regulars had gone home except for Mr. Brewster.

  He remained perched on his bar stool, nursing what was his fourth scotch and soda. Because Mr. Brewster lived within walking distance of the bar, he and I had an agreement that as long as he wasn’t driving anywhere, his cut-off point was a little higher than most patrons’. I had already learned that he never wanted to talk, no matter how depressed or troubled he seemed. So I poured his drinks and, as was his preference, left him in silence to wallow in the pain that was his life.

  I had reconciled myself to wait Mr. Brewster out, and so I sat on the glossy mahogany bar, listening to the Wurlitzer 950 jukebox I had purchased and reading a smutty novel. Pop had been against getting a “coin-operated phonograph,” saying it would never pay for itself. But I knew it would generate revenue, so I bought it while he was away—convinced that I’d show him what a moneymaker it was once the war was over. It would still be several months before I’d learn that Pop wouldn’t be coming home.

  The book I was rereading was called The Scandalous Spinster. Years later, lesbian-themed books would become a bit more commonplace, though they would suffer from the same curse as this one—meaning that typically any characters who so much as acknowledged that another girl was pretty met some unspeakable fate. In The Scandalous Spinster, the protagonist engaged in some heavy petting with a few young ladies and she was consequently killed in a freak thresher accident. Ironic, I thought, since she clearly didn’t live long enough to become a “spinster.” As this was the fifth or sixth time I was perusing it, I chose to only read the dog-eared pages—which were, of course, the racy parts. I’ll admit they got me plenty hot.

  The silver bell jingled as the bar door suddenly opened and in strode Marjorie. My breath caught in my throat as she stood for a moment silhouetted by the blue neon of the sign in the window. She was amazingly beautiful.

  “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here so late on a school night?”

  “I need a drink,” she said sullenly, sitting on the stool directly to my right.

  “You don’t drink,” I told her, sliding off the bar.

  “Well, now I do, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, walking behind the bar and assuming my work stance. “What’ll you have?”

  She seemed caught off guard, as though she didn’t realize that there was more than one drink—just booze. “Uh…” As though conjured by her bewilderment, the Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola” started playing on the jukebox. “That’s what I want,” she said, seeming to take it as divine inspiration. “Give me a rum and Coke.”

  Curious, but wanting to frame my questions carefully, I nodded and made her drink—sliding it in front of her with flair. I looked over and saw Mr. Brewster staring at us morosely, and found it somewhat unnerving. “Marjorie, this is Mr. Brewster. Mr. Brewster, this is Marjorie Stein.”

  Though she was clearly distraught over something, Marjorie forced a warm smile anyway. “Nice to meet you.” God, it tugged at my heart when she did things like that.

  Mr. Brewster nodded back at her dismissively and then audibly belched. I smiled at Marjorie, giving her a look that I hoped explained that Mr. Brewster never got any friendlier than that. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  I knew she was lying. I mean, why else would she have driven twenty miles from campus this late at night? She took a tiny sip of her drink and was visibly repulsed by it. “You can’t even trust the Andrews Sisters anymore,” she sighed, propping her chin in her hand.

  “Well, they are singing about hooch and whores,” I muttered softly, lost in the amber flakes of her brown eyes. “Tell you what,” I said, taking back the glass. “Let me make you something you’ll like, okay?”

  She nodded sadly and glanced over to my book. “What are you reading, Laney?”

  I slid the hardback under the bar self-consciously. “Nothing. Just some smut that I got from Patty.” That was essentially a true statement. I had learned long ago that there was no lying to Marjorie. One skeptical arch of her eyebrow had me confessing everything to her…and God knew I didn’t want that to happen.

  “Why are you friends with Patty, Laney? She’s not a very…nice girl.”

  The truth was that because Patty was the town tramp, she was one of the only people I felt I could confide in about my sexuality. Patty didn’t judge me because I didn’t judge her. It was a symbiotic relationship. “She’s not so bad,” I said, mixing Marjorie’s new and improved drink. “Maybe I’m not a very nice girl either.”

  She laughed, no doubt because in her mind I had never had a steady boyfriend, so how could I not be a nice girl? She had no way of knowing how I spent my evenings at Mo’s. What’s more, if she had been aware that I’d had several sexual partners already, she would never have suspected that as I made love to them, I always imagined they were her. I had dreamt so many times of the feel of Marjorie’s body, tongue, and fingers that I had convinced myself that I knew it all by rote.

  Mr. Brewster stood, wobbling only slightly as he took out his wallet and dropped a few bills on the bar.

  “Have a good night,” I called after him as he started out the door.

  “See you tomorrow, Elaine,” he slurred softly.

  “He’s here every night?” Marjorie asked after he was long gone.

  I nodded. “He’s a practicing alcoholic. It’s like a religion for him.” I set another drink in front of her.

  “That’s sad.”

  “Sad is that he lost his wife three years ago to cancer, and now both his sons in the war.”

  “So he’s all alone now?”

  “Unless you count Johnnie Walker, yes.” I leaned toward her on my elbows. “So are you ready to tell me why you’re here?”

  Marjorie shook her head unconvincingly. “I don’t want to bother you while you’re working.”

  I sauntered to the door and locked it, turning off the bright neon sign in the window and pulling down the shades in the windows and door. “There, now I’m not working,” I said, walking back, picking up Mr. Brewster’s cash and ringing it into the register. “Did you try your drink?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “If you don’t like this one, you don’t have to drink it.”

  She tasted it hesitantly at first, then took another, larger swig. “What is this?”

  “It’s my own concoction. I call it a Betty Grable. So you like it?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, taking another sip.

  “Okay, spill it, sister.”

  She removed an envelope from her handbag, set it on the bar, and slid it over to me. I could tell by the return address that it was from Alan overseas. At least he was still alive, I thought reflexively, having known too many lost in the war already.

  “Open it,” she said, not looking at me. “Read it.”

  Pulling the letter
out, I was surprised at its brevity.

  Marjorie,

  There is no kind or simple way to tell you this, so I’ll just get right to it. I’ve met someone here in Italy, and fallen in love with her. I never meant to hurt you, and I hope you are able to move on with your life. If you like, you can keep the ring.

  I wish you the best,

  Alan

  “That son of a bitch!” I spat. I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting Marjorie. I was angry and stunned. Then I remembered that she probably was too…perhaps almost as much as I was. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure. I have…mixed feelings.”

  I squinted at her. “How so?”

  “Well, part of me feels kind of…relieved, I guess. I mean, maybe Alan wasn’t the one for me.”

  “I could have told you that when he gave you a waffle iron for your birthday. What the hell kind of a gift was that?”

  Marjorie laughed—a lilting, spirited sound that tended to make my heart feel like it was about to explode.

  “So how does the other part of you feel?” I asked.

  “Destroyed.”

  I walked around to the front of the bar and took a seat on the stool beside her. “I’m really sorry. What did your mother say?”

  Her expression became instantly contrite as she bit her lower lip. “I haven’t told her yet. I’m actually considering letting her think that I’m still engaged for a little while.”

  “Wow. How long can you keep that up?”

  Marjorie took another sip of her drink and started to fish for the maraschino cherry at the bottom of the glass beneath the ice. “You just don’t know what it’s like to have all your dates arranged for you.”