Clete nodded a greeting that was also a parting gesture to Dr. Hemmings, and slid behind the wheel of his truck.
CHAPTER TWO
DesirЋe rolled her sparkling eyes up to the handsome face of her sweetheart Mark. When they had decided to announce their engagement it had been a surprise for everyone, including her parents, though she had known that they could only approve. They liked Mark, loved Mark, and they had been overjoyed that their only daughter had found such a fine young man to marry. DesirЋe had really been in no hurry to get married. Her education in music had been more important to her in Chicago, but her straight-laced parents, her father in particular, had panicked when a friend of hers, of a somewhat disreputable aspect, had shown up at the door of their mansion asking for his darling, pristine daughter.
Father, now very rich and in a position to be an absentee director of his corporate law firm, quickly moved the family to his distant country farm where DesirЋe would be safe from the influence of modern society. The fact was that DesirЋe was his only child, his beautiful wife having lost her reproductive powers through a medical accident during her second abortive pregnancy, and Thurston Mitchell had no intention of losing his one and only daughter to modern decadence.
DesirЋe, for her part, had at first complained, albeit meekly, about having to leave her friends and her precious university studies. After all, she was barely into her sophomore year and now she was torn away from all her plans for the future. She had never been close to any boy, never in love, and her music and literature courses helped her compensate for the emotional emptiness in her life. And so coming to Pickford's Meadows had seemed like the end of her world.
Until she had met Mark Denning. It seemed that they had found each other, with an instant attraction and desire. Mark, young as he was at only thirty-two, was head of the town council. When she had seen him, addressing the audience at the council meeting with such style and personal grace, her heart had immediately begun to melt in a way they she had never experienced before. For the first time in her life she had felt a burning in her cheeks, a tingling in her tight pink nipples on those big, round breasts she kept carefully concealed beneath her chaste clothing, and a definite twitching in her untouched pussy as it positively flooded with her feminine juices. And then she had seen the answering light in Mark's eyes across the room, and she had sat there quietly, while her parents stood talking to other citizens, after the meeting's end.
While her heart pounded in her warm bosom, causing her firm breasts to quiver, he crossed the floor to her, self-assured and poised, and began talking to her. He never used any of the standard flattering pick-up lines, simply introducing himself and making a tentative date to meet her at the church social. DesirЋe already attended regularly, her place at the front of the choir established, so meeting him there was nothing anyone could really talk about, but it was at that later date that he had first asked her out.
They began dating steadily, and then people did begin to talk, but romance was no scandal, and DesirЋe's parents were more than happy with clean-cut, college-educated Mark Denning. After being nearly inseparable for eight months, they became engaged, and Phillip Mitchell was so elated that he threw a grand party at the mansion for all their many friends in Pickford's Meadows. There they had announced their engagement before all assembled, among them quite a few uninvited, including sheriff Clete Anderson.
No one had noticed the look that crossed Clete's face, just last Saturday, when Mark had announced the great news to all the guests. No one had heard Clete's teeth grind in anger and frustration, for he had set his cap for the young, blonde beauty, never thinking that perhaps she might be way above his class and far beyond his reach. He had spoken with her often and she had been polite but laconic, for, though she never showed it, she did not like him, neither his looks nor his personality.
Some of her girlfriends in college had bragged about their experiences in bed with black men, and though she had said nothing, she had been mildly repulsed. It was not an experience that she cared to share. His white teeth and mustache gave her the feeling of being under consideration by some feline predator and she felt herself shrinking away from his attention. Once, he had touched her arm and she had jerked back and hurried away.
But Clete was far from her mind now, for she was with her beloved Mark and he was taking her for their usual Sunday picnic somewhere on the western side of the 800-acre Mitchell farm. The picnic had become a weekly ritual, and last week had nearly developed into a sinful affair, right after church, and though DesirЋe knew that it was dangerous, she was powerless to stop herself or do anything to avoid going along with him to that isolated place again. After all, she was not a girl anymore, twenty years old, and she could control herself, couldn't she?
She could, but she wondered how. He was so handsome, so noble and strong. And she loved him so very, very much. She would do anything to please him, and there was the problem, for if he were to ask her to give herself to him, she would do it willingly. She would do anything for him, and that was the simple truth, for he was her life. She wondered now how she had ever lived without him.
Mark saw her beautiful, dewy blue eyes on him and smiled. He could see her love, and he returned it with all his heart. No one had inspired him like this since Priscilla, and his feelings for DesirЋe were even stronger, much stronger. She was so pure and lovely, an angel, where Priscilla had been something of a shameless siren, a thing more for partying and bedding, not for marrying and cherishing. Of course, Priscilla had been incensed to think that the pristine little city girl had unwittingly stolen his affections from her and made her the laughing stock of Pickford's Meadows.
Mark turned off the paved road and followed the dirt trail that serviced the far reaches of the estate. Mitchell definitely had a lovely piece of property here and DesirЋe would be a very wealthy woman someday. Not that that meant a thing to Mark, for he had every intention of becoming rich on his own. In fact, he was well on his way to it, for he had a law practice himself and between that and his plans to become a US Senator, he would be very well off. Even now he was being groomed for state politics and that was why he would be going to the capital, just a week hence, to meet with the party bosses to arrange his nomination for the next election.
"How can I bear to be separated from you for a whole week, Mark?" DesirЋe complained as he stopped the car near the huge, spreading elm where they customarily enjoyed their Sunday lunch. "A whole week without you! I'll be a nervous wreck."
Mark shook his head and squeezed her hand warmly. "You know I've got to do it – for us. Don't worry, darling, you'll be with me in my heart."
Getting out, he went to the trunk and took out the picnic basket and the drinks cooler, and the large, thick blanket they would sit on. They sat under the tree, and Mark took a bottle of wine from the cooler and poured it while DesirЋe blushed. DesirЋe rarely drank wine, or anything else with alcohol, for that matter.
Clete Anderson followed the nearly dry stream bed that ran across the Mitchell property. Watching through binoculars, he had seen them come this way and had parked his Land Cruiser behind the hill. He knew the Mitchell property well. He had spent many an afternoon and evening trailing the wild dogs that were preying on the small livestock hereabouts and frightening the cattle. He had trailed them this way, almost to the Mitchell mansion. But that was another story altogether.