SPANKING STORY: Penitent (BDSM, F/f)

[beenabadgrl]

PENITENT

Nam sera nunquam est ad bonos mores via. Quem peonitet peccasse, paene est
innocens. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Chapter One

Samantha Dupree circled around the huge cream-colored house twice before
parking her dusty Honda Civic in the stately elm-lined driveway. She sat,
nervously gripping the wheel, staring in doe-eyed panic at the newspaper
folded open at the Classifieds page, sitting there beside her in the
passenger seat, and tried to grow some courage. She was wearing her
"interview" outfit - a dark blue skirt and jacket over a crisp white blouse,
with stockings and sensible flat-heeled shoes. She was trying to make a good
impression, so she even wore earrings, dark blue to match her suit, and if
one didn't look too closely one might not notice they were little cloisonné
images of the Beast from the X-Men comics. She'd worn her long, dark hair in
a loose cascade (mostly to hide her ears), and now she regretted not putting
it up somehow. There was just something about a huge Victorian manor home
that made a girl feel she ought to have her hair up. In a bun, preferably.
Or a bonnet.

Sammy realized she had her fingers in her mouth and quickly dropped her
hands back to her lap and wrung them in an effort to keep from biting her
nails. She'd never been so nervous.

She stole another glance at the front doors, standing as they were beneath a
covered faux-balcony, and crowning a set of stone steps that fanned out
dramatically onto a walkway that wound through the elegant grounds, all in
flower of course. Not a hint of moss or dandelions in this grass, no sir!
Whoever owned the house probably had a heavyset stone-faced mafia gardener
come out in the dead of the night to take out any intruding greenery of the
undesirable kind.

"I can't afford this," Sammy said to herself. It was a bad habit, rather
like biting her nails, but she was helpless to do anything about it. She'd
given herself very stern lectures on the subject, but they hadn't helped. "I
haven't got a prayer."

But she was already here, so she might as well try.

Sammy slid nervously out of the car, clutching the newspaper classifieds to
her chest as if they had some shielding powers, and stood awkwardly in the
driveway. She had parked beside a silver toned Lexus. Beside that, a dark
gold BMW. Both had vanity plates. The Lexus was MISTRSS. The Beemer was
GODDESS. The license plate on Sammy's Civic was 861-URG and had a salmon on
it.

"I can't afford this," she said again, and chewed on her lips. She was
afraid to knock on the door, feeling more like a girl of twelve than the
woman of twenty that she was. She was afraid that she'd knock on the door
and the maid would answer and Sammy would throw up on her.

Sammy looked down at the wrinkled newspaper in her hands and read the ad
again. F-Dom with room for Sub. Rent/labor negotiable, all Tools inc. S/P
Basement. 1202 Regency Circle.

It was the Rent/labor negotiable that had caught her eye. Sammy had some
$3000 in her savings account, but no job.

Tears threatened, but Sammy pushed them back with her knuckles. For once, it
wasn't her fault. Her-mom's-husband-Eric had been good enough to let Sammy
work for him as a kind of gal-Friday in his office building ever since
graduation, but that did not guarantee her a job forever and she knew it.
When the company took a nosedive, layoffs were inevitable and her position
was one of the least-secure. She knew it, her-mom's-husband-Eric knew it,
and when she got her notice no one was surprised. No, that part was okay.

What was not okay, what did hurt, was having to sit in the living room and
listen as her mom and her-mom's-husband-Eric told her that her-mom'
s-husband-Eric wanted to have his own room for all his special camera stuff
and his own darkroom and whatever, and it was time for all little birdies to
leave the nest. Like, sometime this week.

How they expected Sammy to be able to find an apartment with no job and no
references she had no idea, but she tried anyway. In ten days, she
interviewed at thirty-six different apartment complexes and put in dozens of
job applications. At the end of that time, her mom and her-mom'
s-husband-Eric sat her down again and told her, very generously, that they
supposed she could stay, but she'd have to move down to the basement and pay
$500 a month in rent until she could move out.

They took the first $500 up front, and even went so far as to pack all of
Sammy's belongings (all the ones they let her keep) into cardboard boxes and
move them down to the basement. She didn't get to keep her bed, because, as
her-mom's-husband-Eric explained, it wasn't really hers and anyway his
brother's kid was out of diapers and ready for a big boy bed and they'd
already told him he could have Sammy's. Instead, Sammy had an old army cot
next to the dryer. And lying there that first night, staring miserably at
the spider-infested bare beam supports of the basement, Sammy realized that
in a few months, she wouldn't have any savings left at all and if she didn't
have the money to pay her rent, she might just end up on the street. Either
that, or working Cinderella-style for her-mom's-husband-Eric and all his
relatives and friends to make up for it.

She'd tried to like her mom's new husband. She really had. He had to be
better than Sammy's real dad, or the string of awful boyfriends her mom went
through after they came back from Aunt Sally's. And Eric seemed like a nice
guy for the most part. But he was awkward around her on the best of days,
and alternated between attempting stilted conversation and picking fights
with her over the stupidest things. He made no attempt to disguise his
disappointment with her when she turned eighteen and did not immediately run
out and get another place to live. He'd made dozens if not hundreds of acid
remarks to the effect that he had moved out the same year he'd graduated and
how it made a man out of him.

Sammy dreaded having to go home today and face him, admit that she still
hadn't found any place to stay, and have to stand there and listen while he
patiently told her it was only because she wasn't trying hard enough and was
in fact, whether aware of it or not, attempting to sabotage his relationship
with her mother and that was very immature of her.

Sammy had hoped that a room in a house would require less paperwork than an
actual apartment and that subletting would be even easier than renting. She
understood vaguely that subletting wasn't always strictly on the up and up
and maybe she'd only be able to sublet this room for a few months but maybe
by then she'd have a job and if nothing else, at least she'd have a
residence history and a landlord to use as a reference when she found her
new place.

"Okay," Sammy whispered and squared her shoulders. She smoothed out the
newspaper as best she could and marched resolutely across the walk, ascended
the stairs, and took a deep cleansing breath before the doors.

She started to knock and paused. There was a brass plate set into the
left-hand door and hanging from a hook on the porch wall, a black-lacquered
cane with a brass head in the shape of a ram's head. A plaque mounted above
the hanging cane read simply, KNOCK.

Hesitantly, Sammy reached and lifted the cane down. It was very heavy for
its size, she thought. But the ram's head had obviously been used and so had
the brass panel. Half-afraid that she was about to do something dreadful to
some very ceremonial display pieces, Sammy lifted the cane and tried to
pound gently on the brass strike-plate. Her blows rang out as from a gong,
and Sammy hurriedly returned the cane to its hook and shuffled back from the
door.

She heard footsteps, muffled through the heavy wood, and then the door swung
open and Sammy was looking at a statuesque young woman, but one that was
almost certainly not a maid.

The woman was dressed in black leather pants, very stylish, snug without
being sausage-roll tight. She wore a cream-colored poet's shirt beneath a
black and violet patterned corset, laced with ribbons, and her hands were
concealed beneath custom-tailored black leather gloves that went clear up to
the elbow before flaring out in a dramatic scoop. She also wore knee-length
boots with high, stark heels, and the tops of the boots were folded out and
downward beneath thick leather bands and shiny buckles. The woman's hair was
blindingly blonde, and hung over her left shoulder in a casual yet stunning
braid. She had the bluest eyes Sammy had ever seen. And God help her, but
she looked like a pirate.

"Hello?" the woman said patiently, and Sammy realized she had said her
simple greeting at least three times while Sammy had been staring.

"Um, I'm here because of the ad. In the paper," she clarified, holding it up
for the woman's inspection.

"Oh, of course," the woman said with a cheerful smile, and put out her
gloved hand. "I'm Raine Lienhart. Come on in."

The leather was soft as rose petals. Sammy shook tentatively and then let
herself be swallowed by the house.

She was standing in a foyer roughly the same size as her bedroom back home
used to be before she was moved to the basement. Against the wall
immediately opposite her was a beautiful little display table and over that,
a mirror that showed her just exactly how freaked out she looked. To the
right of the mirror, a beveled door opened onto a pale and elegant room. To
the left, another door, every bit the twin of the right, stood closed and
somehow stark and final. The wall beside the open door boasted a tall
armoire, a ficus in a stone urn, and a free-standing set of racks and hooks
bound to a central pole that Sammy eventually decided was meant to hold
coats, hats, and boots. The wall beside the closed door was bare except for
a large painting in a dark frame.

Sammy studied this uneasily, aware of Raine standing off to one side
watching her. The painting depicted some sort of gothic courtyard, with two
rows of gargoyle-like statues, or perhaps they were people in strange,
daemonic armor. At the far end of the courtyard, on a raised dais, stood a
barefoot woman in a long, shimmering blue robe. The woman's eyes were fixed
before her, one brow was coolly swept up as if in inquiry, and a thin gold
crown rested on the crest of her raven hair. Kneeling before her, his head
pressed to the ground and his back to the eye of the viewer, was a nude man.

There was a sense of utter stillness to the painting. If it were to come
magically to life, Sammy doubted she would see more movement than she saw in
it now.

There was no artist's signature that she could see, but on a brass plaque in
the center of the dark frame there were two titles. CIRCE said one. The
Supplicant, said the other.

For some reason, this made Sammy glance at the closed door.

"Do you like it?" Raine asked.

Sammy jumped a little, caught out yet again at staring while her host waited
to regain her attention. She started to stammer out an answer, got a good
look at Raine's face, and blurted, "It's you!" She spun and stared at the
painting, at the woman on the dais. The hair was different, but it was the
same woman. "Did you paint this?"

"No. It was a gift, given to me by a good friend. Rather a good likeness, I
think." Raine stepped back towards the open door and made a sweeping gesture
with one arm.

Sammy, feeling even more horribly out of place than ever, went awkwardly
before her host into the brightly-lit chamber beyond. There was another door
opposite this one, closed of course, somehow not as foreboding as the one in
the foyer. There were layers and layers of drapery over tall windows, eight
or ten chairs of varying yet complementary styles set around the room, with
tables of differing widths and heights near at hand. The walls hosted
several paintings and famous prints, and seemed almost to be paneled in low
bookcases. No tawdry bodice-rippers and Stephen King page-turners in this
library - all were leather-bound and dramatically lettered literature. The
tops of the bookcases held a deliberate array of clutter in the form of very
expensive-looking knick-knacks, vases, statues, one or two open books in
special wrought iron stands, and a tiny globe in earth-tone paints, complete
with scrimshawed sea monsters and that ancient mariner warning: Here be
Sarpents.

"Have a seat," Raine invited, motioning at one of the chairs. "Do you take
tea? Coffee?"

"Tea," Sammy said faintly, and winced. She hated tea. She liked coffee. Why
hadn't she asked for coffee?

Raine departed through the other door, revealing a brief glimpse of the rich
red room beyond, all hardwood floors and overstuffed furniture, and
(bringing a deep glow of relief in all the antiqued surroundings) a huge
television with Murder, She Wrote on mute.

Sammy put her newspaper down, nibbled on her fingernails, picked the
newspaper back up and smoothed it out, stared in dismay at the smudges of
newsprint on her palms, and put her hands firmly in her lap so she wouldn't
touch anything. The chair she was sitting on was a floral over cream. She
didn't want to give it a nice newsprint motif.

Raine nudged the door open and backed into the room, wheeling a delicate
cart with a full tea service laid out over it. Biscuits, cookies, and those
little toy hotdogs. China of course. Probably from China. Or Paris or
wherever they make really nice tea sets.

Raine poured for two and lifted the lid off the sugar bowl, then sat back in
her chair and sipped at her drink, looking expectant as Sammy struggled to
sugar and cream her tea without looking like an idiot.

"You use the little tongs for the sugar cubes," Rain remarked. "The fork is
for the little wieners."

"Oh."

"It is customary," Raine continued after Sammy had situated herself with a
teacup of cream and sugar with tea flavoring, "to give one's name upon
introduction."

Sammy stared at her blankly.

Raine's mouth quivered as though she were trying not to laugh. "Hi," she
said in a cheerful let's-start-over voice. "My name is Raine Lienhart."

"I'm pleased to meet you." Sammy enunciated carefully. She wanted to make a
good impression.

Silence stretched out between them. Raine's smile escaped a little further,
and there came a muffled puff of laughter from some hidden place in her
corseted chest.

"My name is Raine Lienhart," she said again, exaggerating the sound of each
word. Long pause. "And you are?" she said finally.

"Oh no!" Sammy cried, almost at a dead shout, and Raine didn't laugh so much
as explode, throwing her blonde head back and unleashing a lungful of
suppressed good humor at the white ceiling tiles. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm
Sammy! I'm not normally this stupid!"

That set Raine off in howls again, but she managed at last to control
herself, rubbing at her eyes with the backs of her gloved hands and winding
down into chuckles as Sammy sat, nervously pawing at her own wrists.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that." Raine was grinning, but not in a mean
what-a-jackass way. She was grinning like...well, like a sister or a best
friend, when you go to camp and stay up too late and everything is funny.

Sammy felt herself relaxing. She offered a tentative smile. "My name is
Samantha Dupree, but I'm really just Sammy."

"You are really nervous, aren't you, Sammy?" Raine asked gently.

"Just a little."

"Lots of people are, when they first meet me. But we'll get along just fine.
Tell me about yourself, and relax. I've heard it all. Just be honest with me
and know that everything you say is held in absolute confidence whether or
not we form a business relationship."

Impossible to describe the great gust of relief and yearning that these
words set free in her. Sammy opened her mouth but at first couldn't make any
sounds. Everything she wanted to say seemed to need more and more
explanation, and so at last, she started at the beginning. The very
beginning.

"My dad died, a long time ago, and my mom married kind of a jerk. Only kind
of. But still a jerk. And now I have to move out. I need a place to stay,
even...just for a while. I don't have a job, but I'm looking every day, and
I have lots of money saved up. I...I know that you're probably looking for
more rent, but...but the ad said rent and labor were negotiable and I can do
a lot of housework. I don't smoke and I don't have pets and I don't make
noise and I'll buy my own food and I won't take long showers or...anything.
I just...please?"

Raine's expression had grown quietly confused and finally she cleared her
throat and said, "You...you say you saw the advertisement, right? You read
it?"

"Right." Sammy smoothed out the newspaper again. "F-Dom with room available
to Sublet. Rent/labor negotiable, tools included." She broke off and eyed
Raine nervously. "I don't really know about repairing stuff. I mean, I can
hang a picture, but power tools make me kind of nervous." When Raine's
expression did not change, Sammy returned to the advertisement. "S/P
Basement," she read and looked up uncertainly. "Swimming Pool?" she guessed.

"Sound-proofed," Raine replied, still staring at her.

"Oh. Um, what does F-Dom mean? I couldn't figure that one out."

Raine blinked, slowly, like an owl.

"I mean, I thought it meant Fabricated Domicile, but this sure doesn't look
like a manufactured."

Raine's right eyebrow rose. Now she looked even more like the woman from the
painting.

"Front domicile? Um, it's probably not a duplex either."

Raine's other eyebrow slid up.

"First...? Do you rent out the whole block?"

Raine closed her eyes and covered them, just for an instant, and Sammy fell
sickly silent. She wasn't sure exactly what she'd said or done, but the
interview was obviously over. She looked back down at the newspaper in her
lap and watched as it blurred together. She could just hear her-mom'
s-husband-Eric now, his long-suffering tones as he explained that she just
wasn't looking, just wasn't trying, just needed to grow up and go.

Raine's hand slid around from her eyes to cup her chin and she leaned on the
arm of her chair and looked at Sammy again, this time with an unmistakable
air of humor. "Well, why the hell not?" she murmured, and smiled. "Let me
show you the room, Miss Dupree."

"Sammy," said Sammy, startled, and almost dropped her teacup as she fumbled
to follow Raine out of the room.

"How much housework were you thinking to offer me?" Raine asked, leading
Sammy past the silent television where the inestimable Mrs. Fletcher was
fingering another guilty ne'er-do-well, and through a keyhole doorway in a
great wrought-iron partition that separated living room from dining room.

"Um, as much as I can, really. I kind of need to keep expenses low."

"How low?" Raine pressed, taking her through a cheerful kitchen and sunny
day room, and around to a broad stairwell curving up to a second floor.

"Five...five hundred dollars?" She had wanted to pay less than that,
actually, but the manor house frightened her.

"So, in other words, you don't want to do any housework." Raine led her
upstairs, past a bank of closed doors set in a hallway wide enough to sport
a little reading room, and to another narrow stairwell.

"Well...say...two-fifty?"

"Okay, let's work with that number." Raine opened the door at the top of the
stairs and turned on a light. "These will be your rooms," she said.

Sammy stepped inside, her eyes huge. The room was a pale, cloudy blue, the
floor hardwood beneath an oriental rug in muted jewel tones. There was a
tall bookcase, three half-moon tables, a small sofa with an embroidered
afghan casually draped over the arm. It was easily the size of her former
bedroom back home. "Oh, it's beautiful!" she said.

Raine paused and looked back at her in some surprise. "We aren't done yet."

Sammy didn't even see the doors until Raine opened them.

"Bedroom," Raine said merrily, leading Sammy past a four-poster canopy and
opening a set of French doors. "Closet," she added, gesturing to the small
room the doors revealed, and turned to slide open the heavy velvet drapes
that covered the wall. "Terrace." She moved past Sammy, gently plucking
Sammy's fists from Sammy's mouth as she passed, and opened a final door.
"Bathroom," she finished, and stepped back so that Sammy could move woodenly
inside.

Pristine claw foot tub standing alone in the middle of a white-tiled room.
Gold-plated showerhead fastened in the lowest of three gold grips. Delicate
gold towel stand with two enormous white towels folded over it. Shell-shaped
fountain spilling water gently into the spreading bowl of a shell-shaped
sink, itself mounted on a raised platform, two steps above the floor. White
curls of iron like lace over inset shelves where fresh linens and such could
be glimpsed. Four-paneled bathing screen arranged to hide the lavatory from
view.

"Sufficient?" Raine inquired, smiling just a little.

"Oh yes please," Sammy breathed, like a child honoring the offer of an ice
cream.

"Very good. Now, you understand that these rooms are yours alone, and you
take full responsibility for their care. As for the rest of the house--"

"Anything."

"Oh, that's tempting. But no. I have a service that comes in once in a while
for the waxing and upkeep of all that wood and stone stuff, but you'll need
to sweep daily. Don't worry, I have one of those super-duster electric
things. It practically sweeps itself. There are two guest rooms and of
course, my rooms, and they need airing and general maintenance every day. I
do the laundry. All the laundry. Never touch the laundry. Just have it in
the bins for me and I'll be happy. You do the dishes, the bathrooms, the
trash, and the windows. I'll work out a schedule for you so it doesn't
overwhelm you."

"Thank you."

Raine smiled at her again, shaking her head a little. "This is going to be a
new experience for both of us, but I'm sure it'll work out. I have only a
few simple rules. This is a good neighborhood, so no Naked Time in the back
yard or in front of open windows. Turn off the light when you leave a room,
because I don't use all the rooms very much and it can be weeks before I
notice." Raine seemed to consider something. "And don't go in the basement."
At Sammy's quizzical look, she added, "That door in the entry hall."

"Okay." It ought to be easy enough to stay away from that door. It kind of
creeped her out.

"Now!" Raine clapped her hands together and looked brightly back at Sammy.
"Why don't you go down and make some calls and get a moving crew to bring
your things? You can move in tonight if you like."

"Really?"

"Of course really. You may find, when you come to know me better, that I don
't often make...suggestions unless I intend them to be followed."

* * * * *

Sammy sat in the telephone corner of Raine's living room and ordered a
moving van to collect the remains of her possessions from her parent's
basement, and then called her mom to let her know they would coming. Then
she drove to the nearest ATM and withdrew enough money to pay the movers,
plus tip, and get a pizza. When she returned (home!), Raine was tucked
cozily into the living room sofa, watching Columbo playact ineptness as he
trapped an evildoer in the webs of her own deceptions.

"I hope that's pepperoni," Raine remarked.

"And extra cheese."

"We're going to get along just fine. Just for information's sake, anything
in the kitchen is yours." Raine thought about it, and added, "Unless you
think you're going to want your own little cache somewhere. I guess if you
have stuff you don't want to share out, just label it."

Sammy glanced at the ceiling, thinking of the huge suite of rooms that were
now hers, and thought it was nothing short of incredible that Raine thought
she was going to hoard Nutter-Butters. She didn't really want to say that,
but she felt she had to say something, so she said, "This is a huge house
for just you."

"I know. I like to think of it as a business expense. My major selling point
has always been atmosphere." A short, considering pause. "But you know, I
kind of like rattling around like the last peanut in the jar...and I usually
have a full-time tenant. Which brings me to a personal question," she
concluded, as Sammy hacked the pizza into serving slices and fumbled around
until she found the flatware. "What kind of work do you want to do?"

"I was a kind of office assistant for the last four years," Sammy replied,
balancing two plates of pizza and a couple cans of soda in her arms as she
carefully eased back into the living room and sat down, not without some
self-consciousness.

"Filing-typing-phones office assistant, or accounting-articles-meetings
office assistant? Don't drink out of the can, Sammy, that's barbaric."

Sammy went back to the kitchen to find glasses and ice. "The filing kind,"
she called. "Gopher work in a coffee-generating capacity."

Raine mumbled something to herself and Sammy returned to the living room
just in time to see Raine sitting down at the telephone corner. Sammy
lowered herself back onto the sofa, not quite comfortable enough to tuck her
feet up and sprawl as Raine did, and transferred her cola from can to cup.

"Adam Cannon, please. Office 401. The one right behind your desk. Right.
This is Raine Lienhart. No, Lee-in, not Lion. Lienhart. Although I can
understand your consistent confusion," she went on, in a rambling sort of
tone that indicated she was on hold and speaking solely to herself, "since I
only call about five times a week and you honestly can't be expected to hold
onto a thought as long as--Adam? Hi, it's Raine. Have you hired Miss
Personality out there on a permanent basis, or...? Oh good. I have someone I
'd like you to try out...References?" Raine shot Sammy an amused, sisterly
glance. "Yes, she has references. Raine Lienhart, who is referring her to
you. Honestly, Adam." She listened for a little while. "Her name is Samantha
Dupree. She's my new tenant and, ah, she doesn't know." A short pause and
Raine laughed. "I know, I know. It'll be fun. I like her. She's cute. And
she brought me pizza, so now I have to keep her. Uh huh. I'll bring her in
tomorrow. If it doesn't work out, let me know so I can set her up somewhere
else. But it will work," she finished, with a slight emphasis on the word
"will". "I trust you to see to that. Have a nice day, Adam."

Raine hung up the phone, slapped her hands together briskly and returned to
the couch. She nibbled on her pizza and tried to pour her cola into her
glass at the same time. "That was your new boss," she said around a mouthful
of crust. "Nice guy. You'll like him. Patent lawyer for some medical
equipment company. Lots of random, mind-numbing filing, faxing, and coffee
making. You start tomorrow."

"Thank you," Sammy said, aware that some further show of gratitude was
probably called for and too stunned to figure out what exactly.

"Don't worry about it, it - Oooo! I just knew it was her! I knew it all
along! Columbo is so smart. And he's so sexy in that trenchcoat."

Sammy started and stared at the television. "He's a raison," she said.

"Yeah, but he's a sexy raison in a trenchcoat."

There came a muffled patter of polite knocks at the door.

"Oh, I hate that," Raine grumbled, sliding off the sofa. "I can hardly hear
anything when they don't use the cane." She stole a last sip of soda and
trotted from the room. There were sounds of low speech and then Raine
called, "It's the movers, Sammy."

They passed each other in the sitting room, and Raine gave her a look of
quiet sympathy that puzzled Sammy right up until she saw the movers. Two
huge men in coveralls, holding between them a single cardboard box to which
a torn piece of yellow steno paper had been taped.

"Is that it?" Sammy asked.

"That's what they gave us," the larger of the two said. He looked
uncomfortable.

Sammy reached out and took the box. It was very light. "Thank you. Um, hang
on, I've got your money here." She shifted the box to one arm, trying to
chase down her jacket pocket.

"No charge, hon," the mover said gently. He looked like he might say
something more, then simply shook his head and said it again. He and the
other man turned and stepped away, leaving her in the foyer to stare after
them.

With some trepidation, Sammy closed the door and peeled the note off the
side of the box. In her mother's neat, strongly-slanted print, it read: Here
are all the things you own.

Beneath that, almost absurdly: We love you.

Sammy put the paper down on the foyer table and knelt to open the box.

Four stuffed animals, a pair of sneakers, three pairs of underwear, one
brassiere, her earmuffs, and the Titanic DVD she'd bought the year before.

Sammy was aware of Raine standing silently in the doorway behind her.
Stunned, hurt, and horribly embarrassed, as if this spiteful act by her
parents carried with it a tangible stink, Sammy tried to say something
light-hearted. "They didn't even send my toothbrush, and I know I bought
that."

"Come on." Raine rested her hand briefly on Sammy's shoulder, then opened
the armoire and shrugged into a black, knee-length trenchcoat. "We're going
shopping."

Sammy followed meek as a lamb to the Lexus and slid into the plush leather
seat. "I'm sorry," she said huskily.

"Families are weird people. I mean, these are people you'd probably never
pick as your friends." Raine checked the road carefully before pulling out
onto the residential street. The engine was so quiet and the ride so smooth
it almost felt as if they were sitting at home in the living room. There
were little fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. They were green.

"My parents actually disowned me," Raine was saying. "Legally disowned me.
About six years ago. That same year, they sent me an invitation to their
Christmas party. I was so mad, I went. It was surreal. They actually seemed
happy to see me. They even asked me about work. I could not believe it. I
wanted to grab them and ask them who the hell they were. It was like,
Christmas With the Pod People."

"It just keeps getting worse and worse," Sammy whispered, knowing that if
she raised her voice, it would crack into tears.

"Yeah, but you're out now, and it'll probably get better. That's the
strangest thing of all. You'll see. Try calling them next week or inviting
them to dinner in a month. I bet you a thousand dollars they act thrilled to
see you. Families are just weird."

Sammy rode in silence as Raine brought her into town. She said, "Do you
still see yours?"

"Of course." Raine laughed a little. "Every Christmas and Fourth of July.
And it's every bit as bizarre as it was the first time. They genuinely
appear not to know how strange they are. And the strangest part? I actually
still love them. There was a while there when I didn't like them much, but I
'm over it now. I love them. I don't understand them, but I love them."

They went to the mall, and Sammy grudgingly spent a fraction of her savings
on new clothes and toiletries. She did most of this in the Target that was
attached, remora-like, to the side of the mall, but reluctantly followed
Raine into a real women's fashion store and bought two complete outfits that
she could wear to work.

It was dark by the time they got home. Their pizza was cold and the cola was
flat. Sammy took her purchases up to her rooms in three trips, and finally
came and got her box.

It didn't take long to unpack, but Sammy felt better when everything was
squared away--her clothes in the closet, Rufus, Ted, Mr. Bundles and Dinoboy
lined up on the little sofa in her front room, and the outfit for her first
day of work laid out neatly in the bathroom. She crawled into her high,
canopied bed and settled amid piles of feather pillows and soft blankets.

After an hour, she slipped out, collected her stuffed bunny from the couch,
and crawled back into bed. She felt slightly ridiculous but only for a
little while. Then she fell asleep.

* * * * *

Raine woke her with a rap at the door the next morning, and Sammy stumbled
out of bed and into the shower. She came downstairs to the heavenly aroma of
hot bread, and found Raine sitting on a high-backed chair at the kitchen
cutting-board island, drinking tea and picking apart a croissant as she read
the paper.

"Morning," Raine said.

Sammy yawned an answer and helped herself to a croissant.

"Grab yourself a napkin for that, we've got to go." Raine downed the rest of
her tea and stood up, steadfastly ignoring Sammy's dismayed protestations.
"I'll take you today so you can see where you're going, and I'll buy you an
alarm clock this afternoon. Are you ready?"

"Yes," grumped Sammy, wrapping her breakfast in a napkin with a
long-suffering air of injury.

"Very good. Let's go." Raine went lightly out and preceded Sammy through the
house and to the Beemer parked in the driveway. Sammy sat in sullen
obedience and gnawed at her croissant as Raine drove, but she took great
pains to look out the window the entire time so that she'd be sure to find
her way alone tomorrow.

The office building was a huge monolith of executive suites jumbled together
in the middle of the downtown area. There was a Starbucks on the ground
floor. That was a good thing.

"Mr. Cannon works on the fourth floor, right across from the elevator,"
Raine explained, pulling up to the covered carriageway. "It is his custom to
take his girls to lunch on their first day, so you won't starve." Raine
caught a glimpse of Sammy's guarded expression, and laughed out loud. "By
'his girls' I meant, of course, his secretaries. He's happily married, and
you don't have to worry about busy hands."

Only slightly soothed, Sammy eased out of the car and gave Raine a nervous
little wave before venturing through the heavy glass doors and into the cool
interior. She felt a strong urge to go to the information receptionist
seated within and make sure she was really supposed to be here. Instead, she
bought herself a cup of double-shot courage and drank it in the elevator.

There was a floor directory directly opposite her when the doors opened on
the fourth floor but she didn't really need it. There was a door less than
five feet from her, and it said 401--Adam Cannon.

Sammy checked her reflection in the elevator's polished walls one last time
and then went to the door and timidly knocked. No response. She knocked
again, harder.

She could make out the sound of a door opening and then a man's voice
slightly raised, "Miss Everett, are you going to get that? Miss--oh drat.
That's right, you're not here." Footsteps.

Sammy stepped back just as the door opened, and found herself staring into a
very handsome face just exactly at eye level, which put Adam Cannon's full
height at about five feet, four inches. In boot heels, she noticed.

She put her hand out hesitantly. "Raine sent me."

The side of his mouth twitched as he shook her hand. "That almost sounds
like a code. Do you watch gangster movies?"

"I've seen The Untouchables and the Godfather. And Good Fellas."

"Then you've seen the only ones that count. Come on in." He stepped back to
allow her entry and added, "I must say, I've never had anyone knock on an
office door before. Although, come to think of it, if you simply walked in,
you'd have found a perfectly empty receiving room." He frowned at the empty
desk that filled one corner, and glanced back at her as if surprised she was
still there. "Did you tell me your name and I forgot it, or...?"

She struck herself in the forehead with an impressive slapping sound, then
peeked up at him hopefully. "I told you and you forgot."

"Mm-hmm." One of his hands twitched slightly. He folded his arms over his
chest and the simple gesture made him seem at least six inches taller.

"Um, that is, I haven't told you yet. My name is Samantha Dupree. My friends
call me Sammy," she added and put out her hand again.

He shook it again, smiling just a little. "That'll have to do, I guess."
Then he turned and waved hugely at the receptionist's desk. "All of this is
yours," he said in a rolling, magnanimous voice. "I'll walk you through the
basics. I'm sure you'll pick up the rest over time. Office hours are nine to
five, and we break at one for lunch. I hope you don't think it forward of
me, but I always take my new girls to lunch the first day. That way, if I
have to fire them, I don't feel so bad because I fed them first."

The rest of his opening advice blurred together into a single stream of
instruction regarding the computer, the filing system, the telephones, and
how often he took coffee. Sammy soaked it in, unable to keep a little smile
off her face. She thought she was going to like working here. She thought
she was the luckiest person alive.

*************************************************************

This story was written and copyrighted by Robin.

For the rest of this and more, please visit www.badgirlscorner.com