Lipstick Jungle

“Lyne, that absolutely isn’t true,” Victory objected. “Most women are not crazy, until some man makes them insane. On the other hand, with the exception of Walter, I’d have to agree with you on the asshole part.”

Lyne smiled and elbowed Walter in the ribs. “That’s what I love about her. She’s always got a smart comeback.”

“And I always will,” Victory said.

“I like a woman who’s herself,” Walter said. “Like Susan. She’s always herself.”

“Even if people do say she’s a bitch,” Lyne said teasingly.

“Lyne Bennett, I’m not half as bad as you are,” Susan retorted. “So what does that make you?”

“Yeah, but I get away with it because I’m a man,” Lyne said dismissively. He opened his paper. What the hell am I doing here? Victory thought.

* * *

THE MINUTE THEY ARRIVED at the house, Ellen distributed “The Schedule.” It ran as follows:

Friday

7:30 p.m. dinner

9:00 p.m. Movie screening

11:00 p.m. Lights out!

Saturday

7:30-8:30 breakfast in sunroom

8:45 tennis

10:00 a.m. tour of island

12:45 p.m. lunch—pool gazebo

1:30 p.m. boating event

And so forth, with activities planned right up until their departure for the airport at five p.m. on Sunday. “I’m glad to see that you’re operating in fifteen-minute increments now,” Walter remarked dryly.

“I’d like to know just one thing,” Victory said. “When are we scheduled to go to the bathroom? And is there any bathroom we’re supposed to use in particular?”

Susan and Walter found this extremely funny. Lyne did not.

It all came to a head on Sunday morning, when Victory found herself, once again, sitting on a wicker chair in the tennis gazebo, watching Lyne play a vicious set of tennis against the local pro, having decided the day before that neither she, Walter, nor Susan was good enough to play with him. Somehow, Susan and Walter had managed to avoid this activity, and had snuck off for a walk on the beach (or maybe for just a much needed lie-down in their room), but Lyne had insisted that Victory watch him. Just like an actual girlfriend. She thought she was going to scream with boredom. She knew there were women who would have been perfectly content, thrilled even, to be watching their billionaire boyfriend murder a tennis ball, but she wasn’t one of them.

What the hell was she doing there? she wondered, for the millionth time.

She got up and went to the phone, punching the button for the “concierge.” Only Lyne Bennett would have a concierge in his private home in the Bahamas, she thought with annoyance.

“Yes, ma’am?” a polite male voice asked.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, but do you have a pen?” Victory asked.

“Of course, ma’am. Right away.”

Victory sat back down. Lyne really wasn’t a very good tennis player, but like most men, you couldn’t tell him that. He tried to hit the ball so hard that nearly every other one went over the fence. This wasn’t a problem, though, as Lyne had two ball boys to retrieve them.

“Here you go, ma’am,” a smiling-faced man said, holding out a silver pen to her. “Will this do?”