"What's so special about this guy out in Wilmette?" Heather sulkily demanded as Rachel steered the Dodge Polara out onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north along the freeway. At one-thirty on a Friday afternoon, traffic was extremely light, and the view of Lake Michigan was sunny and breathtaking.
"Well, since you didn't have any classes this afternoon, Heather, and you've never once visited my shop," the brunette matron airily replied, "I thought you might like to see what sort of work I do. It's a big order, too-remodeling all the furniture, drapes, even the pictures in a big old house in a very quiet and swanky residential suburb."
"I suppose so," Heather grudgingly admitted, giving her stepmother a wary look. "But I'm telling you straight off, Rachel, I'm not interested in meeting any guy. Time enough for that when I finish school And anyhow, if he's that rich to give you a commission like this, chances are he's old enough to be my father."
Rachel coolly watched the road ahead as, without turning to look at her red-haired stepdaughter, she blithely retorted, "And what's so wrong with that? But the fact is, Heather, he's not that old at all. Early thirties, as a matter of fact."
Heather, who had gasped and eyed Rachel with a hostile glance at the latter's counter question, now shrugged diffidently. So he's just another man. I told you, I'm not on the prowl. So let's change the subject."
"Of course, dear."
This time, Heather's look was frankly puzzled. "I don't get you at all, Rachel. I should think you'd hate my guts, and Timmy's too."
"No. I understand you both very well, you see.
"Hmm," the coppery-haired beauty sneered. "And so you don't mind cheating on Daddy with us, is that it? Or maybe, you just like variety sex?"
Heather's jibes made Rachel flush hotly despite her determination to show herself impervious to them. "I know it sounds square, to use your expression, Heather, but if I have to go in for dramatics to prove I love your father and want this marriage to last, well, I'll do it."
Heather gave her another quick, puzzled glance, then again shrugged and glumly remarked, "I don't get you at all, Rachel. But I have to say you're a good sport. You could have snitched to Dad and got us both in Dutch."
"And what good would that have done? You'd have hated me even more and lain awake nights figuring out ways to get rid of me," was Rachel's swift parry accompanied with an engaging smile.
"Yeah." Heather slumped disconsolately down in her seat and stared out at the glassy clam-blue waters of the lake…
"Mr. Cantwell, this is my stepdaughter Heather," Rachel smilingly made the introduction after the plump bespectacled sandy-haired maid had opened the front door and ushered them both into the sitting room where, a moment later, the tall architect joined them.
"A very great pleasure, Miss Woodling," Arnold Cantwell cordially extended his hand. "Your stepmother tells me you play quite a fair game of chess."
Heather flushed and looked petulant as she diffidently took his hand, then let go of it. "Fair enough, but she doesn't really know much about the game."
"Perhaps you'd care to have one with me while she visits with my mother and sister," he proposed. Then, turning to Rachel, "you do plan to bring some of the materials we agreed on next Monday?"
"Yes, Mr. Cantwell, as I told you on the phone, I have the samples of suggested new carpeting with me to show your mother and sister."
"Excellent! Come along, then, Miss Woodling, I'd like you to meet them, too."
Heather indolently rose from the heavily upholstered couch and followed her stepmother down a long hall to the elegantly ornate library at its other end. There, a white-haired frail woman and a portly but pleasant-faced gray-haired woman courteously rose to meet their guests as the personable architect, his arm affectionately around his mother's waist, remarked, "Mother, this is Mrs. Woodling, who'll be making this old house look like new, and Miss Woodling. Ladies, my mother and my sister Fern."
"My goodness," the white-haired woman beamed," you two look more like sisters than mother and daughter."
"Indeed they do, Arnold dear," his sister nodded.
Heather frowned, glancing hastily at Rachel, who quickly amended, "Thank you for the compliment, but actually Heather is my stepdaughter."
"Even so," Arnold Cantwell's mother smilingly replied. Then, to her son, "Arnold, I'd no idea Mrs. Woodling was so young and attractive. My gracious, I suppose I thought anyone so experienced and with such good taste in home decorating had to be along in years!"
"You're very kind Mrs. Cantwell," Rachel swiftly but politely tried to change the topic of discussion sensing the red-haired young woman's annoyance. "If I might, I'd like to show you and Miss Cantwell some very attractive samples of carpeting and get your thoughts about where alterations could be made in the various rooms.
"Why, of course, how thoughtful of you!" the architect's mother smiled. "Arnold dear, would you ask Jessie to bring all three of us some tea and cookies? Oh, I'm forgetting-perhaps Miss Woodling would like to take some refreshments with us?"
Arnold Cantwell interposed with an apologetic smile, "I've asked her to play chess with me, Mother. And I'll have Jessie serve us both in the study. Take your time, I want you and Fern to be perfectly happy with the changeover, you know."
"Oh, I'm sure we'll get along splendidly with Mrs. Woodling," his mother said with a fond look at him. Rachel, opening her briefcase, seated herself on a chair drawn up near the couch, while Arnold Cant-well turned to the still sulky redhead: "How about that game now, Miss Woodling?" he pleasantly proposed.
Heather nodded without enthusiasm. "Might as well," she mumbled, and accompanied him to a room a few doors away from the library. Opening the door, he rang the bell for the maid, smilingly gesturing to Heather to enter.
In a corner near the large bay window, there stood a handsome walnut table with an inlaid chessboard on its top, and a superb ivory set of white and black pieces. With a gasp of admiration, Heather hurried over to the table and almost reverently lifted up the black king, then the white rook, examining them, and setting them back on the board, her green eyes shining with animation. Arnold Cantwell, who had given the maid Jessie instructions to serve Rachel and his mother and sister in the library and to bring a collation for Heather and himself in here, now returned to the alluring young redhead, who had worn a summery blue cotton frock and beige nylons. For an instant, he contemplated her as she stood with her back to him, and then banteringly said, "Most ivory sets, as you probably know, Miss Woodling, are ornamental But this one was made in the accepted Staunton design, so it could be used even in tournament play."
She turned quickly to him, a smile curving her sensual red mouth. "Yes,. I noticed! It must have been frightfully expensive!"
"I bought it out of my very first fee as an architect. It was something I'd always wanted since I was a fourteen year old and learned chess from a very arrogant high school senior whose father had an absolutely garish ivory set."
"Then you must be a very good player," Heather drawled.
"Passable. I don't have too much chance to play, not with my work, and joining a club would take much too much time. Now then, why don't you take the white pieces?"
Heather's smile vanished, to be replaced by the sulky look again. "You don't have to patronize me because I'm a girl, Mr. Cantwell. We'll draw for colors."
"Of course, forgive me!" Me took a black pawn and a white one, put his hands behind him, changed them several times, then offered his closed hands to Heather, who touched his left.
"You get white after all," he chuckled, seating himself at the side of the board on which the black pieces were arrayed.
Swiftly, the red-haired young woman shot out her hand to move the king's pawn to the fourth rank, and Arnold Cantwell, pursing his lips, hesitated a moment before moving the queen's bishop's pawn to the fourth rank.
"A Sicilian," Heather murmured, and moved her king's knight to which he answered with the queen's knight. She glanced intently at him; then, as his eyes rose to meet hers, she frowned, flushing hotly, and played the queen's pawn to the fourth rank.
There was silence for a few moments till after the architect's eighth move. "The Najdorf variation," Heather mused aloud, cupping her chin in both bands and leaning forward over the board.
"Yes. It's probably discredited now by the latest Russian analysis, but It leads to an aggressive game," he retorted. "Cigarette? Ah, we'll wait-here comes Jessie with our tea."
The maid deferentially moved forward to set the tray down on a large hassock beside the table, then murmured, "I've served your mother and sister and Mrs. Woodling, sir. Will there be anything else?"
"No, thanks, Jessie, that's just fine. We'll serve ourselves." When she had left the room, he poured out tea into a Wedgewood cup. "Do you take lemon or cream, Miss Woodling?"
"Lemon and lots of sugar. And you can call me Heather."
"I'd like that. And still more if you'd call me Arnold in return. Here you are, and try two of these molasses cookies. Jessie baked them herself, and she's a wonder."
He handed Heather the cup and saucer and the little plate with two large round brown cookies, and she set them down at the side of the wide table, took a perfunctory sip of the tea, her eyes scanning the position. Arnold Cantwell poured out tea for himself and leaned back in his chair, studying his lovely opponent.
"Your move!" she said almost curtly as she moved a bishop. Then, reaching for a cookie, she nibbled at it, put it back on the plate, looked up at him expectantly.
"And yours," he countered by moving a rook.
"Oh-yeah." Heather mumbled, glaring at the rook which threatened to take possession of the open file. She leaned back, reached for the rest of the cookie, crunched it noisily between her fine white teeth, then took up the cup and nearly drained it, setting it down with a clatter, after which she gave him a cursory look before studying the position again. "You know your opening theory."
"I subscribe to some British chess magazines and go over the games every so often, that's why," he smilingly confided. "Now, how about that cigarette?"
"Yes, please." Puffing at it after using his monogrammed silver lighter, Heather countered with her own queen's rook to the same file, and Arnold Cant-well instantly surprised her with a king's side attack which began with the advance of the bishop's pawn.
Now fully absorbed in the complicated position, the attractive young redhead no longer glanced at her opponent with the frowning, faint hostility she had shown at the outset. Instead, cupping her chin in one hand, sitting sideways in the chair and crossing her shapely nylon-sheathed legs, she morosely pondered a full two minutes before making a defensive move. Instantly the architect followed through with the attack, and for the next quarter of an hour, Heather was busy defending herself, for the least slip could mean the shattering of her king's security. At last, thanks to his transposing a move, she was able to save herself by sacrificing a bishop for two pans to bring about a perpetual check with the queen, and gasped, "Boy, did I ever need that!"
"That was extremely well planned, Heather!" he congratulated her as he began to set the pieces up for another game.
"Yeah, for a girl, I suppose you mean," she flung at him as she reached out to take the second cookie off the plate and munch it, staring almost defiantly at him.
"I didn't say that at all. I'd have been very happy myself, in your shoes, to have dreamed up a clever diagonal file sacrifice like that."
Heather visibly softened, "Oh, yeah. Well, th- thanks." She said the words hastily, as if ashamed of them; apologizing wasn't customary to her iconoclastic nature.
"You're welcome. No, I'm not a male chauvinist, If that's what you were thinking. When I play over the score of a good game, It doesn't matter to me who the player was, If he was white or black or even a Red, so long as the Ideas are sound and instructive. That's what we learn from chess, just as in life."
"And now you're getting to sound like a professor instead of an architect."
"Probably because I was a senior assistant to the instructor in my post-graduate days at the institute," he smiled back at her. "How about another game? This time I'll see if I can hold you off with white."
"Sure. You know, Mr. Cantwell, you're not a bad guy."
"I will be unless you stop calling me that and say Arnold, Heather."
This time, unexpectedly, Heather dimpled and blushed becomingly as she played the Caro-Kann Defense to his opening P-K4. And when, half an hour later, she bad to topple her king in defeat, she found she didn't mind losing. It had been an exhilarating struggle, and best of all, he'd treated her like an equal with no hint of sex.
"Are we going to the airport to pick Dad up, Rachel?"
"No, Heather. He wasn't sure when he called this morning what flight he'd make; he might even be back home already."
"Oh, yeah, sure." The redhead lay back against the front seat, stretching her voluptuous legs, tilting back her head, closing her eyes, the flicker of a smile on her insolent red mouth. "Say, this client of yours isn't a bad egg. Sorta square, but nice. Not as old as I thought, either."
"That's fine, Heather. Did you enjoy the chess game?"
"I did, a lot. Fact is, he asked if he could invite me over for dinner and a return bout maybe next week. So I said to call me-and I'd see."
"I'm glad."
"Uh huh." Heather opened her eyes lazily, turned to look at her stepmother. "You let your hair grow, didn't you, Rachel?"
"Why-yes, I did, dear."
"I like it." Then, with a flash of her old cynicism. "It came in handy the other night, didn't it, Mummy?"
Rachel flushed but did not take her eyes off the road. In a coolly level voice, she flung back, "I guess it did, Heather."
"I'm wise to you, Rachel You're pretty smart, you know. That Arnold Cantwell looks almost like a dead ringer for Dad first time around. 'Course, he's lots younger, and he's different in lots of ways. But the way he talks, and his eyes-I just wonder-"
"What, dear?"
"You sort of hinted some time back I might have the hots for Dad, didn't you? So you fixed me up with a guy that could pass for Dad in the dark. That's being a real hep amateur headshrink, Rachel, I have to hand it to you."
"I wasn't trying to fix you up, as you put It, Heather."
"I wouldn't make book on it, Mummy. But you're not a bad joe, at that. Only, we got a deal, don't forget, and it won't be much longer than two week now, you know."
"That's understood, Heather."
"Fine. Now, what've you got up your sleeve to make little brother happy, Rachel?"
"Nothing, Heather."
The red-haired young woman gave her stepmother a mocking look. Then she shrugged, closed her eyes again. "Have it your way. Only it better be good. Timmy really has a man-size yen for that tight hot little pussy of yours, Mummy. Wake me up when we get home. Those chess games wore me out… hmm, wonder if Arnold is as nifty handling real-life flesh-and-blood queens as he is wooden ones?"