and throwing him against the wall and screaming, Where do you think you are going?
Troy turned and fled up the stairs, as Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife. The front door opened and slammed closed. The Wrangler started up and exited her driveway with a screech of tires.
Milada fell back on the couch and covered her face with her hands. Damn, this was embarrassing. Okay, the transition from the sacred to the sensual had been a bit abrupt. But frankly, bringing God into the picture had always been a bit of a turn-on. She’d bedded preachers and priests—she knew damn well that sex and religion were not mutually exclusive pursuits.
A hundred years ago, Mormons were the lechers of the western world. The New York press could not scandalize them enough, Brigham Young and his umpteen wives. Those well-bred men of society—and their mistresses—delighted in being shocked—shocked!—by the immorality of it all.
Who knew Mormons were all a bunch of born-again Victorians underneath? Milada paced a line across the floor, met the wall, paced back. Damn, she said to herself. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! She stopped pacing and put her hand on her stomach. She was hungry. She really was. Well-nigh ravenous. When had she last fed? Three weeks ago? That was pushing it. Garrick warned her about getting wrapped up in her work. She should have just taken the boy and been done with it. Good God, what am I saying? She hunched over, feeling weak. She wasn’t thinking straight.
She headed down into the basement, peeled off her clothes, stalked back and forth. She flung open a drawer, closed it, opened another. There were the BYU sweats Rachel had traded her. Milada held up the top that showed the cougar draped with rapine seductiveness across the block letter Y. She grinned, brushing the tips of her canines against her bottom lip. Yes, this was just right.
She set her wristwatch alarm to four-thirty—always a precaution—and hopped into the Mercedes. The keys were in the ignition, car door remote under the visor. The car glided down the driveway onto Larkspur Lane. She felt extraordinarily good. Her body sensed, anticipated, expected satiation. The adrenaline pumping into her bloodstream gave her an almost giddy high.
She wound her way out of Cottonwood Estates and headed north.
Chapter 20
A faint heart ne’er won a fair lady
The first time Milada had mentioned her interest in Utah and Salt Lake City, Garrick asked, “What institutions of higher education are we talking about?”
The University of Utah boasted a highly regarded teaching hospital and computer sciences program with a number of well-known spin-offs, she told him. Division I football, basketball, and women’s gymnastics.
All fine and good, but Garrick wasn’t referring to the university’s academics. He was thinking of the student body. Or rather, that’s what he wanted Milada to keep in mind. It was a good thing he was over two thousand miles away right then. If he ever got wind of this little fiasco, he wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace about it for the next decade.
Jane was bad enough. Garrick playing mother hen could get downright annoying. Don’t go hunting in your own back yard, he always said, and she saw the wisdom in that advice.
But the University of Utah was a state university, which meant it should be crammed with libidinous and barely legal young adults eager to get stupid over alcohol and sex, religious convictions notwithstanding. She could get what she wanted with a minimum of manipulation.
It was easier for a woman that way—easier to be seduced than to be the seducer. Even her sister Zoë would settle, in a pinch, for strolling into a bar and letting a man get lucky with her. “Like falling off a log,” she’d say, with no little contempt. Zoë had been off men for a century or two, and Milada could see her point.
To seduce was the greater challenge, to consummate the seduction the greater reward. Milada herself hardly missed this intersection of business and pleasure. She could pretend to be above it. But the hunt always thrilled, especially after a long fast. She fell easily into the routines of pursuit. Her long-honed instincts quickened at the thought of blooding the prey.
Which was why her attention this night fell on a comely junior sitting alone at the bar. She was dressed in white cotton and wore about her a practiced look of sophistication. The boys caught up in her scent flitted to and fro about her until she batted them away