Pool Party Read online

  Pool Party

  KT Morrison

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by KT Morrison

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  A Preview of The Obsessed Series

  Other Books by KT Morrison

  About the Author

  KT Morrison writes stories about women who fall in love with sexy men who aren’t their husband, and loving relationships that go too far—couples who open a mysterious door, then struggle to get it closed as trouble pushes through the threshold.

  Visit My Blog!

  sparrow3dx.blogspot.com

  Also by KT Morrison

  Click here for the KT Bookshelf

  SERIES

  Maggie

  Obsessed

  The Cayman Proxy

  Landlord

  NOVELS

  Cherry Blossoms

  Lessons Learned

  Going A Little Too Far

  SHORTS

  Taken While He Watches: On Their Honeymoon

  Taken While He Watches: At The Combine

  Taken By His Best Friends: At The Hockey Rink

  Measured Next To Her Ex

  Size Curious Brat

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Models on cover are meant for illustrative purposes only.

  POOL PARTY

  First Edition. October 20, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 KT Morrison

  Written by KT Morrison

  Cover by KT Morrison

  Chapter One

  It was a hundred-and-five degrees and blazingly sunny on the hottest day of the summer. Darren Maxwell—his daughter on a work exchange program in Spain, his son spending summer recess in Cambridge, and a wife he was convinced was cheating on him away in New York City, offering her well-prepared symposium on general prosecution to selected international lawyers—was alone in the house laying on the comforter on his neatly made bed in just his shorts and a polo shirt. He stared at the ceiling.

  His wife, the very capable Lynn Maxwell, Esquire, was far too attractive for him. Even now, both of them hitting the middle of forty, she turned heads. Turned them whiplash-hard. He was sure she’d been looking back, too. Going to the gym four, five days a week for two years now, her body tight and toned. Her wardrobe had gotten slimmer, too, as her body responded to all her efforts. She was always attractive, but he could see she was sending out a new message.

  She was probably acting on it: Another addition to the wardrobe ... lingerie. Stuff she didn’t wear for old Darren but stuff he found neatly folded in her drawers, hidden below her wool sweaters. Exactly when were these lacy, frilly, sheer things being worn?

  Their love life had never been a great big show of fireworks, and now what little fizzle remained dwindled to a dying ember in a bed of ash.

  Two times.

  In one year he had made love to his wife only two times.

  When Owen had left for Harvard and Tabitha was in her last year of university he’d been excited that soon he and Lynn would have the house to themselves, and maybe they could reignite some of their passions. When both their children were gone, however, his wife’s renewed vigor and lust for life had not benefited him. He sat and watched from the stands. Watched her tan, watched her come home from the gym with a happy glow, watched her body transform and saw her new clothes hug her curves.

  She had to be cheating on him.

  What was the point in all her effort, right? If it wasn’t for him, who was it for? Her friends at work at Goldstein-Farber? Why would they care? He knew in his heart some other man was enjoying his wife’s body.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, and he dragged himself up into something approximating sitting, legs dangling off the bed, toes grazing the Persian rug, laid squarely under the bed frame.

  Outside the sky was an oppressive cyan, a faint trace of bright azure fluttering up high above all that humidity. Hottest day on record for the last decade. The kind of heat that sapped you, robbed your legs of their strength, made them wobble. He watched a songbird out there, struggling through the bake, listless wings reluctant to flap, its tiny body looking heavy as a stone.

  His head hung low between his shoulders as he viewed his neighborhood through the bedroom window. His drapes fluttered with lifesaving AC; beyond that, past the large billowing maple that grew large in their front yard, his cul-de-sac was lifeless. Everyone indoors like him, burning electricity to save their lives on this scorcher of a day.

  There was a knock at the front door.

  “What now?” he said to his sad, empty bedroom, and he stood, tossed away the discovered lingerie he’d been clutching, walked in his bare feet to the bedroom window and looked down into the driveway.

  The Maxwells dwelled at 17 Pine Bay Court. Their home, like most of the others on the street, was a six-thousand square-foot Georgian, mature gardens professionally landscaped, Homeowner Association approved color palettes, twelve-thousand a year in property taxes, full acre-and-a-half lot with a tennis court, swimming pool, hot tub, and access to trails that led all around the shared and well-maintained private green space.

  The car in his driveway was not from this neighborhood.

  “Who the fuck is this?” he said, shaking his head in irritation. It was a ten-year-old Hyundai hatchback with rust-bubbled wheel wells and a fluffy hot pink air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.

  There were two lithe, bare-armed shapes wavering in the carved glass window set in the solid oak double-door that led to the front porch. Two figures, facing away, standing and talking to each other animatedly. It looked like two girls.

  He sucked his teeth and paused, hand on doorknob, frowning. He opened it.

  “Hey, Mr. Maxwell,” a girl said as she turned to face him. Skyler King. Notorious bad girl from old Bay Ridge High where his kids attended school. A ne’er-do-well his daughter had been on-and-off friends with since they were eight. More ‘off’ once they graduated to high school. Skyler came from a less comfortable part of town.

  She stood now on his doorstep, a grown twenty-two-year-old girl. Beautiful. Last time she’d been at this house would have been a birthday party maybe twelve years ago. Times had changed. No longer the scraggly haired, unkempt little girl with unwashed feet, Skyler was stunning. Long gleaming chestnut brown hair with bleached locks that wound through in loose twirls. She wore a bikini top and cut-off shorts. Frayed, faded denim cut so short the front pockets hung below the fringe. Her legs were long, bare, and fine. Thin things with well-formed knees and little ankles, and pretty feet; painted toes curled against the foam bed of turquoise flip-flops that matched her top. She lifted a pair of oversized, white-framed plastic sunglasses and dazzled him with her green eyes. His heart clenched, and he felt unreasonably excited that such a spectacular human being knew his name.

  “Skyler?” he said, unsure of what else to say, knowing it was Skyler, but at a loss for words, lucky anything at all tumbled out of his mouth.

  She leaned on the jamb, slipping one foot up to rest on the threshold. She smelled like candy. His mouth worked open and closed and his eyes wandered over to her compatriot. She was an ample-bosomed knockout on her own. Sour-faced, bitchy and unimpressed, pouting lips under black sunglasses, long lank blonde hair hanging down on either side of her plump but beautiful
face. She wore a white bikini top, her soft tanned tummy pressed in by a pair of tight madras short-shorts. She had muscular legs, bare feet in a pair of leather high-tops.

  Skyler sang, “Oh, Mr. Maxwell, I haven’t seen you in so long ...”

  Skyler stepped up from the stonework of the front patio putting one of those flip-flops across the threshold of his home, lifting then up onto her toes and kissing his cheek, making his heart race with an awkward excitement.

  She said, “You’re looking really good, Mr. Maxwell.”

  “You are ... You are, too, Skyler,” he said, then grimaced, feeling uncomfortable for acknowledging her looks given she used to be one of his daughter’s friends. But she did look good. She was in her twenties now, and the truth was the truth, even if was uncomfortable. Still, he winced, then said, “You know what I mean.”

  She cocked a hip out and gave him a big smile and a wink, said, “Oh, I know I look good.” She giggled, passing it off as though she were kidding.

  She reached a long arm out, brushed her friend on the shoulder and introduced her to him. “Mr. Maxwell, this is Madison. She’s a good friend of mine.”

  “Hi, Madison,” he said. “I’m Darren … you can just call me Darren, not Mr. Maxwell.” He extended a hand to shake with her, unsure of the protocol but wanting to be polite just the same. She looked at his hand like he’d offered her something off-putting. But she raised hers and let him take it. Her hand was soft and lifeless. He shook it.

  He leaned on the door, said, “Skyler, Tabitha isn’t here. She’s away.”

  “Away where?” Skyler said.

  “She’s in Spain. For school. She’s been away awhile now, all semester and into the summer ...”

  Skyler brushed past him, walking into the foyer and looking up and around, taking in the chandelier, the artwork, the family photos that festooned the walls that ran up the circular staircase.

  She said, with her hands on her hips and her back to him, “The place is just the same. Remember when I used to come here?”

  He said, “I do. I remember you very well, Skyler.”

  “I remember you, too, Mr. Maxwell. Darren.”

  “Have you talked to Tabitha recently?” he asked.

  “Tabitha? No, I haven’t. Haven’t talked to her in probably a decade. You remember when she had her birthday party here? Her tenth? I was here for that. Remember we had it out at the pool?”

  He said, “I remember we had the pony that we called a unicorn. Lynn had put—”

  “A fake horn on it,” she finished, then gave him a girlish giggle.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Skyler looked now over his shoulder at her friend, Madison, still standing with a tart expression on the patio just past the door. She looked back to Darren, said, “You still have that pool?”

  “The pool? Yeah, of course. Where would the pool go?” he said with good humor. Somehow the joke attempt making him feel more paternal than before.

  Next to him, Madison’s pale voice: “It’s really hot out here.”

  He looked at her, saw her wan face regarding him behind those jet black glasses. He said, “Oh, come in. Sorry, come on in. The air conditioning is on.” He held the door for her and she stepped up and in, drawing the scent of coconut in her wake.

  Her untied sneakers clomped on the tile as she came into the foyer with her slumped shoulders and arrogant demeanor. “Some place you got here,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Skyler’s been here before. She and Tabitha were good friends.”

  Skyler said, “For a while.”

  “You were,” he said.

  Now Skyler turned around, looking very bold with her hands still on her hips, her young pert breasts pressing out her bikini top. She said, “Madison and I were just driving around the neighborhood—”

  “We were,” Madison said, turning to face him as well.

  Skyler continued, “We were just hating how hot it was. Saying we wish there was a way to cool off. You know they closed the community pool?”

  “What community pool?”

  “Oh, I guess not your community,” she said, waving a hand toward the door, meaning his gated enclave. “I mean where we live. So we were driving around, looking for something to do ...”

  Darren said, “The pool. Did you want to use my pool?”

  Skyler said, “Well, we don’t want to intrude ...”

  Darren said, “You’re not intruding. I wasn’t using it. No one’s here, my wife, you know, Lynn—is away on business.”

  “How is Mrs. Maxwell?”

  “Lynn’s doing great. Better than ever. Busy, busy, busy.”

  “Old Mrs. M. That was her. Intimidating.”

  He chuckled lightly, said, “Intimidating? I suppose she could be.”

  “Some of the kids were afraid of her.”

  “Afraid of Lynn?”

  “She still beautiful?”

  It struck his heart a little. She was still beautiful. Still beautiful and he missed what they had. Somewhere along the way it had dissipated. Sometimes, he imagined, those things happened in a marriage. Just as they became empty-nesters, his wife seemed to have a lot of regrets. He couldn’t help feeling like maybe old Darren Maxwell was one of those regrets. They had a good life together up to this point, there was never really a bad word between them. Sure, their sex life fizzled somewhere along the way. Gosh, probably more than a decade ago ...

  “So, you can use the pool if you wanted. It’s just out back.”

  Skyler swayed, said, “Can you show us?”

  He led them through the kitchen, then the dining room, over the terra-cotta flooring they put in just two years ago, out into the high ceiling of the family room that looked out over their well-manicured estate. One-and-a-half acres of prime suburban land just outside the city. A score they had achieved when they were young and only added to as their careers took off. It showed. And while he felt a little pang of badness walking these barely dressed young ladies through his house when he was alone—and a mature and married man—there was a certain pride that riled up his male hormones as he watched these two beauty’s eyes go around and take in all of his achievements. Though they weren’t entirely his to be truthful. Lynn did quite well on her own.

  “Holy shit,” Madison said when she saw the backyard. They stood now by the French doors that opened out onto the twenty-by-forty irregularly shaped concrete pool complete with waterfall and sculpted gardens, slide, diving board, and hot tub.

  Skyler looked at her and said, “I know. I told you.”

  “Holy shit,” Madison said again.

  Feeling a little inflated now, Darren held one of the doors open, said, “Well, go on. Go out and enjoy it.”

  Skyler said, “Are you sure?”

  “I told you, Skyler. Go on ahead, have fun today.”

  “You sure you’re sure?”

  He smiled, said, “Skyler ...”

  Skyler smiled back, indicated for Madison to go ahead, and she did, stepping down and into the bright heat of the afternoon, her shoes clapping along the stonework.

  “Go on,” he said to Skyler.

  She still held her hand out like she did for Madison, now saying, “After you.”

  “Oh, I’m not going swimming.”

  “Well, you’re not staying in the house. Come on out with us.”

  “Come out with you?”

  “Yeah, come hang with us.”

  “Hang with you? I don’t hang. I’m twice your age.”

  “Don’t sound so old. You still got it. A lot of the kids had crushes on you.”

  “On me?”

  She rolled her eyes comically. “We’re all adults now, no kids here anymore.” Her eyes narrowed on his. That look she gave him got his heart hammering again, putting his pulse in a dangerous area. Fortunately, he was on medication.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice a little dry and a little thin. But he was still a gentleman, so he took the door from her, said, “After y
ou.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said with a sexy sigh as she walked past him and down onto the flagstone, drawing one of her long fingers along his chest as she passed.

  He had no idea what the fuck was going on here. Nothing like this had ever happened in his life; it was the sort of thing guys his age would dream of. He wouldn’t let the opportunity past.

  Chapter Two

  On the pool deck, out in the bright sun on one of the hottest days in the last few years, Darren stood and watched two stunning young girls in their early twenties saw their hips from side to side, squeezing themselves out of their dreadfully tight shorts and then stand before him wearing only skimpy bikinis and tattoos. He did his best to act unaffected.

  Once she was disrobed, Madison wasted no time getting in the water. She jumped from the edge of the pool, going straight up, feet first, turning in the air so that she faced them as she fell in the pool slapping a hand up to pinch her nose before she disappeared under the crystal clear water.

  Skyler hooted, clapping her hands for her friend. She turned to Darren then, grabbed his wrist, said, “You’re coming in with me.”

  “No way,” he said, “are you crazy? I’m still dressed.”

  Now she let him go, gave a very disapproving look. She said, “Go get your trunks on or none of us are having any fun today.”

  “I hadn’t planned on swimming,” he said.

  She looked over her shoulder at Madison who was splashing around in the water now, pretty face with wet hair slicked back. She turned and said, “Neither did we. An hour ago we were just dying in the heat.”