Free Love under contract by Karin Fromwald Page A

most of the time. How does it feel? No, don’t think about that. God, she desperately needed sex.
     
    Toward evening, as the sun slowly set, she heard Gregor speaking with Marc in French, since apparently Catherine wasn’t supposed to understand.
    “Do me a favor, and please keep Catherine away from me for an hour, I need a little time to myself.” Gregor liked Catherine, he found sex with her to be wonderful, sensational, but he wanted an hour of quiet to read a book, to have a conversation with someone else. If he was honest with himself, he thought about Zara, who sat on the deck all day, writing in her Notebook and surrounded by books.
    What the devil was she writing? He was curious and he wanted a diversion.
    Marc understood and it seemed like a good idea, since he thought Catherine not only to be very beautiful, but they shared the same profession.
    He slapped Gregor on the shoulder. “This evening Catherine belongs to me.” Gregor nodded. “Great, but afterwards I’d like her back,” he responded and smiled. Marc laughed and went over to Catherine, who was squinting into the sun.
    Zara was writing an article for a professional journal in France about one of her favorite topics, ethics in the business world and women’s rights initiatives.
    Gregor sat down next to her and she pretended that she hadn’t noticed; he picked up one of the thick books, looked at the cover and couldn’t believe his eyes. Women’s Rights Initiatives ? Oh, dear. Pity the world’s men!
    “Oh, I think you’ve chosen the wrong seat,” she said and put her book down. She looked at the Notebook screen.
    “I think you’ve chosen the wrong field.” He put the book down. Zara was dumbfounded.
    “What do you mean?” she asked, taken aback, and pressed the “save” button on her Notebook.  Gregor stared at her naked, flat stomach.
    “Feminism? Really? I thought your specialty was business law!” Gregor laughed.
    “You probably have your little world in which everyone has his place – here, Christians; there, Jews; and women, who don’t just think horizontally, are difficult for you to understand,” she said sharply and pushed her sunglasses back on her head – the sun had gone down here. Should he answer her? He felt a little trapped.
    Zara gathered her books together, and an application to a doctoral program at Harvard fell out of the pile. Before she could push it out of the way, Gregor snatched the form. “You want to go back to Harvard?” he asked. She was ambitious, which he already knew. It impressed him more than he would have liked, and his heart began to beat significantly faster.
    She took the piece of paper away from him. “That’s none of your business!” What was he doing here anyway, where was his girlfriend, he should be taking care of her, since she obviously needed a lot of care and was so hungry – for a lot more than food.
    “I always thought that you were happy being an attorney,” he said then. He had an inkling that she wanted to leave because Goodmann had clipped her wings in the case against him, which she didn’t comprehend or didn’t want to, and in a way he could understand.
     
    He picked up one of the heavy books again. Strangely, bound books always reminded him of his childhood. His parents’ house was always full of books. Books were everywhere; they were even scattered in the kitchen because his father was often very absent-minded and left them lying around all over.
     
    Zara noticed how pensive he became as he was looking at the book. “Is your father really religious?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine such a thing, as she saw him sitting there half naked, with a great tan.
    Gregor looked up and gazed at her, reflective. “Yes, very, in fact. My father is a rabbi, as was my grandfather. He teaches in Germany.” Why is he telling her this, he asked himself, immediately upon saying the words.
    Zara leaned against the side of the boat, and he could see that she was taken