Free Caress Part One (Arcadia) by Josie Litton Page A

time we
had together.
    The last thing I wanted to do was screw that up by giving
him any hint of my wayward thoughts. If nothing else, I didn’t need the
humiliation.
    Wrenching my eyes from the bed, I managed to focus enough to
make a quick inventory of the contents of the room. As I was finishing, I
realized that I should check the closets.
    There weren’t any but there were two large dressing rooms,
one clearly intended for a man with fitted cabinets and drawers matching the
style of the bedroom. It was empty except for the clothes that Lucas must have
brought with him. The other…
    Whoa! When the rumors claimed that Margo had walked out of
the Arcadia with nothing but the clothes on her back, they weren’t kidding. She
had left behind a wardrobe fit for a queen of Hollywood, and I’d just found it.
    Stepping into the dressing room felt like venturing into an
Aladdin’s cave filled with silks, satins, and tulles in jewel colors. At a
glance, I saw dozens of pairs of shoes, evening gowns, day dresses and suits,
and the lingerie… Oh, my god, the lingerie! It alone made my mouth water.
    Just inventorying the dressing room would take at least
several days by itself. On top of everything else, I’d have to get up to speed
on vintage 1950s clothing before I could have any hope of putting a valuation
on what I’d just found.
    What a horrible job that would be! I was grinning as I
backed out and carefully shut the doors behind me.
    The rest of the day passed quickly. At noon, I went for a
run in Central Park to clear my head. George was on duty and we chatted
briefly. After a shower, I settled back to work in the library.
    Margo hadn’t just collected books, she’d also read them.
Everything from Shakespeare to Balzac to Hemingway. I even found scattered
notes in the margins of several in the same delicate hand as the notes I
discovered in her desk.
    Looking at what she had thought was especially noteworthy, I
began to piece together who Margo was and how she felt about various aspects of
life.
    She was a romantic. Regarding Ophelia she wrote-- Poor
girl! What a bastard Hamlet is! But she was also a realist. Balzac’s Cousin
Bette, surely one of the most scheming, manipulative women ever put on paper,
merited this remark-- She’s in Hollywood now!
    I laughed when I read that but I sympathized, too,
remembering my brief experience with Heather. Apparently, versions of Cousin
Bette cropped up everywhere.
    I worked into the evening, not looking forward to the hours
when I would inevitably lie in bed, wondering where Lucas was or when he’d be
home. I never heard him come in. He was just there again every morning.
    That evening I decided that I needed a diversion. Women my
age were heading out to bars with their friends, dancing the night away,
meeting interesting or at least tolerable guys. I was spending way too much
time thinking about a man I had no business thinking about at all.
    That needed to change. Now that I had a better handle on the
job, I’d be smart to carve out some time to relax. Join a gym, maybe. Even
entertain the possibility, however remote, of meeting people who wouldn’t freak
when they heard my name.
    But for the moment, the best I could do was decide to
explore the screening room next door to the library. It was the 1950s version
of a home theatre and I loved it.
    Oversized couches and chairs faced a large, rolled down
movie screen. At the back was an old-style projector. Along the walls were
shelves holding round metal canisters filled with movies from the era before
streaming, before DVDs, before even video tape.
    I hesitated to touch them but temptation overcame me when I
found a copy of “The Lady is a Flirt”, the movie that had made Margo a star. A
few minutes on-line and I had instructions for how to load the reel into the
projector.
    The movie was up and ready to go, and I was just about to
turn off the lights in the screening room before settling in to watch it, when
I heard the