When Betty quit school and brought her new husband home to live with her parents, the local gossips had a field day. Since Bruce Case’s Philadelphia antecedents were never mentioned either by him or his in-laws, it was automatically assumed that he came from a moneyless and socially unknown family, which in turn led to the automatic conclusion that he had married Betty Runyon for her money.
Of course this would have been the automatic conclusion if any outsider who wasn’t known to be a millionaire had married her, for the Runyons were not only the oldest, but the richest family in Runyon City. Betty was the great-granddaughter of old Cyrus Runyon, who had founded the city in 1850 and had made a fortune in real estate. The tradition-conscious community felt the same vested interest in her that it felt in the Memorial Park her grandfather had donated to the city. It was generally felt that she had no business marrying outside one of the other old families.
The gossip that Bruce Case was nothing but a fortune hunter had been reinforced when Betty’s father, Arthur Runyon, had bought his new son-in-law a junior partnership in a local law firm. The local I-told-you-so group drew some satisfaction from the fact that he had never developed more than a mediocre practice which couldn’t begin to pay for the scale on which the couple lived.
The gossips had also done the inevitable counting they always do after a runaway marriage. They were extremely pleased when the bride gave birth to a son just eight months after the marriage.
Actually this lessened the hurt Kirk Marshall felt. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that there had been a more compelling motive than mere fickleness which caused Betty to marry another man so suddenly.
Because Marshall’s handicap was four strokes less than Betty’s, he spotted her four. She was in good form though, and at the end of the eighth hole he had made up only one stroke. On the ninth, a dogleg, Betty topped her drive and dropped her ball at the edge of the fairway, only fifty yards from the tee. Marshall drove his a hundred and twenty-five yards to the exact center of the fairway, right at the turn.
He stopped with Betty when they reached her ball, and watched as she chose a brassie.
“Don’t you think a midiron would be better?” he suggested.
“I’m taking the short route,” she said. “Right over the trees onto the green.”
The ninth hole was at the end of the club grounds, the course backtracking upon itself from there on. Just beyond the ninth green was heavily underbrushed woods, where it was almost impossible to find a lost ball. For this reason golfers seldom tried to loft above the trees, as overplaying the green even a dozen yards could be disastrous.
Marshall said, “Better let me get down to the turn so I can spot your ball.”
She waited until he had reached his own lie and signaled back to her. Even from where he was he could tell she had hit the ball nicely, with a beautiful follow-through. He watched it loft over the treetops and, for a moment, thought it was going to land directly on the green. But it hit ten yards beyond, bounced mightily and disappeared into the woods.
Mentally he marked the spot where it had gone in, then addressed his own ball and laid it ten feet from the cup. He played it safe by taking two putts and was in with a par four.
Betty dragged up her cart as he sank the ball and gave him an inquiring look.
“It went into the woods just this side of that small pine,” he said, pointing. “By the height of the bounce, I’d say it’s at least twenty-five feet in.”
Making a face, she chose an iron and headed toward the indicated pine. Marshall pushed both carts over to the next tee and waited.
About five minutes passed with no sign of either Betty or her ball. A foursome came along and Marshall told them to play through, as his opponent was hunting a lost ball.
When the foursome moved on, he went over to the edge of the woods and called, “Betty!”
“Still hunting,” she called back from perhaps twenty yards in.
He moved toward the voice, crouching to avoid being scratched by low boughs. He found her in a small, grassy clearing on hands and knees, peering into the surrounding bushes.
“Why don’t you give up, sacrifice a stroke and play it from where it went in?” he said.
“And let you take the hole? I can still make par if I can find the blasted ball.”
Shrugging, he seated himself on the grass with his back against a tree.
Chapter II
After a few moments Betty rose to her feet, glanced at him petulantly, and came over to sink next to him, laying her iron beside her.
“Five-minute break,” she said. “Give me a cigarette.”
He lighted two and handed her one. After taking a drag, she grinned.
“If we were worried about just our playing together causing scandal, wonder what would happen if someone saw us here.”
“I wasn’t worried,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s mentioned scandal.”
“Well, this isn’t exactly the sort of place for a married woman to be tête-à-tête with an ex-boy friend.”
She had a point. Though they were no more than thirty yards from the ninth green, no one could possibly have seen them from there. Or from anywhere more than five yards away, for that matter, for the little clearing was entirely surrounded by bushes.
Her nearness and their isolation began to have a strange effect on him. A trifle self-consciously he crushed out his cigarette after two puffs.
“Maybe it would be more decorous if I waited for you at the tenth tee,” he said, making no move to rise.
Carefully she stepped out her own cigarette. “Maybe I’d better start hunting again.” She made no move to rise either.
For a long moment they stared at each other. She was seated half turned toward him, her left shoulder nearly touching his right. Slowly she reached out to lightly touch his cheek with her fingers.
The next moment she was in his arms and he was crushing her to him savagely. Her lips were against his and he felt her tongue thrust into his mouth.
He was not conscious of undoing the snaps, but suddenly her halter was lying on the ground. Her back was arched across his lap and her plump breasts, snow white in comparison to her suntanned shoulders and stomach, thrust upward inches from his face. Burying his head between them, he ran his palm across one nipple, then the other, feeling them harden beneath his touch. She emitted a little moan.
He was conscious of removing her shorts, for it seemed to take him forever to find the side zipper. When he finally found it and pulled it down, she slid from his lap to lie full-length on the grass.
“Don’t,” she said in a hoarse whisper, at the same time raising her hips to make it easier for him to pull off the shorts.
She was wearing open-toed sandals instead of golf shoes. They came off with the shorts, leaving her stark naked.
She lay motionless, staring up at him glassily as he removed only the essential part of his own clothing. Then they were in each other’s arms, their bodies working together and their breaths coming faster and faster until both their bodies stiffened in an excruciating spasm, then together went limp.
When they were both dressed, she avoided his gaze. “I don’t think I’m up to the second nine,” she said. “Let’s go back to the clubhouse.”
“Are you ashamed of yourself?” he inquired with raised brows.
She glanced at him briefly, then away again. Picking up her club she began to work her way to the edge of the woods. He followed.
They both stopped behind the screen of bushes edging the woods when they saw two men on the tenth tee. The men glanced curiously at the two golf carts and one made some comment. Both looked around, seeking the owners of the carts, then shrugged and played through.