An apology and an introduction from the writer:
I have three stories on Literotica that I have not finished; two, Love in the Cross Hairs and Allyson, are still active, and will be completed imminently. Please be patient. This story, Too Clever by a Mile, has been finished, and will be submitted, a chapter a week, until it is all on line. So for anyone who starts to read it they can be confident there is a finished tale. I really liked telling this story. I like the people in it, and it actually is a love story regardless of what some of you might think from time to time. I hope you enjoy it. Please vote and leave comments, as those are the only means I have of knowing if I've been successful.
The cast of characters includes:
Steve Murphy,
Cathy Shoreham,
Theresa Stockton,
Barry and Carol Austin,
Allen and Glynnis Peregoy,
the Spanish Ladies,
and Leah Murphy.
*
Chapter One:
Prologue:
This is the story about a woman named Cathy Shoreham. She was twenty-seven when the story began, she was superficially gorgeous, and she was absolutely totally without any moral compass, no scruples at all. Coming off a second divorce she'd found a way to repeatedly enrich herself. Her method was as simple as finding a gullible willing rich man, luring him into a legal relationship, a marriage, and then emotionally and financially disemboweling him.
The reasons for her behavior, though for a long time she never seriously thought about them, dated from the way her father had heartlessly manipulated and ruined her mother, in the end driving her mother to suicide. Since then Cathy had become the incarnation of Oliver Twist's man eating Estella. She both hated herself and loved herself for it.
Her hatred, her loathing of men was a complex affair. She knew somewhere there might be someone good enough to deflect her predatory inclinations, but so far no man had appeared, and she was fairly confident no man ever would. Two foolish husbands aside her cynicism regarding men knew no limit. They were all affection and attention till they got what they wanted, then they became increasingly cold and indifferent. They all got what they deserved.
She'd more or less decided all she needed was one more great score; find one more stupid gullible self- righteous, self-centered, egotistical, conceited lug head, marry him and clean his clock. That's where Steve Murphy came in. Steve was the classic example of someone with too much money and too little ambition; the typical sheep ready to be sheared. His father had money, and Steve, being an only child, had gotten it all and had gotten it much too soon. At twenty-nine Steve was the perfect target; easy going, overly generous, friendly, but not exactly the smartest or the most attractive guy in town.
Cathy had already scoped him out. Through her friends, reliable acquaintances, and the lawyer she'd used to emasculate her second husband she'd gotten the dope on the young ass hole. He'd been married once, but the girl had suffered and died of a life ending malady, something to do with cancer, leukemia or something maybe. She'd only been gone a year or so. In short he was rich, stupid, and vulnerable. She'd swoop in, sweep him off his feet, catch him at his weakest, talk him into marriage, and then clean him out. She'd be in and out inside a year.
How stupid was Steve?
Of course he was grief stricken. His wife, his first great love, his childhood sweetheart had literally died in his arms after months of chemotherapy. She had been sweet, pretty, good. He missed her desperately. His carefree manner had at first been displaced by the most profound depression, followed by a series of self-destructive behaviors. Finally he'd started to come to terms with his suffering by devoting his time and energy to charitable work; especially cancer research and hospice care for children suffering from cancer. It had given him a new opportunity. Then he met Cathy.
Was Steve ready for a new relationship? Was he ready for anyone quite like Cathy? Was she ready for him? What if he discovered her ulterior motive? What if she discovered someone who defied all her preconceived notions about men? What if their discoveries coalesced at the same time? What if their responses took them in two entirely new directions? What if he became the quiet slow moving predator and she found herself slowly falling into the trap of unwitting victim. Would it matter? Would they discover something about themselves and about each other before it was too late?
First Contact:
Steve Murphy, one time play boy, married man, swinger, now alone, lonely and wifeless had, after months of self pity found a new reason to go on. A small underfunded hospice facility in his area had been struggling along without any leadership or connections. Worse the hospice was too generalized and too specialized. They had too many patients with too many different problems, plus the problems they tried to treat were too narrow in scope. The result was the facility couldn't get a real deep dished commitment from any large reliable charity. The place needed to target something; a disease or some kind of ailment that attracted more widespread sympathy and in turn the money from the big donors that would make it a success. In desperation they'd had too many patients with too many too narrowly focused problems; sickle cell was one, and though it was a heartbreaking problem, when a third of the beds were devoted to a malady that impacted only a tiny percentage of the national population it became a lost cause getting the money needed to run and be successful.
Steve had lost his wife to leukemia; a disease millions could identify with; it took young and old alike, but it was particularly heartrending when it took children. Steve had the administrative expertise to turn the place around, he just lacked the experience. With the support of local politicians and a few fairly well connected private individuals he managed to gain managerial control. From there it was a matter of garnering the money to make the place a success. Things moved fast, and within a handful of months the operation was moving forward. But Steve thought it was too small; he wanted to turn it into something, something that would eventually gain national attention, and that meant money, lots of money. He started campaigning. He started opening the place up for visits, and he devised new creative ways to raise funds. Of course the old stand by for the kinds of operations like the hospice was the big donor, or in the absence of a really big donor lots of good donors.
With leukemia that wasn't hard to achieve. Nearly every family had a tale to tell, everyone knew someone who'd lost someone at a tender age. It was just a matter of pulling on the right heartstrings, and the cash would come in. To be sure, some charities had grown to become more about collections than about caring. Steve's plans weren't like that. He wanted the money, not to set up some kind of on going collection scheme, but to get the money to really help as many sick children as he could. That made it harder, since it meant less for advertising and more for actual care. He didn't care about that. He knew if he put in the hours the money would come, and it did, there just was never quite enough. There was never quite enough because he knew he always needed just a few more beds. There were always a few more little kids.
Cathy Shoreham had just cleaned out her second husband, an asshole if there ever was one. Now she was sitting on a pile of cash, and didn't know quite what to do with it. She wanted to move on, she wanted to find another man to cheat, but in the mean time she wanted to hide her money. That was when her lawyer suggested a way to help herself was by giving some of it away. He explained it in the old way; charitable giving saved money because it meant large deductions come tax time.
Cathy had an open mind; she just didn't know which charity was the best place. That's when her lawyer mentioned the children's cancer hospice that Steve Murphy was building. He gave Cathy the run down on who Murphy was, and how he came to be involved in charitable work. It didn't take Cathy long to put two and two together, a deadbeat husband with feelings of guilt and too much money. She could invest her sexual energies and a little extra money in a charity and clean out the operator in the process. All she had to do was get on the inside. For sure she was no ravishing beauty, but she knew how to package and sell the product. It didn't take her long to find an apartment near the hospice; from there she figured it would be like plucking the fruit off a ripened tree. She wasn't far wrong.
It was his third mediocre charitable fund drive in four months, and Steve was getting nowhere. Sure there were a few donations, but everyone said times were tough, and besides, except for the hardcore giver, most people weren't looking to help others. This was the era of trickle down, and that meant maximizing self promotion and minimizing any actual giving; get ones picture in the paper as a big donor, but quietly disappear when it came time to write the check.
That's when his friend Barry pointed her out. She'd been to his last two fund raisers, and on both occasions mentioned to Barry her interest in doing something. It seemed she'd mentioned something to Barry about a girlfriend who had been diagnosed with leukemia. While she was dying in a hospital bed her girlfriends were all in the hall flirting with boys. The woman was never quite able to shed her guilt.
This was the type of donor Steve was looking for; someone with a big checkbook and a personal reason to give. She was standing over by the small orchestra he'd hired. He could tell right away she wasn't very pretty, but she worked hard to conceal it. She had a rinse in her hair, and probably was wearing contacts. She was a small woman, and she was wearing clothes that covered an underdeveloped body; probably a push up bra, uplift panties, tight hose that shaped the legs, and extra high heels.
He walked over. She had a sympathetic look about her. By sympathetic he thought someone who could use some understanding. She had a lost waifish look like someone who was unhappy about something. He had a suspicion they were kindred spirits, "Hi, they tell me you're Cathy Shoreham?"
"You must be Steve Murphy, the paragon of virtue who's putting on this little shindig."
He caught the defensiveness in her tone of voice but ignored it, "Sure am, what do you think?"
"You could use some help."
"I could use some money."
She pretended to relax a little, ""I hear you're trying to expand your hospice."
"Have you seen it?"
"Is that an invitation?"
"When are you free?"
