Katrin Changes Her Mind
1
To all who knew them, Katrin and Stuart Jefferson were the 'golden couple' renowned for their generosity and lavish entertainment. They always did so in choice adults-only tropical resorts with their long, pristine, sandy beaches, palm trees, and luxury suites that were often to be found in cabana-style buildings painted a glaring white. They were in searing contrast to the azure blue, cloudless, skies above and the luxuriant greens of the flowering shrubbery, and planting, below. They lined the network of paths that meandered through the complex and brought guests to bars, plunge pools, and wave pools; all of them discreet resting places. There, guests could indulge themselves, and frolic with choice companions who were wealthy and renowned, just as they were. Those who had been invited were a select group who sought to cast worldly cares and constraints to one side.
In such discreet company, Katrin and Stuart were known to live in an open marriage, an arrangement that Stuart pursued more often than Katrin, who clung to the traditional ways of binding two people together. She gave nothing away about how she felt whenever Stuart's defections occurred.
Just as it was in her business dealings, so it was that she would not become a hostage to fortune, not put at risk the business that she and Stuart had built up, from nothing, and that now made them billionaires, Stateside. They and their guests were featured on all the gossip channels, and pictures of them appeared on the society pages of tabloid newspaper magazines and the web. But, when on holiday, Stuart ensured that a news blackout was imposed, one landmark case that he had brought, and won, ensuring that privacy was now respected. Having his guests adhere to that regime, one of non-disclosure, ensured that the destination of private flights that Stuart arranged, and that flew away from the main air hubs, was kept a secret.
Stuart Jefferson could be a mean son of a bitch, when it concerned the shielding of his private life from prying eyes; from having others discover his holiday pleasures and the company that he so often kept.
In her behavior, Katrin was restrained, but in how she dressed Katrin was often seen to be provocative, ahead of the fashion curve, and could behave in that way here and now, in Cabana Paradise, the best of vacation resorts in the Dominican Republic.
To be here had been her choice, the guest list one that she and Stuart had agreed on. That it aroused some unease in Katrin was to be understood. Vacation time, and the encouragement of excess, also brought into play Stuart's insistence that they were 'open' with each other; that openness was a byword for their marriage of fourteen years that, by agreement, had produced no kids and, for Stuart, liaisons with women who were of a like mind. Tempted she had been, but Katrin had not taken any lovers for such a man had yet to be found; someone who would take her out of herself and, to some people's eyes, humdrum ways.
Those years of uncommon wedlock had been time enough for the strains of living with few boundaries to take a firm hold on her and take its toll on them. She felt again now, as she dressed to meet their guests for drinks and then dinner out there, beyond the windows of her suite and under the palm trees, that a change of heart would save her and her marriage. So far, nothing had shaken their marriage to breaking point, and no one had come in the way of them remaining business partners, the share of the spoils, if it ever came to a divorce, too close to call.
There was no prenup, so the stakes were high, so very high.
♠
Katrin made small talk easily. She ensured that guests new on the scene, newcomers to the annual jamboree in the sun, were welcomed. She never did stand on ceremony and neither did Stuart. He was relaxed, looked at ease, and rich in his sky-blue lightweight suit and pale, lemon-yellow shirt. She felt only too comfortable in her long dress, with its v-neckline and bodice showing off her toned and slender figure, accentuating the swell of her breasts, the slit in the dress' skirt revealing a tanned thigh. Diamante earrings sparkled; a diamond-encrusted butterfly hung tantalizingly in her cleavage.
They had asked all in attendance to dress for the occasion, nothing too showy or formal, yet a statement of how they all felt to be here, in a place that took them all out of an only too ordered existence and working for AURUM Inc. and its subsidiaries, all of them Stateside. Discreet, select friends, were also on the guest list. They were all to gather for drinks and meals, the rest of the day and night hours were for them to live and play out whatever was on their minds, be it with each other or any of the guests that they chanced upon and agreed to hook up with.
Gold there certainly was in the patterned weave of a floral symbol, or star, on women's dresses and blouses; to pendant necklaces, clunky bracelets, and bangles; gold jewelry on slender wrists or in a companion's watch.
Katrin wouldn't play the game, but she knew that others would seek to outdo those present, show to excess what money could buy, and, in doing so, offer a sure sign of success and money.
They all dined and drank, the waiters and waitresses suitably dressed and as Katrin had intended and planned for. All were clothed in white, the men with a colorful, tropical-themed, waistcoat; the women, girls really, with a scarf wrapped around their waists. They were all barefoot and moved silently about the carefully planned table layout.
In between courses, or as the mood or an impulse took them, they danced, Katrin being asked out of politeness, Stuart duty bound to make all female guests feel welcome and a part of their men's lives where it concerned AURUM. It also allowed Stuart to reconnect with Lydia Gould, the flaxen-haired beauty that he took to, a woman that Katrin thought was like an opiate that Stuart had no wish to give up on. As in previous years, her airline pilot husband was nowhere to be seen.
'As I was saying...' Katrin began to tell a friend, Laura Jackson only to see her look away.
'Me again, Brad?' Laura asked with a teasing laugh, and mock disbelief on her face, as she looked his way.
Brad Esmeralda, the lean-faced, supremely fit former athlete with long, dark, and curly hair and a neatly trimmed goatee beard, stood by their table, his cream linen suit and open-necked sky-blue shirt so stark against his skin, his smile a dazzling brightness that captivated them both.
'Sorry, no. It's Katrin that I'm after.'
The two women laughed on hearing it said and seeing the teasing smile on his full lips. Attentive eyes were upon her and Katrin thought them to also be appraising and overtly wondering, flirtatious and unthreatening. Brad, it seemed, was playing the game so many guests fell into soon after their arrival, and the relaxed atmosphere and ways of it slowly took hold. You played the game according to only a few rules. You took your chances with someone you'd taken a fancy to, in Brad's case, and where it concerned her; she who had set the blood humming in his veins.
Katrin was seen to give an all but imperceptible shrug of her shoulders to Laura, as if in the resignation of being taken away. She took hold of Brad's hand, if only for a moment, but she'd already been possessed by a charge of excitement that his glances at her, through dinner, had aroused. She'd also met Stuart's fleeting glance of acknowledgment, and noted the soft smile that was to be taken as some sort of sign, or acceptance, that she might be in the game that he too played.
It was getting on for midnight, the day soon to be brought to a close and in these overt ways of it between the guests.
