Rosemarie felt a jolt of apprehension mixed with anticipation when she returned from shopping downtown and her mother told her that they would be having an informal dinner at the Collier's that evening. William Collier had just had a large stone outdoor cooking pit built in his back yard and wanted to try it out. Therefore the Thorntons had been invited to an alfresco dinner with croquet afterwards.
Rosemarie wondered if she would be able to maintain an air of unawareness with Mr. Jake Collier in such close proximity. But, in a way that she'd never experienced before, she was anticipating being near him to see the reaction that she inspired in him.
Shortly before six the Thorntons arrived, with the ladies dressed in light linen dresses and the men in cool, white linen suits. The air of informality meant that the men dispensed with their shirt collars for the evening while Rose wore her hair down in a long thick braid which was drawn to the side and had wrapped a brightly colored red scarf around her hair as a headband.
Jake approved of the casual mode of her dress and hairstyle, thinking that she looked lovely with the headscarf matching the color of her red lips. An unbidden question as to whether her nipples might be the same vibrant shade suddenly crossed his mind, however he immediately pushed it out of his thoughts in order to maintain a casual attitude towards her. As it was, she had been seated across from Jake and to the right, so that he could keep her in his line of peripheral vision without appearing to focus on her.
In spite of the heat, the evening passed pleasantly with many compliments to Mr. Collier and the steaks that he'd prepared on the barbecue pit, which, in addition to the rest of the food made for a very satisfying meal. The discussion had turned to tennis, with Mr. Collier mentioning that Jake had made a name for himself amongst the younger players at his club in New York.
"Well, if you're hankering for a game, we had some fine courts installed at the country club just last year," Marion Thornton said. "I'd be happy to take you there over the weekend. Eve and Rose play too, Rose is a fine player if I do say so myself. Sometimes Eve and I will play against Rosie and Jim Tatum's son. Jim is the vice president at the bank"
"That sounds like a fine idea. Perhaps Miss Rosemarie would allow me to partner with her this weekend and the four of us could play," Jake said with studied casualness.
"Well, what do you think, Rose? Have you any plans for Saturday morning?" her father asked, secretly pleased that Jake had mentioned inviting Rose along.
"I was supposed to go to Maud Trimble's and look at her scrapbook from Europe, but I imagine I can cancel that without a great difficulty. Besides," Rose said, winking at Betsy, the Collier's sixteen year old daughter who was in the same class as Maud's younger sister, "I have it on very good authority that it's deadly dull and Maud just goes on and on about a convent that she visited in France."
Jake noticed the interaction and made a mental note of it to perhaps learn a bit more about Rosemarie without it seeming too obvious to his Uncle and Aunt. He was a bit surprised at her supposed athletic ability and wondered what other talents the quiet and heretofore somewhat aloof young woman might possess. Once again, this caused his mind to wander to the forbidden, so he tried to focus on the conversation that his uncle and Mr. Thornton were having about the stock market.
With dinner over, the two Collier girls and Rose, along with Jake, Mr. Collier and Mr. Thornton made their way to the wide expanse of the back lawn where the croquet wickets had been imbedded in the ground and began a game of croquet. Rose was quite good at this also, as Jake soon found out when she struck his ball so hard with hers that it took him four strokes to just get back into the game. However, he wasn't playing his best as he was constantly distracted. When Rose would bend over to tap her ball through a wicket, he couldn't help but notice the back of her dress as it draped over what he knew to be soft, shapely buttocks. In her delight over an excellent shot that her father made, she bounced up and down for a moment as she clapped her hands, wreaking havoc with his thoughts as he envisioned her lush, lovely breasts bouncing up and down under their innocent coverings. As she walked, the long braid swayed back and forth across her back, reminding him of her coiling her hair on top of her head just the night before, which had revealed the exquisite curve of her back and shoulders tapering down to her perfectly full hips.
The croquet game ended with Rose as the victor, and the Thorntons leaving shortly afterwards. That night, when almost all were in bed, the exchange between the watcher and the watched continued as Jake found himself waiting up until he observed Rose bathe herself once more. That night, he was treated to the sight of her smoothing talcum powder over her skin once she'd patted it dry from her ministrations. She caressed herself with the puff as she dipped it into the powder box several times, taking great care with her breasts and brushing away any excess powder from the area of her nipples. Jake found himself expelling into the handkerchief that he'd had the presence of mind to retain when he'd removed his clothing that evening, as he watched her dip the puff into the powder box and stroke it up and down between her thighs, beginning at her left knee and then moving up to the patch between her legs and completing the voyage down her right leg. He couldn't restrain the long groan that escaped his lips as he watched her turn, with the moon white globes of her perfect ass facing him as she twisted around in order to pat the puff upon them and then distribute the powder over them with light caresses of her hands. As Jake pumped himself dry into the handkerchief, he found himself fervently hoping that the weather would maintain a status quo for the remainder of his visit.
This pattern was established each night and Jake found himself thinking about Miss Rosemarie Thornton nearly every waking minute and then, having her invade his dreams at night. After one particularly vivid dream in which he would have sworn that he could feel her soft, soft body moving beneath his and her passionate moans in his ear, he had to get up and stand under the cool water of the shower in the bath adjoining his bedroom for a good fifteen minutes in order to get any sleep at all that night.
Rose, for her part, was having similar difficulties. While she found her nightly ritual incredibly exhilarating, she found it becoming more and more difficult for her to satisfy herself with her fingers. She constantly thought of his handsome face with the strong, sharp jawline which she wanted to caress with her lips, his thick brown hair that seemed to be made for fingers to run through, his dark brown eyes which, were they to look at her in an intimate way would surely make her knees turn to butter, and his strong, athletic physique which gave wing to some very daring flights of fancy.
In one of their most recent intimate talks, which had occurred around the New Year, Cousin Milly had asked if Rose had yet taken a lover. Rose had simply laughed, long past being shocked by anything Milly said or did, and said that she had apparently become the oldest living virgin in Indianaoplis, to which Milly had responded thus.