Destiny’s Chastity

Chapter X

A Plan Takes Shape

Destiny swallowed. “Half of everything he owns is ours? Uncle Oliver?”

Hunter, a corporate man of destiny? Chad, a secret heir to Hunter’s huge caffeine fortune? Sir Sneddley, her evil accuser and employer in cahoots with all this?

This meeting at Dodger Stadium was too much. The stale beer, the boiled Dodger Dogs (Chad was too lazy to stand in line for grilled ones), the snarling Sir Sneddley out of the hospital after the gunshot wound she accidentally inflicted on him on that desert night when she was simply trying to throw herself on Hunter.

And where was Hunter? Something inside her told her that he was near, very near, but how could she be sure? After all, she had believed the fabulously rich coffee heir when he said he was a simple pet shop owner and lover of animals.

“All you have to do,” continued Chad, bearing that same smug look he used every time he criticized Mama’s attempt to decorate the double-wide trailer, “is marry Sir Sneddley and the caffeine world is mine! I mean, ours!”

Sir Sneddley? That cad? That bully? That pinching, mincing maniac who wore bad shoes and listened to middle-of-the-road country-western? Destiny, like so many of true taste, preferred the original twangs of Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. Now, they were two women who could help her.

“Chad, I think you’ve been watching too much ‘Melrose Place,’ ” Destiny huffed. She preferred Lifetime: Television for Women, even though its movies starred too many of the same small-screen actresses. She liked Michelle Lee in “Knots Landing,” but to see her as every mother determined to save her son from something or another? Honestly.

Looking not unlike Heather Locklear if she used “I Can’t Believe I’m Not a True Redhead” rinse, Destiny blew a lock of hair off her forehead. She was determined to marry for love, not for hostile takeovers! And not even facing down the barrel of an attempted-murder rap was going to change that!

“Chad, you cad,” she continued, “you, who wore polyester the first time around, have visions of coffee kingdoms and java mergers?”

“Take a look, Sis,” Chad said, pointing at his cashmere camel-colored suit hanging on the door hook. True, nowadays he looked decidedly more Laker court-side than Dodger dugout. “Prada,” he gloated.

Just then, Sir Sneddley grabbed Destiny. He could no longer keep himself from her ravishing reddish locks, those heaving breasts, those long legs. . . .

Appalled that neither the ballplayer-turned-criminal-lawyer nor her ambitious, selfish brother would defend her, Destiny once more took destiny into her own hands and clobbered Sir Sneddley.

In the ensuing struggle, out fell a bag of Earl Grey.

“Tea?!!” Destiny screamed. She shook Sneddley’s jacket, and out tumbled more bags--Orange Pekoe, Irish Breakfast, Simply Jasmine, Blackberry Delight, Quietly Chamomile. “My God,” she gasped, “you even drink herbal?”

Sir Sneddley began to quiver.

“Answer me!” hollered Destiny, her beguiling green eyes filled with tears of fury and frustration. All those miserable trips to Rome, N.Y.; Athens, Ohio; and Paris, Texas. All those humiliating years of working for a groping Sneddley, just so she could bring quality coffee-based beverages to the masses. All that, and for what? This big fat lie!

“Answer me!”

Sneddley fell into a corner. Mister Johnny, whose credentials Destiny was beginning to seriously doubt, spit chewing tobacco into his caffeine-free-soda can. Chad snarled his lips and held back in contempt.

“It’s true, it’s true,” Sneddley cried. “I can’t keep it in anymore.

“Thirty years ago, when I was a boy of 12, Father found me in the pantry with a servant girl.” He couldn’t go on.

“Go on,” Destiny demanded. “Go on.”

“We were,” Sneddley gulped, “we were having tea.”

Everyone in the room gasped--even Mister Johnny stopped chewing.

Sneddley’s mother, for all her flagrant indiscretions with postmen and grocery store clerks, had imparted on her son a love of 19th century Hudson River Valley paintings and a proper English afternoon tea.

At first, Sneddley continued, his father mocked him. Then he banished the servant girl to the family potato farm in Pocatello, Idaho. But worst of all, he made Sneddley promise to never, ever touch this disgusting drink again. After all, they were coffee barons!

Sneddley tried, through his undergraduate years at Caledonia State University, Fullerton, through the miserable apprenticeship for Father burning down huts of union organizers for the Coffee Bean Workers of America.

But Sneddley could never control his urges. Eventually, the need to tea overwhelmed him. Nothing could stop it. Not Prozac, not primal scream therapy, not even the Pasadena chapter of Tea Lovers Anonymous. (Oh, the stories he could tell about a certain Rose Bowl queen and her hankering for Red Zinger.)

Destiny drew herself to her full 5-foot-7, 125-pound, nicely--but not overly--aerobicized frame.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “I need a bath, a facial, a pedicure and an iced Frappuccino!”

She had to take herself out of this tacky just-home-from-gal’s-prison outfit and into something befitting an out-of-work personal assistant, Destiny thought. It was time for a more subdued look--Donna Karan, perhaps?

As Destiny stormed out of the room, the eyes in a picture of Dodger legend Sandy Koufax followed her. Hunter, scrunched in Tommy Lasorda’s secret crawl space--thankfully from his pre-Slim Fast days--had found out all he needed for his next move.

Destiny rushed outside to the bus stop at Dodger Stadium.

“Hmmm, if I catch an express to Ventura Boulevard, can I catch a transfer for the next two blocks home?” Destiny wondered, never having been this far removed from her Explorer before.

The unknowing beauty pouted through an expired MTA schedule, unaware that every straggling Dodger fan who hadn’t already left by the seventh inning was staring at her.

Just then, a black stretch limousine pulled up.

“Madam, I believe we have an unfinished game of miniature golf,” Hunter said.

* Meanwhile, somewhere in Chapter XI:

The limo came to a stop, and Destiny looked up.

“Where are we?”

“At the beach. C’mon, I have something to ask you.”

Destiny’s heart raced as she followed him out of the limo. “Something to ask me?” she said to herself. “Maybe he wants to know a good place for dinner. Or maybe. . . .”

ON THE WEB

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