Author Unknown
Illustrations by Robert Bishop
Scanned and Transcribed by guardian46wChapter One
Myrna Gentry was statuesquely beautiful, and even men whose vanity made them resent a female far taller than themselves could not help staring after her longingly when she walked down the street. Five feet eleven and a half inches in height, with coppery-red hair set in a fluffy bob with curls straying over part of her high-arching forehead, she invariably wore a coolly aloof, amused smile as she perceived the all too obvious gawking after her
At twenty-three, she was still a virgin, primarily because most men seemed callow and transparent to her; to fancy herself in the embrace of some stranger who lecherously ogled her magnificent body and to call it love was unthinkable. Her parents had been wealthy co-owners of a cosmetics firm which, just before her father's death when she had turned eighteen, he had sold to a national firm which had long considered him a dangerous business rival and tried to hire him away. Her mother died a year later, and so Myrna's sizable inheritance was put in trust and a gray-haired, portly banker, Jason Murfree, named executor. Because the legacy was almost eight hundred thousand dollars, her father, an old-fashioned man who believed women to be helpless, indecisive creatures, had made a will stipulating that Myrna was to have a certain amount doled out each year and not come into the full trust till she was twenty-five, by which time he hoped she would be married and sensible.
To be sure, the knowledge that she was independently wealthy had much to do with the svelte Amazon's haughty self-assurance and her penchant for putting down men. In high school, she had doubtfully accepted one or two dates, only to find that her escort immediately wanted to run his hand under her skirt or squeeze her stunning tight-spaced pear-shaped firm breasts, which even in her adolescence needed no bra, to sustain their bold resilience. At college, though the approach was more subtle, the end result proved to be the same, and Myrna's dexterity and strength aided her in forcibly rejecting too strenuous a pass. Thus, by the time she was graduated, she had a low opinion of the male animal to begin with.Her parents had left her a house on Chicago's elegant Sheridan Road, and after graduation, she had gone into social work, since she was not concerned with the problem of earning a living and wanted an activity which would be absorbing as well as uplifting to her aim at contributing to a worthy cause. Unfortunately, her innate selfishness and snobbery ended this in three short months; forced to interview people at the lowest end of the economic balance scale and discovering that even a male from the slums would make verbal passes at her, she antagonized many of the clients as well as the personnel with her authoritative attitude.
Finally, after a few months, she accepted the post of clerking in a charity sales shop established by some wealthy and socially prominent North Side women; the money obtained from the sale of castoff clothes, brick-a-brac and furniture discarded by the rich went to useful charities, and this she could reconcile with her desire to be a kind of Lady Bountiful to the unfortunates of this world without, of course, having to come into contact with them.On the other hand, the eligible bachelors belonging to the society set from whom the organizers of this charity shop were drawn soon "discovered" the tall stately haughty redhead and several of them made plans to overcome her diffidence to the male. Polished, worldly and experienced with women, two or three of them skillfully managed to get her to accept a date. Dinner at a swanky restaurant, then a play or a first-run film, artful conversation, followed but no physical infringement on Myrna's by now embattled virginity. Two of these men especially, willing to wage a patient campaign if it finally meant stripping that glorious body naked and enjoying it zestfully, pursued her. One was Ken Adams, a towheaded genial playboy who had a token job in his father's advertising agency; the other was Dudley Severnson, a black-haired, suave roke (sic) of 35, who had inherited his father's drug store chain and, turning over the business to a handpicked manager, devoted most of his time to adding to his list of sexual conquests.
Inevitably, Myrna discovered Ken's and Dudley's real intentions with her, and scathingly told each off, going so far as to slap Dudley's handsome, dissipated face and vehemently declaring, "You men are all alike! You think just because you want to go to bed with a girl, she has to swoon away at the flattery. Well, in my book you're a conceited, insufferable and parasitical creep, Dudley Severnson. Go back to your little stenos and manicurists, they'll appreciate the honor you want to do them. But keep away from me, or—I'll sock you, understand?"Just a week ago, Myrna had visited the First Central Bank to confer with her administrative trustee named in her father's will, Jason Murfree. Impulsively, she had decided that perhaps settling down in Spain or France where she could live like a great lady would get her away from all the tasteless and inept male attention which had been foisted on her. But Murfree informed her that the trust was unshakable, her father's will equally loophole-proof and that he would not advance all the money till two years had elapsed as per the will.
Seated a distance away was Jack Brandon, Murfree's nephew, his mother being the banker's sister. Thirty, half an inch shorter than Myrna, with curly brown hair, sturdily built, straight nose, intense blue eyes, the thin lips of an ascetic, Jack had seen Myrna several times before and admired her. As he waited to see his uncle, puffing at a cigarette, he contemplated her now with appraising glance, taking in the sculptured beauty of her long legs; she wore tan-hued nylons and open-toe sandals with modest 2 1/2-inch heels, and a knee-length plaid skirt which emphasized the elegance of her long willowy thighs. Her calves, sleek, high-set and sinuous, were marvelously mobile; she had crossed her legs and was impatiently twisting her upraised right sandaled foot, with a petulant frown on her exquisite face. He detailed her now, noting the widely spaced green eyes with thick short lashes, the arching thin penciled brows, the aquiline nose with thin, very widely flaring wings, the firm, determined chin with an adorable, deep cleft, and most of all the insolent mouth with its ripe upper lip —a telltale sign of her arrogance.When she at last rose with a shrug of impatience, her brows arched in an irritated frown, he stared avidly at the marvelous sculptured poise of her tall, lithe body: the deeply hollowed back, the sudden dramatic and lubricious jut of compact, tight spaced oval shaped buttocks. He had already observed the pale-creamy tinting of her skin, speckled with rosy dots, a true and exciting characteristic of the born redhead, and he could not help feeling an aching surge of lust in his loins.
After she had left, he went over to his uncle and said, "You seemed to have annoyed her, Uncle Jason.""It's mutual, I assure you, Jack. Damn it all, she's unreasonable. Pampered and spoiled, knows she has all that money, doesn't need it because the interest alone is enough to live comfortably every year, but no, she wants to move to Europe and hoard it. Says she's disgusted with the shallowness of people—especially the opposite sex."
"I thought that would come up, Uncle Jason," Jack Brandon grinned."If I were her uncle instead of yours, I'd have tried to discipline her long before this. What that young lady needs is a good old-fashioned over-the-lap spanking, if you ask me."
"I heartily concur—but that's not all she needs. Perhaps—who knows—she'll get her comeuppance one of these days," Jack Brandon said slowly.