Gloria's Daughter Ch. 03

This is the third and final chapter of Denny and Gloria's story. Even more than the second part, this one will make a ton more sense if you've read the earlier installments. But to recap: Denny has been one of Gloria's regular customers for twelve years. When he accidentally meets her college-age daughter - who hates that her mother is a prostitute - he is smitten with the younger redhead and asks Gloria to role-play as the daughter. During a role-play session, Gloria's daughter persona, "Brandy," complains that they haven't had a real Thanksgiving dinner since Gloria's husband died. A month or so after this admission, Denny brings the two of them a restaurant-made Thanksgiving feast and is invited in to see the front part of Gloria's house for the first time. Also for the first time, he's properly introduced to Kaylee. The three have dinner together, Gloria gives Denny a completely non-erotic massage, and then she establishes a line that says it's okay for them to make friendly gestures as call-girl and client, but that any sex has to stay on the business side of their relationship. This isn't because Gloria wants to keep Denny at a distance, but because she says she needs his goodness in her professional life to keep her sane, and she doesn't think she can sleep with him on both a personal level and a professional one.

I'd like to thank everybody for reading this far and for all the positive comments. I hope you find the conclusion equally as satisfying as the first two parts!

*****

When the door opened and I saw Kaylee, I had a half-second of happy deja vu that sent me straight back to the first time I'd met her. But after that half-second, the look on her face dropped any pleasure out of my heart like a sink-hole.

"Kaylee ... What's - Jesus, has something happened?"

She nodded, biting her lower lip as if to hold some terrible secret in. Her shoulders trembled under the uncombed mess of her long red hair, and she had her arms wrapped tight around herself.

"Your mom -"

"She was in accident." The girl's voice came out raw and uneven.

Unable to help myself, I took hold of her by the arms - half to comfort her and half to squeeze something out of her that wouldn't be the worst possible news. She closed her eyes for a second, then said, "It's not that bad. Some cracked ribs and her leg's broken in three places. Last night."

The way she sniffled and shuddered every other word confused me, made it hard for my brain to click on what she meant. But ... Gloria isn't dead or in a coma. The utter relief of that kept my legs from folding under me and let me find the backbone to approach with whatever had Kaylee in this state.

"Okay, so help me understand. Do you want to go inside to talk?"

She glanced behind her, into the boudoir. Her shoulders nudged upward, then slumped back down. "Sure."

I got her inside, guided her to the loveseat, shut the door. "Take some deep breaths and relax. I'm going to get you something to drink."

Head in her hand, eyes closed, Kaylee nodded. I kept talking on the way to her mother's microfridge and wine stash.

"So if Gloria's going to be all right, then what? Why are you so upset?"

"Dennis, her leg's broken in three places. She's not going to be able to work for two or three months." Her head came up off the hand, leaving her fingers tense and hooked. Her voice twisted upward in tone and volume. "We're going to lose everything. The house, the car - I won't be able to go back to school in the fall."

I poured her a big goblet of Gloria's burgundy and carried it back over. "Look, no, they don't foreclose on you after you miss a payment or two, and maybe I could loan you something to help with tuition ..."

The words were out before I could think about them and remember how completely tapped out I was at the moment. But it turned out not to matter. Kaylee's eyes looked into mine, her face distressed by my obvious ignorance.

"You don't get it. We're already two or three months behind on the mortgage from when mom lost a big ... client, last year." Shit. Harry with the belt. "She gets a little caught up and then falls back again. And what, are you totally loaded or something? Stanford's expensive. Sixty grand a year."

Stanford? Jesus, Gloria said she was smart, but I didn't know she meant that smart.

"Okay, well ..." Fuck, that's five grand a month. And there's what, twelve hundred bucks in your account? My savings had been completely shot that spring when my stepdad went off his antidepressants and decided to burn down the house with him and my mom in it. The fire department got them out, but the insurance called it arson and wouldn't pay, and on top of that they were underwater on their mortgage. I'd had to empty out my IRA and take the penalty to keep them from going homeless. "Are you already maxed out on student loans?"

She shook her head, eyes rolling. "No, no. You just don't ... Mom couldn't risk having her finances looked into by signing me up for loans or financial aid. She makes a crap-ton of money, somebody would start wondering how a massage therapist pulls in twenty grand a month."

I didn't count how many times I blinked before being able to reply. "How ... can she be behind ... if she makes -"

"Fuck, has she not told you this stuff? My dad owned his own company and he did something and got his ass sued off - like, millions of bucks in the hole. And then he went out drinking and drove his car off an embankment. And she'd let him put her on all the paperwork for the company, so she's on the hook for the judgment. Why else would she have ... she really never told you this shit?"

My head shook, dazedly. "She's not big on talking about her - your dad."

"Huh. Well, nobody could blame her for that."

Standing there watching her as she took a big gulp of wine, I tried to figure out what I could do. Her eyes searched my face as if some tiny chance of a miracle might be hidden there, but she obviously didn't find it.

"Look," I said at last. "Why don't we go see her?"

Talking to Gloria can make anything better.

Kaylee, though, stopped her miracle-search and squeezed her red-rimmed eyes tight. Then she made a fist of her free hand, pressed it against her forehead, and reopened her eyes looking as grim and hollow as I've ever seen anyone.

"No," she said, lowering the fist. "There's only one way to fix this, and that's for you to show me how she does it."

"Show you ..."

"How to fuck a guy for money."

For a second, I literally thought I was about to pass out.

"Oh my god, Kaylee, no. No, I couldn't possibly - and you can't - your mom would never forgive me for doing it or herself for putting you in that position. I can totally give you my four-fifty and maybe some more, however much that will help, but I won't let you have sex with me for it."

Completely unmoved, she said, "Four-fifty times however many times a month is still nothing, Dennis. I mean, unless you're over here every other night at four-fifty a pop, which I assume you're not ... are you?"

"Uh, four-fifty is for the whole month."

Now it was her turn to blink. "Holy crap. She really does like you, doesn't she? Dennis, she gets three or four hundred a session from most of her clients. I've been going through her accounting files all day trying to figure out how fucked we are, and that's the kind of money I need if I'm going to make the house payment and the car and insurance and my tuition bill. Four-fifty? Jesus, she lets you have it for cheap. How many times does that get you?"

My face felt like she'd rubbed chili oil on it. "Look, I don't think that really matters ..."

"It does if you're going to understand what I'm up against. God, Dennis, are you like the most naive guy in the universe?"

"You don't have to be mean."

Her mouth shut and she stared at her wineglass, now half-empty. "No. I guess you're right, I don't." Then she looked back up at me. "But I do have to convince as many of Mom's clients as I can to let me stand in for her, or it's all gone. Everything she's been on her back opening her legs to keep hold of for the last thirteen years."

"Please don't be crude about your mother."

I could see her having to bite her tongue. But she did it, and after she did, her face softened a little. "Wow. You've really got it bad for her, don't you?"

"I'd do anything for her," I said without hesitation. "And if you take me to the hospital and let me see her and she says your plan really is the only way, and she wants me to help you, I will. But without talking to her, I don't want to hear another damn thing about it."

Watching her think, seeing the wheels turn behind those flaring blue eyes, I wondered whether I'd successfully called her bluff - or if there was a bluff to be called.

She finished thinking, threw back the last of the wine, and stood up.

"Okay, then. Let's go."

* * *

Neither of us talked on the drive to the hospital. In the silence, I became acutely aware of her stunning body, just turned twenty a few months earlier. Christ, how many times has Gloria pretended to be this girl for me, and now there's the real thing sitting right there, and I'm hoping she tells me to keep my hands off it.

Kaylee stood a good four inches taller than Gloria, slimmer through the hips ... about the same bust size. Her mother had the sexiness of a stripper wrapped up in a MILF-housewife package, but Kaylee could have been a super-model, with a magazine-cover face, unbelievably straight, rich, blood-red hair, and a body that, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, screamed to be poured into a string bikini for an all-day photoshoot somewhere sandy and tropical.

She wasn't someone very many men would turn down.

God, I hope Gloria says she's got a rainy-day fund squirreled away somewhere.

* * *

They had the head of her bed raised, and she lay back against a pillow there, eyes closed, when I entered the room. At the receiving desk, they'd told us we had to go in one at a time, and Kaylee let me go first.

The bulk of a full-length cast made her right leg a larger bulge beneath the sheet than her left. Band-aids tracked their way up her left arm, and another one covered a cut on her forehead, smack in the middle of a huge bruise. Both her eyes had been blackened, and clearly no one had given her a brush or comb since she was admitted; her scarlet hair splayed wildly across the pillow around her head. An IV stand dripped fluid through a tube into her right arm.

She was so beautiful.

As I stepped closer, her eyelids cracked open, and a slow, happy smile lifted the edges of her mouth up. "Denny ..."

"Hi."

She tried to sit up a little, flinched in pain, dropped back against the pillow.

"Sorry," she gasped, then relaxed into a few deep breaths. Somehow the smile hadn't left her face. "Not in the best shape to make our appointment, I guess."

"It will keep."

Her hand lifted an inch or two off the blanket. I reached down and took hold of it.

"Kind of expected you to show up last night. Or on your lunch hour today."

"If I'd known, I would have gotten here before the ambulance dropped you off."

As if it took some effort to work through my words, her brows knitted and relaxed and knitted again. They must still have her pretty doped up.

"Kaylee ... called you. Didn't she?"

I shook my head. "No, but she brought me when I showed up at your place tonight."

The essence of fuming motherhood settled into her eyes and simmered there. "Showed up ... I told her to call you. Yesterday. Why did she go and let you ..."

"It's fine," I said, squeezing her fingers. "I really don't mind -"

Taking her hand back, she grimaced and squeaked and worked herself further up in the bed.

"Gloria, please, take it easy."

"If she didn't call you," she said, panting, "did she call anybody? I know you don't mind, but some of them ... they'll be, pissed, if they show up and I'm not ..."

Wow. Kaylee didn't come up with that idea on the fly talking to me. Gloria told her to cancel everything yesterday. And she didn't do it.

"Yeah, look ... Kaylee has this plan worked out that you're going to have to talk her out of, because I got nowhere when I tried."

She sat there for a minute, blinking, thinking. Then her hand lifted again, asking for mine. I took it.

"Shit, Denny."

"I know. I told her there had to be some other -"

Her head dropped against the pillow again, eyes closed. "No, she's totally right. Fuck me, how could I have let this happen?"

"You're not serious," I said. But the tightness of her grip in mine said she was. "There's got to be -"

"Denny." The blue of her eyes, swimming in those bruise-blackened sockets, shut me up. "You're not a dumb guy. But I'm smarter than you, and Kayle is ... way smarter than I am. God. She must've ... I gave her my password, told her to call everyone, cancel ... she's been digging through my records this whole time. She can do the math. Trust me."

"But you've got equity in your house, right? You can use that to cover her tuition, then -"

"Can't get an equity loan when you're behind on your payments, honey." She glanced down at her immobilized leg. "And have no income."

"Well ... shit, sell me the house, and I'll get the equity loan. She doesn't have to ..."

My voice dropped off at her smile and the tears in her eyes. "Denny. What are you going to put down? That stuff with your parents ... I know you're busted."

Standing there, holding her hand and meeting her gaze, I found my brain empty of any other solutions. "Gloria, she asked me to help her."

Amazingly, she laughed at that. The tears broke free and rolled down her cheeks, and her face immediately clenched in pain, from her cracked ribs, I guess, but the laugh kept going until it looked like she couldn't breathe.

"Oh," she said, sucking in a breath at last. "Oh! God. You should have just ... said so ... in the first place."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"Denny, she asked for help? Kaylee doesn't ask for help, honey." Something between pride and bedevilment showed in her eyes. "Ever. If she'd go that far ... ask you to help ... she's set on it. No talking her out of it. You or me."

"So," I said, barely able to digest her words, "you're just going to let her?"

She shook her head. "Can't stop her. That's it. Unless I call the cops on her. But then we still lose it all ... and I go to jail. Maybe her too."

"Wow." Her hand felt so soft and sure in mine. "You seem awfully ... calm about the idea."

Rolling her eyes toward the IV stand, she got her smile back. "Drugs."

I tried to think of what else to say. Nothing came to me.

"Thank god she has you to help her."

That almost made me drop her hand. "What? No, you're not seriously -"

"Hah," she said, managing to keep it to a chuckle that wouldn't hurt her ribs. "God's sake, Denny. I know you want to fuck her. What are you trying to protect me from? I know everything ... you want to do to her."

"Gloria, that's different. I wouldn't really -"

She nodded. "Yeah. It's different. Know what else is different? You, compared to them. Gentle. Kind. Sweet, nervous. Good to her. Not like my first couple of tricks. God, I spent so long ... puking in the toilet after the first few times. She knows you a little. Knows how much ... I think of you. You want her to have that, for her first one ... or Marty Harris? 'Smy first Tuesday appointment, Marty. What I call a pump-and-grunter."

"Ew."

"Right." Her eyes slipped shut again. "We're stuck. She's gonna whore herself. You want to teach her how ... or let Marty do it? Know who I'd rather."

I could feel my hand getting sweaty in hers. "Gloria ..."

She looked back up at me, gave my fingers a squeeze. "Go fuck my daughter. You want to. She needs it. Enjoy yourself ... be sure she enjoys it too, if she'll let herself. And ..."

"Yes?"

Her expression went wicked. "Tell her you're going to call her 'Brandy.'"

* * *

"Holy shit. We're really going to do this."

The whole car ride back to the house - back to the boudoir - was full of Kaylee repeating that thought or something similar.

"I can't believe she didn't go ape-shit. Fuck. Oh crap. Fuck. I'm about to have sex with you for money."

No, you're about to have sex with me because I love your mom and she needs me to do this. Assuming I can get it up. But that last bit was fooling myself. I'd been rock hard since we both shut our doors and the soft hint of her perfume spread through the interior of the car.

"Hey, why are we stopping?"

"ATM. If you're having sex with me for money, I need money, right?"

"Mom's computer ledger said you already paid your four-fifty. I figured that was just for one time, but if I'm charging what she does, you're set for the month."

"Then I'm paying for next month. If I'm going to show you what it's like to pimp yourself out, you need to know how it feels to take the cash."

"I guess so. Holy shit."

The conversation paused while I keyed in my PIN and made the withdrawal.

"Wait ... next month? Does that mean you're really going to come back and keep all your appointments, while I'm ..."

"Jesus, Kaylee, do you want to know what it's like to have a client or not?"

"Fuck. Holy crap."

We pulled into their driveway around eight o'clock, still light outside with the evening sun of early summer. I switched off the engine.

"Okay. Here's the deal," I said.

Kaylee caught me in her skeptical blue gaze, back immediately straightening at my words.

"First off, none of that."

Her eyes narrowed. "None of what?"

"That," I said. "No tensing up because you don't think you're going to like what I have to say. No pushing back, no sharp looks, no sarcasm. When you open that door in a minute and let me in, I'm your customer, and you act like you're happy to see me, and the things I say are intriguing and arousing."

She tried to loosen up, didn't succeed as well as she might have.

"Next," I said, raising a hand and counting onto my second finger, "you're going to need to dress yourself up before I knock on the door. Your mom's got a closet full of stuff, and I'm pretty sure she keeps notes on what to wear for who when."

"Yeah, I found that when I was digging around on the computer. Didn't have anything listed for you, though."

"I like the black silk kimono thing. I think she's known that for longer than she's had the computer." And I guess she pays enough attention to my special requests that she doesn't have to write them down. "But that's not what you're wearing for me, because I don't want to be comparing you to her."

"What do I wear for you?"

Flash: Gloria as Brandy bent over a laundry-basket full of things she'd borrowed from Kaylee's room, a soft, pretty blue blouse on top of the pile, the frill that would hang across the breasts stained with cum from where I'd thrown a full condom on it.

"Uh ... how about something ... blue. To match your eyes. Something frilly, if you've got it. And white shorts if you have those. The tighter the better."

"Do I need to ... like, shave or anything?"

Awesome. She's still got pubes. "No - look, we're getting deeper into the details than we need to right now." And it's not giving me a break from my hard-on. "Your mom and I usually go two hours, but since I'm paying you extra and you need to learn the ropes, I think we should do three. There's an alarm on the nightstand by the bed, set it for three hours and make sure it's on 'chime.'" There was a 'buzz' setting too, and it had scared the shit out of me the one time Gloria accidentally left the dial on the wrong spot.