Anna Marie Sorenson's Secret Affair Read online

  Anna Marie Sorenson’s Secret Affair

  By Linn Young

  This book is an original publication of Linn Young

  Copyright 2011 by Linn Young

  All rights reserved.

  Secret Affair 2

  Chapter 1

  Anna Marie Sorenson grabbed her keys and purse from her desk, flipped the light switch to her office, and opened the door, and almost ran into Beatrice, her assistant librarian, who had her fist raised, about to knock.

  “Oh, what now?” Anna Marie groaned.

  Beatrice handed her several small message slips. “The county boards been wanting to

  know when you’re going to present your opinion on Councilman Broders’s proposal for the library gift shop.”

  “Uh, tell them I’ll try to include it in the meeting for tomorrow,” Anna Marie said

  absently.

  “You just received them today.”

  Anna Marie looked up at the older woman. “Oh. That’s right. I’ll have to take them with me to read tonight.”

  Secret Affair 3

  “Anna, you’re already overworked, as it is. The board can wait a month while you read them.”

  “Oh, I guess you’re right.”

  “You may be the head librarian but it doesn’t mean you have to jump every time the

  council members says so.”

  “But Broders wants to meet with me tomorrow morning. I guess I’ll have to do a quick read over the proposal the first thing tomorrow morning before the meeting.”

  Beatrice looked at her for a moment. “You’re going to your sister’s for dinner?”

  Anna Marie winced. “Does it really show?”

  “Yes, abject terror is usually hard to hide.”

  Anna Marie rolled her eyes. “It’s not that bad. It’s just I’m running late. Pepper hates it when her guests are late. God, I wish I could just go home and take a long bath.”

  “Why don’t you? You’ve been here since seven this morning. And then having to face

  your sister for another few hours? What would it hurt if you skipped for once your sister’s weekly dinner?”

  “I’d never hear the end of it for the entire week.”

  “You know, most people are pretty understanding about canceling a dinner every once in awhile.”

  Anna Marie grimaced. “You’d think. Oh, well. See you in the morning.”

  As she drove off, she mapped out in her mind the easiest route to her sister and brotherin-law’s house and avoid the rush hour traffic. She looked at her watch and saw that it was nearly six o’clock. Sometimes, she knew, the downtown roads would ease up a bit at this time, and sometimes it was clogged with cars back to back just as badly as it was at five o’clock. Just the idea of fighting rush hour traffic made her feel exhausted. Bea was right, she thought. She should just tell her sister that she was too tired to make it tonight, and go home. She would if she had some backbone. She would not only be able to face her sister’s displeasure when she canceled out on her, she would also be able to stand up to some of the county board members in their push to install a coffee and gift shop in the library. Of course, bookworms were generally known to be pushovers, because they wanted to avoid conflict. Why else would they bury themselves in books? It’s because they weren’t able to handle the rough and tumble environment of rest of the world. At least, that was the problem with her.

  Secret Affair 4

  She needed to sign up for one of those classes on assertiveness that the county offered once or twice a year, Anna Marie thought. She was always putting it off, because just the thought of practicing being assertive gave her the willies.

  Oh, well, that was for another day. Right now, she had her sister’s dinner to go to.

  Pepper, her sister, had told her dinner was at six-thirty. She looked down and convinced herself that the simple wool slacks and tailored striped dress shirt was appropriate for a dinner.

  Casual, Pepper had told her. So, there was no need for her to stop by her condo to change. And she still had to stop by the delicatessen to get a bottle of wine.

  Oh, hell, she thought, that was another thing she had to figure out, whether or not to bring red or white. What did her sister tell her they were having for dinner? Chicken? No, her sister, being a chef and an owner of a restaurant, rarely chose something as bland and simple as poultry.

  Beef? Seafood? Pasta? Anna Marie remembered Pepper saying something about it being a meat dinner.

  Oh, God, what if she brought the wrong wine? Her sister would throw a fit. And she

  would be angry with her forever. She could feel that old panic beginning to rise in her chest.

  Ruthlessly, she clamped down on it, closing her eyes, forcing herself to breathe deeply. I will be all right. I will be all right, she silently chanted to herself, as the therapist that she saw five years ago had instructed her to do. One. Breathe. Two. Breathe. Three. Breathe…Anna Marie mentally did the exercise with her deep breathing until she counted to ten. The tightness in her chest loosened and the smothering sense of panic began to fade.

  She forced herself to think rationally through the wine dilemma. Damn, why couldn’t she have written it down? After all, she was a librarian. The head librarian of the county library. She was supposed to be organized and detail oriented. And she was. Generally. At work, at least.

  There was the Internet.

  She parked her car at the deli and pulled out her small laptop. She pointed the computer towards the hip coffee shop next to the deli and brought up the Internet through the wi-fi that the coffee shop provided for their customers that tied into the wireless modem. She typed in a few key words on versatile wines. Ten minutes later, having decided on a pinot noir that a site assured her would go with either red or white meat, Anna Marie went inside the deli and made her purchase.

  Secret Affair 5

  Nearly twenty minutes later, Pepper opened the door to Anna Marie’s knock. She said

  with barely concealed impatience, “Well, it’s about time. I’ve been waiting for ages for you to arrive. Come on in.”

  “I was kind of held up at the library…”

  Pepper waived her hand dismissively. “Oh, it’s alright, I guess. Come on in. But you know how I hate to be off schedule. People just don’t seem to understand that when it comes to food, you can’t be so offhanded about time. There’s nothing worse than having to serve soggy cold food that should have been eaten ten minutes ago. People should realize that timing and food is just as delicate and complicated as it is with a corpse. Any coroner will tell you that. As the body cools, depending on the temperature of the environment, it is important to discover the corpse as soon as it gives its last breath to accurately pinpoint the cause and time of death.” While Anna Marie tried to figure out what something as disgusting as a corpse had to do with delicate and complicated food, Pepper examined the bottle’s label. And her brows gathered in displeasure. She opened her mouth and was about to give a lecture on the importance of being more selective when buying wine. She closed it again when she saw her sister’s face start to pale and her eyes widen as if she was caught in the crosshairs. Pepper tried to remember the instructions from books she had read on how to deal with loved ones who were less strong in character.

  Anna Marie sweated a little as she waited for Pepper’s lecture. “I couldn’t remember what you told me we were having for dinner,” Anna Marie explained. “So I thought I should go with a wine that went with everything.”

  Pepper made a slight grimace. “Hmmm. I guess it’ll do.” She abruptly turned and stalked to the kitchen.

  Anna Marie hurriedly followed her, although her steps were no match for her sister’s lo
ng and impatient strides. Pepper’s well-disciplined and well-trained body was nearly nine inches taller than Anna Marie’s own five foot one inch height. She had been an All American athlete in high school and college in swimming, tennis, and volleyball. Although she no longer participated in sports, she was vain enough about her physique to maintain her muscle tone by attending the gym four times a week without fail.

  All her life, Anna Marie had admired the magnificence of her older sister, for Pepper’s blinding Nordic blonde beauty, her driving ambition and determination to succeed in anything Secret Affair 6

  that she undertook, winning medals and ribbons in any sports she engaged in, and her supreme self-confidence that drew people to her.

  Anna Marie entered the kitchen, where she found her sister opening the wine. “Where are the kids?”.

  Pepper had a son and a daughter, Toby and Tessa, ages eight and seven.

  “The monsters are upstairs in the romper room with their nanny, Gloria, and that’s where they’re going to stay for rest of the evening. I don’t know what’s up with them. I come home at five o’clock, after working nearly ten hours at the restaurant, and they run around here yelling and screaming at one another, and crying and running to me. They do this everyday I get home from work.”

  Pepper popped the cork and smelled it, a look of intense concentration on her face. ‘It has a good bouquet to it, woodsy, oaky. And blackberries and orange, I believe. The grape fields must be near some orchards. It might do.” She reached for a wine glass, poured, swirled, held it up to the light, and then drew in the liquid on her tongue. “Yes, it just might do. I think I even taste a hint of currant.”

  Anna Marie’s face relaxed. To her, it was just wine, but to her sister, it might as well be the Holy Grail for any proper dinner. “What are we having for dinner?”

  “Grilled filet mignon with mushroom sauce, mushroom risotto, roasted asparagus, French bread with herbed butter, and avocado and grapefruit in tossed greens.” Pepper set the open bottle aside in one corner of the counter. “We’ll let that breathe, and it should be ready by the time we sit down. I made some cosmopolitan for before dinner cocktail.” She went to the refrigerator to retrieve the pitcher and poured the drink in martini glasses.

  Anna Marie took her glass, sipped, and sighed with gratefulness at the sensation of the warm liquor running down her throat. “Are you trying out a new menu for the restaurant?”

  “No, not really. It’s an old recipe that I hadn’t made in a long time. Besides, another guest is coming tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “Cam’s

  brother.”

  “Who? Cam’s brother…Oh, the one who’s a Navy SEAL. The one who goes on all these

  hush-hush missions?”

  Secret Affair 7

  “Yeah, that’s him. That’s why dinner is a bit heavy-handed. You know, G.I. Joe coming back home from the field for some R & R, and that includes dinner where he is be able to sink his teeth in some big juicy, bloody steak.”

  Anna Marie wondered if Pepper would take offense if she pointed out that using the

  words bloody and dinner in the same sentence was not exactly an epicurean encouragement. But she kept her thoughts to herself. Her sister would probably have thought that she was being unnecessarily facetious. Pepper’s sense of humor tended to be limited, hit and miss at best.

  “Cam picked him up at the airport over an hour ago. They should be home pretty soon.” Pepper arched her eyebrows at her sister. “He’s single, you know.”

  Anna Marie face turned bland. “That’s nice. I like what you did with the curtains. Are they new?”

  Pepper ignored her sister’s not so subtle change in topic, and launched with full speed to what seemed to be her favorite topic. “You need to start seriously thinking about meeting the right man so that you can start a family. You’re not getting younger, you know, at thirty-three.

  Medical studies show that many women who put off having kids to further their career are finding it hard to conceive even when they’ve hit their thirtieth birthday. Do you know what that could mean for a woman your age? You could be single to your old age, and be left all alone, an old spinster without a husband, and without any kids to look after you. And then you’ll die of loneliness, because you’ll have no one in your life to turn to when you you’re sick or injured, and nobody to give you hope to see another day. You might get so lonely that you’ll get severely depressed, and then you’ll lose your mind, as some elderlies do because they can’t take the loneliness. Your life will go down into a spiral, into an abyss from which you can’t climb out.

  You might even become homeless at old age, because your pension will have run out, and you’ll go from shelter to shelter, sleeping under the bridge or in a cardboard box between garbage canisters.”

  Anna Marie sipped her cosmopolitan, her expression almost serenely studious, as if she were giving serious weight to Pepper’s words. Then she turned and looked at the curtains. “The red in the window shades is surprising for the overall color scheme you have here, but somehow, it works.”

  “I’m serious, Anna,” Pepper said. “Do you plan to develop into a spinster in your old age?”

  Secret Affair 8

  “You know, it is true that becoming a spinster until recently was considered a serious condition, such as the dropsy.”

  “Oh, you’re hopeless, Anna. It’s no wonder I worry about you. You have no goals, no

  path. Aren’t you worried about your future? I am. That’s why you need to start thinking about settling down. A family gives you roots, a purpose in life.”

  Anna Marie’s eyebrows formed into a faint mutinous line. “I have plans. I have goals,” she muttered.

  “What, to get another degree? And in library science, of all things. I can understand if you wanted to get it in something useful, like in accounting or computers. But what can you do with a doctoral degree in library science?”

  “I would be in a better position to get a job at the Library of Congress.”

  “And that’s another thing. Why there? What’s wrong with the library that you’re working in now?”

  Pepper made it sound as if one of the world’s greatest libraries was as common and

  breath in scope as the local school library. But Anna Marie didn’t say anything. It had always been her lifelong dream to work in the Library of Congress, ever since she was a little girl, reading about it in her civic textbook. She knew her family did not understand her desire and her wish to always be among so much knowledge.

  They had laughed at her when she had told them she wanted to be a librarian when she was deciding on college. They had always considered books to be only for when a person had nothing else to do. Reading was never considered a priority above all the other more important activities, such as pursuing a worthy career, raising kids, establishing a home, doing charity work, visiting friends and relatives, playing sports, traveling, hiking, sailing, etc. When a person picked up a book, the world stopped. And one of the worst things to experience in an overly active life was for the world to come to a standstill. Only when a person was desperate, because he or she ran out of activities, did they pick up a book as a last resort. But one had to be in sheer dire straits to do that.

  Not for Anna Marie. From the first moment she picked up a book, they had given her

  everything that real life seemed to always lack; passion, knowledge, love, adventure, travel, meeting strange and fascinating people, history, philosophy, humor. Everything.

  Secret Affair 9

  Some might have said that it was unfortunate for her that she was born in a family of extroverts whose whole meaning of life was being active every minute of the day. Even on holidays. They felt that life was not worth living unless one’s to do list had at least twenty things to accomplish for that day. Their mother worked as a corporate lawyer while raising her family, and their father, also a lawyer, practiced family law. Their first born, Pepper, had stepped right
into their busy, ambitious life.

  If Anna Marie and Pepper were two sisters who could not be more different in their

  personalities, they were also almost diametrically different in their appearances, each sister’s appearance befitting her personality. Pepper had inherited her mother’s classic beauty and blonde looks, with blue eyes and smooth, rose-petal skin. She had also inherited her statuesque height and athletic physique from both parents. Just on sight, she was stunning, drawing every male eye. On the field, on the court, up on stage, she was breathtaking to watch in her speed, agility, and grace. She often reminded Anna Marie of a Valkyrie, magnificent in her blond beauty, a sword in one hand, a shield in the other, facing the challenges of life with heroic and ruthless determination, unswerving in her purpose, unyielding in her goal.

  Anna Marie’s looks, on the other hand, had none of her sister’s dazzling beauty or

  family’s height, just as she hadn’t inherited their athletic build, their towering ambition, or their forceful nature. Her face was pleasant if a little plain, her hair dark brown instead of the pale gold of her mother and sister, but at least it was thick, lustrous and fell around her head in loose, glossy waves. She was quite short with a delicate build with long, slender arms and legs.

  Surprisingly, though, for her petite size, she had full, round breasts that were size D-cup with large coral-pink areoles and large nipples. It was the only thing that Pepper was ever jealous of her sister, often bemoaning her own breast size that could only fill A-cups. But to Anna Marie, who disliked intensely drawing any attention to herself, her breasts were an embarrassment, and made her self-conscious. She cringed whenever she caught men eyeing them. She at times wondered what the gene-god had been thinking on the day that they had been putting her together. In her whimsical imagination, she pictured the god being distracted and accidentally placing the wrong gene for the breasts in her cell, a gene that had been meant for another woman, and Anna Marie was supposed to have been given breasts that were more sedate in size and far less flamboyant.

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  Although she inherited none of her sister’s looks and talents, Anna Marie did not