June-December Romance
Natalie Gilmore was born with two enviable God-given assets: one, an exceptional natural beauty, and two, the good sense to use that beauty to her advantage. Although never one to exhibit false modesty, she was not vain or self-centered. From early adolescence, she accepted the compliments of adults, the envious glares of less attractive girls and the longing stares of amorous boys with equal indifference. Natalie was determined that her feminine charms would not be carelessly flaunted for the sake of her pride, nor would her sexual favors be squandered on cute teenage boys who aspired to become nothing more than auto mechanics, police officers or construction workers. Her beauty and poise were to be wielded with skill and great care like a surgeon would use a scalpel.
As high school graduation approached, the teenage Natalie was faced with the inevitable decision of what to do with her life. Her grades and standardized test scores were mediocre at best, but with hard work, she might be able to make it through four years of state college. But then what? Her friends suggested she become a model or actress. Given her beauty, did it matter whether or not she had any real modeling or acting talent? She did not need to play Lady Macbeth or appear on Paris runways when she could make good money selling perfume, toothpaste, shampoo or laundry detergent.
Nonetheless, Natalie was smart enough to realize that while she was, in most people's opinion, the prettiest girl in Pequannock, there was a big world beyond the New Jersey town. Thousands of beautiful girls from big cities, small towns and remote hamlets across America would be willing to lie, cheat, steal or sleep their way to becoming the next Cindy Crawford or Charlize Theron.
Obviously, not all of those women would become rich and famous. A few lucky ones would actually go on to become high-paid models and well-known actresses. Others would, along the way, settle for more secure but far less glamorous lives. The unfortunate ones might become victims of their unfulfilled ambitions and fall into a life of drug abuse, alcoholism, pornography or prostitution. Natalie did not intend to risk her youth and beauty on such poor odds.
Upon careful consideration of all available options, she decided her best bet was to marry into money, preferably an older man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. After a short-lived marriage, she could enjoy being a rich, merry widow.
With that goal in mind, the day after her eighteenth birthday, Natalie Gilmore left Pequannock and headed for New York. She found a cheap room in a boarding house in the Bronx. While the tiny place had none of the comforts of home, all she needed was a bed and a roof over her head. With the money her parents had saved for her college education, she purchased a small but expensive and flattering wardrobe. She considered the purchase a wise investment, for how could she hope to capture the attention of a rich man wearing bargain basement clothing?
Natalie spent the last of her savings on a makeover at Elizabeth Arden's. The cosmetologist and hairdresser did for her what Professor Henry Higgins had done for Eliza Doolittle. She had gone into that famed red door on Fifth Avenue as an exceptionally pretty teenager and come out a stunningly beautiful woman. With her hair cut shorter and colored a softer shade of blond and her eyes accented with proper makeup, she looked not only more attractive but also more sophisticated.
Armed with her new clothes and enhanced looks, the girl from New Jersey had little difficulty getting a job in the heart of New York's financial district. True, she was a mere receptionist, a position only slightly higher than file clerk on the corporate ladder; but what better way was there, she reasoned, to meet the rich and influential people who did business with her employer?
After barely six months of working in Manhattan, Natalie met J. Prescott Hamilton, a ninety-two-year-old billionaire who had managed to outlive not only his three wives but also his five children. J.P., as Natalie affectionately called him, was the answer to her prayers. He had a substantial net worth and no beneficiaries!
Like an experienced angler, Natalie dangled the bait in front of the old man and then skillfully reeled him in once he had bitten. Due to her fiancé's advanced age, she considered it prudent that their engagement be a short one. Accordingly, the two were married only three days after J. Prescott Hamilton proposed.
* * *
Winifred Rogers ordered a drink, put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it with a diamond-studded lighter from Tiffany's. Then she looked at the sad face of her luncheon companion and sighed. She knew only too well what the young woman was going through. Twelve years earlier, she herself had married a much older man.
"My dear, you mustn't get so discouraged. After all, Prescott is a very old man. How much longer can he last?"
"That's precisely what I thought when I married him," Natalie whined. "That was six years ago, for Christ's sake! I can't believe it. He's ninety-eight years old, and he's got the constitution of a man one-quarter his age. Do you know he hasn't been sick a single day since I met him? Not even a head cold or an upset stomach."
"Why don't you concentrate on the positive aspects of your situation?"
"Like what?"
"You're married to a man who is filthy rich. Instead of moping around and complaining while you're impatiently waiting for him to die and leave his fortune to you, try to relax and enjoy yourself. Go shopping, throw a few lavish parties, travel around the world."
"I've tried that. It's not very much fun when you have no freedom. My husband hired a bodyguard to follow me around. He claims it's for my protection, but I know he wants that goon to keep an eye on me."
Winifred's eyebrows arched with amusement and suspicion.
"Having a little hanky-panky on the side, dear?" she teased suggestively.
"I wish! J.P. never lets me get within ten feet of a virile young man. Remember that chauffeur he had?"
"You mean the one who looked like Harrison Ford?"
"Yeah, that one. J.P. saw me joking around with him, and that was it. The next day, he got a new chauffeur, one who looked more like Gerald Ford than Harrison Ford. I tell you, Winnie, I can't go anywhere or do anything without being watched. I swear I feel like a dammed prisoner."
"Poor Natalie. I wish I could give you some sage advice to solve your marital problems, but I'm afraid I don't have any. All I can tell you—and I say this from personal experience, mind you—is that once old Prescott finally does go off to meet his maker, the rewards will be well worth it."
"I know. Someday I'll be a very wealthy widow. That's the last thing I tell myself before I fall asleep at night and the first thing I tell myself when I wake up each morning."
* * *
Another year passed and then another. As J. Prescott Hamilton faced the anniversary of his one-hundredth year on earth, his health still showed no signs of failing, much to his wife's dismay. All arrangements concerning J.P.'s birthday celebration were left in the capable hands of his private secretary, who was far more suited for the task than Mrs. Hamilton was.
"I'm off now, darling," Natalie announced sweetly to her husband.
"Shopping again?"
"Come now, J.P., you don't really mind if I buy myself some nice new things, do you?" she asked, kissing him on the top of the head as though he were her grandfather.
Prescott said nothing. He merely narrowed his eyes and watched as his pretty young wife grabbed her hundred-thousand-dollar Hermes purse and headed for the door.
Natalie rode in the back of J.P.'s Rolls, trying to avoid the surreptitious glances from her bodyguard. The old driver pulled up in front of the mall's front entrance, got out and opened the back door for her. The bodyguard was already coming around the back of the car to join her.
"I've decided to have lunch out," she informed the driver. Then, after glancing at her Cartier diamond watch, she added, "Meet me back here at three o'clock."
Without a word or gesture of farewell for the chauffeur, she turned and entered the Prada store. Five minutes later, Natalie and her bodyguard exited the mall and walked quickly to a Dodge Viper parked in the lot.
"Where to, honey?" the muscular bodyguard asked.
"I don't really give a damn, Rocco," Natalie replied in an impassive voice as she loosened the smartly tailored clothing that clung to her lithe body like a second layer of skin. "Go anywhere you like as long as it's away from here."
Natalie, whose boredom and discontent had grown unbearable over the past six months, found solace in the arms of the very man who had been hired by her husband to see that she didn't stray. The irony of the situation made the taste of the forbidden fruit so much sweeter.
Rocco drove a short distance and pulled into the parking lot of the Pinecrest Motor Inn, a far cry from the Waldorf or the Plaza.
"Not the No-tell Motel again!" she sighed.
"I know it's a dive, but at least you're not likely to run into anyone you know here."
"Don't be too sure of that! Have you ever met any of J.P.'s business associates? They like to take long lunches that don't involve eating food."
"I do hate having to bring you to these crummy places," Rocco declared apologetically, as he gently pulled his employer's wife inside the motel room and into his arms. "Why don't you leave him? I'll take care of you."
Natalie nearly laughed in the bodyguard's face. Did the fool think she would walk away from the Hamilton billions to be with him? She spent eight long years putting up with J.P.'s possessiveness and mistrust, not to mention his sexual advances. She felt she'd earned that money.
"You know I can't leave my husband," she said with deceptive tenderness. "He's a very powerful man and an unforgiving one."
"Oh, baby," the bodyguard moaned.
Rocco's caresses became more insistent.
"I wish your old man would die already so we can be together all the time."
Was he serious? The minute J.P. was finally laid in his grave and the shackles of matrimony were taken from her shapely limbs, Natalie Gilmore Hamilton would say goodbye to this city, perhaps even this country. With the money she would inherit, she could live in Paris, London or some tropical paradise. Or maybe she would be a jetsetter, wandering from country to country, staying in one place only as long as the novelty and excitement lasted.
To be sure, there would be men in her life, handsome, well-built young men, the best her beauty and her husband's money could attract, but she would never marry one of them. The relationships would be on her terms or not at all. Until that day arrived, however, her Russell Crowe-wannabe of a bodyguard would have to do.
* * *
J. Prescott Hamilton's one-hundredth birthday party was a gala affair that was written about in the society pages of every major newspaper in New York. The guest list included the cream of society, leaders of industry, professional athletes, top names in the entertainment world and more than a few men with ties to organized crime.
There was little doubt that Mrs. Hamilton, smartly dressed in a Versace original, was the most stunning woman in attendance. More than one less-gifted female eyed her flawless features with barely concealed envy, while most of the males ogled her perfect face and figure with more than casual interest. Had she not been the wife of one of the richest and most powerful men in the country, Natalie would, no doubt, have had to deal with drunken advances and risqué suggestions most of the evening. Thankfully, she was protected from would-be Lotharios and dime-store Romeos by her husband's well-known reputation for ruthlessness.
Despite the glamour and magnificence of the festivities, the hours dragged by for Natalie, who was not enjoying herself. Few of the guests talked to her; they much preferred to "suck up" to her husband. It seemed to the unhappy wife that there was no one with more friends than an old man with a great deal of money.
Do these sycophantic ass-kissers actually think J.P. will remember them in his will? she wondered. Think again. That money is mine. I earned every penny of it.
Shortly after midnight, J.P. said his farewells.
"Please stay and enjoy yourselves, but I'm afraid I need my sleep. I'm not as young as I used to be, you know," he joked and was rewarded by laughter and applause.
Natalie surmised cynically that he would probably have gotten the same reaction if he had described in graphic detail his last bowel movement.
"Oh, and I hope to see you all at my next birthday party."
More laughter, more applause.
God forbid! Natalie thought, rolling her eyes in revulsion.
The couple drove home in silence. Natalie was exhausted, but J.P. was wide awake. It really was remarkable that a man his age had such incredibly good health and vitality. How many years could a man live anyway? She would have to look that one up in the Guinness Book.
Whatever the record is, J.P. is not going to break it! I'll make sure of that.
Natalie vowed—and not for the first time—that if nature refused to take its course, she would have to take steps to send him on his way.
When the Rolls-Royce Phantom pulled up in front of the Hamilton mansion, Nigel, the butler, was waiting at the door to let the owners in.
"Good evening, sir, madam," he greeted them in his stuffy British accent. "I trust you had an enjoyable time at your birthday party."
"Yes, Nigel," J.P. replied. "It was very nice. Any messages?"
"The movers called, sir. They said they will be here promptly at nine tomorrow to begin packing."
"Good. That'll be all, Nigel, thank you."
"What movers?" Natalie asked as soon as the butler left.
"I've decided to do a bit of traveling. I'm going to put the furniture in storage and close up the house for a while."
"What about me?"
"What about you? You're my wife. Naturally, you'll accompany me. We'll go to Switzerland, Austria and France. Maybe stop in Spain, too."
"And just when did you intend to spring this little surprise on me?"
"I had planned on telling you tonight after the party."
"Oh? And I'm supposed to drop everything and go running off with you to Europe?"
"Drop everything?" he echoed. "What the devil are you talking about? You don't have a job or any other responsibilities. All you do is shop, go to the beauty parlor and carry on with your bodyguard."
Natalie turned pale with shock. How on earth had he found out?
J.P. smiled malevolently.
"Foolish girl! Did you honestly think you could keep your little affair a secret from me? I've known about it all along."
"Then why didn't you do anything about it? Why didn't you fire Rocco like you did the chauffeur?"
"My firing the chauffeur had nothing to do with you. I found out he was using the Rolls for personal reasons, so I gave him the sack."
"And the bodyguard was having sex with your wife. Are you saying you care more about your car than you do about me?"
J.P. did not answer her question since he did not want to admit that it would be easier and cheaper to replace her than his classic Phantom V.
"You must have enjoyed the idea that you were putting one over on me, so I let you have your fun. Now it's time to move on, though."
Natalie's emotions ran amok. She was angry, hurt, afraid and relieved all at the same time. Relief won out. She had lived behind the façade of a faithful, loving wife for eight years. The mask could finally come off.
"I suppose it might be amusing to take a European vacation," she admitted.
"Especially when traveling first class," J.P. pointed out. "That is why you married me, after all."
His wife made no attempt to deny it.
"It's really a shame," the billionaire laughed. "You would have made a beautiful widow."
Natalie's blood turned cold. Was that a threat?
"What are you rambling on about?"
"You took one look at me and decided there's a man whose parking meter needs another dime. If I were to marry him, I'd inherit his billions when the time runs out."
"Is this your way of telling me that I'm not your beneficiary?" she asked, trying to hide her mounting fear.
"No, no, of course not. You're my wife. If I were to die, you'd inherit everything."
Natalie's heartbeat returned to normal. J.P. was amused at the expression of relief on her exquisite face.
"Yes, my dear," he continued, taking his time in delivering the coup de grace, savoring each word.
And why shouldn't he? He had waited for months for just this moment.
"You would be a very wealthy woman if I were to die."
His wife did not fail to notice that he stressed the word if. Although his body was in top shape for a man his age, perhaps his mind was slipping.
"If you were to die? Sooner or later, Prescott, you're going to have to face the fact that your billions can't buy immortality."
The old man roared with laughter.
"While you were researching the size of my bank account, did you ever stop to consider the source of all that lovely money?"
Natalie began to feel ill at ease again.
"What difference does it make?"
"That's my girl! Who cares where it came from, just as long as it's negotiable, right?"
"Listen, Prescott, I'm tired, and I want to go to bed. So, whatever you're trying to say, just come out and say it."
"All right, dear. Plainly put, you're not going to inherit a cent. Why? Because you're not going to outlive me."
Natalie's eyes shot to the door. Should she make a run for it, or was her assassin waiting outside? Surely, her husband didn't plan on killing her with his own two hands! Feeling the hopelessness of her predicament, she started to cry and tremble. She couldn't possibly outrun the power of her husband's money. If he wanted her dead, he could hire an entire army to rid himself of her.
"Stop blubbering!" he shouted with disgust. "I never supposed a hard-hearted little money-grubber like you would be such a coward. Stop it, I said! I'm not going to kill you, nor do I intend to have someone do it for me. I take a good deal of pleasure in being married to a young, beautiful woman such as you."
"Prescott, please stop torturing me with this cat-and-mouse game."
"Oh, all right. The truth is, you won't outlive me because I can never die. I am as rich as I am because I've been accumulating my wealth for centuries."
"You're crazy."
"No. I'm indestructible. I don't fully understand it myself. Perhaps I'm a freak of nature, or maybe I'm the last of a race long gone from this planet. It's possible there are others like me out there who keep their immortality a secret as I do, but I've never met them."
"And how old do you think you are?" she argued sarcastically.
"I don't really know. Most people can't remember anything from when they were babies, only vague images from their early childhood. I have dim memories of ancient Greece, but prior to that time, my memory is fuzzy."
Natalie stared at her husband in amazement.
"In all my years, I've never been ill, never been injured, never bled, never even felt pain. I've lived through plagues, pandemics, wars, floods, earthquakes and famines, and I've survived them all. I've been married hundreds of times and fathered countless children."
"If any of this were true, someone would have found out about you by now."
"I've got a fool-proof escape route that I've perfected over the centuries. I live a long, happy life in one place, and then I disappear. I resurface somewhere else under a new identity. Next week, J. Prescott Hamilton and his lovely wife will be tragically killed in a plane crash en route from New York to London. By the time the press prints that story, Mr. and Mrs. Xavier Colfax will be moving into their new villa in France."
"What an enviable position Mrs. Colfax would be in," Natalie stated, attempting to blackmail her husband. "Mr. Colfax would have to be very nice to her, or else she might make his little secret known to the world."
"In which case, poor Mrs. Colfax's sanity would be called into question, and Mr. Colfax would have no choice but to have her committed to some quiet, out-of-the-way institution. Maybe it would be necessary to keep her sedated—for her own safety, naturally. That's assuming Mr. Colfax doesn't decide to simply make her disappear."
Natalie did not respond. She knew this was no idle threat.
"But I believe Mrs. Colfax would, as usual, have her own best interests in mind and thus keep her mouth shut."
"I suppose she would, presuming, of course, that Mr. Colfax would be as generous to his wife as the late J. Prescott Hamilton was to his."
"Certainly. What's money, after all? You must understand that we need to keep a low profile at first. We'll both require some cosmetic alterations. I do believe you'd look quite lovely as a redhead. Perhaps wear green contact lenses over your blue eyes. I'll get rid of this gray hair, which, by the way, is not really my color. In fact, you might be surprised by my actual appearance. When I shed this makeup I've been forced to wear, I don't look a day over thirty."
For the first time, Natalie examined her husband's face. She realized that without the wrinkles, liver spots and gray hair, he would be a remarkably handsome man. Suddenly, her lot in life did not appear so gloomy. Living in a villa in France with a rich, handsome young man was something she might actually enjoy.
Natalie walked toward her husband, kissed him lightly on the lips and whispered, "It's getting late. Let's go up to bed."
She saw the flame kindle in his eyes, but this time she was not repulsed by it. J.P. watched his wife walk up the stairs, her body tempting him with its slow, sensual movements.
Yes, she is beautiful.
But—there was always that but—time would ultimately creep up on her and rob her of that beauty. Like so many pretty young things before her, her looks would go, and she would cease to arouse the fire within him. Then it would be necessary for him to replace her. There was little difficulty there; given his vast wealth, he had always had his choice of the most beautiful women in the world.
Still, for the next ten years or so—maybe a few more if she took care of herself—Natalie would share his life, his fortune and his bed. Then she would have to vanish, become an unknown, unmourned victim buried in an unmarked grave. Afterward, the lonely widower would seek comfort and happiness elsewhere in the arms of yet another beautiful young woman.
Better watch out for those June-December romances, Salem. Look what happened to Michael Jackson.
