Chapter 14

The latest email from my real-estate agent reported that every retail lot along the south side of the freeway had been sold as well as a third of the lots fronting the north side of the freeway. Even eleven large commercial lots north of the freeway had been sold. Having them already zoned for commercial and manufacturing made them very easy to sell since the buyers wouldn’t have to buy the property gambling that they could get a zoning variance. Having a nearby highway and the railroad already running through the area also helped.

That meant two-thirds of my remaining part of Reynolds Ranch had already sold and I was excited about it. My agent also told me that there were a couple of fancy, framed letters from the county and the state thanking me for my generous donation of land. Laughing, he said that I could either hang them in my office or use them for toilet paper. I decided to hang on to them for now, although I was leaning towards the toilet paper option.

I was impressed and excited at how well everything was coming together. Once I reviewed everyone’s reports, I made a phone call to my Mississippi real estate agent and authorized him to purchase the remaining farms that were available.

I ran into Hallston; I had to sign a few things for the attorney and for my agent, and picked up the framed letters from the county and the state. The four women followed in Jan’s car, wanting to do some shopping. When I finished, I ran by the bank to thank the branch manager for his help. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there.

The new branch manager nearly fell all over himself when he met me, gushing about what an honor it was to have me as a customer. The teller who helped me was the same one who had helped me when I closed my joint account and had set aside half of the amount for Jacqueline. She just rolled her eyes at the manager’s antics. When he left, she told me that the previous branch manager had just been promoted, due in no small part to successfully retaining me as a customer and then watching my account balance explode. She’d even been promoted to head teller for her role, however minor.

When I found the women, I was surprised that they hadn’t bought much. “We’ll buy more when we get where we’re going. It’s kind of silly to buy a lot and then have to move it,” Jan explained.

When we got home, I gave Jan and Chloe a quick tour around the remainder of the farm. After putting so much work into it, I was sad to leave it, and to know that so much of the extremely fertile soil would soon be buried beneath concrete and asphalt. Jan and Chloe asked me about my feelings towards my two bed warmers.

“It’s difficult to sleep with someone for nearly three months without feeling something special for them. I can’t say that I love them. I made that very clear when they first approached me. Still, I care about each of them and want to see them succeed in life. I’m willing to do extra things for them above what I would for the rest of my employees,” I explained.

“Would you be willing to continue letting them sleep with us?” Jan asked.

While staring in surprise at her, I thought about her question. “I think two beautiful, loving women in my bedroom are more than I could ever hope for. More will further complicate the already-complicated relationship we have just begun. If you’re asking for my sake, the answer is no. If one or both of you want one or both of the girls, we can discuss it,” I finally answered cautiously. “Just keep in mind that, if this all blows up in our faces, my heart will be broken.”

“We want to keep them,” Chloe replied. “Jan is fascinated by Marisa, and I’m equally fascinated by Carlotta. We don’t know if this will be a long-term relationship, or if the attraction will fade,” she explained.

“I’m not judging, but I didn’t know the two of you were so into other women,” I said.

“Before Chloe, I’d only been with one other woman, and that was over before I quit college,” Jan admitted. “Chloe had never been with a woman until me. She’d never been with any other woman before yesterday,” Jan replied. “We just find ourselves extremely attracted to the two girls.”

“I hope it doesn’t detract from the relationship the three of us are trying to forge. I want them to know that at this point, it’s still a temporary invitation, and that the two of you are extending it, not me. I don’t want them to think that they convinced me to let them stay longer, making them hope I’ll ask them to stay permanently,” I warned.

The girls agreed and we made it back well before supper. While we were touring the farm, the ladies agreed that we would leave for Mississippi in the morning, well before dawn. That way, we’d be there before supper, regardless of how many potty breaks the two little girls needed.

My stuff had already been packed and shipped. All I had left here were the clothes I had taken with me to see my parents, and my new guns. I packed the guns making sure they were still accessible, just in case. The clothes I quickly repacked except for what I would wear in the morning. I went back outside and found a couple of guys to help me put the camper shell on my pickup. Yes, I finally bought a pickup, even though I still had the Camry. Once it was firmly attached, my clothes were tossed inside. Next, I reloaded the boxes of Jan and Chloe’s stuff into the truck.

I was mobbed when I went back inside, hugged excitedly by Marisa and Carlotta as they bounced up and down excitedly. “You still need to get permission from your parents,” I warned them.

“We already did that,” Marisa exclaimed excitedly.

“And we packed everything of Marisa’s that she needs. Her family will bring the rest of her stuff. My family already took most of my stuff when they moved,” Carlotta added. We added their stuff to the growing pile in the back of my pickup.

Hearing us talking at dinner, Juwanna and Mabel both insisted that they come with us. “You be gonna need a whole lotta help cleaning a new house,” Juwanna warned.

“You’re right, as usual,” I conceded. “There’s just so much going on right now that I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached,” I sighed.

“Don’ you worry none. If’n, we find it lying around the house, we know where it belongs,” Juwanna teased me.

Juwanna and Mabel were such opposites that their friendship was humorous. Mutt and Jeff came to mind. Mabel, her sidekick, is closer to sixty than Juwanna. Where Juwanna outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, Mabel was a dinky thing. If Mabel was five feet tall, I’d be extremely surprised. I doubt that Mabel weighed a hundred pounds dripping wet and wearing combat boots filled with water. Her breasts were small enough that she never wore a bra, not that I went out of my way to check. To say she was an A-cup was being generous. Still, she had managed to nurse three healthy children. Her son and one son-in-law worked for me, and she was in a situation similar to Juwanna. Juwanna knew her and convinced me to hire Mabel, not that she had to do anything more than ask.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that both of them were already packed. Once we were gone, wives of the men working for me would pack anything left in the house, mainly stuff from the kitchen. Each box would be labeled with the room it came from and the boxes would be added to any trucks coming our way, filling in any space left after the semi-trailers were otherwise loaded.

We went to bed even before it was fully dark.

Jan grumbled when the alarm went off at 1:00. Still, I managed to coax her into the bathroom where we peed and showered, reminding me once again to make sure we had a big shower in our new place. I wondered if the shower needed to be big enough for three, five, or even more. I shuddered when I wondered if Jan and Chloe would collect more women the way the wives of my namesake had.

“Maybe the shower should be big enough for twenty people,” I chuckled inwardly, hoping it was a joke. I only hoped that any extra women in my life got along as well as Lucky Jim’s wives had. As long as they got along, I guess it wouldn’t be so bad having several extra women around acting like wives.

I was proud of everyone. We quickly had the two little ones (still asleep) in the car and our dirty clothes from yesterday bagged up and in the back of my truck. We hit the road at 1:53. I led the way with Jan following, and Juwanna and Mabel bringing up the rear in Juwanna’s new Honda CRV. She had been so proud when she bought it, knowing that she had made enough money to afford it on her own. Carlotta rode with me, sleeping as best she could. Marisa rode with Jan, Chloe, and the two little girls.

About 7:00, just when I was thinking about breakfast, my cell phone rang. I handed it to Carlotta since she was sitting right next to me. Juwanna wondered if we could wait another hour for breakfast. I told her to call and ask Jan, not knowing if the two little ones could wait that long. Evidently, they could, and Juwanna pulled around me to take the lead in our convoy.

Just after 8:00, she pulled off the freeway about an hour outside of Atlanta. A block off the freeway was a Waffle House restaurant. When we went inside, it was like old home week as one of the women there ran squealing to Juwanna, hugging her. Juwanna introduced us to her younger sister, who owned this Waffle House with her husband. Despite their catching up, we were out the door in an hour. I even chased the two little ones around outside for a few minutes to help them burn off some energy.

Once we filled up with gas, we were back on the road. I continued to drive, but Chloe drove their car and Mabel drove Juwanna’s car. We made two reasonably quick pit stops so the girls could use the bathrooms, and still made it by mid-afternoon. When we found everyone, I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that they had already chosen my home. They had carefully reviewed all the houses, quickly choosing the largest, the antebellum plantation house, as mine.

It was the biggest of the houses and had the most recent remodel. Despite that, they had remodeled the kitchen for me, making it even larger. They had installed the most modern commercial appliances they could find to make it easier for Juwanna, Mabel, and the other women to feed the hungry hordes that usually congregated at my home for meals.

The ladies were in awe of the house. I remembered seeing it before, but I hadn’t looked at the inside. Sixteen large marble columns decorated the 150-foot-wide front of the three-story mansion. The front veranda was twelve feet deep, extending clear across the front and twenty feet down each side of the building. The second story veranda was identical, except that it was only ten feet deep, and had a four-foot-high railing enclosing the entire area.

A covered stone archway ran the rest of the length of the house on the left. That was the driveway and “porte-cochère,” a covered area designed originally as a place to unload goods from wagons. It was next to the kitchen so the goods could be taken inside easily. The driveway ended at a ten-car garage behind the house, where the carriage house and stable used to be.

The home’s interior was luxurious, centered around a magnificent spiral staircase. Each of the marble stairs was eight feet wide and two feet deep. The entire rotunda was twenty-four feet wide, reaching clear up into the center of the third-floor attic. A monstrous, two-story-high chandelier hung in the center.

The two-story master bedroom was humungous, bigger even than the entire apartment Jan and Chloe had shared. Just off the master bedroom was a walk-in closet twenty feet deep and twelve feet wide. The master bath was not quite as large as the master bedroom but housed a hot tub that could seat sixteen people, as well as a counter with six separate sinks. Three people could comfortably share the bathtub, and the shower was big enough to hold a moderate orgy, not that I had any experiences with moderate orgies.