The Other Man (6 page)

That was it.
 

He didn’t even leave his number, or ask for mine.
 

There was no way whatsoever for me to misinterpret what that meant.
 

I honestly didn’t think I’d see him again.
 
I was resigned to that.
 
Not happy about it, but not bitter either.
 

Not bitter, because he’d given me something.
 
Something I hadn’t thought to feel again.

Hope.
 

Sad as it was, for better or worse, my life had fallen apart soon after I’d turned forty, and I hadn’t imagined, couldn’t even conceive of the idea that my best years of my life lay still ahead of me.
 

And now, because of Heath, anything seemed possible.
 

The revelation was liberating.
 

 
A heavy weight had left my body; the dead weight of a marriage that I was
finished
letting deprive me.
 
Of anything.
 
Just finished.
 

I didn’t want to be deprived of
anything
anymore, or ever again.
 

CHAPTER
 

SIX

It was a few days later, and I wanted to blame the wine, but I wound up telling my girlfriends all about him.
 
Way
too many salacious details.
 
I hadn’t meant to so much as mention him, but was hard to hold anything back from the girls.
 
They were
those
kind of friends.

We had a running bi-weekly girls’ night that I hardly ever missed.
 
The group had been going on and off for several years, and though I’d only joined up with them about a year prior, it felt longer.
 
Like I’d known some of them forever.
 

It was an impressive group of women.
 
Over a dozen of us.
 
Successful women.
 
Beautiful women.
 
Funny, entertaining.
 
Some single, some married.
 
A bit of anything you could want, really.
     

It was a large group, but it didn’t feel large.
 
We came in all ages, and no one broke off into cliques.
 
We all mixed well together.
 

Well, I should explain more.
 
It was more than a girls’ night.
 
It was more of a weekly, impromptu therapy session with friends.
 
And alcohol.
       

“How old is he,
exactly
?” Frankie asked, sounding zero percent judgmental, and one hundred percent fascinated.

I’d met Frankie first.
 
She had her own reality show, and I’d been shooting her for a spread in a magazine that featured said show.
   

We’d hit it off right away, but that was just how Frankie was.
 
I’d been going through a rough time, and we’d bonded, fast and deep.
 
She’d quickly invited me to a girls’ night and introduced me to the others.
 

I’d been impressed with her right away.
 
She was uniquely beautiful and wildly unconventional, in her looks and lifestyle, and the way she handled it never stopped impressing me.
 
She had so much acceptance for herself and who she was, but also of her friends.
 
It was hard not to adore someone who was that loving of both herself and others.
 

I had a serious girl crush on her, but it was purely platonic. A. Because I wasn’t gay.
 
And B. Because I was pretty sure her wife, Estella, would claw anyone’s eyes out that tried to come between them.
   

I grimaced.
 
“Twenty-five.”
 

Her smoking hot wife, Estella, whooped, high-fiving the air.
 
“You go, hot mama!
 
It’s about time.”
 

“Hell yeah,” Danika said succinctly.
 
She was one of my favorites.
 
A sarcastic soul after my own heart.
 
She was extravagantly gorgeous, a striking, exotic woman of some mixed Eurasian heritage.
 
Her face and body were flawless, aside from a slight limp when she walked, but I didn’t think that detracted from any of it.
   

I’d started attending these get-togethers just after she’d gotten married to a great heaping hunk of a man that put on one of the most successful magic acts on the strip.
   

“He’s not much older than my children,” I said, eyes swinging to Lucy, the therapist and voice of reason of the group.
 

“Don’t do that to yourself,” said Danika.
 
“He’s twenty-five.
 
Hardly a
child
.”
 

Easy for her to say,
I thought, as she was sitting somewhere in her late twenties.
 

“I don’t honestly think I’d have done it,” I said, words still aimed at Lucy, “if I’d had a clue he was
that young
before we hooked up.
 
Unfortunately, I only asked him his age
after
.”
 
I knew that was likely bullshit.
 
My lust had been too overwhelming to be stopped at the word
twenty-five.
 
I was trying to save face, though I didn’t actually need to, not in front of this group.
   

“Stop that,” Lucy said gently.
 
“Don’t beat yourself up.
 
You didn’t commit a crime.”

“What’s the lowdown on a cougar relationship happening, doc?” another one of the ladies, Candy, spoke up, asking a question I didn’t have the balls to.

Lucy held up her hands in a sort of c’est la vie gesture.
 
“It just depends on the individuals involved.
 
I don’t hand out verdicts for relationships.
 
You know this.”
 

“But what is the usual pattern for a thing like this playing out?” I asked her.
 
I knew better than to accept her pat answer.
 
She had all the likely scenarios, all the usual dysfunctional relationship patterns memorized.
   

Ugh
, I’d thought the word relationship about a guy I’d only met twice.
 
I was
so
old school.
 

I’ve been out of the dating pool too long
, I thought.
 

Lucy looked amused.
 
“What, you want me to cite off the statistics for you?”
 

“I wouldn’t mind hearing them,” I mused.
 

“I’m not going to do that.
 
You are a responsible woman.
 
A good woman.
 
As long as no one is being exploited, and no one is feeling used, I say do as you like.
 
How’s that for a lowdown?”
 

Less than satisfactory
, I thought.
 
But I’d take it.
 
At least she wasn’t outright cautioning me against it.
 

“I’m encouraged, frankly,” she continued.
 
“I see it as a good sign that you’re finally willing to enter the dating world again.”
 

“Don’t sound like dating to me,” Candy muttered, but there was nothing catty in the way she grinned at me.
 

I couldn’t argue with her.
 
“It
definitely
wasn’t a date.”
 

“You should never give it up that fast, sweetie,” Sarah, another lady in the group, one well into her sixties, told me.
 
“I’m not judging you.
 
It’s just, well, men never come back when you give it up that fast.
 
Any chance at a relationship flew out the window when it resorted to sex that quickly.”
 

She wasn’t wrong.
 
I opened my mouth, mostly to say, rather defensively, something like, oh I don’t know, ‘Who said I was looking for a relationship?’ but I never got the chance.
 

Bianca, one of the quieter members of the group, shocked us all by butting in.
 
“That’s just not true.”

Every single one of us looked at her.
 
She was a woman that stood out in a crowd, no matter how exceptional her company.
 
She was beautiful, tall, with pale blonde hair and abundant curves.
 
She had just the sort of eye-catching beauty that one expected to see in the wife of a famous billionaire, and it just so happened that she was one.
     

Her expression was calm, her face angelic, both in its beauty and peacefulness.
   
There was something so suppressed about her manner, as though she’d learned to avoid making much noise in a very profound way.
 
She participated in the group, but she rarely added in her two cents like this.
 
That role was usually reserved for the louder voices.
 
And when she did pipe in, I noticed that everyone usually took it to heart.
 

“James and I,” she continued, a becoming blush breaking out across her cheeks.
 
“We . . . didn’t wait to have sex.
 
Not at all.
”

“But I’d bet money you weren’t hooking up that soon after you met him,” Candy pointed out.
 

Bianca’s blonde brows shot straight up.
 
“You’d be losing money on that bet.
 
He was going down on me in an airplane galley, it had to be, God, like only the third time I ever ran into him.”
       

That was met with a pregnant moment of shocked silence, then a brief burst of awkward laughter as everyone came to the conclusion that she was putting us on.
 

She was not, her expression told us.
   

“Him getting
you
off is a far cry from
you
getting him off, in terms of keeping him on a string,” Candy shot back.
   

“That is fucking hot, though,” someone put in.
 
I glanced at the source.
 
It was Sandra.
 
She was a bit older than I was and worked in the Cavendish art gallery with Danika.
 
It was a well-known fact that she was semi-obsessed with Bianca’s husband.
 
She was always a little too fascinated with the subject when he came up.
 

Bianca’s blush got a few shades darker, her eyes darting around the room.
 
“I’d already gone down on
him
, by then.
 
Technically, I think that was the
second
time we ran into each other.
 
Still turned into a relationship.
 
A marriage.”
 

Danika let out a low, appreciative whistle.
 
“Wasn’t he your
first
?” she asked her, sounding impressed.
 

We were getting a rare gem if even Danika hadn’t known about that, as the two women were close friends.
   

Bianca nodded.
       

“That brazen fucker,” someone muttered.
 
Frankie, I think.
 

We were all just staring at Bianca.
 
I, personally, wanted to hear the rest of the story.
 
I’d read some of the tabloids about them, but this was different.
 
This was the
real
story, the most I’d ever heard from Bianca about her much talked about relationship with one of the hottest men on the planet.
 

“What about
actual
intercourse?” Sarah asked, like it was a perfectly reasonable question.
 

“That same night, after the galley incident,” Bianca answered matter-of-factly.

“Brazen fucker,” Frankie repeated.
 

“He’s so fucking hot,” Sandra muttered.

“How’s it going, in general, and also with your ex-husband?” Jackie asked me, bringing the subject back around since it’d clearly gotten out of hand.
 
Bianca had started to look uncomfortable.
 
“Is he still being antagonistic?”

“He is, but it’s tapering off, I think.
 
And things in general have been good.
 
It took some time.
 
The divorce was a big readjustment for me, but now I’m . . . content with having him gone.
 
I have more free time now.
 
Free time that I value.
 
I find that I enjoy a good book over a bad husband.
 
No contest.”

That was met with a round of elaborate toasting.
 
We had some enthusiastic readers in the group.
       

“What about your kids?
 
Has there been any communication between your ex and the kids lately?” Lucy asked.
 

I shook my head.
 
“He alienated his children when he mistreated their mother, and rather than take responsibility for that, he’s decided to blame me.
 
It’s baffling, to be honest.
 
I knew how my boys would react.
 
I don’t understand how he’s surprised by it.
 
They’re overprotective and loyal to a fault.
 
Frankly, I’m a little worried that they’ll never forgive him.”

“It’s not your job to mediate their relationship with their dad,” Lucy told me in her no nonsense voice.
 
“That is
their
business.”
 

I nodded that I understood her.
 
I tried to take her words to heart.
 
It was a burden I’d be happy to set down for good.