“How long have you known about this?” I asked.
“Months.”
“Richard, as your attorney, this is something—”
“No,” he said, cutting me off with a rigid finger. “I couldn’t tell you until I had proof in hand. Those pictures are my golden ticket.”
A glossy image of a naked Janis on her knees caused a grimace. It was taken through a window, and in the shot a man was out of frame, but his junk wasn’t. “Who took these?” I asked, tossing the picture in disgust.
“I hired a private investigator. These are the worst of them, enough to prove my point. I have loads more, some where she and he are checking into a hotel a few minutes apart, leaving in the same way.” He then tossed a flash drive on the disturbing pile. “Recordings of her conversations with him. One sided but incriminating enough.”
“Richard, these are not admissible without Janis approving their use.”
“I know. It’s more to fuck with them. These conversations go back years. Years!” He banged a heavy fist on the solid wood table. “Those two were fucking right under my nose. They thought they were slick.” He glared at me as if I were the one fucking her. “She made a fool out of me, accusing me of cheating, embarrassing me among our friends. That bitch shouldn’t have shat where she ate. I now want everything, Nate. Not majority, all of it.”
I couldn’t blame the man for his spite. Janis truly wasn’t bright in the way she had antagonized him these past months while having these skeletons in her closet.
“We’ll need to file a motion to modify as soon as possible. Doing so means this could go public, Richard. Are you ready for that… for the havoc it will wreak in your life?” I lifted a picture in which the married congressman’s hand molded around his wife’s bare breast. “Exposing Congressman Torrelli?”
“Absolutely. I’m not the one who’s in the public’s eye. I have enough money to disappear to the Caribbean for a year or two and leave them to deal with the fallout. You do whatever it takes. I want that agency that I funded, and then I want to close it down and feed every one of her clients to her competition.”
This would complicate things greatly… and even while that realization slammed into my subconscious, why, in that moment, Amy’s face had come to the forefront of those thoughts was even more concerning.
I was late to begin with, but horrendous traffic made my predicament even worse. And although I was the one who had made these plans, my bestie was used to my tardiness.
“Can you pull over? I’ll get out here.” Wordlessly, the driver did as I asked, and after paying the fare, I hopped out to walk the last few blocks, hoping to gain time. As soon as the little illuminated person on the traffic light signaled that the coast was clear, I trotted along the crosswalk while dodging others who rushed on in the same way.
Regretting my decision to not wear a coat, I tightened my sweater against the sudden autumn chill that had arrived. It was hard to believe Halloween was upon us in a few days when it felt as though August was just yesterday.
Practically eight weeks had passed since the night Nate had bid his way into my life, and five since we’d decided on our arrangement. That meant a whole lot of hot sex with an arrogant attorney who had a special talent for messing with my head.
Really, it had begun the weekend of his cousin’s wedding… the messing with my head part. Something had flipped within me that night. I felt it immediately, and I sensed that Nate had as well. The moment between us had been fleeting, although intense… and the heart-stopping sensation remained vivid in my mind.
I liked it much better when my feelings toward Nate were driven by lust instead of the confusing emotional ones that seemed to have surfaced out of the blue. There was no place in my life for the sinking dread that took hold in the pit of my stomach. I’d much prefer the delicious throbbing he incited between my legs.
Case in point, from the moment he’d arrived at my apartment at 8:00 a.m. this past Saturday, with bagels and coffees in hand, Nate had made it clear he needed to release a ton of tension because of a stressful week. That declaration had set forth hours upon hours of nonstop fornicating. The man was insatiable, and he was by far the best lover I’d ever had. There was no competition.
After freezing my thong as promised, he’d then slid them up my legs and forced me to endure the torturous press of ice-cold satin against my core. He’d reduced me to a wanton mess with erotic kissing and petting. Only after I’d practically begged had he removed the thawed, damp panties to warm my numbed flesh with his mouth.
There were no words to describe the level of sensuality that man was capable of. I had no issue admitting to him that I’d be stealing his little trick for a future book… to which he demanded credit in my acknowledgments.
That was our relationship in a nutshell… stupefying, amazeballs, remarkable sex sandwiched between our sarcastic selves. As long as we kept it on that level, things would remain uncomplicated.
But come Sunday, nothing had changed regarding the unease in the pit of my stomach or the regret that kept pinging around in my head. And along with the fact Nate seemed as tense as well, I was left even more unsettled.
Instead of him milking every minute of our time together as he normally would, he’d left midafternoon, blaming a shitload of work that he needed to get done. Once alone and sans distractions, those confusions sprung to the surface, along with a neediness that I’d never experienced before. I felt like a fish out of water without him around, and I hated it.
So the next day, I did something stupid in true Amy fashion and impulsively got a tattoo. It was of a red heart that held my own initials… my way of marking the relationship that I had with myself, one that would always be my priority. And in the three days that followed, I came to the decision it was time to end things with Nate… for my heart’s sake.
It was time.
Eager to have our normal Thursday girls’ night out like the good old days, I swung open the heavy door, causing cranky patrons waiting to be seated to land their gazes on me. But one of my favorite people on this planet reacted by jumping off a leather banquette and greeting me with a huge smile.
“I missed you!” she exclaimed, throwing her arm around my neck in a choke hold, not caring we had a small audience.
“You say that every time, yet you still leave me.” I extracted myself from her clutches to plant a juicy kiss on her cheek.
“Are you ladies ready to be seated now?” the hostess snapped impatiently.
“Oh, yes… sorry,” Jade replied sweetly, while I wanted to tell the bitch to suck it.
I held my tongue as we followed the woman through the packed restaurant. But when she dropped the menus with an eye roll, I asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Aim.” Jade gawked as though I’d grown a third tit.
Undeterred, the woman smiled sarcastically. “Your server will be over in a minute.”
Jade waited for her to walk away before whispering, “You’re almost an hour late. It wasn’t easy begging her to hold our table or ignoring the daggers those waiting for a table threw at me.”
Feeling like shit, I pouted, “Okay… okay. I’m sorry.”