“Oh, she’s not here tonight,” said a young woman he didn’t recognize, whose name badge declared her as Julie. “She’ll probably be here for the next one, though.”
“She doesn’t always come to these?”
“Not always—not now they’re so established. She’s been helping set up events in our other bookstores, too.”
“But she’s not at another bookstore tonight?”
“Oh no—she had the day off today. She said she was spending the day with one of her authors, seeing the sights. Sounded absolutely divine.”
Hugo nodded, and knew that it had probably been absolutely divine—but where had the day ended up? Knowing Connor, or at least to some extent, it had probably ended up at the opera, or some glitzy party, or some other kind of glamorous event that Hugo would never have been able to take Madeleine even if he’d wanted to. And then what? A night at an expensive hotel, perhaps, getting pampered in five star luxury before ultimately succumbing to her new lover’s charms, spreading her legs for him.
Would she at least tell Hugo about her experience afterward? He wasn’t sure if that was the deal any more.
“I thought I might find you here.”
The voice startled him, and nearly made him drop his Champagne glass.
Lucy.
“Well, I guess I got it wrong,” he said. “She’s certainly not here.”
His wife’s best friend nodded quietly, once again giving him the impression she knew more than she was letting on about Madeleine’s whereabouts.
“She hasn’t told you much about today, then, huh?”
Hugo shook his head. “Not a thing. As far as I’m concerned it’s just another day at work for her.”
Lucy swirled her half-full Champagne glass, took a sip, calm, relaxed. Hugo could see under the surface she was itching to tell all.
“You’ve spoken to her recently?” he asked.
She took a quick glance this way and that, checking they were not overheard, and on seeing the question and answer session underway, she gave a quick flick of the head toward the exit, suggesting they take this one on the road.
Hugo put his glass down on a nearby shelf, and led her out of the store.
“She’s had a wonderful day with Connor,” Lucy said as they stepped out of the pool of light in front of the bookstore, and started out along the street in the direction of Hugo’s apartment. “Lunch at Espressione…”
“Wow.”
“Ice skating at Rockefeller—well, I sent you the picture—and a matinee showing of Wicked on Broadway.”
“Jesus—she loves that one, I meant to take her.” Hugo felt his insides freezing up. Madeleine was going to fall for this guy if he wasn’t careful.
Lucy hooked her arm in his as they walked. “Feeling scared yet?” she smiled. “A little nausea in the tummy?”
He nodded. “A little.”
She said, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, she called me after they got out of the show, and said what a fantastic time she’d had—but she said she was kinda scared about what came next.”
“Scared?”
Lucy shrugged. “She’s scared you’ll feel bad about this guy treating her like his queen. She’s scared that you actually really hate all this secrecy, that when Connor wants to take her back to his place for some dinner and romance, that you’ll suddenly wish none of this had ever happened.”
“She’s scared I don’t actually want this?” he asked.
“I said I’d come keep you company tonight,” Lucy squeezed his arm, “I promised her I’d make sure you were okay about this, that even though you might not know the details, you’d know generally what was going on, and if you changed your mind, I’d let her know to call things off.”
“So you’re not going to tell me the details?” Hugo asked, feeling a little disappointed.
“I told her I wasn’t going to tell you the details.”
There was a twinkle in Lucy’s eye.
“So what’s next? Where are they?”
Lucy smiled. “Connor’s cooking her dinner back at his place. He’s quite the cook, apparently.”
“Seriously?”
“Come on. We’ll be able to see them from your apartment, right?”
Hugo’s eyes widened, and his whole body seemed to heat up a few degrees. Lucy was right—if this was where everything was going to happen, they’d get the perfect view. And if Connor chose not to close his curtains—and why break the habit of a lifetime now?—he would get to see Madeleine actually take that step and give herself up to another man.
Fifteen
Lucy had thought of everything, bringing two pairs of opera glasses to enhance their viewing. They weren’t the most high-powered of binoculars, but it wasn’t a great distance across the street—Hugo found he could see things in phenomenal detail.
Connor was wearing another designer suit, only the jacket was on the back of a barstool and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, a cutesy apron protecting his outfit as he rustled up the meal for his date. Madeleine was perched on a stool at the brunch bar in her new man’s luxurious kitchen, constantly laughing and smiling, effervescent as he regaled her with never-ending anecdotes as he gave her the kind of dinner experience you just couldn’t buy at a restaurant.
Hugo bubbled and simmered with jealousy, but while he sat on the window seat opposite Lucy, he also buzzed with adrenaline and tingled with arousal, his manhood rock hard within his pants. Madeleine looked stunning, once again, in a simple smart skirt and purple blouse, her legs clad in stockings, a hint of suspenders showing from the way she was sitting, her face adorned by that devilish make-up that made Hugo’s heart race.
“And she thinks I’m doing what tonight?”
“You’re taking me to see the late night showing of Rear Window at the Sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Rear Window? Nice.” Hugo laughed. “I guess I do feel a little like Jimmy Stewart, not that I’m in a wheelchair. I just hope we don’t see a murder tonight.”
“I think it’ll be almost the complete opposite.”
When they’d first arrived back at the apartment, Hugo had felt massive relief that Connor and Madeleine were still in the middle of dinner. It meant he hadn’t missed anything. Lucy had handed him the plastic spyglasses she’d swiped from some opera or other, and they had kept the apartment lights very firmly off.
Sitting on the window seat, they were both pressed themselves back against the wall either side of the windows, to minimize the chances of being spotted by anyone on the other side of the street. Even so, Hugo felt a little jumpy—even fearful—when Lucy opened the refrigerator to retrieve a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and the light from inside had blazed out into the rest of the room.
He felt a little funny sneaking around his own apartment—as though he didn’t have the right to be there. But the important thing was not to put Madeleine off her game.
“You regretting letting her do this?” Lucy asked him. Still the journalist, still wanting to dig into the experiences of others.
“No, not at all.”
“They look good together, don’t they?”
“Uh-huh. Perfect.”
The dark-haired Asian girl moved silently back to the kitchen, picking up the bottle from the counter to return and refill their glasses. The street light filtering in through the horizontal blinds cast bright lines across her, and Hugo worried that she was still quite visible. Were they both obvious to those who might look out the windows across the street?
As she refilled his glass, and then her own, pushing the alcohol on him as though to calm his nerves, he could tell that Lucy was watching him as much as the view out of the windows. Interested in the enigma that was the sharing husband, the man who desired to see his beloved wife in the arms of another man.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, her voice soft, gentle.
“Oh you know,” he said. “Butterflies taking over my stomach.”
He almost expected her to be
the same old Lucy, any moment to hear her start cracking jokes, making merry about this whole thing, about Hugo letting another man have a go at his wife. But she didn’t. Lucy recognized the seriousness of this situation, the gravity. She was not going to make jokes at his expense, not that evening.
“She’s really doing this, this time.”
“She is,” Hugo swallowed.
“And you’ve told her she can go as far with him as she likes.”
“I told her,” he said quietly, and realized he was shaking a little.
“And you’re really happy about it? That she’s going to fuck someone else?”
“You know how excited she is about it? How wild it’s driving her?”
“Well, of course.”
“Well, then. That’s how I feel about her feeling that way.”
He saw how she held her cell phone in one hand while she clutched the wine glass in the other. As though there was some kind of possibility that the State Governor would phone and give Hugo a last-minute reprieve.
“And she’s allowed to do anything with him? Anything she likes?”
“It’s up to her.”
“Is she allowed to stay the night?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about it. I’m not supposed to know about this, remember?” Hugo felt his stomach churning. He desperately did not want her to stay the night—not on this first time, at any rate. It would be a little too much for Hugo to abide by this early on. But it was not his place to decide.
“I guess she thinks you’re taking me to the movies, and she’s late after her book signing thing,” Lucy said. “So she could hardly stay away all night.”
“No, I guess not.”
It felt deliciously wicked to see her flirting with her crush, in the apartment Hugo and his wife had both monitored so much over the months since they’d been living there. It looked so strange, so wrong. Madeleine looking so blonde, so pretty. Like an angel in that scandalous skirt with her stockings and garter belt.
“You know we can stop this right now?” Lucy said, holding up her phone. “I promise, I won’t say another word about it if you choose to.”
He shook his head. “I’m okay. Really.”
It was reassuring to know that there was a kind of nuclear button, though. That if this all got too intense, he could have Lucy text Madeleine, or even call her. Emergency. Get out. It didn’t stop all the anxiety. What if Madeleine’s phone battery died? Or if she got too drunk?
As the dessert was dished out—some kind of impressively delicious looking tart or cheesecake—Connor sat on his own bar stool, the two of them flashing bedroom eyes at each other. Hugo felt the claw of desperation and fear encircle his heart. Through the binoculars, he could see a coltish hunger in her eyes, in her giddy smile, as she focused directly on him, batting her lashes and biting her bottom lip in a slow, exaggerated way that spoke of sex.
She’d never looked like that with Hugo. Even at her most horny, she’d never looked so sultry, so seductive, so… grown up.
God, she really was going to fuck him.
“You’re really going through with this,” he heard Lucy say, her voice a near whisper, filled with some kind of awe. Their Maid of Honor had really been expecting him to get to a point and then call time out, say the safe word, or whatever.
He turned to find her standing there behind him, surprisingly close.
“I’m really going through with it,” he said, his throat almost too dry to get any words out.
Lucy looked at him, and he looked at her, staring each other down. She really was attractive, Hugo couldn’t deny that. But the way her perfume filled his lungs only made him wonder what Connor must be feeling having spent the day with Madeleine, and then having his invitation to take her back to his place accepted.
Lucy was breathing shallowly, and Hugo could see that she was nervous. Why on Earth should she be nervous?
“You can have me if you like,” she said quietly, taking him by complete surprise.
“I’m sorry?”
“Is that what you want? You’re letting her have Connor, so fair’s fair, right? That’s the reason you’re doing this, so she has to let you be with other women.”
“No, Lucy,” he said.
She brushed her long black hair out of her face, and gazed up at him with those big almond-shaped eyes, and he could see a slight tremor in her red lips. Her nipples were hard, pushing against the thin cotton of her shirt.
“She’d never find out,” Lucy said. “We can just text her to say she can do what she likes with Connor—she’d never know we were together.”
She put her arms over his shoulders, linking her hands together around the back of his neck, eyes focused on his.
“Lucy, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Really—you’re so beautiful, I can’t believe the perfect guy hasn’t come along and put a ring on your finger. But—”
She flashed a part-disappointed, part-pleading look his way, insisted, “Oh, but we’d be so good together, Hugo…”
She pushed herself up on tip-toes, reaching for him, her face coming so close to his he could feel her warmth through the air—he was suddenly worried she was going to try to kiss him, cause a scene, force him to be firm with her.
But she didn’t kiss him. Seemingly at the last minute, she halted, merely touching gently against him, cheek to cheek, breathing in his subtle cologne.
He said, “I’m sorry, Lucy…”
Then she let go of him, her hands dropping down to her sides, her face brightening up into a smile. “That was the right answer,” she said, then offered him a look of clear apology. “You know she always thought you wanted me. Even told me a few times she wouldn’t be so upset if you were ever tempted to a drunken kiss one day.”
“You were testing me?”
Lucy shrugged. “You know, if a wife hears that her husband is all right about her fooling around with another guy, her first assumption is that her husband wants to fool around with another woman guilt-free.”
“I suppose so. I told her I didn’t.”
Lucy nodded. “And now she knows.”
He could probably have been a little annoyed at Madeleine’s need to know, her strange plan to get Lucy to test his own motivations. But that was Madeleine—she needed to know everything, every little detail.
They watched, now, as Madeleine pushed her dessert away half-finished, though clearly praising her host for its quality. Then she slipped off her stool with a quiet word to Connor, and tiptoed through to the bedroom, where she continued on to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Freshening up for the big show.
This was really happening. He was really stepping on the edge of a precipice, about to take the mother of all cliff dives.
In the dark apartment, Lucy’s cell phone suddenly announced its presence with a furious flash of light.
“It’s her!” she hissed.
Hugo felt a jolt of heat surge through his chest.
But what was he afraid of? That she would finally decide to go through with it—or that she’d once again step back, unable to make the fantasy they’d imagined for so many months a reality?
“What’s she saying?”
“She’s nervous—she’s really, really nervous.”
He wasn’t sure why they were whispering. The tension in the air was electric, the fear, the excitement, the uncertainty.
Lucy said, “She wants me to bring you home from the movie theater.”
“What does that mean? I thought she wanted to do this in secret?”
“Guess she changed her mind.”
Hugo felt an unexpected warmth swamp his system. She wanted him there, at least the first time. Wanted him watching her, supporting her, excited by her. It was what he’d always wanted.
“Ask her if she really wants me to watch,” he said.
He saw Lucy’s phone display light up as she typed a text message to Madeleine. His heart was thumping hard within his chest—this was the
moment where it could all finally happen, and yet the fear levels had built in both of them to the point where it could all collapse around them any minute.
Lucy said, “Yes. She wants you to watch.”
Hugo’s heart lept, his whole body pulsated. His cock had never been harder.
Lucy added: “She wants you with her, sharing this.”
Hugo had never felt happier. It felt like choirs of angels were singing inside his chest. His whole body saturated with the kind of saccharine goodness that a thousand Hallmark card writers could not capture.
He said, “Tell her we’re here. Tell her I worked out what she was up to today. Tell her I’m watching right now.”
Lucy tapped out the message, and Hugo realized that what he had said to his wife across the street was a full green light for her to now step out of that bathroom and seduce another man, take him in her arms and between her legs.
In that moment, that was exactly what he wanted.
Lucy’s phone vibrated as another text message came in, the sound making Hugo jump.
“She says she loves you,” Lucy said. “She says all of this is because of you, and she says you make her the happiest woman in the world.”
Hugo nodded in the darkness.
Then they both watched as Madeleine emerged from the bathroom. Hugo’s heart rate picked up even further—he felt his ticker straining under his breast plate, and had a sudden sharp fear: could his body actually take this intense emotion? Had people actually had heart attacks because of strong feelings?
As she walked through the bedroom, they saw her pause, peering out of the windows as though trying to tell whether her husband was telling the truth, whether he was indeed right there watching. Hugo wondered for a moment whether he ought to do something to confirm his presence. But then the moment was past, and she was straightening herself up to re-enter the rest of the apartment, and walk back to the kitchen area in which Connor waited patiently.
God, she looked wonderful. Hugo felt burning envy now for the man who was going to have her like this—her make-up perfect in that exotic manner that was such a recent change, her hair shimmering gold since she’d had it highlighted to further draw the interested of other men, her figure trim from her visits to the gym, and well presented in that small but smart skirt and elegant purple blouse—her legs clad in wicked stockings waiting for a man’s hands to wander up them towards the heaven that awaited.
Madeleine Strays: A Wife-Watching Romance Page 12