by Sarina Bowen
God, I love this woman.
Usually that offhand thought with—you know—the L-word in it would freak me out. But right now I don’t even have time to stop and worry about it. I just toss my jacket onto the new coatrack and toe off my shoes. Then I sprint toward the bedroom, still lit by warm lamplight. Rufus lifts his nose from the dog bed as I go by. But I’m in a hurry.
And…Hottie is passed out cold in my bed, facedown in the center of the bed.
Ah, well.
I brush my teeth. Now that sex is off the table, my body relaxes. I yawn as I towel off my face. Dropping my suit, shirt and tie onto the armchair, I crawl into bed, pulling Hailey’s warm body into my arms. God, it’s nice. She makes a sleepy, purring sound. My dick wakes up immediately, but her limbs are heavy. And I’m not going to pester Hailey for sex if she’s too tired after a long day.
And yet she’s pressing back against my chest, her sigh deep and soft. Mmm. I tilt my hips, pressing my cock against her very fine ass. Her body reacts, legs shifting, creamy skin seeking mine. My lips find her neck and I’m lost to kissing her sweet skin. This woman in my bed, she’s been waiting for me. My heart beats a new rhythm. Grateful. Grateful. Thank you.
I try to turn her around, but she resists with a shake of her head.
“You want me to take you from behind?” I ask, my voice gravel.
She presses back against me in answer.
“Say it, honey.” I just want to make sure she’s awake and completely onboard with the fun we’re about to have.
“It’s hard for me,” she whispers, the arch of her foot tracing my calf.
It’s very hard, my body agrees. I want her so badly. “You mean it’s hard…to say the words aloud?”
She nods, so I know she’s really awake.
“Dirty talk weirds you out a little.”
“I love it on you,” she says, and I smile in the dark.
“Well.” I lift her knee and slip my cock between her legs, just brushing her sweet pussy to tempt her. We both groan, because she’s already wet. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.” I roll her nipple between my fingertips to make the point.
“Mmm,” she whimpers. “Fuck me. Do it right now. You have morning skate and I have work and you sent me that dick pic, you fucking tease.”
“Delfie,” I whisper, running my cockhead over her clit.
“Give. It. To. Me,” she whines.
As I am not a stupid man, I don’t make her ask again. I lift her knee high, and she gasps as I push inside her tight heat. And now I’m gasping, too. We had a quick chat about birth control and health status last week, but this is our first time together since. And it’s heaven. With a groan, I start to thrust. She grips the covers and pushes back against me. We find our rhythm, and my shaking hand snakes around her hip so I can touch her. My fingertips meet soft, supple flesh and she moans my name.
Fuck, I’m a goner. She feels so good around my aching dick. I give it to her hard and fast, and I’ll bet it’s not sixty seconds later when I feel my body gather in on itself. “Jesus, baby,” I groan into her ear. “Gotta come right now.”
She squeezes her legs together and turns her face toward mine. Our tongues touch for the first time in a week as I burst inside her, moaning and rutting like the desperate man I am. And she shivers and shudders, her pussy clenching around me as she follows me over the edge.
A minute later she’s turned to flop onto my chest. We’re both panting like sprinters. We are sprinters tonight. I think I set a land-speed record for sex. The taxi that brought me home from the airport probably hasn’t made it out of Yorkville yet.
I start laughing, and it bounces Hailey on my chest.
“What’s so funny,” she slurs.
“Us. Quickest quickie ever.”
“Good hustle,” she says against my pec. “Good foot speed. Dick speed.”
I laugh some more. I’m totally beat but totally happy, too. “Sorry we didn’t talk much this week. I hope you know it’s not because I don’t care.”
“Not exactly sitting around watching reruns here, babe. I worked twelve-hour days. Have you ever been to Niagara Falls?”
“Mmm?” I’m sleepy, and the change of subject has confused me.
“I keep forgetting you’re not from around here,” she says. “The falls are really impressive. The biggest torrent of water you’ve ever seen. That’s what business at Fetch has been like since Blake made his TV testimonial. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Her voice is sounding further and further away. “Matt? Honey?”
Sleep takes me away.
Hailey
Matt is in California now. That quickie we had last week was one of our few moments together. I went to his home game with Jenny, sitting in his row-D seats. But I was on call, and when two Fetchers called in sick afterward, I had to do a night shift for the first time in months.
The team is playing San Jose tomorrow night, so they’re in California already. They’re eating an early dinner somewhere gorgeous tonight, and Matt just texted me a shot of him and Wesley at a dockside restaurant, munching on shrimp and sampling wines.
I’m spending the evening with…data. Lots of data. Instead of shrimp, I have granola bars. Instead of wine I’ve got…water. Even coffee is out of the question because I hit my caffeine limit hours ago.
It’s not glam, but I’m not bitter. I love data. I really do. It’s infinitely interesting and it never misses your dinner reservation. It doesn’t whisper sexy things into your ear from afar, but then end the call suddenly when the charter jet is about to take off.
All right. Maybe I’m just a little bitter. But not at Matt.
If I were going to blame anyone for my twelve-hour workdays, it should be Jackson. Even though we’re full-tilt right now, he’s the one who won’t let this crazy expansion idea die. He gave me a spiel about how the property was going to get snapped up if we didn’t act fast. It sounded like an infomercial. It sounded like his father, damn it.
Unfortunately I voiced this opinion a couple of hours ago, and it didn’t go well.
“What’s the hurry?” I’d pressed when my ex came into my office to ask me what I thought of the idea. Again.
Jackson had rubbed the back of his neck, as if in pain. “He wants us to get the spot, that’s all.”
“Jax?” I asked carefully. “Does your father own that building?”
His frown deepened. “Yeah. But so what. He owns this one.” Jackson spread his arms to indicate our current office space.
“But this one is cheap,” I pointed out. “Why’s he so desperate to get us into that pricey spot?” I don’t trust that man. And worse—I don’t trust Jackson to stand up to him.
“He can’t hold it for us forever. That’s all.”
I studied Jackson, the same way I had since we were kids. He was still fussing with his neck, and he ran his fingers through his hair. He looked as jumpy as a man who had fleas.
“I’ll give you an answer by Tuesday,” I said slowly. “There’s still work to be done.”
That had satisfied him. Or maybe it hadn’t, but at any rate he’d disappeared.
Now it’s nine p.m. and I’m rolling around in data, trying to get a handle on the question of my company’s future. Plenty of promising businesses have put themselves on a collision course with the sun by trying to grow too fast. I don’t want that to happen to this company that I love. Although a little part of me—the part that’s sitting here alone and pathetic on a Friday night—is tempted to take the half-million dollars Mr. Emery wants to give me and walk away. To let Jackson run this place into the ground.
Ack. No. That idea fills me with horror. That’s a solution for people who don’t care. But I do care, damn it.
So here I sit at my desk, building the mother of all spreadsheets. Now that we’ve been open for four years, our customer records are a treasure trove of data. I’ve decided that I need to know more about our clients before I can decide what our expansion should l
ook like. I’ve made a density map of their locations. But then I realized I needed to know more about our best clients. Since a quarter of our active clients provide three-quarters of our revenue, those are the people I need to understand.
Unfortunately, understanding them has proven to be a tedious process. I’ve spent the last few hours opening up client files and tagging them with various attributes. We have people who use Fetch for their business needs (for document delivery, office supplies, client entertainment.) Then we have what I’m calling the Busy Moms (diapers, organic food) and the Swinging Singles (wine selection and delivery, catering and gift-giving.)
Someone has to think about these things, and tonight that someone is me.
I started at the front of the alphabet and now I’m up to the E’s. I smile when I click on Eriksson, but then I realize that it’s not Matt’s account. It’s Kara’s. That’s not a huge surprise now that I think about it. He’d told me once that he learned of Fetch from his ex, who’d grown to depend on us when the twins were younger.
Checking out her charges feels a little weird, but I have a job to do tonight, and it won’t take long.
I quickly scroll back through her lengthy list of requests and see that she belongs in the Busy Moms category. Lots of diaper deliveries in her early days. She also gets a tag for Concierge Services because she has Fetch make a lunch reservation for her every Friday, under the name of Dr. Daniel Bryant. The reservations happen exactly once a week, rain or shine. The choice of restaurants varies a great deal, but the consistency is admirable. She’s been lunching with Dr. Daniel Bryant every Friday for…I keep scrolling. For two years.
Well. Kara obviously found what she was looking for—a Steady Eddie. Matt said she hated his travel. Hated the Hockey Wife lifestyle. She wanted a dentist to lunch with like clockwork. And she got one.
I close that account after tagging it and move on. The next one in alphabetical order is Matt’s. I don’t need any time looking at the list of charges, because I’ve seen them all before. Tagging him is tricky, though. He doesn’t fit any of my tidy categories. I scroll back through the long list, wondering where to put him. The charges start eighteen months ago, but I don’t let myself pull up any of our old text messages because I’ll be here all night rereading them and missing him.
Eighteen months ago, when he was separated. I already knew the date, because he and I were leading parallel lives and didn’t know it. Our spouses asked for divorces only a couple of weeks apart.
That’s when the hair stands up on the back of my neck, and goose bumps climb my arms. Matt’s marriage was over a year and a half ago. His wife has been lunching with Dentist Dan every Friday for two years.
With a pounding heart, I open up her account again. It’s right there. Two years ago last month, she made her first Fetch reservation request—a lunch date at Sassafras. Table for two. Under the name Dr. Daniel Bryant.
There must be some mistake I’m making. Maybe that Daniel isn’t her boyfriend. Maybe it’s her dad.
But who dines at fancy restaurants with her dad every week?
I Google Daniel Bryant, pediatric dentist, and he pops up immediately. His website shows a picture of him wearing scrubs with teddy bears on them. I check the hours.
His office doesn’t open until three p.m. on Fridays. Plenty of time for lunch and a quickie.
Holy shit.
Twenty
Always On My Mind
Hailey
“Oh my God! She was cheating on him! Really?”
Jenny’s shriek of outrage makes me wince. We’re in my room. She was sprawled on my bed before I dropped my Kara bomb. Now she’s sitting upright, eyes wide and mouth gaping open.
Jenny doesn’t come over often, but she’s here this evening to do my hair and makeup. I’m got to be at the hotel in an hour, and normally I wouldn’t make such a big fuss about my appearance, but I’m getting an award tonight. It’s a big deal. And I want to look like a big deal.
We haven’t quite made it to the getting-ready part, though. The discovery I made earlier this week has been weighing on my mind, and I finally caved and told Jenny about it, since I can’t very well tell Matt. But even though I’d just laid out the facts and Jenny came to the same conclusion as I had, I can’t help but play devil’s advocate.
“Not necessarily,” I answer. “Maybe she was meeting this guy for a weekly friend lunch.”
Jenny arches one eyebrow. “But aren’t they together now, the ex and the dentist?”
I nod.
“Um, then they’re not friends now and they sure as booger-sugar weren’t friends back then.” She flops back against my pillows and crosses her arms over her chest.
“They might’ve been,” I say weakly.
“Bullshit. Even if they weren’t hooking up, they were still having an affair—an emotional affair. I mean, come on, Hailey. A married woman doesn’t meet the same man for lunch for six months if she doesn’t have feelings for him.”
I agree, but I hate the idea that Kara was actually doing that to Matt. For some dumb reason, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when she can’t give me the same courtesy. From the second we met, Kara assumed I was a one-night stand or a casual hookup. Even after months of me dating Matt, the woman continues to turn her nose up at me whenever she sees me. So, yeah, Kara is a bitch. But if she was seeing some dentist behind Matt’s back during their marriage, that’s beyond bitch. That’s cruel.
“Are you going to tell him?”
Jenny voices the question that’s been hounding me for days. I’d spoken to Matt a few times this week but didn’t once mention that I think his ex-wife was a Cheating McCheaterson. There’s no good way to bring that up. Yeah, I miss you too, can’t wait to strip you naked. By the way your ex cheated on you, good game tonight!
“I don’t know,” I admit. “A part of me is, like, hell yes, he deserves to know. But another part wonders if I’ll just be needlessly hurting him. They’re already divorced, so obviously the marriage wasn’t working. What will knowing do, besides hurt him?”
Jenny flashes an evil grin. “It’ll make him hate the bitch.”
“Exactly. But she’s the mother of his kids,” I say softly. “Is it right of me to create a rift between them?”
Her jaw drops. “You’re not rifting them. She did!”
“Yeah…” Then something occurs to me. “Maybe he knows, Jenny. It’s embarrassing, right? Maybe he knows, and he didn’t tell me. It’s sort of private.”
Jenny flops onto the bed. “I dunno. You say he blames himself for their breakup. Would he do that if he knew?”
She makes a good point. I know he blames himself, thanks to the offhand comments he’s made about being a shitty husband and a failure. But he didn’t cheat on Kara. And if she’d truly gone behind his back with another man, then maybe all the reasons she’d given him when she’d asked for a divorce were just a way to excuse her own awful actions.
“Or...She wanted to leave him but didn’t want to look like the bad guy,” Jenny tries, drawing the suspicions out of my head and giving them voice. “So she blamed his schedule and his hockey career and whatever else and made it seem like that’s what destroyed their marriage. That way she wouldn’t have to take responsibility for being a cheater.”
“Maybe. But again, is it any of my business?” I counter.
“It’s literally your business, Hailey! She used your business to cheat.”
I falter, one hand rising to rub my cheek. Yikes. She’s right. Kara utilized Fetch’s services to make those lunch appointments with her dentist lover. If Matt is the kind of man to check credit card receipts, he would’ve just seen “Fetch” on all those statements, rather than the name of the restaurant where she was meeting Dentist Dan.
“Oh boy.” I raise my other hand and start massaging both my temples. “I just thought of something.”
Jenny eyes me warily. “What?”
“Are we cheater facilitators?”
There’s a beat of silence. Then she bursts out laughing. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Fetch is a cheater’s paradise,” I explain with an unhappy moan. “You want to buy sexy lingerie for your mistress? Use Fetch, and then your wife doesn’t see sexylingerie.com on the credit card statements. We also give clients the option to remain completely anonymous. Are we aiding the immoral?”
Jenny rolls her eyes. “Okay, we are not getting into a morality debate right now. These are grownups—if they want to use a delivery service so they can get their secret golly-jollies, let them. Besides, there are lots of ways to conceal shady credit card charges.” Another laugh pops out. “We’re not cheater facilitators, weirdo.”
I drop my hands and wipe them against the front of my yoga pants. My palms feel clammy for some reason.
“Anyway, back to Matt,” Jenny says. “You guys are dating. Don’t you think he deserves to know?”
“Yes. No. God, I don’t know. I just don’t want to hurt him. And even though he’s over Kara, I know this will still hurt him.” A groan slips out. This is why I don’t like it when people tell me their secrets. I can’t take on these kinds of burdens.
And yet I don’t think I can keep this from Matt.
I’m falling for him. All week I’ve thought of nothing but him. The sexy texts and hurried phone calls we exchanged haven’t come close to satisfying my Matt cravings. Fortunately, tonight I’m going to be on his arm. He’ll be wearing his sexy tux, smiling at me from the audience as I get up to accept my award. We’ll feed each other hors d’oeuvres and slow dance and, if I’m lucky, maybe sneak off and hook up somewhere in the hotel. Jess told me that coat closets are all the rage. That could be fun, a covert quickie in a coat room…
“Um, please don’t tell me you’re thinking sexy thoughts about the ex. Are you batting for the other team now?”
Startled, I lift my head. “What?”
Jenny snickers. “You got all blushy, which means you’re thinking about sex. But we were talking about the cheating ex, so…”