by S. E. Lund
I've been told that I’m not hard on the eyes, if that’s what you mean…
* * *
My jaw dropped yet again when I opened the attachment.
It was a pic of his naked six-pack abdomen, which was amazingly washboard. I saw a very pronounced hip cleft and the start of a noticeably bulging package beneath some black Joe Boxer briefs.
I sent a text to his cell number, using my Lexi911 alias.
* * *
Lexi911: Phew… I worried that you were a skinny geek with thick glasses. I don’t send my photo to just anyone. We’ll have to meet in person. One question – what happened to your date?
* * *
His response came right away.
* * *
MBS69: Geek, yes. Glasses, yes, sometimes when I have to read fine print. Skinny, no. As to what happened to my date? Suffice to say that both our expectations were off. She broke the rules, and I’m nothing if not a stickler for rules, so the relationship was off as well.
* * *
Lexi911: You are a stickler for rules for your women? My kind of man.
* * *
"Heartless jerk…" I said.
* * *
MBS69: I do not lead anyone on about my expectations, and I expect the same from the women I become involved with. I have rules. She had the wrong idea about how willing I’d be to break them.
* * *
Lexi911: Let me guess… you wanted sex but no strings, and she wanted you to tie her up with a big knot but not in the fun way.
* * *
MBS69: Let me put it this way – our relationship did not move to the next level on my part, but it did on hers. My family was interfering and trying to push things, but it wasn’t working for me. So, I had to end it. That left me without a date on Saturday for this family dinner.
* * *
Lexi911: You could always go alone?
* * *
MBS69: Not with this crowd. They’re all married with trophy wives and expect the same of me and everyone in their circle. John said you were beautiful. If he thinks you’re hot, I know you’re perfect. Make sure you look classy and conservative. You have something appropriate, I hope? John said you were high end.
* * *
Lexi911: Oh, I’m very high end. The highest. I’d like to meet you in person before I go out with you. You like rules? That’s one of mine. Hard and fast. Coffee would be fine. 1:00 Thursday. The food court at the Columbus Circle mall. Outside that sushi place. Wear something red so I know who you are. You can bring your Non-Disclosure Agreement and I’ll sign. You’re a stickler for rules? Same here.
* * *
MBS69: That’s pretty short notice. I’m a business person and I am exceptionally busy.
* * *
Lexi911: Precisely. Me as well. See you then, Mr. Big. Shot.
* * *
“You’re really going to go meet him, right?” Candace's eyes were wide. It was something she would do, but not me.
“No.” I was already hatching a plan to spy on him. “I’m going to go incognito and see what he looks like. I'll stand him up, let him go to this fundraiser alone. Serves him right.”
“I wish I wasn’t going to be in a meeting tomorrow afternoon with Professor Everly,” Candace said, her voice sad, “but it’s about my committee members and I have to go. I want to come, too…” She pouted.
I bit my bottom lip and considered, doubts creeping in about whether I should lead him on.
“Maybe I should send him an email and confess.”
“No, no, no. You should go. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing!”
“What if he’s mad and starts to harass me?”
She shrugged, like that was nothing. “You could always block his cell if he starts to bother you. You could delete your old email. You don’t use it anyway.”
I made a face, struggling with my decision. I created my Lexi911 email when I worked as a 9-1-1 relief operator during the summers. After everything that happened with Blaine, I had initially planned on becoming a paramedic, but realized after answering calls that I couldn’t face that kind of stress. So, I went into plain old social science instead. Something calm and non-stressful, like international relations. I did an undergrad in Portland, and then moved to Manhattan to do my MA at Columbia. Candace came with me, happy to leave the West Coast behind. I’d start my PhD next year, if all went well.
“He’s obviously a real dickhead, so don’t feel bad about leading him on.” Candace moved back to her desk and flipped a page in her file. “What kind of guy has such rigid rules and breaks up with women over them? He sounds like he doesn’t have a heart. He deserves some payback. Consider yourself Karma.”
“What about my Karma?” I examined the pic of his abdomen again. “Will this be good Karma or bad Karma if I go through with it and stand him up?”
Candace shrugged. “Has a guy ever treated you badly?” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
She knew very well that a guy had treated me badly. One particular guy named Blaine who I only barely escaped with my life. I tried not to think of Blaine, because it was a very dark and scary part of my life I'd rather forget, but that's the thing about trauma. You can't ever really forget it.
“Mr. Big Shot 69? Consider me Karma,” I said and smiled.
Chapter 2
Luke
* * *
I met John at our favorite hot dog cart in Central Park West, relishing our weekly trip to for some street meat.
It was a ritual we never failed to follow, the two of us going for a sausage slathered in mustard and heaped with sauerkraut. Although we were business partners, we had separate office space. John was CTO and in charge of the technology side of the business while I was CFO and in charge of the financial side. I spent my time on Wall Street and he spent his closer to the techies at Columbia. He wore jeans and a t-shirt and had a surfer-dude thing going on with the longish hair while I wore a business suit and tried to look like a banker. A competitive swimmer in college, John still swam for fitness and had the bleached-blond pool hair to show for it.
"So?" he asked, eyeing me as he paid for his dog. "What's the deal with Lexi?"
I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. "She agreed."
He raised his eyebrows, a crazy grin cracking his face, and gave me a playful cuff on the arm.
"I told you she would. Did she send you a photo? She's pretty, isn’t she?"
I shook my head. "No, she didn't send one." I stood beside him at the hotdog cart, loading my sausage with sauerkraut.
"Well, she's beautiful, " he said as he skillfully squired mustard on the sausage. "I would have thought she'd send you a risqué picture at least. Believe me, she's hot." He turned to me, smiling like an idiot. His smile was infectious, and his excitement at my upcoming plan to teach my cheating bastard of a brother-in-law a lesson lifted my spirits. I'd been working like a dog for months, getting the financing in order to take our startup Chatter to the next level. It had paid off big time and soon, we'd be former owners, and richer each by a cool billion dollars.
The deal was the talk of Wall Street. The two of us were its darlings du jour. I'd been interviewed in the Journal and John had appeared on a segment CNBC about young entrepreneurs under thirty-five.
We were considered boy geniuses. Everyone loved a wildly successful success story and that was us.
"So, it's all set for Saturday?" James asked as he finished layering on mustard and sauerkraut in his meticulous way. "You're going to take Lexi to Cipriani's and scare the bejesus out of Eric?"
"It is and I am," I said as we walked to a bench and sat to eat our lunch. "I can't wait until Eric lays eyes on her."
"What do you think the bastard will do?"
I shrugged. "He's such a bullshitter, he'll probably smile and kiss her knuckles."
I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. In truth, I had no idea what Eric would do. Once upon a time, I thought I knew the man, but I was wrong. Instead of a loyal h
usband and hard-working executive in my family's business, he was a cheating lying bastard. Whatever he did, it couldn't make me happy, but seeing fear in his eyes would be something.
"You got a lot of balls to do this," John said. "What if he punches your lights out?"
"Nah. He's more likely to slither off like the snake that he is."
"I'm surprised you didn't go over there and punch his lights out."
"Me?" I said, all innocent. "Resort to violence? I'm all about forgiveness."
John snorted and gave me an I don't believe you look. "Yeah, right."
I laughed ruefully. John was right. I wasn't all about forgiveness – not anymore. I usually could forgive a lot in a person, but cheating was the one thing I could never let go.
I had good reason to feel that way.
Since I discovered he cheated on my sister – my very pregnant sister – I'd come to know a different side of Eric with the help of a private eye I hired. He tailed Eric to see what he got up to on all those late afternoon meetings and out of town business trips. I came to know the Eric who spent lunch hours in the bar flirting with various women, or in the bathroom snorting coke, or getting blown by Lexi 911 when he was supposed to be out of town taking care of customer relations in my family's century-old investment business.
Eric was such a bastard, I doubted if anything could faze him. If he could cheat on my very pregnant sister, taking an escort to a trendy bar while his wife — my sister — was at home alone suffering from unrelenting morning sickness, he had no moral substance.
It made me so mad I could explode, but the marriage therapist I'd contacted about how to handle the issue said my sister would not appreciate me being the one to tell her that her husband was cheating. That I should take Eric aside and tell him I knew and that he should tell my sister or I would.
I couldn't – couldn't – face being alone with the bastard for fear I would lose control and choke him to death so I decided to show him I knew. I'd take the very same escort to the dinner and shove her in his face. I wouldn’t say anything, I wouldn’t make a scene, but he'd get the message pretty damn quickly…
John took a bite of his dog and chewed, his eyes narrowed. "Do you want me to come?" he asked when he was finished.
I shook my head. "Better not," I said. "I don't want to get this girl in any trouble. When she sees Eric, she'll recognize him, but I'm sure she'll be discreet."
"He'll be shaking in his boots that you'll tell Dana and that'll be the end of his life posing as one of Manhattan's rich and famous."
I shoved down the last of my lunch. "As far as I'm concerned, he can fuck off right now, but I don't want to ruin Dana’s whole experience of pregnancy and birth. Plus, new parents are totally jammed for a couple of months adjusting. After that? She can divorce the son of a bitch for all I care. In fact, I hope she does."
"It's hard being a single parent."
"She's all set up to live comfortably. They had a prenup. He'll get some cash, but not much because they've only been married for a couple of years."
We watched the pedestrians strolling through the park. It was still pretty hot in the last days of August.
John turned back to me. "How's the build coming?"
He meant the build of my new catamaran, on which we planned to sail around the world. A forty-two-foot beauty, The Phoenix as I dubbed her, was custom made and equipped with the latest technology and top of the line materials.
She was spectacular.
"Going really well. I'm looking forward to spending a few weekends at the beach house before the end of the season. Once the sale goes through, and as soon as the cat’s finished, we can take it for a few test runs up and down the coast before heading out for The Bahamas."
"Can't wait."
Sailing around the world was what kept me going. The money from the sale of our business was nothing to me but freedom. It was a way to break completely free from the reach of my adoptive parents, and do what I really wanted. John and two of my buddies from Columbia were going to crew the cat with me. We’d worked hard for the past few years building up a social media app that would mean we'd be able to do whatever the fuck we wanted for the rest of our lives, each of us becoming New York's latest young billionaires under thirty-five. Hell, I was still under thirty.
I planned on getting into the space industry after we returned from our world tour, investing my money in the mission to Mars. I might even try to go on a one-way trip, become a modern explorer.
There was nothing on Earth keeping me there except my sister, so leaving on the journey of a lifetime and then the journey of a century? Hell yes, sign me up.
My agenda was completely free for the rest of my life once the deal went through. As soon as that happened and my cat was finished, I was gone.
But first – first I had to rub Lexi911 in Eric's smug face.
I could barely wait for Saturday to roll around…
* * *
We finished our dogs and walked back to my car in a parking garage a few blocks away. On the way, we talked about the deal and how the only snag was that one of the buyers was the brother of the woman everyone thought I was going to eventually marry.
Everyone was wrong.
Felicia Blake was sweet, and we did date on and off for the past few months, but she was not my type. Despite the machinations of my adoptive mother, Felicia's mother and practically everyone else in their close circle of friends, I couldn't be tempted out of my plans to leave. Felicia's brother Harrison was one of Chatter's prospective buyers, so I had to tread very lightly. I didn't want to lead Felicia or anyone else on about my intentions, but at the same time, I wanted Harrison's support for the deal. It shouldn't matter that Felicia and I were not going to tie the knot. I'd already had a very disastrous go at engagement and potential marriage. What should matter was that the deal was great and would make the new owners – and me – very rich.
I kept my fingers mentally crossed that nothing would happen to scupper the deal and that within a couple of weeks, the ink would be dry on the sale. Then, John and I would be casting off from the slip at Alpha Yachts in Patchogue, NY. Our first non-US destination? The Bahamas, followed by Jamaica and then a trip through the Panama Canal on our way to the Galapagos, French Polynesia, Fiji and then on to New Zealand and Australia before hitting Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, South America and back to the USA.
After that?
Whatever the fuck I felt like.
Which was space. I'd soon have a cool billion and I already had big dreams.
I only wished my parents had been alive to see my success, but they had both passed, killed in a car crash when Dana and I were only eight, leaving us orphans, raised by adoptive parents neither of us cared for.
* * *
On Thursday morning, John and I sat in my office and talked about the sale of our business, going over charts and balance sheets for our presentation. We had a big meeting coming up with the potential buyers in two weeks and we wanted to be on top of things. The time went by fast, and I was due to meet Lexi at 1:00 p.m. at the Columbia Circle food court. At twelve-fifteen, I closed my files and took my car, hoping to find a parking space somewhere near the mall. I brought along my red umbrella to identify myself to Lexi. In my pocket was a NDA that I'd get her to sign. Once she saw me, I figured she'd know who I was and so I didn't want her to go to the gossip rags and spill that I was hiring her as an escort. That was the last thing I needed, considering that I didn’t, in fact, use escorts. I'd never used one and I never intended to.
Using Lexi was all just a means to an end.
I'd hire her for the night, parade her in front of Eric at the dinner, and then say goodbye. She'd play her part in my little family psychodrama, and then I'd never see her again. Hopefully, neither would Eric.
My PD continued to follow Eric after I found out he was cheating on Dana and discovered that he hadn't used her again or any another afterward, so perhaps the escort was just that one time. Still, Eri
c was on the edge, drinking too much, doing blow and generally acting like an idiot. I doubted he'd change when he discovered I knew about his cheating. If you could use an escort once while being married and your wife very pregnant with your first child, you could use one many times.
If he didn't use another escort or pick up a random woman in a bar for the rest of my sister's pregnancy and after the baby was born, I wouldn't tell her about his cheating ass. That would be my leverage. The carrot I would dangle in front of him to put him back on the straight and narrow. If he failed to heed my very generous warning, I'd use the stick. I'd tell her what he did, and the rest would be up to her.
So it was with a slight surge of adrenaline in my blood that I went to the food court and found a place at the front of the seating area, glancing around for a beautiful woman with long light brown hair, who John assured me, was attractive enough to be a model, even if she wasn't tall enough. John had seen her with Eric at a club in downtown Brooklyn on a weekend when Eric was supposed to be out of town on business.
I grabbed a tray of sushi and sat down, my red umbrella on the table beside me. There had been no rain for over a week, so she'd know who I was when she saw the red umbrella.
I planned on arriving early and watching the people come and go so I could catch a glimpse of her before she saw me. I liked to take whatever advantage I could when handling a business deal. I glanced around the food court, looking for someone who resembled the woman John described, but there was no one there who fit the bill.
I removed my cell and sent Lexi a message about five minutes before we were supposed to meet.