“Everything.” He folded his arms across his chest, ready to stand his ground and fight if she wanted to go there. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my son.”
“She’s lying.”
“How would you know what she was lying about if you weren’t involved in anything?” he asked.
Frustrated and caught, she passed him, blew into the family room, snatched up her purse, and was out the door, not even bothering to say good-bye to Rowe, who looked after her questioningly.
The minute she got into Paulette’s new Mercedes, which she’d borrowed, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed her friend’s number. “That bitch is sleeping with my husband,” she said without a greeting or preamble.
“Which bitch?”
Reese slammed her fist down hard on the steering wheel. “Kira! She and Chris are fucking.”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised. You set it up, remember?” Paulette let out a long yawn.
Reese stared at the phone, then screamed into it, “I asked her to fuck him, not be his girlfriend, damn it!”
“What did you really expect? The girl’s a gold digger.” Even Paulette grasped the irony of calling someone else that term, but she also knew that, like bitches—as in dogs—gold diggers came in all shapes, sizes, and pedigrees, and she considered herself head and shoulders above the rest.
Reese sighed heavily. The whole world seemed to have turned against her. “It’s just fucked-up.”
A click sounded on the phone. “Hold on, Reese; that’s my other line.”
While Paulette took the call, Reese sat dejectedly, going over the log of calls on Chris’s bill, torturing herself as she noted how often Chris and Kira had spoken on the phone during the days before and after D-day. As she sat lamenting the situation her eyes fell upon another familiar set of numbers. She blinked, sure that she was seeing things. When she opened them, sure enough another other ten digits on Chris’s cell phone log were familiar. They belonged to Shaun, her lover!
Her heart lurched in her chest. Not only did they talk regularly, but there was a call made from Shaun to Chris on that fateful night they were together at the Four Seasons. Her face flushed with anger. Not only had Chris played her where Kira was concerned, but the sneaky bastard had set her up with Shaun. In her anger another possibility bubbled to the surface: Maybe Chris and Kira set her up. After all, Kira was in town and at the party when Shaun mysteriously appeared. She felt like such a fool! Their plan had worked brilliantly, while hers had fallen apart at the seams.
“Sorry about that.” Paulette was back on the phone. “Reese, are you there?”
In a monotone she said, “You’re not going to believe this.” Reese sat there slowly shaking her head.
“What now?”
“It’s Shaun.”
“What, is Kira fucking him, too?”
Reese rolled her eyes. “Maybe.”
“What are you talking about?” Paulette was sounding impatient.
“Chris and Shaun.”
“What? Is Chris fucking Shaun?”
“No, but they both fucked me.”
“I know that; now, what’s the big deal?”
Reese exhaled, exasperated. “Chris, and probably Kira, set me up with Shaun. Chris and Shaun are boys! I’m looking at the phone records!” she yelled.
“You’re kidding! Wow!”
“That dirty, low-down muthafucker!”
“Which one?”
“Both of them. No, all of them! That’s fucked-up.”
“Yeah, it’s exactly what you were planning; he just beat you to it.”
“Hey, whose side are you on?”
“Don’t even go there. Remember, I’m the one who’s letting you sleep at her place, has hired an attorney for you, and has your back in the press.”
“Speaking of attorneys, we need to call Justin. Since Chris is fucking around with Kira, maybe it could help my case.” Her attorney had been in contact with Chris’s lawyers, and so far they were still playing hardball, protesting any financial settlement at all since Reese had broken the marital vows, and Chris was seeking full custody of Rowe. Under the original tenets of the prenup she would have been entitled to $2 million, plus child support. That sum had seemed piddling a couple of months ago, but at this point she would have welcomed every penny of it.
“That may not be a good thing,” Paulette cautioned. “Chris filed a legal separation, so it won’t matter who he’s sleeping with now, unless you can prove he did it before you split up. Besides, if you drag Kira into court and she testifies that you plotted with her to set him up, it could hurt you more than it hurts him.”
“You’re right, but we’ve gotta do something. What about press?” Reese was biting her chipped fingernails, something she would never have done months ago.
“You have to trust me, Reese. The one thing that I know from being in this business for the last six years is that everybody’s got a skeleton or two buried somewhere, so I’ve got a private investigator digging around. Once we find something, then I’ll start the press campaign. We will need public opinion moving toward your side in order to get Chris to settle out of court. He can’t afford to have skeletons walking around, not with all of those lucrative sponsorship contracts he has on the table. All we have to do is a little digging, strike gold, and then you’ll get paid.”
And then you can get the hell out of my house, Paulette thought to herself.
TWENTY-ONE
“Oh, baby. That’s sooooo goooood,” Paulette panted and hissed. Forget Halle; Paulette’s performances were truly Oscar-worthy. “Omigod, omigoooood. That hurts soooooo good. You’ve got the best dick eveeeer,” she lied.
Max had no sexual technique whatsoever, and couldn’t find a clitoris with the help of a global positioning satellite system. The saving grace was that usually the whole bumbling act was over within a few minutes, at which time he’d roll over heavily, as if he’d slain a fire-breathing dragon. But Paulette was so in love that he could have come at her waving a limp noodle, and she’d have happily spread her legs and faked a climax. To Paulette, Max represented social redemption for her and her mother. He was the one who got away—from June, and from Paulette.
He pushed and poked around on top of her, with his head buried deeply in her cavernous cleavage, emitting grunts of effort here and there. For all of the intimacy on his part, Paulette could have been a mail-order blowup doll. After another few minutes of thrashing about, he stiffened like a seizure victim, cocked his head way back, and came. Paulette didn’t remember the last time she’d had an orgasm, and Max never bothered to inquire whether she did or not.
He rolled off her onto his back, his arms splayed at his sides.
“That was wonderful, baby.” Paulette continued lying like a Persian rug.
He patted her thigh in response, the way one might an eager and obedient puppy. The thing he liked best about Paulette was how little effort it took to make her purr like a kitten.
With Lauren he never felt as if she were ever satisfied, in or out of bed. Aside from her looks, his wife’s money and social position were what attracted him to her to begin with, yet they were also the things he resented day to day. Though he and Paulette managed to heist a good deal of the Baines fortune by forging the will, that je ne sais quoi that rich people wore like a cloak couldn’t be confiscated; borrowed, or imitated.
“What are you thinking about?” Paulette asked, snuggling closer to him, clearly craving postcoital intimacy.
He hated when women asked that question of him, especially after sex. It was obvious that they wanted to hear that he was thinking about them, which was rarely the case. In fact, with Paulette, it was never the case.
He sometimes wondered why he had ever even started the affair with her to begin with, though he knew the answer. The psychological explanat
ion involved typical passive-aggressive behavior. By fucking Lauren’s cousin, he could get back at his wife without having to confront her or his own deeply rooted issues with her. He could bring her down a peg or two and make himself feel better—mentally and physically—in the process. So, as much as Paulette despised being Lauren’s cousin, it was really the only thing that she had going for her, as far as he was concerned. And of course, the purely physical reason was that magical thing that she did with her vagina.
She nudged him to get his attention. He was daydreaming, about her, she hoped. “A penny for your thoughts.” She snuggled even closer.
She was so needy, he thought. Max had a barely contained urge to push her away from him, dress in a hurry, and bolt out the door. And it was probably time that he did just that. They’d gotten the money, had a little fun, and now it was time to call it a day. “You wanna know what I’m really thinking?” he asked, summoning up his courage. Enough was enough. It was time to end this before someone got hurt.
She smiled, but it looked more like a pained grimace. “Of course I do.”
He rolled onto his side to face her. “I was thinking about the future.” He was running his it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech through his head.
The prospect that he was thinking about their future increased the show of Paulette’s teeth as her lips spread across her mouth; then she turned to face him, too. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about,” she interrupted. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while now, and we’re great together.” She rolled over onto her back and gazed toward the ceiling. “And I’ve been thinking: What could possibly make our relationship even better?”
“That’s what I want to talk about, our relationship.” There was no easy way to do this; he just had to say it. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“You’re right, and I want to change that. In fact, I have something to tell you that will.” She sat up in bed, excitement hanging over her like a halo.
The conversation wasn’t going exactly the way Max had hoped. She seemed to cling to some far-fetched fantasy that they’d live happily ever after. It was definitely time to bail out. “Listen, Paulette—”
She couldn’t hold it anymore. “Max, I’m pregnant!”
The muscles in his face went slack, and his mouth hung open like a Venus flytrap.
She badly misread his shocked expression. “I know; I was surprised, too! But isn’t this great?” she shrieked.
Max felt trapped in an underwater bubble. He could see Paulette’s mouth moving, but couldn’t hear the words that were coming out of it. A stream of drool reminded him to close his own mouth. “This can’t be,” he finally managed to say. He wore a rubber religiously; in fact, he kept a stash in her nightstand.
Paulette must have been locked her own bubble, because she seemed to hear nothing he was really saying, only what her fantasy required of him. “I don’t know how it happened,” she lied. “You know we always use protection.” She gestured over to the nightstand, which contained the box of condoms. The problem wasn’t a lack of condoms, but the little pinprick she’d used to “prep” them before he even arrived. Since Paulette always slid the contraceptive on for him after reaching into the nightstand and pretending to tear open a new package, he was never the wiser. After sex she’d gently remove the condom and head into the bathroom to clean up, but not until she locked the door and lay in the tub on her back with her legs up against the wall, where she’d then squeeze the remaining contents into her sex.
The bubble finally burst, propelling Max up. “Paulette, you don’t understand. This can’t happen.”
Paulette shook her head, still ignoring the words that came from his mouth. “Oh, yes, it can. I’m three months pregnant.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “There can be no baby.”
Paulette looked at him as though she’d been physically slapped. “What do you mean, there can be no baby? We are having a baby.”
“First of all, there is no ‘we,’” he said sternly. He could see that kid gloves weren’t going to work here.
Now her face really cracked. Her daydream was shattering into pieces right before her eyes. “What are you talking about? We’re getting married.”
He’d heard enough. Max got up and pulled on his underwear, pants, shirt, and shoes as rapidly as possible. “You’re crazy! I never said that we were getting married, and I certainly never wanted to have a baby.”
“But you did.” Having a baby was all he ever talked about.
“Yeah, but with Lauren!”
“That selfish bitch! Why her? Why does everyone love her?” Paulette sobbed.
She was up, chasing him across the room, clutching at his shirt. He pushed her aside, rushing out of the bedroom. Paulette ran after him. Before he reached the door she slipped to the ground, but continued grabbing at the hem of his pants. On her knees, she begged. “Why Lauren? Why not me?” Tears ran down her face, chin, and neck, and streamed into the crevice between her huge breasts.
When the door slammed shut, Paulette remained crumpled in a sobbing heap on the floor. This was not how she had envisioned the happy scene that would play out when she told Max the blessed news. In her version he held her and praised her for giving him what he wanted most—a child. They were supposed to grow closer, more and more in love every day, but something had gone horribly wrong; he obviously hadn’t read the same script.
Time passed, and she had no idea how long she lay there, wallowing in her sorrow, but sometime later the door opened and she rose to her knees, her arms outstretched. “Max, you’re back. I knew you’d come back.”
But it was Reese, who was supposed to be with Rowe all day, who walked through the door. “What happened to you?” She stared at Paulette as though she’d grown two heads since that morning. “You look like shit!”
Paulette crumbled back to the floor, deflated and emotionally wasted. “He’s gone,” she cried.
Reese knelt beside her. “It’s okay; he’s just a man.” Hell, she had problems too, but you wouldn’t see her bawling just because a man left her—only when he took his money with him.
“It’s easy for you to say. Look at you. You can always get another man. It’s not so easy for someone like me.” She began sobbing uncontrollably. Paulette had never articulated those feelings out loud, so it was devastating to confront the demons that normally lurked quietly within her subconscious. Though Paulette had assumed that money and the power that usually came with it would make her happy, she was beginning to realize that her issues ran much deeper.
That was the saddest thing Reese had ever heard. How must it feel not to be beautiful? she wondered. “Paulette, we’ll get you all fixed up, and you’ll have men lined up at your door,” she lied.
“That’s not all.” Paulette took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant. I’m having Max’s baby.”
Reese raised her brows and stood up. “Now, that’s just plain stupid.” She walked out of the room, leaving Paulette alone.
TWENTY-TWO
Max surreptitiously watched Lauren apply a coat of lipstick at the vanity in her boudoir, while he stood across the room, dressing for a dinner meeting with a new client. While Lauren slept soundly beside him, he’d barely closed his eyes the previous night, tormented as he was by Paulette’s deranged plan to have a baby—his baby! He’d tossed and turned like a trout caught on a line, cursing the day he’d let himself be hooked by Paulette. For him, their relationship began as a tantalizing flirtation—fodder for the sexual imagination, not a consciously planned affair.
One weekend Paulette “happened” to stop by while Lauren was on Martha’s Vineyard. She wasted no time baiting him, and before he could say “slut” she had him spread-eagled, flat on his back, with his penis at full mast. She took him in with a vacuumlike suction, wrapping him in her tight, warm, wet cocoon. Then the most amazing thing happened: On the upstroke her
sex literally snapped his penis, causing the most amazing sensation experienced by man! The pleasure was so intense he nearly passed out as she worked her magic over and over again, driving him nearly insane. At the moment of climax he felt a jolt of electricity surge through him like a cattle prod.
Until then, as far as he was concerned, the snapper was pure legend, like the Loch Ness Monster: No one he knew had ever actually encountered one. At first he thought there was witchcraft involved, or black magic in them thar’ lips, but he later learned that there was a perfectly reasonable and purely anatomical explanation for the snapping action. A small, infinitesimal percentage of women had cervices positioned at such an angle that the penis moved over its ledge and back during sex, resulting in an intense snapping sensation; therefore, the snapping pussy was not some special paranormal hat trick, but actually a physical deformity. In any regard, now he perfectly understood the concept of being pussy-whipped; even though he hated Paulette at the moment, and had never really liked her to begin with, he still felt an unwelcome craving for her magical snapping cervix. He wished to God that he’d never had the pleasure. That Venus flytrap was like a dangerous drug—crack cocaine, one hit and you were an addict. After taking the plunge, he found himself unable to extricate himself, no matter how much he disliked her brash personality or her tacky ways.
He shook his head, a vaguely defeatist gesture, wanting to erase from his mind—and loins—the muscle memory associated with Paulette’s snapping pussy. Of all people, why did Paulette, Lauren’s cousin, have to be one of the few women on earth who actually possessed one?
Weekly rounds of sex with Lauren had continued after the affair initially began, though it became more of a chore for them both, not much different from doing laundry. They’d never had explosive chemistry to begin with, but sadly his affair with Paulette—or more accurately put, her pussy—extinguished any flicker that might have ever existed.
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