Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (2 page)

“I know how it works,” he reminds her.  “I’ve been with her since we were in college, you might recall.”

Dishing on Siobhan is a Jaime specialty.  Reminders that Siobhan is Dodge’s wife, that they have a past together – or worse, a future – interest her far less.

“Check out Mr. Chuck,” Jaime says, nodding at the guy he noticed earlier – the one who looks
like a more demented version of himself.

Mr. Chuck looks uncomfortable, out of place, lingering on the margins of the crowd, near people, but not with them. 

The crowd is camouflage for a guy like that, not company - cover for constant leering, his gaze swinging, lingering, over women in the room – Siobhan, in particular, and Jaime a lot too. 

Dodge meets his eyes in the mirror as he eyes Jaime, as he has been all night - whenever she dances, or leans over the bar, or shifts in any way even slightly in his direction. 

Any motion that allows him to ogle any of her curves.

Not that Dodge can blame him; every one of those moves pushes one of those curves tighter against some part of his own body, the soft cushion of a breast crushing against his arm, a hard, a smooth hip denting the muscle of his thigh, her fingertips sometimes tracing shapes on his jeans, sometimes just rubbing circles on the small of his back.

All of this is having its intended effect.

There isn’t much he can do, he tells himself.

He’s just sitting here, drinking his whiskey.

The only thing he can do – the only thing he wants to do – is not a consideration, no matter what his wife is doing on the dance floor.

It isn’t going to happen.

Jaime knows this.

Wouldn’t be doing
what she is doing if she doesn’t.

“He work at the agency?” Dodge asks, watching Mr. Chuck stare after a cocktail waitress walking past him.

“Not exactly,” Jaime explains.  “Mail room.  That’s Mail Room Chuck.  M.R. Chuck.  Mr. Chuck.”

“So now the mail room guys get an invite to the annual party?” Dodge asks.

“No,” she laughs.  “He’s creepy.  He just shows up.”

“He looks like a little creepy,” Dodge concurs.  “He keeps checking you out.”

“He actually looks a lot like you,” she points out.  “Not as cute, though.”

“I noticed,” Dodge admits.  “Not the cute part.  Just the resemblance.”

“That’s more than a resemblance,” she insists.  “That’s almost doppelganger.  Hope your wife doesn’t accidentally take him home.”

“She’ll know soon enough if it she doesn’t have the real thing,” Dodge tells her, boasting, but not totally taking her bait
.

“Maybe I should drag him out to the dance floor, find out,” she muses. Then, mumbling, she adds, “Rock his world.”

She’s drunker.

Dodge stifles another groan as her body slithers closer against him, giving him a hint of what it might mean for her to rock somebody’s world.

He breathes, waits for the world to stop rocking.

When Siobhan arrives at Dodge’s other side, it’s both terrifying and a relief – caught red-handed, so to speak, but saved from a situation he
didn’t ask for.

And can’t control.

He can’t control Jaime. 

He can’t control himself around Jaime.

That’s where Siobhan comes in.

“Well, if it isn’t my husband and my assistant,” she announces as she lands against the bar, dropping a sweaty arm around Dodge’s neck.

Around her trophy.

Jaime
is already separated herself
him, sensing with some female intuition that she had caught Siobhan’s attention long before she actually arrived.  Brazen as Jaime is when Siobhan isn’t around, she knows her place, isn’t going to jeopardize Siobhan’s benefaction.

That’s how Dodge knows Jaime is playing a game – the flirting
and the advances – he and Jaime
are both beholden to Siobhan.

Siobhan is the sun, and she wou
ld incinerate Jaime if she dares
fly too close.

“Thanks for the party, boss!” Jaime toasts, raising her martini, an olive sloshing over the rim.

“Enjoying it?” Siobhan asks.  “Or just my husband?”

Her tone is friend
ly - not totally cold -
but betrays a more calculated spar.

Even intoxicated, she has a way with words - a way of cutting to a point.

Jaime knows how to deflect Siobhan’s assertive postures, though, surviving as her assistant for over two years now.

“I thought he was included in tonight’s entertainment,” she quips, flashing her patented smile.

If Siobhan is anything like Dodge, she can’t resist that smile.

Not even Siobhan is immune to Jaime’s charm, relaxing at the joke.

Jaime knows it’s flattery to want what Siobhan has.  To show no envy is almost as dangerous as coveting too much.

“He is.  For me,” Siobhan declares, tightening her arm around Dodge’s neck and pulling his face into hers to plant a very deliberate kiss.

He doesn’t appreciate the demonstration of power, or the manhandling, but Siobhan is drunk, and even a little jealous, so he indulges her by acting like Jaime’s not there, pulling her into his lap and making her laugh.

“Now take me home,” she orders.

Siobhan is the boss. 

He knows it. 

Siobhan knows it.

And Jaime knows it, already flitting across the room, to Mr. Chuck or Rod Dressler or some stranger, any
one to demonstrate that Dodge i
s but a moment’s amusement, just another man on the margins of the crowd, a toy, a trifle, the flimsy wing of a butterfly flapping, an exhale in a
hurricane.

Waiting for a cab outside, the jarring plastic yellow of caution tape wraps itself around four metal posts, over a broken piece of sidewalk, jack-hammered earlier that day.  Its tail, flapping in the breeze, catches Dodge’s eye.

Siobhan notices, shakes her head in disapproval.

But Dodge is already grinning, mischief twinkling in his eyes, tearing the caution tape loose.  “
Who needs all these restrictions?” he asks,
with a shrug.

“You do,” she insists, trying not to share in his joy at the misdeed, but laughing with him anyway.  “You have no idea how to behave.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, but he knows the answer.

They hop in the next cab, disappearing into the night, the tape fluttering away in the wind.

*****

And so he does exactly what Siobhan demands, kissing the sweat beaded along the taut muscle lines of her neck as they bounce in the back seat of the cab on the way home.

The cabbie watches in the mirror, but neither of them cares, throwing money at him as he pulls in front of their house.  She giggles at the top of her lungs as Dodge chases
her through the gate and to
the back
of the house
.  She skitters
across the de
ck and straight into
the pool, gown and all, laughing the whole time.

He catches her as she climbs out the other side, pulling her out and sprawling her across the decorated concrete.  Her dress is soaked, clinging to her ribs, outlining the bones of her hips, and falls to pieces in his hand as he pulls it off of her.

Dodge imagines sequins flying instead,
can even feel those
curves pressing against him still in his mind.

Siobhan controls his money, and his
life -
and his body, for that matter.

But his mind is free.

The swirling vortex of a hurricane, the calm center of chaos.

*****

Dodge wakes up, the woven mesh of the poolside furniture branding itself onto his dry flesh.

He’s alone.

He remembers Siobhan cuddling, on her back, on his stomach on this very chair the night before.  It’s the last thing he remembers, but it’s a good memory.

Waking up outdoors, by himself -
figuring she left
him here when she went to bed -
isn’t as good of a feeling.  He doesn’t complain; a lot of men would have traded their lives for his last night. 

Jaime at the bar. 

Siobhan by the pool.

He’d sleep out here every night.

“You awake, Princess?” he hears Siobhan say from behind him, hearing the soft pitter patter of bare feet approaching.

He cranes his neck to look behind him, over the back of the chair.

Siobhan is bouncing her way toward him, in a delicious white bikini. She looks stunning, as usual, even early in the morning and hung over. 

He realizes, with some embarrassment, he is naked.

“Oh relax,” she laughs, smiling at him as he blushes, dropping into the chair next to him.

“Who’d think you’d get so excited over a mimosa,” she chides, handing him the champagne with its splash of orange juice.  “Have some medicine.”

“Thanks,” he groans, drinking it in one gulp, dehydrated, feeling better as his blood starts to flow again.

“I’ve got to go into the city tonigh
t for a meeting tomorrow
,” she announces, sipping her mimosa.