Secrets of a Shoe Addict (26 page)

“I’m sure he got it this time,” Robert said, quirking a smile that made her wonder how much he’d heard.

“Jacob,” she said, keeping her eyes fastened on Robert’s. “Go get your jammies on, okay?”

“Do I
have
to?”

“Yes!” Robert and Loreen said simultaneously.

“It’s a school night,” Loreen added.

Jacob rolled his eyes dramatically, and said,
“Okay.”
His eyes lit up. “Do I get ice cream?”

“You already had dessert at the restaurant,” Robert said. “Now go. Get your jams on.”

Jacob slumped out of the room dramatically. When he was gone, Loreen breathed a sigh of relief.

For a moment.

“So,” Robert said, leaning back against the sofa and steepling his hands in front of him. “What were you up to when we got home?”

“I told you.” She swallowed and licked her dry lips. “I was on a business call.”

“Then I’m afraid to ask what your business is.”

She felt her face go red hot. “What do you mean?”

Robert lowered his chin and looked at her in that way she recognized to mean
cut the bullshit
.

“How much did you hear?” she asked, deflating. She already knew the answer: enough to humiliate her.

“It’s none of my business,” Robert said. “I shouldn’t have listened—”

“You listened?”

This time Robert blushed. “I can’t lie to you, Lor. I couldn’t turn away. At first I thought it wasn’t you,” he went on. “We never . . . you know, we never talked that way to each other.”

Maybe they should have. “I know,” she agreed.

“So . . .”

She could tell he wanted to ask if she had another man. And she wanted to reassure him on that point. Not that she owed him fidelity
or anything anymore, but it would be a little hard for her if she knew he was sleeping with someone—and maybe he was, who knew?—so her instinct was to tell him that wasn’t the case.

But was it better for her to say she was a phone sex operator?

What would be harder for him to take?

She looked into his pale blue eyes. They always had that puppydog quality, just as Jacob’s did, so that shouldn’t have suckered her, but there was a deeper hurt in them that made her decide she had to tell him the truth.

“It’s not what you think,” she started.

He lifted an eyebrow. “It’s not?”

She winced. “Oh, Robert, this is not easy to explain.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“I know. But you want one, don’t you?”

He gave a laugh. “More than you can imagine.”

She swallowed. “Okay. So what happened is this. You know how we took the kids to Las Vegas for the band thing, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, some of us did a little gambling. A little too much gambling. Actually . . . it was a
lot
too much gambling. And I was the most foolish of everyone.”

Robert looked skeptical. “
You
gambled?”

“You have no idea.” She shuddered, remembering the night. “I was like a different person.”

“I can’t even imagine you doing that.” He didn’t say it in a judgmental way. He just sounded . . . interested. “Looks like I’m learning a lot of things about you I never knew.”

She gave a dry laugh. “Just be glad you got the good stuff and I saved the bad stuff for
after
our separation.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Denigrate yourself. There’s nothing wrong with gambling. There’s nothing wrong with losing at it either,” he added before she could say it.

She leveled her eyes on him. “Even when you do it with the PTA’s money?” she challenged.

He cocked his head. “You lost me.”

“I was drinking,” she began, then held up a hand. “Yes, I was drunk. I’m telling you, it was a strange weekend. Anyway, I got confused in the casino and accidentally got cash advances on the PTA credit card instead of my own.”

Robert gave a shout of laughter. “Not good.”

“Well, they
are
from the same bank.” She hesitated. There was no point in trying to defend herself. “No, it was stupid. Anyway, I racked up thousands of dollars’ worth of debt on the PTA card. Because I’m the treasurer, you know.” She smiled. The irony . . . it was all too ridiculous.

“I don’t want to butt in, but where are you going to get the money to pay it off? The real estate market isn’t exactly hot.” He laughed. “Despite your call earlier.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth and drew a breath in. “Funny you should mention that, because that’s what I’m doing to supplement my income.”

“Getting a boyfriend?” He looked confused.

“No.” She shook her head and held his gaze. “Phone sex.” Then, to be absolutely clear, “I’m a phone sex operator. Lonely men call 900-HOUSEWIVES and I tell them whatever they want to hear for however many minutes they can afford. Or, rather,
Mimi
does.”

“Mimi?”

She nodded. “My stage name.”

The shock on his face was complete. “You’re . . . Are you pulling my leg?”

“No. But I could. In fact, for two ninety-five a minute, I could pull just about anything you want me to.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

She shook her head. “I wish I were.”

“You’re having phone sex with strangers for money.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

He stood up and paced the floor in front of her. “When we were married, you didn’t have the time or energy to hold my hand. Now you’re jacking off strangers over the phone?”

“I don’t
want
to,” she said, looking down. “It’s just the only way to pay back the debt quickly.”

“So if I’d
paid
you—”

“Don’t go there,” she interrupted. “That is
not
what this is like.”

“Do you know how long I waited for you to be with me again? After Jacob was born, I understood it would take a while, but not
years
. If you had come to me at any point, if you had
tried
to put the intimacy back into our relationship, we might not be where we are. But all you did was rebuff me, and now . . .” He threw his hands in the air. “I can’t believe this.”

Loreen saw, for the first time since they’d separated, that Robert wasn’t being
critical
of her time with Jacob, he was
missing
her time with
him
.

How had she been so blind to that?

“It wasn’t that I didn’t
want
to . . . be with you.” Funny how hard it was to find the words when she wasn’t on the phone. “Back then, especially, with Jacob so young, it was just hard to find the right time.”

He looked doubtful.

And maybe, in a way, he was right.

“I didn’t feel good about myself,” she said plainly.

Robert looked startled. “What? What are you talking about?”

“After having Jacob.” She gestured toward her hip and stomach area. “I was never able to get my old shape back. I didn’t—I
don’t
—feel like myself.”

“But you
are
yourself. Did you think I was judging you?”

She thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I was judging myself so much that I couldn’t imagine you weren’t. Especially since you were seeing all the changes so”—she shrugged—“intimately.” Tears reached her eyes. She was embarrassed to say all of this out loud, and embarrassed that it was true. Her brief time with Rod, aside from the part where she got the bill, had felt “safe” because she knew she’d never see him again. She wouldn’t have to face him in the morning and wonder if he was thinking about how doughy her butt was compared to someone else’s.

Robert looked uncomprehending. “But I loved you. And any changes in your body, not that they were nearly as significant as you think, were because you carried and delivered our son. Your body is beautiful and strong and perfect just like it is.”

The tears ran down her cheeks, and she sniffled unseductively. “That’s nice of you to say—”

He grasped her arms. “Loreen, I
mean
it.”

She swallowed. “Even if you do, that doesn’t make me less self-conscious.” It would have been easy to say,
Then why didn’t you just go on a diet?
But Robert knew better.

“So you do it over the phone and you look however you want to.”

She thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Not that it’s been any great turn-on.” The conversation was making her uncomfortable. “It’s late, Robert. I need to get to bed.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s seven thirty.”

“You’re kidding.” It felt like midnight. “I must be coming down with something.”

Robert looked concerned. “Could be stress.”

She gave a dry laugh. “That’s for sure.”

“Want me to stay and put Jacob to bed?”

She did. But she couldn’t. “I’ll do it,” she said. “But thanks.”

He came to her and bent to kiss her cheek. He smelled of the same aftershave he always had. And soap. Robert always smelled clean.

He left, and Loreen went back to the sofa to sit down for a minute and rest.

She woke hours later. The room was dark, she was disoriented, and the only light in the house seemed to come from Jacob’s room, along with the very loud and
extremely
annoying sounds of
LEGO Star Wars II
on the PlayStation.

Loreen went upstairs and pushed Jacob’s door open. She shielded her eyes from the light. “What time is it?” she asked.

Jacob glanced at her then turned back to his game and shrugged. “Is Dad still here?”

“Dad left.” Loreen’s eyes fell on the clock. “Two hours ago. It’s ten, Jacob, what are you doing up still?”

He shrugged. “No one put me to bed.”

“Well, you’re ten years old. Can’t you put yourself to bed when it gets late?”

“I just figured you’d come up like usual.”

“Okay, I’m up now. Turn the game off, get your teeth brushed, and get yourself in bed.”

“But—”

“Now!”
It was way too late to argue about it.

Jacob put the game on hold, didn’t turn off the TV, and stalked off to the bathroom, where Loreen suspected he held the electric toothbrush up toward the door for a minute or two in the
ON
position before coming back out.

“Okay?” he asked, splaying his arms sarcastically.

He was at least three years too young for that kind of sarcasm. She hadn’t even attempted it until she was thirteen, and it had taken another three years to truly perfect it.

“Bed,” she commanded. “Right this minute.”

“Just lemme finish this game!”

“Jacob Henry Murphy, you have been up
hours
past your bedtime. Do you really think you should beg to stay up even longer to play a video game?”

Put that way, he seemed to get it. He hung his head. “No. I guess not.”

“Sleep. Got it?”

“I got it.”

“Good.” Loreen headed for her bedroom, knowing she’d have to get up in a few minutes to check and make sure Jacob hadn’t turned the game on again.

Fortunately the nap had done her good, and she had some energy to do a little administrative work she needed to catch up on. They now had five outside workers—or “actresses”—on the roster, and when she went to the site to check their statistics, she saw they were logging a lot of hours.

She went to the spreadsheet she’d created and made note of what they were owed. Loreen had arranged to pay weekly, on Fridays, via a PayPal account she’d created just for that purpose.

Taking calls was hard, but it was amazing how easy it was to be a virtual madam to
other
phone actresses.

And how lucrative.

She switched screens and checked the Gregslist listing. She
had
been planning to take it down, to keep the operation small, but she decided that she could handle a staff of maybe five more workers. The money was certainly persuasive.

She’d keep the ad up.

And she’d be a madam for just a
little
bit longer. After all, it was the best contribution she could make to the group.

Chapter
      
17
  

A
bbey had done a lot of soul searching in the weeks since they’d gotten back from Las Vegas, but she couldn’t decide if she thought running into Damon was a coincidence or punishment for her long-past sins.