The Adultery Club (9 page)

“You missed Evie’s Bible class recital,” my wife tells me.

“Christ, I’m sorry, I’d completely forgotten—”

“No, I mean you
missed
it,” Mal lilts. “I haven’t had so much fun in years.”

I tuck the handset under my chin and start to lace my shoes. “Come on, then.”

“Moses—and I quote—‘led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread
made without any ingredients. Then he went up Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandos. He died before he ever reached Canada but the commandos made it.’ ”

I snort with laughter.

“No, no, wait, it gets better,” Mal giggles. “ ‘Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sara Dessert. The climate of the Sara is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.’ ”

Out of the mouths of babes—

“She didn’t actually
write
that,” I exclaim.

“She did, I have it here. I can’t wait until half-term, they’re tackling medieval history then.”

When I ring off later, I discover that Sara has left a message on my voice mail while I’ve been discussing the finer points of Egyptology with my middle child. Since it is below freezing outside and I have no desire to compete with office revelers for a taxi the week before Christmas, I am happy to accede to her suggestion that we meet in the hotel restaurant downstairs at eight to discuss tomorrow’s case over dinner. We do have to eat, after all.

Fifteen minutes later, at precisely two minutes to eight, and armed with a stack of legal files, I stand in the hotel lobby and glance around for my colleague.

Oh Christ. Oh bloody Christ. I am in deep, deep trouble
.

She’s waiting at the entrance to the restaurant, her back toward me as she talks to the maître d’. Her statuesque frame is sheathed in a soft, black wool dress that manages simultaneously to skim and to cling to every voluptuous contour. It ends demurely enough at the knee; but she is wearing black seamed stockings and a pair of scarlet high heels that
either ruin the outfit or set it off beautifully. I suspect you need to be a woman to tell.

I realize I am gaping, and close my mouth. Jamming my files across my poker-hard erection, I take a deep breath and go over to her.
This is business. Just business—

Oh, Jesus
.

She turns at my approach and smiles. “Great. You got my message.”

A deep V of honeyed skin plunges to a generously displayed cleavage. Between her breasts, a silver heart-shaped pendant nestles. I wonder if it is warm from her skin, or perhaps she has only just put it on, it’s still cool to the touch.

My cock bucks and for the first time since I was fifteen, I wonder if I’m actually going to come in my pants.

“—I said, is a booth all right with you, Nick?”

I nod dumbly. The waiter escorts us to our table, and for a few moments we fuss with napkins and menus and breadsticks. I clear a space on the tablecloth for my files, building a manila rampart between us. It’s the only way I can tear my eyes from her breasts.

A silence descends. Awkwardly I clear my throat, squaring the heap of the files in front of me with military precision. “So—ah—are you going out somewhere later?”

She gives me an odd look. “No, why?”

Girls are different these days, of course: They dress for themselves. The appreciative physical response they elicit from hapless males is just so much collateral damage.

She snaps a breadstick in two, and puts it to her mouth. Instantly I picture those full pink lips wrapped around my throbbing cock. Grimly I cross my legs and recite my eight times tables.

A tiny crumb falls into her cleavage, and negligently she licks her forefinger and dusts between her breasts to retrieve it.
Six eights are forty-eight—

“So, have we heard anything back from the other side?” she asks, glancing up.

“Nothing official,” I say, gratefully seizing the conversational lifeline. “But our barrister, Roger, happened to be in Court on Friday on another case opposite Sandra Reizen, who’s representing the wife in our case tomorrow. Sandra couldn’t comment directly, of course, but she gave Roger the distinct impression she’s going to push the wife to settle out of Court.”

“Interesting. You think the wife will agree?”

“It’s certainly possible—”

We spend the next thirty minutes discussing the case; safe on neutral legal territory and with a swift couple of Scotches soon under my belt, I finally allow myself to relax a notch or two. There’s no doubting the alarming physical effect this woman has on me, but she’s all business, brisk and efficient, and I realize with relief that however lurid my fantasies may be, they are just that:
fantasies
. Unreciprocated schoolboy crushes are hardly a threat to anyone’s marriage.

She scans the wine list and orders a decent but inexpensive bottle with dinner; I am impressed by both her
savoir-faire
and her taste. Mal always defers to me over wine. I’m not entirely sure I’d appreciate a woman taking control like this on a permanent basis, but it is certainly an interesting novelty.

During the meal—lamb cutlets for me, fillet of sea bass for her—our conversation broadens to encompass the legal profession in general, and our firm in particular; she permits herself an expression of amused tolerance when Fisher and David are mentioned, but is otherwise commendably discreet.

In fact,
I
appear to be the one doing all the talking, but
it’s a pleasant change to have such an appreciative audience. Almost hanging on your every word. Especially when the audience in question is so very young. And attractive.

Sara barely touches her meal, which surprises me; she doesn’t look like a picky eater. I prefer a woman who tucks into her food; it shows enthusiasm for life.

“Is everything all right?” I ask. “We can order something else if it doesn’t pass muster—”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m just not that hungry. Too many breadsticks, probably.” She leans back and smiles—to dazzling effect—as a waiter tops up our glasses. “Tell me, Nick, how long have you been with Fisher’s?”

“Good God. Let me see. I joined just before my thirtieth birthday, so that’s thirteen—no, it’ll be fourteen years this winter.”

She regards me for a moment, her clear gray eyes considering. “I’d only have put you in your mid-thirties now, tops. Although I suppose if I sat and worked it out, you’d have to be older to have gained such a reputation.”

“Reputation?”

“Look, you were the main reason I applied to the firm,” she says frankly. “I kept hearing your name mentioned around, and of course you have acted in some landmark cases. I know it’s probably not the thing to say, but I couldn’t think of a better training than working with you.”

I feel ridiculously flattered. “That’s terribly sweet of you, but—”

“Sweet has nothing to do with it, Nick. It’s the truth.”

No one has ever called me Nick before. Even at school, I was always Nicholas. I think I rather like the diminutive; it sounds younger, a little less dull and middle-aged.

She pushes her untouched plate away and leans earnestly
toward me. Thank God for the files between us, or I’d have a view straight down her cleavage to her navel.

“The Hopewell case changed divorce law in this country forever,” she says. “No wife had ever been awarded a third of her husband’s future earnings until that ruling. Did you have any idea going into it that you were about to set such a significant precedent?”

“Actually, that was a very interesting case for several reasons, very shrewd of you to bring it up—”

A waiter interrupts to ask if we want coffee.

“I’d love some,” Sara says. “Let’s have it in the bar, Nick, chillax a bit. And maybe a cognac?”

Chillax?
Of course:
chill out
and
relax
. Christ, she speaks a different language.

“Nick?”

I’ve had more than enough to drink already, and I should go back to my room to reread my case notes and get some sleep.

But I find myself following Sara’s swaying hips—
five eights are forty
—to a couple of pseudodistressed leather sofas at right angles to each other in a corner of the dim bar next door. I dump the legal files on a side table as Sara kicks off her fuck-me red heels and curls her feet beneath her. She props her chin on her hand and leans on the arm of her sofa, accidentally presenting me with an eye-popping view of her breasts in their lacy black bra. I swear I can actually
see
the dark pink tint of her nipples—

“The Hopewell case,” she prompts.

Once again, her professionalism saves me. I shift in my chair and mentally conjugate Latin verbs, multiplication having worn out its welcome.

Her silver gaze is interested as I delineate the details of
the complex case; it really is a pleasure to have such an in-depth discussion about work with someone who really understands and is fascinated, rather than bored, by the minutiae. I can’t blame Mal for losing interest beyond the headline facts of my cases; she’s always happy to listen when I talk shop, but clearly only a fellow lawyer can truly appreciate the technical detail. In parallel, I adore Mal’s spring pea soup, of course, happy to lap it up; but the genesis of the homemade chicken stock that constitutes its culinary base isn’t necessarily the most fascinating of conversations.

“Did you always want to work in divorce law?” Sara asks as a companionable silence finally falls between us.

I watch her roll the cognac glass between her palms, mesmerized by the sensuous movement of her long hands. The amber liquid, refracted through the crystal, casts gold darts across her face that bring out the tawny glints in her cropped blond hair.

“Pretty much. I toyed with corporate and tax law for a brief moment—”

“I know.” She laughs a laugh I can feel in my trouser pockets. “Don’t we all?”

I smile with her. Despite the excruciating sexual tension—I have the worst case of blue balls—I feel surprisingly warm and mellow: due in no small part, I realize, to the alcohol I’ve consumed; but due, also, to her relaxing and attentive company. I realize that she has cleverly deferred to me and allowed me to ramble on at length all evening—I’m not a total innocent—but that deference itself is rather flattering. And she really
is
extremely easy to talk to. As well as being exceptionally easy on the eye.

I loosen my tie and suspenders, sinking back into the comfortable sofa with a contented sigh.

“There have been times I’ve wished I’d sold out and taken the corporate shilling,” I admit, “usually around the same time the next set of school fees fall due.”

“It’s cool you didn’t, or I’d never have got to work with you.”

“Well, that’s very kind, but—”

“I told you, Nick,” she says, lightly brushing my forearm,
“you
were the reason I joined the firm.”

Somehow, her hand lingers. I should pull gently away. I should thank her now for a pleasant evening, pick up my files, and go upstairs. Alone.

I don’t move.

Seconds pass. I’m acutely aware of her touch on my arm, of the fact that only a few millimeters of cotton separate my skin from hers. The mellow feeling of just a few moments ago is a distant memory. My cock is as hard as rock.

I’m overwhelmed by the urge to pull this woman—so very different from my wife—into my arms, crush those shiny, pliable pink lips beneath mine, to bury my face in those full breasts and plunge myself into the warm wet core of her. I want to lose myself in her, to get hot and dirty with her; I want to do things to her I’m too ashamed even to put into words.

Her gray eyes meet mine, and I see permission in them.

“So, Nick,” she says, very softly, and her voice is as intimate as the rustle of sheets, “would you like to come upstairs for a nightcap?”

The words
throb in the air between us.
Come on, Nick
, I will him silently.
Come on, say yes, say yes, you know you want to
.

Those dish-water bedroom eyes of his are clearly picturing me spread-eagled naked on a four-poster bed and covered with bloodred rose petals à la Mena Suvari, but there seem to be roadblocks on the information superhighway between his brain and vocal cords. God, Nick, how difficult
is
it? Short of lying down and sprinkling myself with parsley garnish, could I be offering sex on a plate any more obviously?

If I have to hold this relaxed, inviting smile much longer I’m going to get lockjaw. Shit, I can’t believe how much I want him to say yes.

I touch my tongue lightly to dry lips and don’t miss the responsive judder in his pin-striped trousers. I don’t know if the public-school poker up his arse is doing something to his
prostate, but this uptight, repressed, missionary-position Englishman also happens to be the most sexual man I’ve ever met. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

And fuck, do I want to be the one to show him
.

Naturally Amy thinks it’s hysterical that I’ve got the hots for my married boss. After all the grief I’ve given her over her affair with Terry, I suppose I can’t blame her. The difference is,
I
know what I’m doing, and more importantly, how this will end, even now, before it’s begun.
Especially
before it’s begun. You borrow the other little girl’s toy for a while until you get bored playing with it and then you give it back. No keepsies in this game.

I’m only going to borrow him, I tell the tiny voice needling my conscience. No one’s going to get hurt. No one’s even going to
know
.

I lean forward to pick up my bag, treating Nick to another tempting glimpse of my tits, and throw him an amused, cool look:
Coming?
I daren’t touch him again, much as I’m longing to. One crass move and he’ll run for the hills.

My stomach is fizzing with nerves and excitement. The twanging in my damp knickers is vibrating all the way to my toes.
Say yes say yes say yes
.

Let me tell you, if I didn’t fancy the pants off this man, I’d never be going to this much trouble. It was funny at first, the way he kept shooting out of a room every time I entered it, or walking up four flights of stairs if I got into the lift—no wonder he’s lost weight. But in the last couple of weeks, it’s stopped being so amusing. I really like Nick. I want him to like me. How is he ever going to do that if he never sticks around long enough to hear the second syllable of my “Hello”?