The Other Woman (4 page)

It was such a feeble pop quiz. Pathetic really. Who didn’t know who Nickleback was?

His eyes brightened. He cocked his head to one side and gave me a now-you’re-in-trouble look. His smile grew smug before he said, “Nickleback, 'How You Remind Me.' You owe me lunch, a Corona, and a coke.”

“Damn!” I cried, letting go of his hand and smacking the table. “Guys aren’t supposed to know these things. But you do. Really, I have to say, Bradley, you blow…” slowly, I ran the tip of my tongue over my bottom lip, and looking directly at him said, “you
blow
my mind.”

I broke one of my rules about no seduction at the first date by intentionally and provocatively using the word
blow
. But I just couldn’t help it; I was mesmerized by the hunk in front of me, absolutely enthralled. That had never happened to me before. Usually, it was more business than anything with me, but with Bradley, he was so beautiful in every way that I was both shaken and stirred by his presence.

Perhaps he felt it too, because for a few seconds neither of us spoke; we just stared into each other’s eyes, a delicious heat smoldering between the two of us. He had stopped eating, stopped drinking, and was just staring at me. I wasn’t imagining it; I had smoothly and successfully ignited a sexual spark between Bradley and me.

When it was time to leave, being the gentleman he was, he walked me to my BMW.

“Well, thank you for that great lunch,” I said, turning to give him a brief hug.

“You’re welcome,” he said, seeming a little taken aback by my hug.

After pressing my double Ds against his chest, briefly at that, I pulled away.

I knew he would analyze our conversation long after we parted, so I
said
nothing that would convince him that I was flirting. My flirting and hugs were confusingly mixed. Deliberate. (Confuse a man and he will think about you long after you exit the scene. We’re striving for obsession, remember?)

I started penning my thoughts and triumphs when I was just seventeen, shortly after meeting Jean Caulker’s father. Steve Caulker was forty-two, but incredibly sexy, even though he had a daughter my age, and in spite of him having salt-and-pepper hair.

He ran regularly and blogged about running, his progress, his difficulties with his problematic knee...

Anonymously, I followed his blog and even commented at times.

He was really nice, responded to my comments, and answered my questions on running and jogging, during which time, I got to know him a little better.

But I didn’t like his wife. Cassandra Caulker was a snooty bitch with her pearls, coral lipstick, and French manicure. Always groomed, with a straight back and a quiet air of superiority.

I disliked the uptight bitch on the spot and decided then and there that it would be fun to wipe that smug look from her powdered face. And I did. Got her man in no time. It was amazing; I felt euphoric and empowered with my conquest. Best of all...her husband presented me with a VW Golf Sport! Cool, huh?

All the details of that conquest are in my book. My future bestselling book that is going to take care of me in my retirement. Chi-ching! J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, and Gillian Flynn won’t be able to hold a candle to me when it comes to my book sales.

****

Random Seduction Tip: The Contented Male

A contented man can seldom be seduced. But fear not, there is a way to get around that. You simply have to manufacture a need that only you can fill.

You need to instill tension, longing, and dissatisfaction in the mind of your target, and he will soon start to become discontented. He’ll begin to question all that he has been happy with, or thought he was happy with.

But tread carefully. Never attack his partner, his wife, or his environment. He may get defensive, which may cause you to lose momentum. Rather, insinuate and allow the seeds of doubt and uncertainty you have planted to sprout organically.

Like a handful of bird seeds, sprinkle leading questions that will indubitably make your target think long and hard about your questions after you have left the scene.

My favorite question to a man is, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…you’re a good looking, successful guy. Does your wife appreciate you? Does she ever stop to tell you just how amazing you are?”

Let’s reverse the roles: if you’re a married woman and a man other than your husband asked you that question, how would you really answer?

If he said, “You’re an attractive, hardworking, successful woman; does your husband appreciate all of this? Does he tell you often just how awesome you are?”

What would your answer be? Exactly.

****

At my lunch with Rival that Tuesday, I expected to see a change in my friend’s demeanor. I braced myself for her aloofness, her umpteen questions regarding my lunch with her husband, her interrogation even.

I was ready for her, had my valid excuses lined up and in alphabetical order, waiting to flick them off to her and allay her anxiety about Bradley and me. To my utter surprise, she said not a word about it. Zilch! Just continued chatting away about…I don’t really remember about what. She was really boring. Her lack of insecurity came as a relief to me; our friendship could continue as before, and that gave me an even wider berth in my pursuit of Bradley Murdoch.

It was also a blatant insult to me. How could she be so secure in her marriage, so confident about Bradley’s love for her that she didn’t feel threatened by someone as smoking hot as me?

In her loopy mind, did she maybe believe I was not attractive enough, not striking enough to catch the eye of her husband? Did she somehow believe I
wasn’t
Bradley’s type?

How dare she think so little of me?

Her failure to hold me in esteem, to give me the respect that was due to me, made me so mad that as I walked away from my rival, I silently vowed to amp up my pursuit of Bradley and get him sooner. Snatch him away from her right away and teach that complacent bitch a lesson.

To calm myself down, I opened my phone and looked at Bradley’s photo.
What a man!

****

Resisting the urge to message Bradley on Facebook and thank him for the lunch was a challenge, but I managed to. I liked his posts as I usually did, but I refrained from commenting on them. The following Friday, I called him just before lunch.

He answered on the first ring. “Well, hello there, Scarlett?” His voice was low, husky, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear him talking. A thrill shot through me at the thought of him keeping me a sort-of secret.

“Hey, it’s Friday, I’m in the area, I feel like being assaulted once again, so I was wondering if you’d like to do the honors? That way, after the assault, I can also settle my Nickleback debt. You up for it?”

He chuckled, I smiled.

“I most certainly am,” he whispered. “Same place, same time?
”

Yes!

“Same place, same time,” I dittoed in a voice husky from triumph.

This time, there was nothing demure about my dress, I was done with playing.

My chocolate-brown woolen dress clung to me like a second skin, showcasing my near-perfect derriere (which was a result of nothing less than a hundred squats a day). The dress molded against my upturned, tear-drop-shaped breasts and stopped mid-thigh, revealing a generous amount of thigh that my brown velour and leather thigh-high boots did not cover.

My soft, shiny hair bounced playfully around my shoulders as I strutted my stuff, completing the seduction mode I was in.

The moment I breezed into the bistro, heads turned, necks snapped, and judging by the dirty looks I got from a number of ugly chicks, I was rocking my carefully chosen ensemble. The two hours I took to dress for my date was no doubt time well spent.

I was moving faster than I planned to for two main reasons:

1) I wanted Bradley really badly. More than I had ever wanted anyone else.

2) I was eager to wipe the smug look off Rival’s face.

Clutching my metallic-brown purse, I snubbed Liz the minimum-wage-earning waitress along with her B-cups and sauntered up to Bradley, who jumped to his feet when he saw me approach the table.

I beamed inwardly as Bradley’s eyes raked slowly over me, and I didn’t miss his slight nod of appreciation. Perfect.

“Scarlett,” he said in a voice that sounded like he had just woken up.

The way he uttered my name – perhaps I wasn’t moving that fast after all. Perhaps Bradley was ripe for me.

Once we ordered, I leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “You’re in my head, Murdoch,” I said in a voice matching his. “Last night, I …dreamt of you.”

With his glass in mid-air, he looked at me, intrigue all over his face. “Pray, tell.”

I cocked my head to one side as I eyed him. Then slowly, with a secret smile on my face, I sat back and shook my head from side-to-side.

He smacked the table with his palm. “Aw, c’mon, Scarlett.”

“Oh, Bradley,” I said in a voice similar to Marilyn Monroe’s as I slowly twisted a lock of hair with my fingers. “It’s so…embarrassing…I mean, like, at first, I couldn’t remember the dream, then on my way here, I remembered, and I said to myself, ‘You better cancel this lunch, Scarlett.’ But it was too late to do that.” I covered my face with both hands. “This is so embarrassing,” I muttered.

When I looked up at him, he was enveloped by a red tide.

“Oh, no, look what I’ve done – I’ve embarrassed you,” I said.

“No, no, no, you didn’t.” He sat forward, clasped his hands together, and looked directly at me, a half smile on his handsome face. “I wanna know.”

After a few moments of biting my lower lip, dropping my eyes to the table, looking up at him, then dropping them again, I shook my head. “Too embarrassing.”

To my delight, he spent most of lunch begging me to share my dream, and I spent most of the time acting coy and pretending I was on the brink of telling him, but changing my mind at the last minute.

(Somebody says they dream of you; what do you do? Usually, you ask them to share their dream with you. If they say “No, it’s too embarrassing,” I guarantee you will be perturbed, intrigued, even disturbed, and your imagination, it will run rampant, shoot in all directions like fireworks.)

“Well, I’ve kept you away from your desk for
two
hours,” I said, dabbing the side of my mouth with my table napkin and smiling sweetly at him. “So on that note, Bradley Murdoch, I will say goodbye…”

He gawked at me. “What ’bout the dre—”

“After I call a cab.” I whipped out my phone and made a pretense of searching for a cab.

“A cab? Why? Where’s your car?”

“Being serviced,” I mouthed as I put my phone to my ear. It wasn’t being serviced; it was parked in my garage in St Ives.

“Oh...” After appearing to think about it for a moment, he ran his fingers wildly across his neck.

“What?”

“I’ll take you home if you wait a few minutes. Just gotta pick up some stuff from my desk.”

Bingo!

I felt like I had just stepped into a bath of warm, sudsy water on a cold winter’s day.

“That would be imposing, Bradley,” I said, fighting off a complacent smile.

“No, no, no! It’ll be my pleasure.” He actually sounded excited about driving me home.

I lowered myself into that bath of sudsy water.

After pretending to think about it, I ran the tip of my tongue over my bottom lip and said, “Mm, on one condition...”

“What?”

“You stay for a drink when you drop me off.”

His eyes darted all over my face.

“It’s the least I can do since you’re gonna be braving Friday evening traffic.”

“Done!” he finally whispered.

I put down my phone and sank deeper into my glorious warm bath.

Then
he
smiled, and
I
smiled, and for a few moments we held each other’s gaze.

Alas, his eyes dropped first. But that was okay – in a few minutes, we were going to be alone in his car. Bradley Murdoch, the man of my dreams, my mark and me, in a confined space for more than an hour.

Beautiful metallic-colored bubbles in all sizes surrounded my warm bath.

Bradley’s office was about five minutes away from
Bogis’s
, but it took us about twenty minutes to get there. We dawdled, talking about everything and anything, clearly both of us in no hurry to end our lengthy lunch date.

By the time we finally got there, his offices were shut.

“We close early on Fridays,” he explained as he used his key to open the doors.
(Keys? It’s 2014 – a swipe card is what a man like him should be using. Mental note to self – lose the keys pronto the moment you make him yours.)

It felt like we were about to enter a hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, and I felt a heat between my thighs at the mere thought of Bradley Murdoch and me alone in his semi-dark offices, free to do whatever we wanted with no one watching us.

I was so thrilled with the way things were going, I would have loved nothing better than to fuck him right then and there. Get raw, feverish, and wild on his old desk, on the cheap, black
pleather
couch, on the plain floor of his office – initiate every part of his ascetic working environment.

But in spite of my urges, in spite of Bradley being putty in my hands, I knew for a fact that he was the kind of guy who required time.

He was a contented man. That meant he wasn’t going to just rush into an illicit affair. I would have to create discontentment, and that would take time. It meant that I had to hang back a little, but keep spinning my web. After all the effort I had put in, the last thing I wanted was for him to get a rash of morality and back away from me. I’d have to abort my mission, and then what would happen to this chapter in my precious book? That’s right – I wouldn’t be able to write it. I couldn’t have that. I was a success at
everything,
and this would be no exception.

I perched on
one of his couches while he rummaged around his…
economical
office.

I would have to make a number of changes to his offices, I realized. Start off with an off-white, Italian leather couch, a few matching high-backed chairs, a plush, dark carpet, a feature wall with some decorative pieces, some huge potted plants, and maybe a new reception desk. Definitely a new glass and chrome reception desk.

Soon
.

Thirty minutes later, we cruised back to my place in his three-year-old Mercedes.

Mental note to self – get rid of this piece of shit and get an SLK convertible. Actually, make it a Porsche! A man like Bradley should be driving around in a Porsche. A gun-metal gray or even a black Porsche.