“So what do we do about it?”
Pursing her lips in thought, she tilts her head and gives a tiny shrug. “Do the best we can, I suppose. Talk more. Don’t let things fester.”
“Would it be totally cliché as a man to say ‘more sex’?” I ask her in total seriousness.
She nods in affirmation. “Totally cliché, but I’m also in total agreement.”
Reaching out, I take her cup from her hands. Setting it on the counter, I pull her into my arms. I enjoy the few blissful moments of peace that we have right now while the kids happily eat their breakfast bananas and my warm and freshly fucked wife cuddles into me.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you.”
After a moment, I kiss her on the head and pull back. “I need your advice on something.”
She turns, grabs her coffee, and leans back against the counter. “Shoot.”
“Well… I think something weird is going on with Lila,” I hesitantly say.
No hesitance in laying this out to Moira—she’ll help me deal—but more so that maybe I imagined something that wasn’t there. I don’t want to cause Moira to doubt what may be just a very good secretary who I misinterpreted something from.
“Like what?” she asks with a cute-as-hell head tilt.
“I don’t know,” I hem, but before I can haw, I continue on. “Well… she’s just… her clothes are different and her hair. Yesterday, she arched her back at me and seemed offended when I told her to submit in overtime hours…”
And then, I fall flat. I’m not conveying it right, and Moira knows it. She gives me a small, encouraging smile. “Back up. Slow down. Start from the beginning.”
So I do.
I relay to her everything that I suddenly noticed last night in one clarifying moment. When I mention the way that Lila now calls me Zach instead of Mr. Easton, Moira nods and says, “Yeah… I noticed that too.”
When I finish, I watch my wife consider what I had to say and then she drains her coffee. As she goes to the Keurig for a refill, she says, “I’m not sure it’s anything, Zach. She may just be a devoted employee… über loyal to you. Her wardrobe may be changing because she’s a woman, and maybe she’s changing… or feeling more comfortable in the job. Hell, she may have a hot, new stud of a boyfriend, and it’s making her feel sexier or something.”
“But she arched her back,” I point out.
“Yeah… wow. Off with her head,” she says in a mocking, cockney accent. She then gives a laugh. “It was close to ten PM, and you both had worked a fifteen-hour day, right? Who wouldn’t arch their back?”
And suddenly, I feel stupid for even thinking those things about Lila. She has never once said anything inappropriate or acted in a non-professional manner. So maybe she was a little frosty about Moira, but sure… maybe she just has my back as my secretary.
Most importantly, Moira doesn’t seem bent out of shape about it, so maybe I shouldn’t either. I mean… I have ten months invested and she’s a fantastic employee in all other ways. What most likely happened was that the stress of work and feeling out of sorts with my wife was making me see things with the wrong perspective.
“Okay,” I say as I let out a sigh of relief. “You make valid points.”
“I’m smart that way,” she says with a sassy grin as she turns to walk past me. She even bumps her hip against mine, and for the first time in a long time, my cock actually twitches from just that minor of a touch from her. Just like in the early days… the glory days when just a sniff of Moira’s shampoo could make me hard.
I feel better… about everything.
We’re going to be okay.
Chapter 5
Moira
Well, that didn’t last long.
The glow… post-orgasmic high… feeling of connection with my husband.
He’s in a pattern of coming home late again—five days in a row now—and as I strain the spaghetti, I know he’s not going to make dinner tonight. Not because of intuition, or because he’s gone back to the workaholic pattern that’s entering into days of repetition, but because Lila called me to tell me that he had another emergency come up. To Zach’s credit, the prior four nights he’s missed dinner, and subsequently sex with me, he’s called himself to let me know he’s up to his neck in work. He was so damn apologetic with promises to make it up that I couldn’t help but reassure him it was all good.
Even tonight, when Lila called me, she was very clear why she was calling and not Zach. Apparently, he was stuck on a five-way conference call with other board members, trying to deal with a steaming, hot fire… the surprising resignation of the CFO of the company who is leaving for a major competitor.
So, as far as excuses go, that’s a pretty damn good one, and I couldn’t be mad about it.
But I could be sad.
And frustrated.
And—