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Nothing else had worked thus far.
I didn’t typically masturbate, yet I did twice more that week. Both times when Robert wasn’t home. My body had needed release—release I wasn’t getting from my husband. And as I touched my pussy I found myself thinking about the man with the hazel eyes, not Robert. Each fantasy was becoming longer and more vivid.
On Thursday morning, as another earth-shattering orgasm ripped through my body, I gazed at Robert’s side of the bed. It was empty. And I realized why I was consumed with this phantom lover: I was lonely.
Or was there more to it than that?
Even though Robert had retired from his position as CEO of Kolstad Systems, he was still involved in the company’s operations as a board member. He had been in the office every day this week, dealing with one problem after another regarding this German acquisition.
His absence reminded me of the early days of our marriage, after we’d returned from our honeymoon and Robert had gone back to work. I’d had fantasies of the wonderful life I would share with my distinguished and successful and charming husband. But it hadn’t quite played out the way I had dreamed.
After Robert proposed, I’d quit my job as a waitress, so I wasn’t working when we got married. He, of course, had his business to run. Robert would be at the office sometimes twelve or fourteen hours a day. Even longer on some occasions. I had missed him terribly, and didn’t like being in my new, oversize home with the housekeeper as my only company. Especially when he went out of town.
I’d occasionally accompanied Robert on his longer business trips to Europe. He promised we’d steal some romantic time to see the sights when his work was done. But on more occasions than not, I would sit alone in my hotel room in London or Paris, longing for my husband’s touch, but having to settle for a glass of wine as I watched a movie in our lavish suite.
Convincing Robert to fund my own business venture had been not only the fruition of a dream, but a godsend in terms of my mental sanity. I needed something constructive to do—much more than shopping and lunching with other wealthy men’s wives.
Before Robert and I married, he’d promised to make my dream of opening a floral shop a reality. Ask any of my friends from childhood and they’ll tell you how I would always pick dandelions and wildflowers and arrange them in a bouquet. If they had a bad day, I would make them something special. Ditto if they got a good mark on a test. My teachers probably got bored with all the homemade bouquets I brought in for them. And I got in trouble more than once for picking tulips and roses from a neighbor’s garden.
Meeting and marrying Robert had enabled me to open Distinct Creations, a shop in downtown Cornelius, just north of Charlotte.
We had a beautiful house, luxury cars, lots of money in the bank. We’d traveled on yachts, and to exotic and exclusive places all over the world.
And yet something was missing.
I hadn’t given a second thought to what it would mean to marry a considerably older and powerful man, or that anything would ever go wrong. Yet the fact that he’d been married and divorced twice was testament to the fact that money and security didn’t guarantee a lasting marriage.
No matter what happened, I would always be grateful to Robert for the life he had given me. But I couldn’t deny the reality that we didn’t seem to be on the same page anymore. There were times I wondered if we were even in the same book.
It wasn’t about his age. I loved my husband the day I married him, and I still loved him now. And yet there had to be some reason I was so vividly making love to a stranger in my mind.
Maybe it was because the passion with Robert had undeniably faded.
I’d married him for better or for worse. I’d known that “worse” would be the age issue—and I had never expected that we would be able to fuck like bunnies. That kind of passion hadn’t mattered to me then, and it didn’t now.
It was the intimacy I craved most.
I almost wouldn’t mind if Robert chewed guys out for staring at me, if he followed up that proprietary attitude with some genuine attention. Some romance and affection.
Something that showed he viewed me as more than a possession.
I wanted Robert to hold me and kiss me, even if he couldn’t make love to me. I wanted him to assure me that he wanted a baby as much as I did, even if it meant adopting. He never said those words, and there were times I got the feeling that he didn’t care at all if we had one.
It was one of the things that made me wonder if we were on the same page—and with that thought came the question as to whether or not there would be a happily ever after for us, after all.
Don’t think it, Elsie, I said to myself as I stared at the ceiling. You did not get married to get divorced. You married Robert because he was the first man who made you feel that he could give you the emotional stability you needed.
He wasn’t a man interested only in hot sex. I’d had hot sex with the younger men I’d dated, but had always felt cold in those relationships. Probably because sex was the first thing—and seemingly most important thing—they wanted from me. Being seen as desirable should have made me feel confident, but instead it brought out my insecurity.
Because it reminded me of my childhood with my mother.
My mom had treated sex like a sport, breaking my father’s heart over and over again as she engaged in meaningless rendezvous with man after man. As a young child, I didn’t understand what was going on. I would overhear heated arguments between my parents and know that something was wrong. And there were days I would come home from school to find my mother gone, and my dad crying. Even the bouquets I made for him didn’t help to cheer him up.
As I got older I understood what caused most of their marital conflicts. In the bits I overheard, my mother always claimed the other men meant nothing to her, that for her sex didn’t mean love.
I don’t know why my father stayed with her. Much later, I began to suspect there was some emotional issue about my mother he understood that I did not. But I always felt for him, was brokenhearted for him.
I was fourteen when my father asked one day how I would feel about going with him to Texas for a long visit, just me and him. He had a sister there. I had been elated by the idea. It was a chance to get away, escape my parents’ arguments for a while.
Two days later, my mother hurriedly made me pack some things while my dad was at work. She ushered me into the cab of a Mack truck between her and some guy I didn’t know, and suddenly we were off to God only knew where.
The trucker, as it turned out, was my mother’s boyfriend. He took us to Philadelphia, where we moved into his small apartment. They fought, too, but I heard them screwing every night in the bedroom next to me.
I was devastated at the way I’d been uprooted. And knew I would never be able to forgive my mother for leaving my father behind.
I had always known that I didn’t want sex to be the first priority in any relationship of mine, no doubt because of my mother, and that’s why I’d grown wary of men my own age. Robert was older, far more mature than any of the men I had dated, and genuinely seemed to want to make an emotional connection with me first, instead of a sexual one.
It hadn’t taken me long to realize I could have emotional security with him—something I desperately wanted after my parents’ fucked-up marriage…
My bedside phone rang, startling me from my thoughts. I rolled over to my night table and plucked the cordless handset off its base. “Hello?”
“Morning, Elsie. I hope it’s not too early to call.”
“Sharon.” My spirits lifted. Her call was the distraction I needed. “No, it’s not too early. How are you?”
“So-so. I’ve been mostly up. I really have. But last night I was way down.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
“It gets to me sometimes, being in this big empty house.”
“Of course it does.”
“Maybe I need to get out and volunteer. Do something so that I’m not home alone so much.”
“You know your doctor said you’ll have to take it easy for this pregnancy. You don’t want anything to jeopardize carrying your baby to term.”
Two months ago, Sharon’s husband had been tragically killed in a plane crash on his way back from a business trip. As if that wasn’t devastating enough, Sharon had just learned she was pregnant. She’d been able to share the thrilling news with Warren over the phone, and had been looking forward to celebrating with him upon his return. Only his company’s private plane had gone down shortly after takeoff in Virginia, killing all on board, including three members of the firm’s executive team.
“I know…and I want this baby more than anything. Warren and I both did. I keep trying to look on the bright side. I’m financially set and I don’t have to travel to a job every day, which means I can take it nice and easy and make sure to carry this baby to term. I’ll be able to hire a nanny, which will be great—as much for the company as for the help. But the truth is…the truth is I keep thinking about what a wonderful father he would have been, and how much he wanted this baby. I miss him so much, Elsie. I can’t believe I’m finally pregnant and he’s not here…”
Sharon was one of my closest friends, and she sounded as if she was about to fall apart. “You want me to swing by your place on my way to work?”
“No. No, I’ll be fine. But I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind getting away this weekend. If Robert can spare you, will you go to South Carolina with me? We could drive to Charleston, or Myrtle Beach. Stay from Friday to Sunday. It’s not quite bikini weather yet, but I might put one on anyway—before my stomach gets too big.” Sharon laughed, but the sound morphed into a whimper.
“Shh,” I soothed. It broke my heart what she was going through. She had mentioned being financially set, but all the money in the world couldn’t ease a loss like this. “Maybe I should stop by.”
“No…you have to go to work. I just want you to give me something to look forward to. But if you can’t because of the shop, I’ll understand.”
“I’d love to go away,” I told her. “I can get Spike to run things for a couple of days.” Spike was my righthand man at the store, and I didn’t anticipate any problems with him heading up operations for Friday and Saturday. My shop was closed on Sundays. The only issue would be Robert, and whether or not he would have a problem with me going away.
That was another thing that bothered me about my husband on occasion: as much as he had his own life and traveled a lot on his own, he didn’t like me to travel without him. He didn’t outright tell me I couldn’t go somewhere, but when I returned he would complain incessantly about how much he’d missed me, how the house hadn’t been the same without me, how there was an event in Charlotte he would have liked to have taken me to—if only I’d been home. It used to drive me crazy.
I learned to seek Robert’s approval first, and not just tell him I was planning to go somewhere with a friend. More times than not he would find some reason to object to my plans. And more times than not, I ended up staying home because I didn’t want to disappoint him.
But this weekend Sharon wasn’t the only one who could use some time away.
“If you can, that’d be great,” she said, sounding better already. “I need a change of scenery, you know?”
“Of course you do. Robert’s been in the office all week, but I’ll run it by him tonight. I know a great place in Charleston we can stay, this quaint bed-and-breakfast where he and I stayed the last time we were there.”
“I’ll wait to hear back from you.”
As I hung up, I mentally prepared myself for broaching the subject with Robert. I’d take him to the club tonight, where we would have a nice dinner and he could unwind. If I could get him to relax and be happy, then he’d be more likely to say yes to me going away.
I climbed out of bed and headed for the shower, a niggling thought bothering me.
That I was Robert’s wife, not his child—and I shouldn’t have to get his permission to take a short trip with a friend.
Chapter Five
I called Robert at lunchtime and told him I’d made reservations at the club for seven. “You’ve been working hard all week and I’ve hardly seen you. I’d love to have a nice dinner with you tonight.”
“That’s a great idea, Elsie. Thank you.”
Robert looked harried when he arrived at home, but once we were seated in The Peninsula Club’s dining room, I could see the stress begin to fade from his face.
Good. The better his mood, the more likely he would be favorable to what I was going to suggest.
Everyone knew us here, and shortly after we were seated, Robert’s usual glass of Remy Martin Louis XIII was brought over—an outrageously priced cognac considered to be one of the best in the world. There was also a glass of Santa Lucia Highlands pinot noir for me—much more reasonably priced by comparison. This is how we always started our order, so the staff knew there would be no complaints.
Robert took a sip of his very pricey drink, and I could almost see more of his stress dissipate. He felt comfortable here, his home away from home. Perhaps also because—unlike The Melting Pot—it was full of people he could relate to: rich older men with wives who knew their place.
Wives who didn’t want to lose, by way of a nasty divorce, the luxuries they’d become accustomed to. I saw some in the dining room who I believed should have left their marriages ages ago. Ruthie Davenport. Agnes Long. They were older, in their sixties, but it was long rumored that their husbands had had affairs with several younger women. Ruthie’s husband apparently had gotten not one, but two mistresses knocked up.
Felicity Williams was in her early thirties, and her husband was a philandering pro athlete. They’d been college sweethearts, and the word was that she wasn’t going to let some “skank-ass ho” steal her man.
There were even a couple rumors of physical abuse. But through it all, those wives had stayed.
I had always pitied the wives of such husbands. And I’d never seen Robert as a man who would abuse his wife either emotionally or physically. And yet here I was, a little fearful of asking if he would be okay if I went out of town with a dear friend for a few days.
How had our marriage gotten to this point? For the first couple of years, I never would have been afraid to ask Robert anything. He had been thoughtful and patient—at least with me. I’d heard him argue with his ex-wives on occasion, and had always thought it odd that he could be so cruel with them, yet loving with me. Once, when wife number two was dropping off their teenage daughter, she’d murmured, “Enjoy Robert while he’s nice. Because once he turns…”
She hadn’t finished her statement, but I’d dismissed her warning as a comment from a bitter ex-wife.
Now, as I looked around the busy dining room, I couldn’t help wondering if anyone there pitied me? The wait staff? The managers? The other wives? Had any of them seen something in my marriage that I had missed?
Robert smiled brightly and waved at someone across the room. He was charming and pleasant. Definitely likable. Successful.
Though I’d been having some doubts about my marriage over the last several months, I now found myself flip-flopping. Robert’s irritability, and his occasional rude behavior, such as he displayed at The Melting Pot—they had to be effects of getting older. Either emotional or physical—or both.
Approaching seventy, he could no longer ignore his mortality. And maybe there were changes in a man’s body that made him more irritable as he hit a certain age. If there was some physiological reason for Robert’s behavior, how could I hold it against him?
And there were so many happy memories from early in our marriage that I clung to.
Like the time we were in Paris, and I was in the hotel suite alone while Robert was at a business meeting. There was a knock on the door and I’d opened it to find Room Service delivering a cart with three trays on it. The waiter wheeled the cart into the room and lifted the silver lids to reveal fresh fruit slices and chocolate fondue.
I’d assumed Robert had simply sent the fruit to the room as a treat for me—but the real surprise came when he suddenly appeared in the doorway as the waiter was leaving.
Robert had ordered the fondue platter not so much for the fruit, but for me. For my body. He put the chocolate on my nipples, licked it off slowly. He put it on my ass, then ate it off with his tongue and his teeth. And he made me come—over and over—when he’d licked chocolate off my clit with tender, hot strokes…
“Cindy,” Robert was saying warmly.
At the sound of his voice, I was jerked from my memory. I glanced upward at Cindy, a waitress we knew well. He greeted her by squeezing her hand. “How are you?”
“Better now that you’re here.”
A flirtatious comment? Perhaps, but I didn’t take it seriously—and I certainly would never get mad at Robert for it. Unlike how he had treated Alexander.
Robert chuckled. He proceeded to joke with Cindy and make conversation about her studies. She was putting herself through UNC, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and one day hoped to become a lawyer.
Cindy smiled as she answered his questions—and yet I would never consider her anything other than professional. She was being nice to a customer. The same thing the waiter at the other restaurant had been doing.
Cindy or any of the waitresses here could easily have designs on some of the rich regulars at the club. And they’d be in a far better position to try and undermine a marriage than a waiter we were likely to see only once in our lives.
Forget what happened at The Melting Pot, I told myself.
But the hypocrisy bothered me—even if I could forgive Robert’s behavior.
I glanced around as he continued to chat with Cindy. And when my eyes landed on a pair of wide shoulders beneath a black blazer, my heart pounded in my chest.
The shoulders…that golden-brown skin…the shaved head.
Oh, my God. Was it him?
My pussy began to throb.
“Elsie,” Robert said urgently.
I jerked my eyes back to his. “Sorry.”
“Cindy wants to know if you’re having the steak.”
“Yes. Yes, the steak is fine.”
My eyes ventured across the dining room again. Disappointment came crashing in.
It wasn’t him. Lord, it wasn’t him.
