No one could have blamed me, I was sure. Not after the way Tamara and I had split.
I hated thinking about it, especially now. I didn’t want anything to taint or ruin what I had going on with Annie, but my brain seemed to take a perverse kind of pleasure of bringing my past back to haunt me. It was as if the ghost of my ruined marriage was taunting me, threatening me to make another move in life and see what would happen.
You weren’t fit to be a good husband, I heard a voice say from the recesses of my mind. No wonder things ended the way they did.
With a growl, I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair.
“Mr. Pritzker?”
I glanced up from my work to see my assistant, Carole, standing in the doorway of my office. She looked nervous, and when our eyes met, she flushed.
“What,” I asked sharply. “I have a lot of things to get done this afternoon, so this had better be important.”
Carole nodded quickly. She stepped into my office and bit her lower lip.
“It’s just, well, you asked me to remind you earlier that today is your anniversary, and that you wanted to go home earlier.”
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered. “You’re right. Thank you.”
Carole’s posture straightened slightly, and she looked a bit less embarrassed.
“I went out at lunch and got the flowers you requested,” she continued. “The store was out of your first choice, but I got this instead,” Carole said, holding up a red leather Cartier box. “It’s the bracelet,” she added in response to my puzzled expression. “You know, the love one.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. I looked down at my watch. It was already five-fifteen, and I nearly groaned in exasperation when I saw the time. I’d made reservations at a French restaurant in Boston for seven, but I wasn’t sure that we’d make it now – there was sure to be traffic, and I still wanted to get home and shower.
Oh, well, I told myself. She’ll be happy enough just to see me.
I had been working such long hours – sixty or seventy hour weeks – that I hadn’t gotten a chance to connect with my wife in weeks, and I felt like a huge asshole about it. I missed her desperately and she’d made no secret of the fact that she was angry about my long hours. Tamara wasn’t exactly low maintenance, but most of the time that didn’t bother me. Still, every time she scolded me about spending too much time in the office it was tempting not to respond with the fact that she’d have been equally unhappy about me not earning as much as I did. She had expensive tastes, and it was hard to break even when I had a wife who made weekly trips into Boston for Hermes and Van Cleef & Arpels.
I loved her, though. Tamara was dynamic and exciting, not to mention stunningly gorgeous. She was fun and she worked hard – or at least, she had before we’d met. She’d worked as a sales associate at Saks and spent hours charming men into buying their wives, mistresses, and girlfriends the most expensive gifts imaginable, all while managing to seem non-threatening and sweet. It was a skill few possessed, and I admired her.
She had gone after me, and it had been the first time a woman had pursued me since college. It had been flattering, especially because she had been so forward and open about the fact that she wanted to sleep with me. I hadn’t ever thought it could last – Tamara was worldly and sophisticated, there was no way she’d be content settling down with a workaholic like me.
In all honesty, I was a lucky fucking guy.
“Thanks, Carole,” I said finally, getting up from my chair and taking the red Cartier box from her hands. “I appreciate all of your hard work. Why not head home? I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Carole nodded. She smiled, looking pleased, then dipped her head to say goodbye and turned to leave my office. As soon as she was gone, I shut down my laptop and stuck it in the leather briefcase Tamara had given me for Christmas the year before. I smiled as I took the Cartier box and slipped it into my pocket, then took the bouquet from Carole’s desk and left the building.
Outside, the sun was shining, and the air was pleasantly warm without a touch of humidity. I wondered if I shouldn’t cancel the reservations and get stuff from Eataly for a picnic instead, but then realized Tamara wouldn’t like that as much. She didn’t much like being outdoors – she worried about getting skin cancer and ruining her perfect face, and she said that the wind ruined her hair.
Oh, well. I loved her all the same, and I wanted her to know it.
It was our anniversary, after all. Ten years together and for the most part, they had been good. I was looking forward to another ten, and then another ten after that where I could possibly retire, and we could live the life I knew Tamara was dreaming of, even now. A yacht in the Caribbean, island-hopping on the weekends. Days spent on sun-drenched beaches with drinks in our hands.
The thought was enough to put a smile on my face, which stayed there the entire drove home. We’d been living in Waltham for a few years, and it was fine for the time being, but I knew Tamara would have preferred somewhere posher. Our street was a quiet one, filled mostly with families and retired people, and the late-afternoon sun was still shining as I drove slowly down the block, avoiding dogs and children playing outside.
When I pulled into the driveway, I frowned. Tamara’s car was there, which was strange – she always had Pilates on Tuesdays – but then I realized that she must’ve gotten home early because of our anniversary, and I smiled. I hoped that maybe she’d still be in the shower when I got home, that I could surprise her and make her smile.
I hummed to myself under my breath as I walked up the stone path to our front door and let myself in. Kicking off my shoes, I walked quietly up the stairs with the bouquet and Cartier box in my hand. I wanted to catch her off-guard – I was sure that she thought I’d forgotten all about what today was, which was only going to make surprising her all the sweeter.
As I walked up the stairs, clutching my wife’s gifts in my hands, I heard a sound that made me freeze in my tracks. It was a soft gasp, like someone stepping into a too-hot bath, and it was unmistakably Tamara. My first instinct was to call out to her, but I didn’t.
Instead, I narrowed my eyes and kept walking. Had she slipped in the bathroom? Or had she gotten drunk in the middle of the day, so sure that her absent husband had forgotten all about her anniversary?
Then, I heard another, different sound. It was a masculine grunt, and my heart sank. I kept walking up the stairs – it seemed to take me forever to reach the top floor of our house – and what I saw when I reached the landing made my heart slow to a painfully slow crawl. Clothes, both male and female, were scattered on the floor.
This can’t be real, I told myself, as I walked unsteadily down the hall, still holding the stupid gift box and flowers. There’s no way this is happening – there has to be an explanation, or I just don’t know what I’m seeing.
She wouldn’t cheat on me. No, I know I’ve been busy, but she’s a good wife. She loves me.
No matter what I told myself, there was no way I could have been prepared for what was waiting for me on the other side of the landing. The door to the master suite – our master suite – was open, and I saw a flash of motion and naked skin.
Tamara was on the bed, sprawled out with her legs open and her arms over her head. She was naked, with her eyes closed and her perfectly-coiffed blonde curls cascading over the side of the bed. As her male lover was kneeling between her thighs with his face buried in her pussy, I dropped the Cartier box and the bouquet to the floor. The sound was enough to startle Tamara, and her eyes flew open, turning immediately to me.
When she saw me, she let out a shriek and pushed the man away from her, kicking and wrestling and fighting to pull the sheet over her naked body. Her lover looked up, and we locked eyes.
When I saw who it was, I felt my heart freeze.
Looking at me, from between the naked thighs of my wife, was my brother.
11
Annie
A couple of days after the last time I’d seen Elliot, I w
as sitting in the living room with my parents, reading a book, when my phone buzzed across my lap. I jumped, startled by the vibration, and my mom glanced over at me.
“Hon? Is everything okay?”
I tried not to flush. “Everything’s fine,” I chirped as I looked down at the screen to see Elliot’s name flashing. “It’s just Beth, um, let me go upstairs and take this.”
I didn’t look at my mother’s face as I grabbed my phone and sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, until I’d reached the safety of my bedroom and locked the door behind me. The acoustics in my parents’ house were pretty spectacular, and my heart was thudding as I swiped open the call and prayed that my mother wouldn’t hear every single word to come out of my mouth.
“Hi,” I said quietly. “What’s up?”
Elliot chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re hiding in a closet, or the pantry or something,” he teased. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
I was still breathing hard from having run up the stairs, and my heart was pounding as I shook my head, forgetting that Elliot wasn’t there to see me.
“No,” I said quickly. “Um, I was just downstairs. Reading. With my mom.”
“Ah,” Elliot said. From the tone of his voice, I could tell that he was smiling. “Well, if you’re not terribly busy on Friday night, I’d like to ask you out.”
I blushed. “What?”
Elliot laughed again, and I felt like an idiot.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had a man call you and ask you for a date,” he replied. “Maybe I’m more old-fashioned than I thought.”
I bit my lip. He was, of course, right. No one had ever called and asked me out before. No one had ever even texted to ask me out before. The closest I’d ever come to being asked out had been a guy in one of my college biology classes – he’d lent me his notes after I’d missed a couple of classes and when I’d handed them over, he’d suggested that we “maybe” hang out sometime.
No, this was different. That kid had been a boy, and Elliot was a man.
A man who wanted to date me.
I held my breath for a moment, unable to believe it. I knew that we had spectacular chemistry in bed, of course.
But dating was intimacy of a different kind.
“Annie? Are you there?” Elliot asked.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “And yes, I’m free on Friday. I’d love to go out with you.”
“Good,” Elliot said smoothly. “So ... I’m assuming for obvious reasons that I can’t pick you up, much as I’d love that.”
“Hold on a second,” I said, taking the phone away from my ear. Being careful not to disrupt the call, I thumbed through my texts with Beth until I found her sister’s address.
“Pick me up here,” I instructed Elliot, giving him the address of Beth’s sister’s apartment a couple of blocks over. “If that’s not too much trouble, obviously.”
Elliot chuckled under his breath. “If I get to see you, Annie,” he replied. “All the trouble will be worth it.”
We hung up after agreeing on a time for Friday, and I closed my eyes and clutched my phone tightly in my hands, holding it to my chest and sighing. I felt like a lovestruck teenager, like someone who had just developed her first massive crush, and it felt both wonderful and terrifying at once, like I was free-falling through thousands of feet of open air with no parachute on my back.
This is happening, I told myself as I took a deep breath and slid down to the floor, leaning against my bed. I can’t believe it, but it’s really happening.
The next couple of days seemed to drag by. I tried so hard to lose myself in keeping busy – polishing up my resume and applying to every job I could find within the Boston metropolitan radius. I looked for an outfit to wear out with Elliot under the guise of cleaning my closet, and realized that I had no idea what people my age actually wore on dates. Going with a fancy dress and heels seemed like overkill, but Elliot was classy, not to mention older.
In the end, I settled on a pair of black stretch jeans and a loose black top – black was easy, I remember Beth telling me once, because it could be dressed up or down. I figured that with a little makeup and some jewelry, I’d be ready for wherever Elliot planned on taking me.
On Friday, I spent an hour washing and painstakingly drying my hair, using my mom’s flat iron to straighten out the wild, kinky curls that had plagued me since birth. I swiped on two coats of mascara, some subtle lipstick, and then a touch of powder in hopes of eliminating the shine that always came on my skin with warm weather.
When I went downstairs, Mom blinked at me.
“What are you up to tonight, Annie?”
“I told you,” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “I’m going out with Beth – we’re meeting at her sister’s apartment.”
“Did you need the car?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble,” I said awkwardly. “Thanks.”
Mom stared at me for a long time. “You know, if you’re meeting a guy, you don’t have to lie about it,” she said.
“I ... um, we might,” I said weakly. I hated lying to my parents – and I knew, of course, that I was terrible at it, too. “It depends, I don’t know. She’s still kind of upset about her breakup.”
“Hmm,” Mom said. She raised an eyebrow at me and eyed me for a long time before walking to her purse and fishing for her keys. When she handed them over, she didn’t release her grip for a long time.
“Promise you’ll be careful,” Mom said firmly.
“Of course,” I said. That, at least, wasn’t a lie. Being with Elliot always made me feel so safe and secure ... which was strange, considering that I could hardly breathe when he was around because of the intense arousal he stirred deep inside of me.
“Any idea when you’ll be home?” Mom asked.
“Before you wake up,” I said. I swallowed hard – if the night went well, and I hoped it did, it would end with Elliot and I sleeping together for the third time.
But then what will I do with Mom’s car, I wondered, as a little flash of panic erupted inside of me. Oh, well. I’ll worry about that later – maybe it’ll be so late that I can park around the block and just get it later.
“Okay,” Mom said. I sensed that she wasn’t happy about my going out, but since she wasn’t willing to admit as much, I didn’t want to make things awkward between us by bringing it up. We hugged, and I took her keys, then walked outside and climbed behind the wheel of her Subaru.
It was hot and sticky outside, one of the first truly hot days that summer, and I was sweating heavily before the air conditioning could start to work. I groaned and lowered my face to the vents, fluffing my hair and hoping that it wouldn’t be a ruined, frizzy mess by the time I made it to Beth’s sister’s place.
The drive didn’t take very long, thankfully. Traffic was minimal, and after finding a pop station on the Sirius radio, I sang along loudly to quell my nerves. The idea that Elliot and I were going out together – in public! – was thrilling and exciting, but I was also slightly anxious. We hadn’t spent much time talking to each other, and I wondered what would happen if the conversation were to fall flat. Would we still have chemistry together if we weren’t alone?
After parking the car, I texted Beth, and she came downstairs to let me in. As soon as she saw me, she squealed and hugged me.
“Annie, you look so gorgeous,” Beth cried as she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her. “Oh my gosh! I’ve never seen you this pretty before!”
I laughed self-consciously. “Thanks,” I said. “How are you?”
Beth wrinkled her nose and made a face. “Eh,” she said. “About as good as can be expected. I’m dying to find our own place,” she continued. “Meg is driving me insane. She keeps calling me lazy because I don’t do anything but look for jobs all day, but what else am I supposed to do?”
I glanced down at my phone for the time. I still had about ten minutes until Elliot was due to arrive, but the way Beth was
talking about her sister didn’t much put me in the mood to go upstairs.
“How about we wait in the lobby,” I suggested. “You kind of seem like you could use a break?”
Beth sighed loudly. “You don’t mind,” she asked, her voice tinged with guilt. “I’m sorry, I know you’re probably thirsty or something. It’s hot as hell outside,” she continued. “But I just need a break.”
I nodded. “Anything promising? In terms of jobs?”
Beth shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. This one blog I read, about jobs and working and stuff, said that you can expect to hunt for three months for an entry-level position.”
I had to suppress the urge to groan. Three months? I had hardly been home for one, and already the secrecy with Elliot was driving me crazy.
The idea of spending an entire quarter-year with my parents wasn’t pleasant, as much as I loved them. I was so eager to get out on my own, get my life started.
Also, while sneaking around with Elliot was hot right now, I had a feeling that if we kept seeing each other, keeping the secret would be harder and harder.
“That’s a long time,” I admitted. “I didn’t think it would take this long.”
“Yeah, well, the sooner we can move the better,” Beth said. “I found this great apartment, it’s on the south side of Boston. Two bedroom, one bath, but utilities are included and it’s only twelve-fifty a month!”
That sounded like a lot of money to me, but I hadn’t done much research of my own, so I just nodded.
The minutes ticked by, and I grew more anxious by the second. I kept glancing at my phone so much that Beth laughed.
Forbidden First Times: A Contemporary Romance Collection Page 88
