She flashed a Cheshire cat grin. “I did it. I have the contact information I need. The next time we get together I will definitely have a job.”
Deanna and Marisol shared a wink. “Speaking of getting together, I need your address. I’m having a dinner party at my home next month on the sixteenth. If you and Damon are free, Spencer and I would love for you to join us.”
Picking up a paper napkin, Bethany jotted down her address and phone number, handing it to Deanna. “Whatever Damon has planned can be postponed. We’ll be there.”
Two servers approached the table carrying their entrées, followed by the sommelier carrying champagne. “It’s a gift from the gentleman over there.” He pointed to a table where a well-dressed man affected a snappy salute.
“Who’s that?” Marisol whispered.
Deanna returned the salute, smiling. “He’s a friend of the French ambassador. We met when I coordinated an engagement party for his daughter.”
Peering over her shoulder, Bethany smiled at the elegant man. “You must meet a lot of important people in your line of work.”
Deanna nodded. “More than I care to know.”
“I’d like to contract your services.”
“For what?”
“Damon will celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday in August, and because it’s a milestone birthday I’d like to throw a little something for him.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Deanna said, not wanting to talk business.
Flutes were filled with the premium wine and raised for a second toast. This time it was for old and new friendships.
Chapter Ten
Damon walked into the lobby of the Victoria, a charming residential boutique hotel nestled in a block of Victorian row houses. Smiling, he nodded to the doorman. “Good afternoon. I’m here to meet Mr. Spencer Tyson.”
The man in the dark gray livery returned the smile. “Your name, sir.”
“Damon Paxton.”
“Mr. Tyson is expecting you. He’s in the bar area.” He pointed to his left. “Go down that hallway and turn left.”
“Thank you.” Spencer had called him a week after their confrontation at the museum to set up an appointment to have drinks. Damon had been available, but had decided to make him wait because of his unprovoked threat. It was another week before he’d called the lawyer back to arrange a meeting.
He saw Spencer sitting at a round table for two in the rosewood-paneled bar reading a newspaper. There were half a dozen couples sitting at tables, talking quietly to one another. Recessed light bathed Deanna Tyson’s husband in a halo of gold, highlighting the red in his cropped hair.
“Tyson.”
Spencer’s head popped up and he came to his feet, extending his hand. “Paxton. Thanks for coming. Please sit down.” Damon shook his hand, then sat opposite him. “What’s your poison?”
“Extra dry gin martini with a splash of Dubonnet and a twist.”
Raising his hand, Spencer caught the attention of the waitress, giving her Damon’s drink order. “I took the initiative to order a few appetizers. I’m scheduled to work late tonight, so I need to have a clear head.”
Unbuttoning his suit jacket, Damon crossed one leg over the opposite knee. “I never knew this hotel existed. It’s nice and off the beaten track.”
Spencer ran a hand over his dark gray tie. “I found it completely by accident.”
“How convenient. It’s the perfect place for a liaison.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I come here for the bar.”
“Are you saying the drinks are that good?”
“Good drinks and service.”
Tiny lines fanned out around Damon’s eyes when he smiled. “It’s the same at the Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton Georgetown and the Hays-Adams Hotel.”
“You’re right,” Spencer agreed. “Maybe I should’ve added discretion to the list.”
Damon grinned broadly. “Now you’re talking.”
He stared at the wide gold band on the large left hand wrapped around a double old-fashioned glass half-filled with ice and an amber liquid, wondering if the brilliant litigator thought he was that naive. Those familiar with the Victoria knew it was where men hid their mistresses, because Damon had been one of those men when he was married to Jean. One of his friends had referred to the hotel as a “safe house.” Everyone associated with the establishment, from its owner, doorman, chef and housekeeping personified discretion.
“Are you saying you cheat on your wife?”
Damon’s smile faded. “That’s not what I’m saying, Tyson. What I meant is if I did think of cheating this would be the perfect spot. Now, tell me why you wanted to have drinks.” He had decided to cut directly to the chase. Over the years he’d played enough mind games with elected officials to last several lifetimes. The people who paid him the big bucks to influence their interests didn’t care how he conducted business. And they continued to throw money his way until he gave them what they wanted.
Spencer rolled his head from side to side, then took a deep swallow of Scotch on the rocks. “I wanted to apologize to you.”
“You already did that.” Damon paused when the waitress placed a glass coaster on the table before setting down his glass. Rising slightly, he reached into the pocket of his trousers to give her a tip, but Spencer reached over and caught his wrist.
“I’ll take care of her.”
He nodded, acquiescing. “Thanks.” Picking up the glass, he took a swallow, savoring the taste of the expertly prepared martini. “That’s real nice.”
Spencer was grinning as if he’d personally mixed the cocktail. “I told you the drinks are excellent.”
Damon took another sip, enjoying the iciness in the back of his throat, then the burst of warmth settling in his chest and belly. He was anxious to get back to why he was sitting in a hotel with a man who was as brilliant as he was a liar. “I’d like you to answer one question for me, Spencer.”
“What’s that?”
“What led you to believe that I was coming on to your wife?”
Lifting broad shoulders under his tailored suit jacket, Spencer feigned an expression of innocence. “I really don’t know. I suppose I’d had too much to drink that night and when I saw you holding Dee’s hand I kind of lost it.”
“You did more than lose it. You threatened to kick an old man’s ass.”
“Well, you did call me son,” Spencer shot back. It was an expression he hated almost as much as boy.
“And you took that the wrong way, too.”
“I told you I was a little drunk.”
Damon leaned over the small space separating them. “You weren’t as drunk as you were scared. It’s not easy to remain in control when your whore shows up unexpectedly.” It was hard for him to keep a straight face when Spencer looked as if he was going to fall off his chair. “You’re smart, Tyson, but I just happen to be a little smarter than you, son. I would’ve let you off the hook that night and chalked your reaction to me holding Deanna’s hand as a jealous husband protecting his woman. But you made a serious, a very serious faux pas when you threatened me.
“The reason I didn’t have drinks with you last week was because the man I had checking into your background still hadn’t given me his final report. I know all about you, Spencer James Tyson. I know the day, hour and minute you were born, the address of the house where you spent the first ten years of your life on Chicago’s South Side and the names of the women you’ve screwed after you married your beautiful wife.” He held up a hand to stop Spencer when he opened his mouth. “I know what you’re going to say. How can I accuse you of being unfaithful when I cheated on my first wife? I’ll admit I did, but I had what I consider a very good reason. If you don’t get it at home, then you have to get it elsewhere.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Spencer said when Damon paused to sip his drink.
A sardonic smile parted Damon’s firm mouth. “You’re so wrong. You know exactly wh
at I’m talking about, but you’re going to play the innocent. Man the fuck up, Tyson!” he snarled between clenched teeth. “Just come out and say, yeah, I fuck around on my wife.”
The tight rein on Spencer’s temper loosened. “And so what if I do?” he said recklessly. “I do it, you did it and so do a million men every day and every hour.” Rage roiled through him with the force of a twister. “What are you going to do now? Go back and tell Deanna that I’m cheating on her?”
Damon swirled the clear, icy liquid around in the glass, his gaze fixed on the lemon peel. “No.” His gaze shifted to the man who looked as if he was going to burst into tears at any second. “No,” he repeated. “I’m not into breaking up marriages. What I want to do is help you save yours.”
Spencer’s prominent Adam’s apple moved up and down like a bobblehead doll. “My marriage isn’t in trouble.”
Damon’s eyebrows inched up a fraction. “You think not? What do you think will happen if your wife finds out that you’re sleeping with another woman? I can assure you she won’t be that forgiving.” He paused. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you want for your future?”
The sweep hand on Spencer’s watch made a full revolution as he appeared deep in thought. It was the same question one of the senior partners at the firm had asked him during a breakfast interview. He’d been so nervous that he’d forgotten to eat—something he rarely did. Now the emotion was back, holding him an unwilling captive.
“I want to become senior partner.”
Damon smiled at the waitress when she returned to the table with a tray of hot and cold appetizers, china and silver and a stack of linen napkins with the hotel’s logo. Quickly and expertly, she set the table and left as quietly as she’d come.
“You’re too ambitious to aim so low,” Damon said as if there hadn’t been a lull in the conversation. “That’s where you are wrong, Paxton.” Spencer’s bravado had returned. “Becoming senior partner at one of the top law firms in D.C. is definitely not aiming low.”
“What about a judgeship?”
Spencer’s expression did not change. “What about it?”
“How does Judge Tyson sound to you?”
The younger man smiled. “It sounds real good.”
“I can make it happen for you, Spencer, but first you have to do something for me. I’m going to make you an offer I’d like you to consider. You don’t have to give me an answer now. In fact, sleep on it for a couple of weeks, then get back to me.”
“What?”
“Jenah Morris is a liability. I want you to get rid of her.”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
“I’m going to give you thirty…no make that sixty days to make her disappear. After her, there can’t be any more outside women. I know people who can clean up your past as easily as erasing a chalkboard. But that’s not going to happen if you continue to cheat on your wife.”
Resting his elbows on his knees, Spencer glared at Damon. “Is this about me or my wife?”
“You’ve been in Washington long enough to know it’s never about the husband or the wife, but the couple.”
“Why me? Why us?” Spencer asked, totally confused.
“When Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House it shattered the glass ceiling. It told everyone that politics was no longer the private club of old white men. Obama becoming president signaled another change, because now there was a man of color in the Oval Office. Even the Supreme Court had to come into the new millennium with three women justices on the bench. If you’re going to make a name for yourself it won’t be as a senior partner. Your wife is an influential event planner with a client list of who’s who, while you’re slaving your ass off sixty to eighty hours a week to make partner. It’s not adding up, Spencer.”
“What’s in this for you?”
“Nothing. I work for a group of people just like you do. They pay me to give them what they want, and right now they want you. Enough talk. Let’s eat.”
Damon picked up a plate, filling it with dim sum, sushi, steak tartar and caviar on tiny crackers, handing it to Spencer. “Eat up.”
Forty-five minutes later Damon walked out of the Victoria and slipped into the rear of the car parked at the curb. He’d promised Spencer Tyson a judgeship, knowing it would never happen. There was no way the man could pass a background investigation.
He’d duped the arrogant attorney to stop him from cheating on Deanna. Bethany had come clean, telling him about her meltdown in the bathroom and how Deanna Tyson and Marisol McDonald had helped her. She also told him of her luncheon date with the two women.
Deanna had saved his wife’s reputation and that meant he owed her; he’d done what he did to ensure she would never know about her husband’s after-work escapades. He just prayed Spencer would take his advice and get rid of his mistress. If not, then Spencer Tyson would have to learn the hard way that his climb to the top of the legal ladder would end in complete ruin.
Chapter Eleven
Spencer hadn’t moved from where he’d sat waiting for Damon Paxton, talking and sharing cocktails and hors d’oeuvres with the man. He knew Jenah was upstairs waiting for him, but for a reason he couldn’t fathom he found it impossible to go to her.
He replayed everything that had gone down with him and Damon, his denial and the lobbyist’s accusations. They weren’t accusations but the truth. But who was Damon Paxton to lecture him about morality when he’d had a reputation for screwing any woman who smiled at him? However, he had to agree with Damon when he said he’d aimed too low.
Spencer had achieved his boyhood dream of becoming a lawyer, but he’d never aspired to the bench because he eschewed politics. He hadn’t wanted to be beholden to anyone but himself for his successes. If he worked hard, then he would attain his goals, not because he owed some power broker.
It was apparent someone recognized something in him that he’d refused to acknowledge: the ability to sit on the bench and mete out justice. Judge Tyson. Your Honor. He smiled. Spencer had to admit he’d like people to stand up out of respect when he entered a courtroom. It was an action he’d performed countless times when he defended his client. The bench was imposing, the black robe impressive, and being addressed as Your Honor was heady indeed.
Yes. He would do as Damon recommended and stop seeing Jenah. Thankfully, he didn’t have to drop her right away. He had sixty days to continue to enjoy the woman who’d offered him the best sex he’d ever had in his life.
He stood up, dropped several large bills on the table, waved to the bartender and walked down the corridor to the elevator. He entered an empty car and punched the button for the third floor. It rose quickly, quietly stopping at the designated floor. The door opened and Spencer came face-to-face with Jenah.
“Where are you going?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Spencer clamped a hand around his paramour’s upper arm, forcibly dragging her down to the suite where he’d told her to wait for him. He unlocked the door and pulled her inside. “It’s apparent you didn’t hear me when I told you to wait in the room for me.”
Jenah Morris tossed back the thick, highlighted, chemically straightened hair that had fallen over one eye. The peekaboo cut had become her signature hairstyle much like 1940s pinup girl Veronica Lake. The style added mystique, but it also concealed the fact that she had different-colored eyes. It wasn’t easy for a black girl growing up in Pittsburgh with one brown and one blue eye not to become the object of rude stares and ridicule.
Pushing out her lower lip, she pouted. “I got tired of waiting.”
Taking off his suit jacket, Spencer draped it over the back of a chair in the dining area. “Don’t I make it worth your while to wait for me?”
A sly smile parted Jenah’s full lips as she watched Spencer Tyson undress. She still couldn’t believe she’d gotten him to fall in love with her. She was more than aware that he was m
arried when they’d met on election night in the bar of a downtown D.C. hotel. They’d managed to find a spot where they could talk without shouting, and hours later they went upstairs to a suite where they had shared the most mind-blowing sex she’d ever had.
She’d moved to D.C. to join the staff of a Pittsburgh congresswoman, and had contemplated moving back to the Steel City before Spencer changed her mind. They couldn’t be seen together publicly, and she understood that, but now she wanted more. Jenah wanted to become Mrs. Spencer Tyson.
Shrugging out of her coat, she let it slide to the floor. Pulling the hem of her blouse from her skirt’s waistband, Jenah began what she called her dance of seduction. She swayed back and forth to a nameless tune in her head, removing each article of clothing like a professional burlesque dancer. Whenever she knew she was going to see Spencer she exchanged her panty hose for a bustier and thigh-high hose. The bustier clinched her waist and pushed up her breasts, bringing Spencer’s hungry gaze to linger there.
“Do you like what you see?” she crooned, stepping out of her heels.
Spencer smiled, his gaze shifting from her breasts to his groin. “Do you like what you see?” His enormous erection strained against boxer briefs.
“Let it out, baby,” Jenah whispered.
Reaching under the waistband, Spencer exposed his swollen penis, holding it and watching Jenah’s expression change from curiosity to awe as it continued to grow longer and larger.
“Come and lick it, Jenah.”
She approached her lover, sank to her knees and flicked her tongue around his sex. It began with a tentative flick, then her mouth opened and she took as much of him as she could without gagging.
Jenah was so aroused that the moisture bathing her core trickled down her inner thigh. She’d gone down on Spencer, but he never went down on her. She realized their lovemaking was lopsided, but she didn’t want to say anything that would make him stop seeing her. However, all that would change once they were married.
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