Diamond Girl

by ANDREA SMITH

  Lindsey and I had decorated the tree at our house Christmas Eve morning. She had been a bit surprised that I hadn’t gotten to it yet.

  “What’s been keeping you so busy, Mom?”

  “Oh I don’t know; this and that I guess. I’ve had Christmas shopping to do.” That wasn’t altogether a lie; I had hurriedly done all of my shopping through catalog having it next day aired through the courier service. It had arrived the evening I had returned from Slate’s. I had hurriedly wrapped them all before Lindsey got home from the airport.

  Christmas morning I made our traditional breakfast of bacon, eggs and waffles. We then went to the family room to open presents. Lindsey loved all of the clothes I had bought for her; I had also given her an assortment of gift cards that she could use at school. Jack had bought her the next generation iPad tablet that had just come out.

  Lindsey had bought me an assortment of CDs with Hits of the 1980s on them; she knew that I loved that genre of music. Jack opened the gifts from me. It was always the same thing every year: shirts, ties, cologne and a new wallet. It was what he wanted and I didn’t dare disappoint him.

  Jack was now showing Lindsey how to download new applications on to her iPad. I was looking under the tree for my gift from Jack. There weren’t any more packages to unwrap. He finally looked up; a smug smile crossed his face.

  “I didn’t forget you, Sammie; Merry Christmas, darling.”

  He handed me a green envelope with a card inside of it that said, ‘To my Wonderful Wife at Christmas.’ I opened the card. Five crisp new one thousand dollar bills fell out onto my lap.

  (Wow! Was this a gift given out of guilt?)

  “Thanks, Jack.” I said, puzzled at his generosity.

  “I figured you can pick out whatever you want, honey.”

  “Let’s shop Mom,” Lindsey said with a laugh.

  Lindsey helped me up in the kitchen with getting the turkey into the oven. She was telling me about her classes at Cornell; apparently she had met a guy and they had been out a couple of times. She claimed it wasn’t all that serious, yet.

  “I can’t believe how great you look, Mom. I know you said you’d been working out but you are hot. You could hold your own on campus, I bet.”

  “Yeah right; you’re silly, Lindsey,” I teased.

  “I am serious, Mom. The guys would definitely call you a MILF.”

  “A what?”

  She leaned close, whispering to me what that meant.

  “Lindsey,” I said, halfway shocked, “I can’t believe that you said that to me.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at her though; I guess we were more like friends these days. Brenda had been right.

  “Is a MILF the same as a Cougar then?”

  “Only if she takes him up on it,” she replied.

  (Oh Christ! I was not comfortable with the direction this conversation had taken.)

  We had our Christmas meal in the evening; Lindsey was then going out with Julie and a couple of the other girls that were home from college on Christmas break.

  As predicted, my period had started earlier in the day with a vengeance. I felt crampy and a bit of irritability was sinking in being home with Jack now that Lindsey had gone out for the evening.

  I pacified myself by taking a leisurely shower. I then dressed in some warm pajamas and curled up in bed with a book. I remembered that my track phone was stashed in my bedside drawer along with my diaphragm. Since Jack was busy on the computer in his office, I decided to power my phone on to see if I had any messages.

  I immediately saw the symbol that that a voice mail was in my inbox. My stomach did flip flops as I waited to hear it. My skin tingled as soon as I heard Slate’s sexy voice on the message:

  “Hey babe, hope you’re having a nice Christmas. Was Santa good to you this year? I’ll see you in a few days; be a good girl, okay?”

  I texted him a message back:

  ‘Got your msg. Hope your Xmas is going well. I look forward to seeing you soon. Of course I’m being a good girl! XOXO’

  I hit the ‘send’ button instantly worried that Slate might not like the hugs and kisses symbols I had put in the text. He wasn’t one for romantic or sentimental shit; that was obvious. Oh well, I couldn’t worry about that now. Perhaps it would be forgotten by the time he came back to town from wherever the hell he was spending Christmas. I was getting ready to power my phone back off when I heard a ‘beep’ indicating that I had a text message.

  (Oh shit . . .)

  I looked at his message and smiled.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, babe. XOXO’

  I powered my phone off, vowing that I would never erase his text message or his voice mail from that phone. I could pull either of them up whenever I missed him - like now. I snuggled under the covers and fell asleep. Hearing from him had been my best Christmas gift of all.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jack left for Charlotte on January 2nd. Lindsey went with him. She didn’t have to be back for classes until the second week in January. Jack had thought she might enjoy the warmer weather and they could spend some quality time together.

  A year ago the fact that Jack would have asked Lindsey to travel with him on business and not me would have injured my feelings; it didn’t faze me now. I would miss my daughter; the rat bastard, not so much. Slate referred to him as that so often that it had worn off on me. I had to watch to make sure I didn’t use the ‘RB’ nickname in front of Lindsey.

  I went up to Jack’s office to pay bills and update our account balances to reconcile with the online figures. I had posted everything to the Excel file, and balanced the personal checking account but the figures still did not match. Our bank account online showed over $9000 more in it than the Excel spreadsheet. I went over the figures again, now checking by check number or payment reference number to see if payments had cleared the bank.

  I finally found the difference. It was the check that Jack had written to Banion - East Coast District Office in the amount of $9213.77 that had not cleared. That had been over a month ago.

  I pulled out the check ledger with our numbered checks. The check number referenced on the Excel file for that payment was gone. The carbon behind it showed that Jack had written and signed it. That was strange. Perhaps he had forgotten to mail it or take it into the controller when he had last been in Virginia. He usually made the trip to that branch office whenever he was in Charlotte to check the progress of the construction on the new distribution center.

  I made a mental note to ask him about it the next time I called. I saw where Jack’s electronic payroll deposit had gone in on January 1st; the previous one was received on December 15th. He got paid twice a month. I didn’t see any withdrawals made for the five grand he had gifted me for Christmas.

  I clicked on the link to our joint savings account at the top of the screen. It required a separate password. I hadn’t recalled that being necessary before; it had been awhile since I had been in that account. There was always more than enough money in the checking to cover our bills. I knew that Jack had transferred some in to pay Lindsey’s tuition for the first half of the school year back in August.

  I put in the same password we used for the checking account. I received an error message for that one. Jack must have purposely set up a separate password for our savings account. Now I was extremely suspicious. I looked around his desk, and through the drawers to see if by chance he had written it down. He had shown me where he kept the password to our checking account if I should forget it. He had assigned an alpha-numeric password that had Lindsey’s initials, plus his birth year behind it. I didn’t think I would have a problem remembering that.

  I searched everywhere but didn’t find anything with his handwriting that looked to be a password. There was one alternative that might work. I needed to see if I could get the password reset. I would simply have to know the answers to the secret questions he had selected.

  I clicked my cursor on the option that allowed a password to be re
set if forgotten. There were three questions I needed to answer before I would get an email with a temporary password.

  The first question was to identify favorite sports team. That was easy enough as I typed in ‘Yankees’. Jack was a baseball lover. Correct!

  The next question was to name his favorite vacation spot. Shit! When was the last time we had taken a vacation? I racked my brain trying to remember. Jack and I hadn’t taken a vacation forever. Then I remembered that he had taken Lindsey on a trip to Disney World back when she was ten years old; he had not been able to make it home for her birthday that year and she had been devastated. He had told her he would take a week off and she could choose to go wherever she wanted. That had been her choice. I had stayed behind because my mother was having surgery at the time and I needed to care for her.

  I typed in ‘Orlando.’

  (Correct!)

  The last question was to type in his mother’s maiden name.

  (Fuck! How in the hell would I know that? They hadn’t spoken in years. I hadn’t seen her since Lindsey had been born.)

  Shit! I couldn’t even telephone to ask because I didn’t even know her phone number. Then I remembered the bible Jack had been given at his baptism. It might have that information inside of it.

  I dashed to our closet and pulled down the box labeled ‘Jack’s’ records. I took the lid off and rooted around through papers, blue ribbons, newspaper articles from his football days, his diploma. My hand touched the leather bound book. Bingo! I looked inside and saw his pertinent information in the back that showed a family tree. There it was: Mother’s Maiden Name: Rafferty.

  I raced back to the office and typed it into the field.

  (Correct!)

  Moments later I heard the computer beep that an email had come in. I went in and clicked on the link, typing in the temporary password that had been given. It then prompted me to type and re-type a new password. I made it match the one for our checking account. I was in.

  It only took me a moment to figure out why Jack had blocked me from our savings account with a separate password.

  (Holy shit! We had more than $375,000 in our savings account!)

  I pulled up all of the transaction activities for the last eighteen months. I started a new Excel worksheet to post it so that I could study the activity in depth.

  There were all kinds of cash deposits from ATMs around the country for various amounts; all were less than ten thousand dollars. I saw the cash withdrawal of five thousand which was likely my Christmas present; there were also deposits of checks made to the account. The checks were written to and endorsed by Jack; they were from insurance companies: State Farm, Allstate, Motorists Mutual, and Cincinnati Insurance. The checks were from different agencies around the country. There were a couple from Virginia, one from South Carolina, two from Indiana, and one from Illinois. Those deposits totaled over one hundred thousand dollars! There were miscellaneous withdrawals generally done a couple of days after each deposit. The withdrawals were always half of what the deposit had been.

  I also noticed that the savings account wasn’t paying interest.

  (Jack didn’t want to report interest income on our tax return; he clearly didn’t want me or the IRS to know about this nest egg and where the money was originating.)

  I was startled when my track phone vibrated in my pocket. I had a text message:

  ‘Get your ass over here; we need to fuck!’

  I smiled as I typed a reply to Slate.

  ‘Be there in an hour; be naked and ready!’

  I shut the computer down, and put the check ledger away. I would review this more later. Right now, I had something more important to do.

  CHAPTER 19

  I was on the couch facing Slate. I was on his lap, his cock buried deeply inside of me. My legs were wrapped around his back as I rode him up and down; my hips circling clockwise as I pressed in deeper with each of his thrusts. I arched my back and leaned backwards, letting my long hair flow down to the floor as he grasped my hips and pumped in and out of me.

  I felt the orgasmic build up deep within me; this had all of the markings of a mind-blowing orgasm. It had been damn near two weeks since he had fucked me and my body was in need of him. I sensed he was in need of me as he neared his climax, he moaned my name over and over again; that was the tiny push I needed. He pulled me up; cupping my face in his hands as his lips devoured mine while we climaxed together.

  “Oh baby,” he rasped, as he was winding down, “I fucking missed this.”

  (My heart fluttered but not as much as it would have if he said he had ‘fucking missed’ me!)

  I fisted my hands in his thick mane of hair, my lips now moving to his face, kissing him all over. I whispered in his ear softly, “I fucking missed you, Slate.”

  He immediately lifted me off of him and sat me down beside him on the couch. His eyes were burning through me; a look of anger was on his face. He raked his hands through his hair; then finally looked over at me again. Most of the anger was gone now; it was replaced with a look of compassion and concern.

  “Sunny,” he said gently, taking my hand into his, “That’s not what we’re about; you know that right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About all of this shit like, ‘I missed you Slate; I care about you, Slate’ - we are not going there; you do get that, right?”

  (Oh Dear God - I had totally fucked up; I had totally misread his signals. That wasn’t true; he had given me no signals other than I was his current fuck buddy. I was a fucking idiot.)

  “Well sure; I know that. All I meant was that I missed you - you know, our fucking. You’re the only one that I allow to do that, right?”

  He nodded his head affirmatively; he wasn’t convinced that my ‘last minute’ save was really the truth. He was worried that I was starting to get attached to him. That was not in the plan. He continued to look at me warily. I was pretty sure that he was going to say something else about it when I diverted his attention by looking at my wrist watch.

  “Oh shit; I have to go,” I said, getting up from the couch and picking up the clothes that he had literally ripped off of me and tossed on the floor as soon as I had walked in.

  I headed towards the bathroom trying my best to save face as the tears stung my eyes.

  “What the hell? You’re leaving already?”

  “I have to Slate; the rat bastard has plans for this evening. We’re having dinner with friends,” I lied.

  I could tell he was royally pissed. It was good for him I thought as I got dressed and did my best to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks.

  I forced myself to hum a little tune while I dressed and repaired my just fucked hair.

  When I returned to the living room Slate was dressed and wearing a scowl that hadn’t been there when I arrived. .

  I pulled my jacket up off of the kitchen chair, shrugging it on.

  “I kind of thought we would be spending the day together,” he said, half whining. “I went to the store and bought steaks. I was going to cook dinner for us.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn he had a full-fledged pout going.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sounding very contrite, “I didn’t know that you would be calling today, Slate. Can I have a rain check?”

  “Whatever Sunny,” he said, not bothering to hide his pissy attitude. He pulled his jacket on and opened the door for me. We descended the stairs and walked in silence to the bus stop.

  Just as the bus pulled up I moved closer to the curb. I turned to tell him goodbye and he was right there; mere inches from me. He pulled me against me, bending my head back as he devoured me with his sensuous mouth. His tongue invaded mine, as he thoroughly kissed me. I heard the hydraulic door to the bus open; the driver cleared his throat loudly. I pushed against Slate, breaking our lip lock.

  “Slate - I gotta go.”

  “Don’t you fucking let that rat bastard touch you, Sunny; I will be able to tell
. I won’t be happy which means you won’t be happy. Got it?”

  I took a breath, my heart was pounding.

  “Yeah Slate; I’ve got it.” I murmured softly, turning to board the bus. He stood there watching me as I took a seat near the window. I looked out at him standing there with a major scowl on his face.

  I raised my hand up and gave him a little wave. His eyes were still boring in to me. He finally raised a hand and gave a slight wave, never once taking his eyes off of me. I shivered as the bus took off; the image of him was with me for the rest of the night as I nuked a Lean Cuisine and ate it in front of the television.

  Brenda called later as we hadn’t talked during the holidays. George had taken her and the kids to Aspen for the holidays. She had skied for the first time and had quite a story to tell me. She then asked how the holidays went for me. I filled her in up to and including what had happened this afternoon with Slate.

  “So you’re still fucking the ‘Bad Boy Biker’, huh?”

  “Yep. I figure I have a lot of orgasms due me.”

  “You know,” she said, chuckling, “I can’t believe that you never told me you hadn’t had an orgasm. Jesus Christ, Sam, that is kind of a major thing, you know?”

  “Oh come on, Bren; when did we really ever go into detail about our sex lives?”

  She was quiet for a moment. I could only guess that she was thinking back to high school; to the time when I got knocked up by Jack.

  “You know, you’re right. I mean you never even went into detail about the night at that party we went to in high school when Lindsey was conceived. The first I heard about it was when your period was late. Good lord, I know you were a virgin but even with that, I mean didn’t he sort of get you all lubed up so at least you were willing to bear the pain just to get it over with?”

  “It wasn’t like that at all, Bren. He was drunk. We made out. The next thing I knew; he had pulled my jeans down and ripped my panties off. I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  “Whoa, hold up there for a second. Are you telling me that Jack date raped you?”