“James, you really do like to take a risk, don’t you?” He was more than happy to pay a return visit with her to his office, they both knew that, but now wasn’t the time to discuss that. “Why is Sara there?” he suddenly asked. It was more appropriate to discuss that.
“Not a clue, but I will let you know at one thirty.”
Lizzie appeared in front of her whispering, “Ask him, ask him.”
“Lizzie has something she wants to ask you,” she told him.
“What about?” he asked nervously.
“Ask her yourself, she is right here, but I will see you later.”
“Okay, baby. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She passed Lizzie her phone and directed Sara outside.
They sat outside under the parasol at the table and after what seemed like an eternity of silence, Tasha spoke. “Is there something you wanted?”
“Sorry,” said Sara. “About yesterday, I shouldn’t have said anything about you and Jim.”
Tasha looked at her confused. “I still don’t understand what you meant yesterday, but I thought we sorted this out last night after you called Jim.”
“I was a little cryptic, but what I meant was that I like you and the kids do, too, and I know that Jim cares for you, but he falls in love very easily and I would hate for you to wake up one day and realise that your idea of love and Jim’s are different. Please, just be sure.”
“Do you and Lenny have the same idea of love?” asked Tasha, apparently shocking Sara.
“Maybe, in some ways, and not in other ways. If he loved me he wouldn’t be forcing me to go back to work rather than selling some of his art work,” she said angrily.
Tasha stared at her but was unsure what she should say.
“He spent almost half a million dollars on art recently, but that is too precious to sell, unlike me.”
“Sorry.” Tasha thought the other woman was being rather dramatic but continued. “It’s not quite prostitution or the white slave trade he’ssellingyou into, is it?”
“No. But you wouldn’t understand, you are young and pretty with big tits in the right place, but it won’t always be like that,” she spat.
Tasha stared at her, her emotions and confusion rolling off her and was unsure why she was here and why she was turning this on her. “Are you mad at me? Is this about me, you, Lenny or Jim?” she asked bravely, but felt out of her depth again.
“Yes. I should be living in this house baking cakes for my husband’s birthday. He should be calling me during meetings and obviously flirting. He should look at me like he looks at you. He never took time off from work to be with me, but for you he does. I should be able to buy him gifts that make his face light up. He should refuse to answer his phone at dinner because I don’t like it. I should be able to call him James and for it to amuse him,” she cried.
What the fuck was going on here? No wonder she’d wanted a private chat. Maybe she was losing the plot and having some kind of episode. Whatever it was Tasha really had no clue what to do.
“Do you still love Jim?” asked Tasha nervously, knowing that the wrong answer from Sara would change everything and there would be no going back from it.
“No.”
Tasha breathed a huge sigh of relief as she heard the correct answer.
“But I want what you have and I think I could have when we were first married and I let it slip away.”
“What about Lenny?”
“I don’t know, he is very different to Jim.” It was Sara’s turn to sigh now.
“Tasha, can we have some more cake please?” called Lizzie from the doorway.
“Have some breakfast, brunch or lunch first, cake later,” she replied.
“Okay.” Then Lizzie was gone again.
