She shrugged. “Maybe. I’m curious about them all and I’d like to get them all a bit more, to get them and you.”
“Ask me. I will tell you what you need to know, whatever you want to know.”
She could see and hear that he meant every word he said, but he still didn’t get where she was coming from. “I know, but you will tell me from your perspective and if I get their perspective too I might see the actual picture.”
He said nothing for a few seconds which was long enough for Tasha to consider just how badly this conversation could go.
“Okay. Meet Amanda for lunch if you must, but remember she is my employee and she doesn’t need to know about us,” he said a little exasperated.
Grabbing her phone Tasha nodded, happy that he’d conceded this and without a real fight or argument. ”Right, I need to call Lucy and Angie and then we will do Q and A, okay?”
He nodded as she called Lucy first and then Angie whose first response to Tasha’s marital news had been, “Fuck off! No way!”
Lucy had been a little more traditional in her response by offering congratulations and screaming loudly when Tasha had said that she may need some help with a dress. After hanging up she rolled her phone over in her hand several times, thinking, deliberating. She was aware of Jim’s rapt attention, undoubtedly waiting for her to speak, to explain just what dilemma she was having an internal debate over.
She turned to him eventually. “I need to call Gerry, but I’d rather do that on my own, so I’ll call him in the morning.”
Jim nodded and then turned the conversation back to them. “Q and A time, what the hell did you do to Sara today?” he asked half-laughing.
“Nothing. We just talked. You were right that she was upset about having to go back to work and the fact that Lenny won’t sell any of his art to cover his balls up with the IRS pissed her off big style.” She laughed as Jim held a bottle of beer up to her as he stood at the fridge.
“Please.” She continued, “But we just talked through what work had given her in the past and she decided she actually missed the independence and another side to her personality.”
She thought she’d given him a decent overview without sharing the details he may not approve of.
He handed her the beer and sat down next to her as he sipped from his own bottle. “What else?” he asked curiously.
“That’s about it, except that she thinks I am fabulous and your kids love me. She believes you’ll marry me and you really don’t deserve me.”
“She said that?”
“Yes, except for the last bit, although you obviously don’t deserve me.” She grinned.
“I certainly don’t deserve you, but unfortunately you’re stuck with me because I own you,” he whispered in her ear, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“Yes, you do,” she agreed and smiled at him smiling at her. “We could do this some other time and go back to bed, or stay here.”
Jim laughed at her. “What are you suggesting, Miss Winters?”
“I’m suggesting that we shag like bunnies, in particular I was thinking of that reverse cowgirl thing, Mr Maybury. I really liked that.” She moved so she straddled his lap, facing him.
He roared as he looked at her now. “I love your enthusiasm, and I got that you love it. I loved it, too, it lets me touch you, everywhere.” He breathed heavily as he stared at her, “But you’re pointing the wrong way to be reversed.”
“That is easily sorted,” she said making him laugh again as she made to turn around.
“No. You’re distracting me, again. Later, if you behave,” he chastised her with a single, light spank to her bottom. “Now ask a question, but stop pouting.” He grinned.
“What happened with Mrs Carter and her daughter? You said you dumped Sally at her mommy’s insistence, but then what?”
Frowning and with a sigh he replied, cautiously, “You know that once I have answered these questions there is no going back and you can’t get all pissed at the answers because you are jealous.”
She nodded, not that she was entirely convinced she wouldn’t get pissed at his answers to her questions where other women were concerned. “I know and I’m not jealous of your high school girlfriend and your first cougar, well, maybe a little, but I don’t want graphic details, just details of what it was. I’m curious.”
“Okay,” he started. “I continued seeing Laine, if that’s the right word, for about a year and I learned a lot from her and she enjoyed having a younger, attentive lover, but it was just sex. I was with her in her pool one day. We were rather involved when Sally came home early. She’d had a fight with the boy she was seeing, a kid a year above us in school. We weren’t aware of her presence and when we left the pool and went upstairs neither of us knew she was in the house, but she was.” He raised his eyebrows at the memory. “She was hiding in her mother’s closet, waiting for us, to watch us.”
“No way,” she shrieked. “You know how to pick dirty bitches. Fuck!”
“Exactly.” Laughed Jim. “I have said that I have missed the smart mouth, Tasha, but you are heading onto shaky ground with the language now, baby.”
