Scandalous Love

Chapter 2

The waitress laughed, shook her head slightly, and walked away. Ashley leaned into the table, staring at him, his face a jumble of emotions she couldn’t identify easily. His hair was mussed, and she wondered how awful hers looked right now. All her makeup was probably melted or kissed off. Was her skirt as wrinkled as his shirt?

What she saw in his face, though, was a careful cataloging of her. They were reading each other, trying to figure out the meaning of what had just happened in the office. Some part of her desperate to know, was also eager to just let it unfold without dissecting it or analyzing it or ripping it apart. Just enjoy the heat of his body, the glow of his look, the smile on his mouth when he kissed her. If there was more she was supposed to understand, she could understand it tomorrow. Right now, she didn’t want to think. She wanted to feel.

When the server brought the food she was glad she had trusted Chad. He picked some of the most tantalizing dishes. From shrimp bigger than her fist to delicate pieces of sashimi with flavors infused with lavender and lilac and something maple, it was a smorgasbord of Asian delight, and by the end of their meal she glanced over at the blonde and the firefighter-type again and saw that some spark was there, a deepening in the way that they handled the air between them. And she smiled to herself, wondering if someone else watching them saw what she felt.

He closed his eyes and sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Sated?” she asked.

His eyelids flew open, a dark, smoky look emanating from him directly into her. “Not yet,” he said, reaching across the table and taking her hand. “But we have dessert yet to enjoy.”

He wondered if it was obvious—whether she could tell that he was distracted, whether his eyes revealed his deep panic, whether she could see how much he was pulled in two directions by a tug-of-war of his own making?

A quick glance to his right showed a couple in that first-date dance, the woman a curvy blonde flashing smiles at her date, a built guy who looked like an Irish-Italian boxer. Her finger traced circles around the rim of her sake glass, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. In the dating world she was saying “f**k me,” and from the cool, calm, suave demeanor the guy exuded, Chad could tell he knew it, too.

Why couldn't he and Ashley be that couple? What he wouldn't give to roll the clock back and just ask her out at that employee orientation nearly two years ago. He'd wanted to. And he could have; she'd have likely said yes, even in her anger at his misconstrued condescension. Yet he'd held back, smart enough to know not to pursue her when she was pissed, and then…

And then what? Why hadn't he chased her? Years of financial statements and merger conference calls and red-eye jet rides blended into a blob of excuses. He got busy. Life got crazy. The rise to the top meant leaving lots of important things behind.

Lame. All of it.

There was no easy answer, because at the heart of it all he had put his ambition ahead of himself. Cheating himself out of years of happiness. A thief of lives, and as he built an empire he had broken more than one heart.

His.

Hers.

Too many.

All of those thoughts whipped through his mind at breakneck speed as he tried to keep up with the conversation, grateful for a final platter of something that turned out to be tasteless and cloying. It wasn't the food. It was him, appetite vanished and the world increasing the rate of speed with which it hurtled through space.

Hours. If he was really, incredibly lucky, he had a few more hours to be with her before the entire world blew up. That video was like an asteroid on a collision course with his life. Even a nuclear bomb wouldn't break it apart enough to be harmless.

Inevitability sank in. Chad wasn't the type to give up or give in, but right now he had one of the last, few conscious choices to make before the juggernaut of that s*x tape took over his life, Ashley's reputation, and Smiths Industries’ gossips. Not to mention the board of directors. With a life that had been carefully calibrated to work perfectly, he knew it was all going to topple neatly as well. Like implementing a military coup—it was always easier to conquer a highly organized society than to destroy one filled with chaos.

Efficiency and corporate sociopathy had made his company a lean, aggressive leader in media strategies. Ironic, then, that the media itself would destroy him, playing endless loops of that tape until Buddhist monks in isolation in the Himalayas could recite every sound from memory.

Ashley's mouth was moving and he realized she was saying something to him, expecting a response. Glowing and excited, her clothes were a bit rumpled from being tossed aside in a heady rush, and her hair had a carefree look to it that made him proud. He had done that. Put the wrinkles in her clothes, the pink in her cheeks, the twinkle in her eyes, the moans in her mouth and elsewhere. Achievement came in many forms, so why hadn't he reveled in this accomplishment the same way he gathered balance sheets, measuring his self worth by his net worth?

If measured instead in orgasms and smiles, he’d be a MILLIONaire by now.

Or die trying.

Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. Chad had changed a few minutes after they'd made love. Not the cooling off most guys went through after a one-night stand, where the air seemed to go stale and sickly within seconds, making her feel cheap and used even if she'd been a willing participant in her own debauchery. Only a handful of nights like that in her life, though; she learned what felt good emotionally and what did not quite well.

Quick study, she was.

No, this was a nearly palpable grief, as if Chad were about to be sent to the gallows, or awaited bad news. If they’d been more familiar with each other, even a tiny bit, she’d have been blunt and just asked what was wrong. Instead, though, she found herself having to go at the truth from the side entrance. Putting on a good face, he kept smiling at her, reaching for her hand, pretending to listen. But something wasn't quite right, and finally she just decided to cut to the chase.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “You are acting like you just drowned a kitten by accident.” She leaned in and whispered mischievously, “I know the s*x wasn't that bad.”

His eyes were unfocused and he seemed almost drunk as he shook his head, trying to rid himself of a fog. “Oh, no. Nothing.” Fake smile. She knew that one all too well; he was using the classic female maneuver, and she wasn't going to let him get away with it.

“So the s*x was that bad!”

“What?” That brought him back to reality. At the table to their left was a couple who looked like they got married during WWII, wrinkled faces stretched in a look of surprise, the woman covering her face with one hand and giggling into it. The old man looked at Chad and just shrugged.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The old man leaned over and stage whispered, “Bad s*x is better than no s*x, bud. Don’t ask me how I know that. And,” he said, rheumy blue eyes peering at Ashley, “get as much of it as you can while you can.”

“Marty!” his wife shouted.

Thump. “Ow! You kicked me,” he growled at her.

“You deserved it!” she snapped. The waitress looked at them nervously, standing in front of them with a heaping pile of soba noodles. Both dug into their food while Ashley and Chad tried not to laugh.

“Shall I kick you under the table?” she joked.

Chad just blinked, studying her. “You’re not my wife,” he said with a sigh.

“Then you have no excuse for having bad s*x,” Marty quipped. Thump. “Ow.”

“Mind your manners,” his wife grumbled, her mouth full of wontons and noodles.

Too polite to laugh in their faces, Ashley and Chad just ignored them.

“So, where are you from?” Chad asked her. She chuckled at the “first-dateness” of the question and he seemed to recognize it too, laughing a bit as well.

“I’m from Maine,” she said.

He nodded. “Portland?” Nearly everyone from Maine she’d met in Boston had come from Portland, so she wasn’t surprised by the question.

“No, a little town farther north called Verily.”

“Verily? Sounds Mayberry-ish.”

She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Something like that. My parents own a campground up there.”