Chapter 13
When Connor checked the time, he got into a bit of a panic. Meiling's obduracy, insatiability - call it what you will - had meant it was a race against time for him to get back home before Marcia and the kids returned. After the quickest of goodbyes, he sped home and was very relieved to see no sign of her car in the driveway. He took the stairs two at a time to get to the bathroom, where he did his best to remove any trace of his lovemaking from his body, before changing into the clothes he had been wearing before they left and going back down to his office to get working on his papers. Only a few minutes had passed before he heard her car pull up, at which point he stuffed the papers back in a drawer. He thought about locking it, but decided against it, since that would look suspicious, as they always kept the drawers unlocked.
He had just enough time to get to the den, where he had taken his laptop, where he created a new Excel file, which in time he would fill with the data he had yet to extract from his paperwork. Seeking their dad out on their return, the boys jumped onto the couch beside him and started telling him about their day and about the film they had seen. Mark was boasting about how he had helped Vesna understand some bits where she had seemed confused, while Aidan told him he was being a doofus, because she understood what was going on a whole lot better than he did.
After a few minutes, Marcia joined them and asked Connor about his day. He told her it had been very productive and he felt a whole lot better now that he had that particular monkey off his back. Marcia gave him a peck on the cheek for his troubles and said he deserved a beer. She'd get one for him and then start work on the dinner.
When she got back to the kitchen, she thought it strange that her husband hadn't shown her his work, as he usually did, and made a mental note to have a look in the office later, when Connor wasn't around. Something about Connor just didn't seem quite right, even though she couldn't put her finger on it. No, she thought, she knew what it was; he seemed utterly washed out, and she couldn't imagine that sorting out the domestic accounts could, well, quite account for that.
Indeed, when she went back to the den with the beer, he gave the impression of being about to nod off. The boys were playing video games on their own, which was also unusual, as he didn't like that when he was around, and would typically play something with them, or supervise them as they worked on a model airplane or knuckled down to the latest project he had set them.
As the days went by, she forgot about her suspicions, and Connor took his papers to the office and got his Excel file sorted out during a quiet spell at work. Marcia didn't ask to look at it, so he didn't bother to show her. In short, he thought he'd got away with what had been the most incredible sex of his life - better even than his sex with Vesna, which had been pretty far out. He felt that under Meiling's tutelage, he'd graduated to a higher level not just of sexual performance but of sexual awareness. He felt his sex life with Marcia had benefited too. He was happy to take more time and to build her up to a higher pitch of desire before he entered her.
Everything changed, though, when Marcia went to the home improvement store to get some furniture for the garden, which had come highly recommended by Jennifer. She happened to run into Don as he was doing his rounds of the store, speaking to staff and reminding them of their individual targets. Although he didn't know her particularly well, he welcomed her like a long-lost friend and mentioned how nice it was to see her so soon after Connor had dropped by with the new church members to help them fit out their apartment.
Overcoming the impulse to ask straight out who these new members might be, Marcia mentioned that Dean and Jennifer had recommended the garden furniture which was currently on sale, at which Don became very animated and took Marcia over to the relevant section, detailing the features, advantages and benefits of the products. In the circumstances, Marcia felt it was just the most natural thing in the world to ask if that is what Connor had been looking at with the girls. (Yes, she had begun to put two and two together.)
Don, who was one of the simplest guys you could ever meet and someone who revered the leadership of the church, said no, they had been looking to furnish an apartment, not a house, but they didn't seem to be under the financial restraints that local students were often under. Marcia felt she needed to fish a little bit more in order to be certain, telling Don that the girls had to support elderly relatives back east and were not as affluent as they might appear to be. She understood that Meiling (the younger of the two) had taken on not just one, but
two
part-time jobs to help her through school. Don was highly apologetic, asking Marcia's forgiveness for his judgmental attitude. He just felt that all Asian students who came to the States to study were without financial worries.
"Well, Don," said Marcia, "things aren't always as they seem."
Marcia told Don she'd have to talk with her husband about the furniture, and he totally understood, telling her that he'd set one set aside for a week, while they made up their mind. Marcia thanked him and made her way out of the store full of thoughts about how she might get her revenge on her douchebag husband. No wonder the wretched man had almost fallen asleep on the couch that evening when she came back from the cinema!
As she was leaving the car park, Marcia chanced to see a man loading what looked like a massage table into his station wagon. A bright light flashed in her mind. That's what she'd do! She'd get herself a piece of the action with that handsome Californian Todd, whose wife she'd already sampled on her swanky massage table. That would serve as starters at least for the retribution she would work upon the snivelling wretch who doubled up as her life partner.
"Really!" she asked herself. "What has come over him? He'll end up being cheated by any piece of fluff in a skirt!"
When she thought of his recent prowess in the sexual arena, she felt sick to her stomach. Either he was thinking of those Asian gold-diggers when he was fucking her, or, even worse, he'd picked up some bloody tips from them. She knew where he could stick his whole frigging Oriental exoticism craze, except he'd probably stuck it up there already!
Now, it was only a matter of identifying a window of opportunity when she could get the civil engineer alone. That happened sooner than she thought (almost too soon, if she was honest, what with the need to look after all the logistics), since Harper and a handful of other house group members were on a committee led by Connor that met on an ad-hoc basis to discuss ideas for social events that could attract new members to the church. One of these was coming up in just three days' time. Since the meeting was being held at the church, theoretically she'd be able to hitch up with Todd at his place, so long as she could arrange a babysitter for the kids.
A quick phone call to Vesna solved that issue; now all she needed was a pretext for getting herself alone for the evening with the handsome Californian. Maybe she could offer him a massage? No, far too unsubtle, she thought. What about asking for an outsider's perspective on the work of the church as part of the strategic review she had been asked to perform to mark the 25
th
anniversary of the establishment of the church? Yes, that would do nicely. She'd pump him for ideas, then he'd pump her like a maniac until she had exorcised all the ghosts of her husband's betrayal.
The strange thing was that when she got in touch with Todd, he actually seemed to be expecting her call. He even told her that he'd "sensed a connection" when they'd "fellowshipped" with them earlier. Marcia, thrilled to her core, played it cool.
"My god!" she thought. "I'm going to play it straight. I'll play the deaconess card and put the discourse on a strictly business level. That should get his juices flowing. Mine certainly are!"
She decided there and then that she'd wear black (including stockings - fuck it! - the works). Every man she knew was turned on by powerful women...and black. She'd get him so horny in anticipation of their "concourse", as she took to calling their get together, that he'd be like a stag during rutting season when she rang his doorbell. And then, when she was ushered into his living room, she'd find the most uncomfortable chair and sit straight backed while she delivered her opening monologue, so she could raise the temperature in the room, the libido in her interlocutor, and the sledgehammer in his pants!
"I look forward to hammering things out with you on Thursday, then, Todd," she concluded, fingering herself, as she imagined his hammer bringing her to the first ("No, make that the
second
," she thought) of a whole raft of orgasms.
Having brought Vesna into her secret (and learning in the process that the cunning Croat was herself not averse to getting to know both Harper and Todd a lot better), Marcia needed now only to think up an excuse for being out for the evening - one that wouldn't scream "Sex!" when she mentioned it to her husband. The best she could think of was a visit to the Thai nail parlour, which stayed open late. She would tell Connor that they were fully booked for the whole week apart from evenings, and that she felt in need of spoiling herself a bit after the hectic few weeks she'd been having. She'd get her nails done, all right, but that would be during the afternoon before she picked the boys up from school. If he made any objections, she always had the trump card of his pastoral visit to the Chinese girls up her sleeve. But she didn't think it would come to that, as she knew Connor well enough to know that he would still be wondering whether he had got away with that little gambit.
After seeing Connor off that evening, she made sure that Vesna was entertaining the boys in the den when she popped her head (nothing more) round the door to say goodbye and tell them to be good while she was gone. One member of the family being naughty was quite enough for one evening, she told herself with a lascivious grin.
When Todd answered the doorbell, he had obviously made an effort in the sartorial department, which pleased Marcia greatly. He looked very dapper in his open-neck white shirt, his tight blue jeans and his slip-on loafers, which would be very easy to slip off when Marcia let him off the bridle.
For her part, judging from the way Todd gave her a not so subtle once-over, Marcia had obviously struck all the right notes with her deaconess uniform: black blouse (with only the top button open), uplift bra, which virtually thrust her breasts at him, mid-length black skirt (with the merest wisp of a slit at the front, which was guaranteed to have his heart doing cartwheels at the thought of what lay above, if he played his cards right) and four-inch heels (which, as she predicted, he imagined remaining on, so that the danger of being run through with them as if by a stiletto if he made a false move in bed was already causing his penis to swell against the denim - underwear having been dispensed with for this evening of all evenings).
