** This story could belong in Loving Wives, Mature, Group or Novels. It includes incest, vanilla sex, polyamory and monogamy. This is not a traditional story about a cheating spouse. It is a re-make of "She Wanted to Cheat" submitted in Feb. 2011.
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On the tenth of April I got an email from a friend who lives in San Francisco. I read it at work. Thinking about it after I read it pretty-well ruined the rest of my work day.
It said, "Walt, I went to lunch today at the Cannery Shopping area and I saw your wife Colleen having lunch with two men and a woman. When I recognized her I was about to go over and greet her, but I changed my mind. The two men were in suits and both Colleen and the other woman were in short skirts and tank tops. I remembered you said she was coming up for a business conference so seeing her didn't surprise me until she leaned to her right and kissed the man sitting there! Her right hand was in his lap and the kiss lasted a looong time. The other couple followed their lead and also kissed.
I'm telling you because if my wife was kissing and touching someone else and you saw it, I'd want you to tell me." It was signed, "Good Luck, Mark."
Four hours of thinking about the implications of what he allegedly saw, I wrote back.
"Mark – I've wandered around work thinking about what you saw for four hours. I didn't know about her behavior when she isn't with me, and I'm glad you told me. At least I think I'm glad you told me. Now, I need to decide what I'm going to do. If you see them together again please take a picture or two and send it to me. I know she's checked into the Argonaut on Jefferson Street. Thanks, Walt."
Two hours later my assistant, Kathy, came into my office and sat down. Kathy and I had worked together for nearly ten years. Sometimes I thought she knew me better than anyone except Colleen. She sat down and quietly waited, without speaking.
I knew she was there without looking and figured when she needed to speak, she would. Finally, I looked at her and asked, "What?"
She smiled and said, "Since ten this morning you've been somewhere else. You missed lunch. You haven't said anything to me since you thanked me for coffee early this morning. You haven't visited the factory floor or spoken to anyone on the phone. Something is going on and I want to... I need to know what's up."
I realized there was no way I could hide from her. She knew me too well.
"Ok. I'll tell you." I lowered my voice. She leaned towards me. "I got an email this morning telling me it's likely that Colleen is mixing pleasure with her business in San Francisco."
Kathy sat farther forward in her chair and asked, "Likely or she is?"
"Likely."
"Are you going to accept likely or will you confirm the suspicions?"
That's one of many things I've always liked about Kathy's mind. It goes to the center of a problem quickly.
"I'll find out!"
"Then we should call our office in San Francisco. I know they have a PI on staff. He can get you the answers you want by tomorrow morning."
"Yeah!" I picked up the phone and with it halfway to my ear I stopped and said, "And then what do I do?"
"For now, find the facts. After we know the facts, we'll deal with them." She got up and I watched her tight skirt encased ass wiggle out of my office. Kathy had never been a tease, but always dressed conservatively with just enough sex appeal to remind any man around that she was indeed a woman. My mind repeated a line I'd heard once in a movie, 'If I was ever gonna...'
I noticed she said, "Tomorrow WE'LL deal with them." We. I wasn't alone in this.
I made the call, gave the female PI what I knew and asked for a call in the morning. Her name was Caroline Carter and I hired her personally, not on the company payroll. She sounded quite professional on the phone and the fact that the company had her on staff said she probably knew her business.
At five I drove home on automatic pilot. When I hit the garage door opener I was surprised. I had no memory of driving home. My head had been in San Francisco. Inside our home I looked around and started thinking about options. "What if" options.
Colleen and I bought the house together twelve years before that day. We'd remodeled the kitchen and two bathrooms since then. Our daughter had graduated high school while we lived in the house and had lived there for her first two years of college, as well. The pictures on the walls all had memories for me. Memories of where we were when we took each picture, why we took them, when we hung them. Everything I looked at let me know that our home was much more than a house. Until ten o'clock that morning I thought George Carlin was wrong. Our home was more than a place for our "stuff."
'Would Colleen be willing to give all this, and me, up?' I wondered. I wondered it so hard I asked the question out loud.
I made myself dinner. I ate in the kitchen and kept thinking. After dinner I went to our family room. We called it our family room but it was actually a media room. A big flat screen TV, surround sound music system, a wonderful couch and a recliner wide enough we could and often did share it. I sat in the recliner and turned on the TV.
I watched whatever was on. In that cop show I noticed someone looking at someone else's computer. I shut off the TV and went to Colleen's computer. I fired it up and looked for her email account. What I found was one account that was easy to find. It had an icon on the screen. I clicked in and scanned through a hundred saved emails. Lots of things about the conference, but nothing personal.
Then I clicked around and saw that she had another email account. Her easy to find account was CollPet and the hidden account was called MarieP. Marie was her middle name. I clicked into the account and read very email. I read them from the inbox, sent and deleted file folders. What I learned was that Colleen had been "flirting" with an affair with a man named Stan for over a year. They had flirted at the conference last year, seen each other publically at least three other times at business meetings and had been talking a lot about the conference they were both attending in San Francisco as I read their emails. Up until this conference they hadn't done anything other than three stolen kisses in elevators.
I copied everything into an email and sent it to me. I erased my intrusion from her computer and closed it down. As I left her little home office I was still sad, but glad the affair, if there was one, hadn't started before this trip.
At ten, exactly, the phone rang. I turned on the stereo and answered. It was Colleen. "Hi Honey," She said.
I suddenly had trouble speaking. I did get it out, "Hi!"
She said, "You OK?"
"Yeah, I think so. How about you?"
"Good. Tired, but good. Fisherman's Wharf is not far from here so some of us walked over there and had lunch. I had chowder in a sourdough bowl. It probably had too many calories, but it was great. We should come up here! We could have fun up here."
"That's a good idea. When you get back maybe we can sit down and plan a trip." My head added, 'and invite Stan and his wife along.' I didn't say it. I didn't even know Stan's last name or if Stan was married.
