One Slip: Difficult Choices

Another sequel to One Slip:

Steve Bellows was poring over a construction schedule for the next few weeks that fateful Friday, trying to work up a six-day work week for the large motel that was the biggest project his company currently had going.

In fact, it was the biggest project the company had ever tackled, a move into commercial construction that, if successful, would mean a quantum leap in its profitability. In order to win the contract, he had made the base cost comparatively low, but with some generous incentive bonuses if the project was completed on time and under budget.

So far, the costs were coming in right where he'd projected them to be, and he'd done it without cutting corners, which was one of his pet peeves in the construction business. As for the completion deadline, it was still six months away, but winter was looming, with its ever-changing and unpredictable weather, so he was taking no chances. Hence the six-day schedule. He was trying to work out a staggered shift, in order to keep overtime to a minimum while still getting the job done.

He was taking more of a personal hand in this project than usual, because of its size, its complexity and its importance to the company. If he could complete this project successfully, and with the kind of quality workmanship his company had long been known for, it would put Bellows Construction in the forefront of contracting companies in the region, and go a long way toward realizing the dream he and Donna had had when they had started the company 12 years ago.

Steve had worked hard for what he'd earned. His father, rest his soul, had worked in the large smelting plant that was the area's largest industry, and he himself had worked on the line during the summers when he wasn't in school. He'd been smart enough to earn a scholarship to the state university in engineering, and had done well there. Now he was on the brink of making it big in his chosen industry, and he was grateful for the support of his wife, who had maintained a stable, well-organized home, thus allowing him to focus most of his attention on the business.

The motel project, however, had consumed a lot more of his time than he'd wanted. It was what had caused him to miss the party his friend Gil had thrown the previous Monday to celebrate his promotion to first vice president at the firm where he worked. Steve and Gil had become friends at State, and had gone to work for the same company after college. They had stayed friends ever since.

Just then, the door to his office opened and Donna burst into the room and stopped in front of his desk.

"Well, hey babe!" Steve began, smiling wide at Donna's unexpected entrance. "This is a..." Then he stopped, and the smile froze in its place as he saw the look on his wife's face.

There are some people who are so plugged in to the cosmic world around them, who are so intuitive, that they often get premonitions of events that are about to happen, and Steve Bellows was one of those people. It had served him for both good and ill through the years.

This was one of those moments. As soon as he read the look on Donna's face - a look that was equal parts fear, anger, desperation and... guilt - he knew what had happened and why she was there. Instinctively, he got up from his desk, walked over to where she was standing, trembling uncontrollably, and gathered his wife in his arms.

Donna had managed to maintain a serene facade through the tortuous days of indecision about whether to confess her adultery to her husband, had maintained her composure through the horrific confrontation with Gil, and had somehow kept her resolve through the drive to Steve's building. But the moment she entered his office and fell into his arms, the dam broke.

"Oh, Steve," she cried, and dissolved in a torrent of gut-wrenching sobs. It took Steve 10 minutes to get Donna calmed down enough to where she could tell him what had happened. As he held her, a welter of emotions flooded his soul. His wife, the rock of his existence and the only woman he'd ever loved, had cheated. He knew it just from the look on her face and the language of her body, and he just didn't know how to react.

But the truth was even worse than he could have ever imagined. Once he got Donna set down in a chair so she could tell him her story, once he got a good look at the pictures she'd brought with her, the outrage and the loathing began to build.

"Steve, I am so ashamed at what I've done," Donna said finally. "I don't know how it happened or why. I'm so sorry."

"You're sorry, all right," Steve spat. He was standing, staring out his office window trying to get a rein on his feelings. That Donna had cheated on him was bad enough. That she'd done it with one of his very best friends, a "friend" who had subsequently tried to blackmail her into becoming his whore, made it worse.

And then there were the pictures. They left no question that, whatever seductive techniques Gil had used, Donna had been a very willing accomplice in adultery. He focused particularly on two shots, one of Donna on her knees with Gil's cock buried between her lips, and one of Donna lying on her back naked on his desk, her legs open wide, with Gil's cock just an inch away from her wet, swollen pussy. In both shots, the look on his wife's face was one of eagerness, of unrestrained lust.

A million thoughts were running wild in his mind, including, unbelievably, a touch of arousal from the images he'd looked at, when Donna brought him back to the here and now.

"Steve, someone has to stop him," she said. "Right now, before he has a chance to destroy the evidence. You need to get the Sheriff's Department out there immediately."

Her words galvanized Steve into action. Steve was a doer, and having something that needed to be done right then shook him out of his reverie and pointed him in a direction. He picked up the desk phone and asked Darlene to call her brother. Once Mike was on the line, Steve outlined what Donna had told him about Gil, and that they needed an emergency search warrant for Gil's office. Mike said he would do that, and that he would send a unit to Gil's office to detain him and prevent him from destroying anything.

"I'll see you out there," Steve said.

"Steve, don't do anything you'll regret," Mike warned him.

"Then you'd better hurry up and head me off," Steve said through gritted teeth. "Because I'm just likely to kill the son of a bitch."

With that, he slammed the phone down, walked to the coat rack, grabbed his jacket, scooped up the envelope containing the pictures and headed out. As he reached the door, he turned back to his wife.

"Go home, get your mom to take the kids for the night and wait for me," Steve said forcefully. "I'll deal with you when I'm done with Gil."

"Steve, please, I love you. You, only you," Donna said, standing up to follow him. Steve just threw open the door and stalked out without a backward glance. Darlene jumped when Steve slammed the door shut, literally in Donna's face, and strode out of the office without a word.

When he reached his pickup, Steve glanced over at Donna's BMW parked next to his truck. "Why?" he said out loud. He'd given her anything she wanted, all the material things she could possibly ask for, all given with every bit of love and affection he could muster. And it hadn't been enough. Panting in his rage, he climbed into his truck and drove off to confront his former friend.

Steve hadn't even made it to his truck before Darlene was up and entering his office. She found Donna slumped in the chair with her face buried in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Darlene pulled Donna up and held onto her as Donna cried herself out. And when Donna had finally calmed down, Darlene got her to repeat the story.

"What am I going to do?" Donna blubbered when she was finished. "Steve and the kids are the only things in my life that I care about. They're my whole life. God, I'm so stupid."

"No, you're not stupid," Darlene said, gripping her friend and confidante by the shoulders and looking her right in the eyes. "Yes, you made a mistake, a serious mistake. But you're human, and we all make mistakes. Your job now is to go home and convince Steve that you are as broken up about this as he is, that it's hurting you as much as it's hurting him, and assure him that it will never happen again. I'm not going to lie to you. It won't be easy. Steve's a very proud, very moral man, and his pride has been wounded in the worst way that a man's pride can be hurt. And you've done something he considers morally wrong. Just remember this, I'm behind you, and I'll do whatever I can to help you. I don't want to see you and Steve break up over this. You two have too much going for you, too much love still, and, hopefully, he'll see that, and see it in his heart to forgive you. Now, go home, and be careful."

Steve stewed all the way to the building that housed Gil's office. He put Donna out of his mind for the moment and concentrated on Gil. How could he have done that to such an old friend? Was he that amoral that he seduced the wives of friends out of habit? Why did he need to fuck other women when his wife, Janet, was possibly the best-looking woman in town? Janet was a sexy, slender brunette with the looks of a model, which, in fact, she was. She'd been a fashion model in her youth, and despite her marriage to Gil and the years, she still had looks enough to get work as a model for department stores. So why would Gil feel compelled to go about seducing other men's wives? And what dark power drove him to blackmail those wives into becoming his corporate whores?

As he pondered those questions, he recalled what Donna had said about Sue Dalgreen. He hadn't known them well, but word had spread around town that their breakup had been particularly nasty. Sue had been caught at a local hotel with two out-of-town businessmen, and had not only lost her marriage, but she'd lost custody of her children as well. Somehow, Gil's name had never been mentioned as a party to the Dalgreen's divorce.

With that, Steve turned his attention to what he would do if he was lucky enough to beat the cops to Gil's office. Steve had the grim thought that he and Gil both were fortunate that he didn't carry any firearms in the truck with him. He did, however, have a large pocketknife that he carried with him everywhere he went, and the thought of using it to cut off Gil's nuts brought a vicious smile to Steve's face. At the very least, he'd rearrange Gil's perfect dental work, and give the asshole's groin something to remember him by.

He slowed as he arrived at Gil's business, and pulled into the company's parking lot. Good, he thought, the sheriff's not here yet. But as he was stalking toward the company's entrance, he heard the screeching of tires from two patrol cars. They stopped in front of the building. Two uniforms, one of whom was Mike Gibson, climbed out of one unit, and another uniform and a plainclothes officer, undoubtedly a detective, got out of the other. Mike intercepted Steve at the door.

"Steve, please let us handle it," Mike said, as they walked past the startled receptionist toward Gil's office. When they got to Gil's office door, they found it locked. The detective knocked loudly and ordered Gil to open the door. They could hear what sounded like frantic activity on the other side, and when the door remained closed, one of the uniforms forced it open with a battering ram.

As expected, Gil was in a panic trying to dismantle his video equipment. But he'd only managed to remove one of the three cameras from its lodging, and was still fighting with the second when the cops arrived. Just then, the president of the company walked up asking the police what was going on. One of the officers took him aside and explained why they were there, and when he did, the man's face fell to the floor.

"I had no idea he was doing anything like that," he said in a shocked tone of voice, nodding at the officers to indicate that they could do whatever they wanted. As another team of officers arrived with the search warrant, Gil was handcuffed, read his rights and ushered to the door. As they entered the hallway where Steve was still standing, Gil caught sight of his old former friend. He sneered as he leveled a contemptuous stare at Steve.

"So, Stevie boy, how's it feel to learn that your sweet little wife's really a slut?" Gil said as he passed where Steve was standing.

"You sorry bastard," Steve yelled and jumped at Gil, only to find himself grabbed around the chest by Mike as Gil was hustled off down the hall. Steve fought to get free for a second or two, then his whole body seemed to slump in resignation when Gil and the officers escorting him disappeared around the corner.

"You can thank me later," Mike said after turning Steve loose. "You almost got to go to jail with him."

"Mike, if I'd gotten a hold of him, I would have gone to jail, but he'd have gone to the hospital," Steve said, still panting in what was left of his rage.

"Look, Steve, it's really none of my business," Mike said as they walked slowly toward the door. "But don't do anything stupid, like throw Donna out the door. Darlene loves both of you to death. She's told me so plenty of times. And my sis is a pretty good judge of character. So if she thinks Donna is worth sticking up for, then she must be a pretty good woman. Don't let one slip ruin 15 years of a good marriage."

"I'll think about it," Steve said, as he watched the patrol car with Gil in the back seat drive off.

"Do that," Mike said. "And think about this, too. It took an awful lot of courage for her to say no to this guy, then to confess her mistake to you. That has to be worth something. Steve, you can get over this, but you have to be willing to look at the good things about your marriage and not the bad."

Then the two men shook hands and went their separate ways. Steve got back in his truck, and as he settled into the seat, he picked up the envelope with the pictures that were a chronicle of Donna's betrayal. He pulled them out of the envelope and slowly flipped through them. And as he stared at each image, once again his cock began to tingle and stiffen.

"NO!" he said out loud and put the pictures aside. He couldn't believe that images of his beloved wife getting fucked by another man could arouse him. But they had, and the thought filled him with anger and self-loathing. With an audible growl, he put the truck into gear and drove out of the parking lot.

Steve was in a daze as he thoughtlessly drove his truck onto the highway. Without thinking about it consciously, he drove onto the interstate beltway that encircled their city. As he drove aimlessly, he thought about what he was going to do.

His knee-jerk reaction was to kick Donna out. The idea of having an adultress under his roof wasn't one that appealed to him. But then he recalled the many good times, how madly in love they'd been not long after they'd met, the joy they'd felt on their wedding day. He recalled, too, the many times when she'd nurtured him through one crisis or another, most recently when his father had died suddenly just over a year ago.

He thought about the prospects for his children if they divorced. They were at a crucial age, 10, 7 and 5. His 10-year-old daughter was already talking about her friends from school who lived in single-parent homes, how they envied her for having a mom and dad at home. And what about the business? How would that fare if he had to worry about what was happening at home, if he had to take time away from the job to wrangle the kids?

"Damn you, Donna," he said to the wind. "Why couldn't you have just said no, told Gil to fuck himself."

Everything going on in his mind was a jumble, and he tried to sort it all out. And as he did, one overriding thought came knifing through. Almost from the start of their relationship, he and Donna had talked about what they would do if the other spouse was discovered cheating. It had mostly been directed at him, because his dark good looks and strong, amiable personality tended to attract the attention of women. And there was no denying that he was an incorrigible girlwatcher. He liked to look at pretty women, and Donna had been remarkably tolerant of this, so long as he just looked and didn't touch.

Steve had been sorely tempted many, many times, and had fleeting thoughts all the time about what it would be like to fuck a particular woman that he saw. Even Darlene hadn't escaped his fantasies. But he'd never once acted on those fantasies, never followed through on his vague desires to have another woman. He'd never thought Donna would have had thoughts about cheating either, but here they were. She'd freely confessed to fucking Gil, and thrown herself on his mercy, although Steve had to wonder if she would have been so forthcoming if Gil hadn't tried to blackmail her. But she had, and the decision they'd long ago made about the consequences of cheating once again came blaring into his conscience.

Suddenly, Steve knew what he was going to do, so he turned the truck in the direction of his house and headed home. As he drove toward home, he reached over once again and looked idly through Gil's pictures, looking at the pictures with one eye and the road with the other.

Once again he felt himself getting hard, and this time he didn't fight it. Even though it hurt like hell, there was something supremely erotic about the way Donna was posed, at the lustful look in her eyes, one he'd seen too little of in recent months. And for the only time in his life, he allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy of his beautiful wife as a whore. He felt a combination of lust and anger building inside of him, and the more it built, the better he felt.

Donna was sitting stiffly at the kitchen table staring out the bay window. The kids had come home from school not long after she'd gotten home, and her mother wasn't far behind. The kids had sensed that something was wrong, but she'd put a brave smile on her face and lied that everything was all right. Her mother had seen the look on her face, and the dried tears on her cheek, and asked pointedly what was going on. But Donna had said she didn't want to talk about it right then, that if something did happen, she'd be the first to know. Then they had left her alone to brood in silence.

Suddenly, her heart skipped a beat as she saw Steve's truck pull up the drive. Well, here it comes, she thought, the moment of truth. She just knew he was going to tell her to pack her bags and leave, that he wanted a divorce. She was almost resigned to it, and had already started tentatively thinking about how she would get by on her own. It was not a prospect she looked forward to. Donna hadn't worked outside the home since becoming pregnant with Lindsey, 11 years ago, and she wasn't sure what skills she could offer an employer, especially if her involvement with Gil Gerard became public, as it almost surely would.

She was not comforted by the intense look on Steve's face when he strode in the back door, the fateful envelope in his hand.

"Fix a pot of coffee," he said as he stalked upstairs to their bedroom. It wasn't a request, but a command, so Donna did as she was told, as some confusion began to build. Once in his bedroom, Steve pulled off his boots, stripped off his work shirt, his jeans and his boxers. Standing naked, except for his t-shirt and his socks, he felt his cock already throbbing with anticipation. He was actually trembling with the potent combination of jealousy and lust.

He slipped on a pair of sweatpants, picked the envelope back up and walked back downstairs. He walked through the kitchen, dropping the envelope on the table, and went out the back door to the wood pile. He gathered up several large logs and a few smaller ones then went back inside, stamping his feet to shake off the chill of the early autumn evening. He carried the wood to the fireplace in their den and arranged it on the grate. Empty-handed again, he walked to the kitchen, to the coffee pot, poured himself a cup, then poured one for his wife, and fixed it the way they each liked.