This is a follow-up to "When Everything Isn't Enough," published in Romance on 8/28/18. Some readers objected to the category, insisting it should have been in Loving Wives. Conceding their point, I've made amends with "Trust Is Earned, Not Given."
*****
Now what? Jenny Yeager keeps asking herself that. She's just returned home to Cleveland from a business trip in Washington DC—not just any old business trip but one in which she jumped in the sack with a man not her husband, a one Dr. Brayden Walberg, an orthopedist based in Charleston, South Carolina. 'I can't cheat on Conrad,' she had told Brayden, 'I just can't.' But she did, found it virtually impossible not to after she and the good doctor dined together, then strolled along the promenade by the Potomac River on a sweet balmy night before returning to their hotel. He had given her an out, told her he'd like to keep seeing her when they were both in Washington, even if they didn't sleep together. But then, when they stepped off the elevator and began kissing in the hallway, her emotions went on a rampage. Next thing Jenny knew, she was holding her dress around her waist, while Brayden, his hand stuffed down her black lace panties, worked his finger inside her. It was the point of no return for Jenny. Moments later, she found herself in his bed, doing what she said she couldn't.
So how does she face Conrad, little Conrad and Olivia? How does any adulterous wife face her family afterward? She actually surfs the Net and finds something written by a British woman who did the same thing. The woman, middle-age like her, started a torrid affair with her sister's ex-boyfriend and fell in love with him. The woman's dilemma was the same as Jenny's in that she wanted to pursue the affair while still living with her husband and child as if nothing was going on. Like Jenny, she was racked by guilt. Try as she might to conceal her secret, the woman's husband and child sensed that something wasn't right, though neither knew what and the woman never told. Finally, deciding that her marriage was more important, she broke things off with the idea that she might leave her husband in the future.
Jenny knows two things. One, she wants to see Brayden again; and two, she has no plans to leave Conrad. Unlike Jenny and Brayden, the British woman and her lover lived close by. So, would it really hurt if Jenny saw Brayden every couple of months? No harm in mixing business with pleasure, right? After all, her "pleasure" lives in a different state, so the chances of someone she knows finding out are virtually none. The guilt? She hopes to get over some of that. Brayden can be her guilty pleasure, well deserved after day-long meetings, Power Point presentations and schmoozing with her company's higher-ups, people she'd rather ignore but better not if she wants to stay on the fast track.
She and Brayden keep in touch. Email is their main lifeline, with occasional texts and phone calls when both are at work. She loves to hear his soft tenor voice. His voice alone can make her hot, can get her juices flowing, sometimes to the point where she needs to duck into the ladies room to wipe herself or even change panties. "You got a man in there?" a female colleague joked one day after seeing her emerge from the rest room, red faced and sweating.
Meanwhile, she lives her life as she did before, at least on the surface, hiding as best she can the exciting anticipation of seeing Brayden again. She still sleeps with Conrad—MORE than she did before. He questions the reason for her new-found sexual energy and Jenny tells him that women get hornier as they get older, and leaves it at that. She knows the real reason—to allay some of her guilt. She's giving Conrad great sex, driven in large measure by her experience with Brayden. She leaves that part out, of course.
Weeks later, she's preparing for another trip to DC on business. Brayden will be there. However, unlike last time, he's not there for a medical conference; he's there solely to see her. This is a new twist in their relationship. Before, they just happened to be there at the same time, mixed business with pleasure. This time, for Brayden, it's strictly for the latter. He's still separated from his wife—nothing to lose on his end—unlike Jenny who must step lightly, out of state or not. They take separate rooms at the Hyatt and, like last time, meet at the bar—prearranged, not by accident. Brayden, wearing blue Dockers and a light tan sports jacket, greets her with a hug and a kiss, tells her how sexy she looks. "All for you," she says. It's just after four in the afternoon and, with her meetings over for the day, she traded in her proper business attire for something sexier, a dress showing more leg and cleavage. Her silky blond hair is still up and she's wearing glasses instead of her usual contacts. Brayden loves it.
She orders her usual Chardonnay, he Merlot, and while they wait, he drops his hand to her thigh and says, "You drive me insane."
She laughs and says, "And you drive me to do something I vowed never to do."
They fall easily into conversation, filling in the gaps between what they already know from their communication since they last met. Brayden tells her that he and his wife will most likely divorce. He caught her in a lie: She never did break it off with that young intern as she had claimed. "Any trust I had left—and, as you can imagine, it wasn't much—is blown to hell. I can tolerate a lot of things but living with a deceitful woman isn't one of them."
Jenny steals a sip of wine, then shivers, knowing full well that deceit has been her middle name these past few weeks. "So Brayden, what makes me any different or better? I'm doing the same thing to Conrad. At least you and Toni are separated."
He swivels in his bar chair to face her, wine glass in hand. "But you..." He sighs, shakes his head and takes a sip. "I don't know. You have your own reasons for being with me as you've said. I just know that I'm crazy about you. All of you, not just your delicious bod."
She lets that sink in. He's telling her that it's more than just sex that compelled him to come here from South Carolina just to see her. She'd hardly relish being used just for her body, yet she can't help but think it would be easier, simpler, if exchanging bodily fluids was his only motivation—or hers. Apparently it isn't and as if to prove it, he pulls out two pieces of paper from his pocket. "Look, I know how much you love classical music," he says, "Mozart especially, so I got tickets for an all Mozart concert at Kennedy Center. Is it a date?"
She looks down at the tickets, swallows hard and places a hand over her heart. "Ohmygod, Brayden, thank you so much! What a lovely surprise. Yes, it's a date."
They have dinner in the Hyatt's dining room, then take Brayden's rented car to Kennedy Center. No need to "dress up," almost an archaic practice in this age of casualness. Brayden had it right. Mozart's her guy when she's not listening to Garth Brooks or Luke Combs. He tells her she's the only country music fan he knows that's also into classical. "And you got orchestra seats on top of it," she says, hugging him in the aisle before settling into one of the red-upholstered seats in the vast, red-carpeted concert hall. She opens her program amid the noise of audience chit-chat and the dissonant sounds the musicians make tuning their instruments. She claps alongside everyone else when conductor Gianandrea Noseda comes out. He begins with the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro, followed by the Haffner Symphony (#35). She can't explain exactly why she loves Mozart, only that his music moves her in a way that other classical composers, Beethoven included, don't. Perhaps it's his melodies, beautiful and sublime, mixed with passages of thunderous power. Whatever the reason, it always lifts her mood.
Following the intermission, pianist Yeol Eum Son goes to work on the twenty-first piano concerto. Jenny holds Braydon's hand, closes her eyes and sways her head to the rapturous music. Oh, what a sensitive performance by this barely thirty, South Korean gal, Jenny thinks. And she's sharing it all with a man she's growing very fond of, a man who appears as if he's enjoying it as much as she. She thinks back to that one time when Conrad took her to hear the Cleveland Philharmonic. It felt more as if she took HIM, more like dragged him, because classical music is not something Conrad appreciates, which is another disconnect from her husband of fifteen years. These days she goes with her girlfriends.
"Thanks, that was one incredible concert," she says on the way back to the Hyatt. "And now it's time to make our own kind of music."
He breaks into song. "Whenever you're near, I hear a symphony..."
She picks right up on that old Supremes classic. "Play sweet and tenderly. Every time your lips meet mine, now baby, baby..."
