Page 14 of Games We Play
“If you say so.”
“I know most women don’t feel the same way, but men get to, right? Men are celebrated for cooking and baking. Something women are expected to do all the time, whether we like it or not, is an interesting hobby or respectable career as soon as a man does it.” Leah glanced at Sloan. “I saw it all the time in culinary school.”
“Suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” Sloan hadn’t expected to jump right into gender politics. God knew it was one of her favorite subjects, but she tended to have a more… aggressive… approach to her arguments. “Even if I were interested in it, I wouldn’t have the time. So, I eat out, or have a chef cook for me.”
“I sometimes thought about getting a job like that. Wonder if there are many families in Portland looking for a private chef.”
Sloan shrugged. Like she knew.
“So…” Leah’s fingers twiddled in distraction. “About Saturday night…”
“You mean your birthday.”Her thirtieth. Seriously?
“Yeah. My birthday. About it.”
Sighing, Sloan uncrossed her legs and leaned forward against the table. A candle flickered between them. Close enough for the light to tease the tips of Leah’s bangs, but still too small to illuminate their table. “What is it?”
“Do you…” Leah lowered her voice. “Why would you think you were paying for something but only do so little? I mean, I liked it, but did you get anything out of it?”
The question was so personal – and honestly, so out of left field – that Sloan couldn’t help but chuckle. “My desires are my own and not up for dinnertime discussion, but yes, I got plenty out of it. I got exactly what I wanted.” Tits. Pussy. A woman handcuffed to her chair and completely lost to Margaret Sloan’s whim. Sloan didn’t need to be touched to get off on it. Besides, making a full night out of it would’ve been exhausting after the day she had.
Leah released her pent-up breath. “Thank God. I thought maybe I had turned you off or something.”
“I admit, your hair kept getting in the way. Looks much better today.”
Sloan thought that would offend Leah. Instead, she chuckled into the bottom of her wineglass and said, “I had danced so much before… yeah. That. Anyway, it was my first real birthday party in years. I decided I didn’t care what I looked like, as long as I was having fun.”
“Well?” Sloan paid more careful attention to the way she sipped her own alcohol. “Did you have fun?”
Leah nodded.
“What a lovely thing to hear.” Sloan couldn’t say she had “fun” at a party in years.Not since my twenties, and that was a decade ago.She was used to age differences in her relationships, too. It only got worse with every passing birthday of her own. Most of the escorts she hired to be her dates and hotel bed warmers stayed in their early to mid-twenties while Margaret Sloan discovered gray hairs and more cellulite than her doctor could do anything about. Twenty-five had been the first real physical change since puberty.Gained weight if I looked at a cupcake. My joints got cranky if I partied too hard. Couldn’t hold as much liquor anymore.Twenty-five! Nobody told her that twenty-five was anything more than the end of brain development. Now that she was closer to forty than, oh,thirty-five, she realized the whole dating thing was only going to get worse.
Leah was thirty. That wasn’t so bad. At least she wasn’t a fresh from college girl with eyes wide open. The worst were the ones who threw themselves into trying to change the world. A noble pursuit, but vigor and principles were wasted on the youth of the world.
“Did you have fun?”
“What? At your birthday party?”
“I mean, you were a part of my celebration even if you didn’t know it. A whole half hour.” She leaned in across the table, her cleavage bumping against the edge.Does she know what she’s got in her bust?Sloan had never been in the market to get implants, but if she had to take a pair to the plastic surgeon to use as an example, she would be inclined to pay Leah for her time. “How much did a half hour cost you, anyway?”
Sloan waited until the waiter finished delivering their dinners before responding. “A woman should never share those sorts of details. Private, yes?”
“Because you don’t want to talk about how much you spend on women? Or because you don’t want me knowing how much women in Portland charge per thirty minutes?”
What is her deal?Leah fluttered between adorable naivete and a dirty mind that implored to learn more. Sloan could work with one or the other. She couldnotdeal with the constant flip-flopping. She had personally known politicians who flip-flopped less than Leah did. “I’m not shy about my financials. Especially when you can find out how much I’m worth with a simple Google search.” On paper, anyway. There were off-shore accounts full of rainy-day emergency funds that weren’t factored into the totals. Sloan was shameless like that. “But you might as well ask me about the details of the woman I wassupposedto meet the other night. Which I will not divulge, by the way. Some things should remain sacred.”
Leah kept her mouth shut, but her bright eyes glistened with more questions. Looking into them made Sloan feel like she was Pandora standing in front of that fabled box.Tip the lid back and see what bursts forth, Margaret.Pestilence. Decay. Sloan’s personal hell.So, Chicago?
Sighing, she said, “Go on. Ask your question.”
Leah grinned so widely that Sloan feared half the restaurant was staring at them – and not because she wore such pedestrian clothing. “Are you a dominatrix?”
Sloan spat her wine back into her glass. “Excuseme?” Leah hadn’t said that too loudly, had she? That better not be something some fuckwit fed to the press the next day.“I saw Margaret Sloan having dinner with some commoner, and she was asked if she was a dominatrix! No, Ms. Sloan was. Not the commoner dressed like a drowned rat with flour on her pants.”
“Sorry, but that’s what I thought you were the other night. A professional dominatrix that my friend had hired to entertain me.”
“You… liked that, huh?”
