Page 45 of Games We Play
“Sooo envious. I hope to look half as fresh at your age, Margaret.”
Shut up, fetus.Christie was almost thirty, but she might as well be a child with a mouth like that.I remember being thirty like it was yesterday.Looking at Christie, in her head-to-toe professionally styled ensemble, was like peering into a mirror. Sloan once dressed herself up like a common socialite. The dresses. The hair. The makeup and shoes. With the assistance of a full-time stylist, Sloan had cultivated a look that made the other Chicago socialites and heiresses foam at the mouth to steal her style. Her reign as Queen of the Midwest Fashion Blogs was long over, having turned in most of her cocktail dresses for pantsuits, but occasionally someone recalled looking up to her.
“Thank you. I do try to take care of myself.” Sloan fluffed her wig, in time for a photographer to stop by and snap some candid photos. “But I’m also fortunate with good genes.”
“You’re all natural?” Rich, coming from a woman with a fresh breast augmentation. “At your age?”
“Believe it or not, it’s possible.”
Sloan only intended to stay long enough to be photographed a few times and to make sure her image was imprinted upon everyone in attendance.Make sure they see me. Make sure they still know my name.Sloan would need their connections when she dropped the bomb on Aaron that she was leaving the company in the coming months. The man had enough power to blacklist her decent name with most of their current contacts. He would, too, because he was a spiteful, possessive freak of a man who didn’t know how to let go.
To be fair, Sloan hadn’t exactly loosened the yoke around her neck over the past few years. Not since she dressed like Christie Yearwood and touted herself as a femme fatale of the business world.God, I was so naïve.How was it possible for a woman to still be naïve at thirty? Was Sloan still naïve? Sometimes, she wondered if she would be rocking in her chair one day, chiding the forty-year-old version of herself who was too stupid, too naïve to function.
No, I’m not naïve. Leah is possibly more naïve than I was at her age.
Ah, Leah…
Sloan posed in her chair before the guest speaker took the podium. Perfect for photo-ops and for her to check her texts. Both Ayla and Leah had announced that a certain someone was waiting at the “Shag Shack,” the unfortunate nickname of the apartment Sloan rented so she didn’t have to take her lovers home.
Or if she desperately wanted to get away from certain people she lived with.
“Prove it,”Sloan texted Leah.“Reading that you’re there doesn’t tell me anything. I want a picture of you waiting for me.”
“Who are you talking to?” Christie asked at the end of the speaker’s applause. “Don’t suppose it’s Mr. Giles.”
“No.” Leah kept her lips pursed. An attachment awaited her in her phone, but she didn’t dare open it with Christie looking in her direction. “A friend.”
Christie’s grin implied she got the gist. “Fascinating. I hear you’ve been seen with many women recently.”
“Why, it’s almost like I’m gay, Christie. Why?” She leveled her gaze on the socialite. “Does that bother you? Or titillate you?”
Christie responded with nothing but one of those finishing schools smiles of politeness.She’s into it.The only reason Ms. Yearwood didn’t invite herself over to Sloan’s place was because the socialite was romantically attached to some Chicago billionaire’s son. Tabloid fodder, of course, but it reeked of PR firm intervention meant to test the waters of public perception. If people responded well to the potential match, then a formal proposal probably wasn’t behind.I used to laugh at that sort of song and dance for modern arranged marriages. I still do.Now was not the time for Christie’s lesbian scandal.
Especially with someone like Margaret Sloan.
She kicked back in her seat and stole a glance at the attachment Leah sent her.My God. Why am I stuck in this hell?Leah was dressed in the white lingerie set Sloan had left for her on the bed. The filter on the photograph attempted to convey an angelic quality that made Leah look like the most blessed virgin in the nation, but Sloan knew the dirty truth. This woman might as well have devil horns growing from her forehead.
“Two hours,”Sloan texted before slamming her phone into her clutch. She couldn’t look distracted from the guest speaker’s spiel, but she could daydream, and every dirty thought she had culminated until she was the first one out the door once it was kosher enough to leave.
Sean drove the best route he knew to get his boss to the apartment. The concierge in the lobby assured her that a Ms. Vaughn had been secured a few hours ago, and she had not been seen leaving since. Sloan unbuttoned her winter coat and piled her outerwear into Sean’s arms for him to take back to her primary residence. A change of clothes was already waiting for her in the apartment to wear the next morning.
She didn’t want Leah to see her in anything but her best.
“We will not be disturbed unless requested,” Sloan said to both her bodyguard and the concierge clerk. She was halfway into the elevator and couldn’t say with certainty that they heard her. She didn’t care. Her goal was to get her ass into that apartment and enjoy the rest of her evening.
Leah leaped up from the bed the moment Sloan burst into the apartment and deadbolted the door behind her. Her shoes were halfway off her feet when she drank in the full sight of her lover waiting for her, like a princess hidden away in a castle tower.
I’m no prince.
“You startled me,” Leah said with a grin. She pushed her curly hair away from her face, that push-up bra built into her lingerie doing everything it was made to accomplish. “Holy shit… yourdress…”
Sloan didn’t slow down until she was in the bedroom. “You like my dress?”
“I’ve never seen you in one before.”
“Sometimes I like to mix it up.” Her hands itched to grab Leah. Her lips begged to be submerged in that generous cleavage spilling from Leah’s lingerie. “Have a nice flight?”
“Honestly, waiting for you here has been worse than the flight.”
