Page 36 of One Last Time?
“Hey, are you done yet?” Mia called out. She walked out on to the terrace and looked me up and down.
“Done? With what?” I asked, feigning innocence. It might have worked if I hadn’t started laughing.
“You little minx. Don’t even try and lie. We know you’re out here having phone sex with your guy.” She chuckled.
“No, no, nothing like that.” Although that was a really good idea.
“We need you inside.” She marched over and linked my arm with hers, ushering me back inside the house. “You know how I said the other day that I had the absolute strong suspicion that Vanessa’s still a virgin? I think I’m right.”
I widened my eyes. That was juicy news because we’d both had the suspicion for a while. Abby just thought she was a prude. “What makes you think you’re right?” I gasped.
“I told her about that sex club I went to, and she turned so red I thought she was going to combust. It was the way she looked at me. I could see it in her eyes,” Mia bubbled on. However, I’d stopped listening when she said sex club. I’d zoned out and was pretty certain my face was just as red as Vanessa’s, and I wasn’t a virgin.
“Mia, you went to a sex club!” I gasped. I couldn’t even conceive the idea.
“Yeah, I told you that was where Robert was taking me last Saturday.”
I had no recollection of that. Sometimes, though, I did zone out when she and Abby started their crazy sex talk. It was always extravagant, but this was by far the most shocking.
“What the hell did you do there?”
The saucy smile she gave me told me everything, and she started laughing. “Taylor, dear, I sometimes forget you’re the prude, not Vanessa.”
Now it was my turn to smile at her. “I am definitely not a prude.” The last few days took me out of that category.Completely out. And just because I didn’t have a flair for the extravagant like Abby and Mia, that didn’t mean I was a damn prude.
We went into the kitchen, where Abby and Vanessa were laughing so hard they were crying.
Vanessa had bits of the cookie she was eating all over her silk top and her hair.
“What are you guys laughing about now?” I asked, grinning at the sight of them.
“Mrs. Gallman’s hair. I was at Portman’s for lunch with Gilly,” Abby began, dabbing at her eyes. “They have this new organic menu. Mrs. Portman came in with a new wig that you could tell was a wig, but it must have been made from fur instead of hair.”
“What?” Mia asked while I started to laugh.
“Yes,” Abby giggled. “It’s apparently a new thing. Anyway, we’re eating, and the next thing we see is this little dog jumping from a bag that sat on a chair near her. It jumped on her and grabbed the wig off her head.”
We all burst out laughing.
I shook my head at the craziness. Abby was the one who always managed to see such things, and always when she was with Gilly. The trouble those two got up to was unreal, but trouble and the bizarre always seemed to find them too.
Poor Mrs. Gallman couldn’t have had a more embarrassing thing happen to her in front of those two. It served her right though. She couldn’t stand us. Apparently, she and Dad dated way back in the day, and she never forgave him for ending things with her. She didn’t hesitate to show her displeasure of all of us as his spawn every chance she got.
“The dog ripped the hair apart,” Abby cried, and we all laughed harder.
Jesus, that was ridiculous.
A little tap sounded on the door, diverting our attention from the joke.
Dad stood there holding a bunch of long-stemmed yellow English roses and a box of chocolates. I bit the inside of my lip, unable to tamp down my jealousy. He knew we were meeting today and probably came to give his children who weren’t me the weekly fatherly overkill of indulgence.
I hadn’t seen him since the meeting on Wednesday last week when he was so harsh with me. I hadn’t spoken to him either. Of course, the last time that we’d been in the same proximity of each other, I’d been in the closet of my office having the best sex of my life.
“Girls,” Dad beamed with a bright smile.
No wonder no one believed me when I told them he was the boss from hell. No one would because right now, he was like Santa without the long white beard and the red outfit.
He was like two different people. This one was the nice-as-pie version.
