Chapter 53
The door’s locked, right? That was one of the constant thoughts flitting through Jamie’s mind as she lay back on her fiancée’s home office desk, legs spread and the woman herself going to town. Shit, if someone walks in on us…
She lost that thought. Including the ones about her recent hangover that lasted two days and the wedding of the year she was supposed to be having in three weeks.
“Why do you do this to me?” Etta groaned, pinning Jamie down on the desk so she could fuck her harder. “I swear you do it so… so…” See? She was losing her thoughts too.
Jamie wanted to writhe against the desk, but was powerless to do so. Anyway, I’m down for being pinned. Particularly if it meant she was on the other end of Etta’s physical machinations.
Jamie gripped the edge of the desk as she threw her head back with a wail that was probably loud enough to summon Beatrice vacuuming the hallway.
It wasn’t often Etta stayed home to work on a weekday, but her downtown office was closed for HVAC repairs.
Usually, Jamie didn’t like to disturb her, but she timed when Etta’s break would be and arrived wearing nothing but a loose pink dress that would be easy to move out of the way.
For sex, of course. Jamie owed her for the madness Saturday night.
“Hot fucking damn.” Etta sat up, exhausted. “Shame I have to get back to work.” She fixed her shirt and shook out her wrist. “I should be hauling you to bed and worshiping your form for the rest of the afternoon.”
Jamie grabbed some tissue from a silver box. Every businesswoman’s best friend. In case you have to sneeze at your desk… of course.
“You’re gorgeous,” Etta reiterated, kissing her before Jamie had the chance to leave. “Stay gorgeous until after dinner. I’ll give you some more later. To make up for a lack of afternoon marathons.”
Jamie, too drunk again – this time on sex – wandered away. “There will be plenty of time for that on the honeymoon.”
“I fully plan on spending our honeymoon doing nothing but making love to you.”
Jamie would hold her to it.
She emerged from the water closet five minutes later as someone knocked on the office door. It was Beatrice, informing Jamie that she had a guest.
Natasha did not look like she was there for much pleasure. Her face was grim, body language frigid as she spent a precious day off coming all the way up to do nothing but walk with Jamie in the gardens, far away from the busy household.
“Spill,” Jamie said, the moment they sat on a bench overlooking a prism of flowers. “And appreciate how serene this garden is right now. Next time you see it, I’ll be getting married in it.” Construction started that weekend.
Natasha asked if she could pluck a tulip from the garden. Jamie opened her arms wide, alerting her friend that she was more than welcomed to pluck every bulb from the garden behind them. She returned with a single red tulip, sniffing it… and plucking one of the petals.
“I hate Amanda.”
“Uh-huh.”
Natasha tossed the petal onto the ground. “I’m serious. She wants to make my life hard.”
“You gonna expand on that?”
“Nope.”
Another petal hit the ground. “So, whatever happened between you and…”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I haven’t even finished.”
“I know who you mean.”
“You said that you didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Caught, Natasha crumpled a third petal in her hand. “Whatever. That’s behind me now.”
Thought so. “You can’t leave it at that. Last I heard, you and she were tearing it up in San Francisco. And Hong Kong.”
“You’ve been all over the world. Hong Kong isn’t that special.”
“Would you come off it? You came here for a reason. If it wasn’t to rant about her, then what was it?”
Natasha sighed. “There is so much drama at the office right now!”
Jamie sat back. “How’s that? Etta hasn’t said anything about drama.”
“Because Etta spends her days doing important business while I run the front lines. Of course there’s always drama, but… it’s so bad recently. Pretty much ever since Ms. Thompson joined the office.”
“Oh?” That piqued Jamie’s interest like nothing else. “Etta said something about tearing her a new asshole because she missed a meeting. Was it because of her assistant?”
“That guy was an ass and nobody was sorry when she fired him. I mean broke up with him. I mean, whatever.” Natasha crossed her arms and legs at the same time.
“But yeah, that’s the tip of the iceberg.
She comes in late a lot, but she never missed a meeting again.
I think one time she came in drunk, but don’t quote me on that. ”
“What’s her deal?” The woman had bought Jamie a wedding dress, but she never quite got a full read on her.
“Amanda says she’s going through a lot.”
“Why the hell would Amanda know that?” That reminded Jamie of something.
“Hey, I thought you guys were buddies.” They arrived at her bachelorette party at the same time and everything.
“Now you’re saying you hate her. Either it’s high school level of hate, or she did something to really piss her off. ”
“Well, Amanda sees her a lot because she takes notes at meetings and sometimes overhears things between her and Ms. Coleman. Personal things.”
If Natasha were to bombshell about their affair behind Jamie’s back, she would have had a different expression. Jamie chose to breathe easy. For now. “Go on,” she said.
Natasha stared at the petals she had strewn on the brick walkway. “It doesn’t matter. It was a fling.”
“With Amanda?” Hold up now!
Natasha blanched. “No! I really shouldn’t say it.”
“You wouldn’t have come out all this way when you don’t even have a car unless you wanted to say it.” Buses didn’t go farther than a mile up that way, either.
“Fine. Eve wasn’t really interested in me unless I was playing ‘hard to get.’ I was a notch on her bedpost.”
Jamie frowned. Who was that with her when they put me in the cab the other night? Jamie had wondered that ever since, and her nosy side cursed her for being too drunk to see well. “Did she tell you this? Or dump you?”
“No. Not technically.” Natasha’s sighs couldn’t possibly get more dramatic than they already were.
“I sort of broke it off with her after we got back from Hong Kong. Went back to giving her the cold shoulder and blocking her number. I mean… that wasn’t very mature of me, but she’s not someone I want to confront.
She’s used to getting her way, you know? ”
“I highly doubt she would hurt you.”
“I didn’t say that! You know how I am with confrontation.”
“Yeah, Captain Passive Aggressive. How’s that working out for you?”
Natasha looked like she was about to fling herself off the bench.
“So let’s say I’m not seeing her anymore.
The bachelorette party was really awkward, but I managed to avoid her for the most part.
I don’t think she cared anymore. Between you and me…
” When was it ever anything but? “She still makes excuses to come by the office, but it’s not me she’s interested in anymore.
” Natasha didn’t say anything beyond that.
Jamie’s mind went to the only possible person – not, not Etta! Although that would be an image to end all images. “I’m sorry this is happening. Do you want me to talk to Etta?”
“What good would that do me?” Frustration mounted between them. “Last thing I need is the boss actually being aware of all the lesbian drama exploding around her!”
“She’s probably more aware than you think she is.”
Natasha rolled her eyes toward Jamie so hard that it was a wonder they didn’t fall out of their sockets.
“Fine. She doesn’t know a damn thing.”
“That’s more like it.”
“I’m sorry you’re dealing with all of this,” Jamie said in the end. “Is there anything I can do? You wanna stay and have dinner? Beatrice is making enchiladas, and they’re pretty out of this world.”
Natasha shrugged. “I’m down for anything that doesn’t make me think about drama. Wait, Amanda isn’t here, is she?”
“No…”
“Good. I didn’t know if she would be up here helping Ms. Coleman work.”
“I think everyone but her has the day off.”
“Does she ever stop working?”
This time, Jamie took up the mantle of eye rolling. “She’s been better since Adele joined. But, no. When you’ve made your own billions, you’ve made them in a very specific way. Assuming you didn’t literally kill people to get there, you worked yourself to death.”
“Won’t that suck for you?”
“I know what I’m getting into, at least.” Jamie stood, brushing debris from her dress.
“It’s not like she doesn’t make time for me.
” Had she, or had she not, taken fifteen minutes out of her day to screw Jamie’s brains out?
Heh! “She is busy a lot of the time. Certainly busier than some of the other women I know around here…” That wasn’t a slight against them.
The women who were born with means didn’t have to work as hard, and that was a fact.
They also weren’t raised to think they had to, unless they were bound and determined to expand fortunes the really old-fashioned way.
For example, Jamie couldn’t imagine Monique’s wife Helen working herself dead tired most days like Etta did.
The Warner family’s holdings were already so grand that all Helen had to do was seek new investment opportunities in case something went bust.
Was that why it seemed like Etta sometimes resented such types, even if she otherwise liked them personally?
Natasha said she would stay for dinner, but only if Jamie’s family promised to keep their clothes on. Luckily for her, Saul and Luna were all about the underwear at the dinner table.