The Price Of Scandal(33)

“Oooh! Organic,” Luna said, whipping out her phone to capture the pouring of the shots.

We’d done town halls without alcohol in our systems. And they were much more painful sober.

“To the shortest town hall in Bluewater history,” Cam toasted.

“Cheers!”

We clinked gold-rimmed shot glasses and downed the vodka.

“One more?” Cam rasped.

I nodded.

“One more and Emily can tell us all about being shadowed by the sexiest man alive,” Daisy suggested with a mercenary grin.

After brushing off their thinly veiled interrogations for two weeks straight, I’d seen this coming. I was not about to confess that I’d kissed the man mere hours after meeting him. Nor would I mention our fight in the ring that ended with me nearly orgasming from a handful of dry humped thrusts.

There were some dark, dirty fantasies that should remain private.

“I would prefer to forget he and his purpose in my life exist for one night,” I said, nudging my glass back at Daisy.

“Is he kind?” Luna asked. She was sprawled on her belly on a daybed, kicking her bare feet up behind her. The pool was shaped like a scrotum. It was a not-so-subtle nod to the fact that we’d designed and developed Bluewater in the shape of the female reproductive system.

It had mostly been an accident until one day, while we were pouring over drone footage, Luna said, “Does this look like a…”

“Reproductive system?” Cam had supplied. “Yup.”

So we’d added the fallopian tubes. One served as the community’s marina. The other was where we built our four homes… including Daisy’s cock and balls swimming pool.

“Kind?” Daisy scoffed. “How is that the first question you ask about a man who looks like that?”

Luna tossed her hair over her shoulder. “That’s what really matters, isn’t it? He can be as beautiful as David Beckham, but if he’s an asshole, that knocks the points off him.”

“But assholes can be so much fun in bed,” Daisy insisted.

Cam and I snorted into our shot glasses as the urinating man statue steadily returned water to the pool behind us from his marble urethra.

“Wait. That came out wrong,” Daisy snickered. “My point is, you shouldn’t be close-minded against the assholes of the world.”

Daisy liked to try to argue morals with Luna, but Luna’s Zen-like acceptance of literally the entire world made it impossible.

“I’d like to point out that Emily still hasn’t responded to our inquiry,” Cam said, pointing an accusatory finger in my direction.

I downed the second shot, a smooth fire coating my throat and temporarily reviving me.

“He is remarkably unflappable,” I said.

My friends looked at me expectantly.

“That’s it?” Cam said. “No ‘he’s a skeezy dirtbag’? No ‘he’s Prince Charming in a business suit’? No ‘he’s a divine god in bed’? Just ‘he’s good at his job’?”

“No detailed description of what I can only guess is an incredible cock?” Daisy teased, ignoring the chairs and flopping down on the terrace tile.

I immediately fought off the vision of Derek’s incredible cock that surfaced from where it was emblazoned in my memory banks.

“In this case, what matters is how good he is at his job,” I insisted. “How was he to work with over your shoplifting thing?”

Daisy’s new assistant at the time had gotten jealous when her boyfriend said Daisy was “totally fuckable.” In a revenge plot that made sense to no one, the assistant had snuck a $40,000 Cartier bracelet into Daisy’s bag.

“That was fucked up,” Cam sighed.

“So fucked up,” Daisy agreed with an elegant shrug of her shoulder. “Derek was brutally beautiful. Ruthlessly efficient. But I wasn’t paying for the babysitting service. At the time, my scandal was a little less big-dealy than yours.”

I wondered if she’d ever found him naked in her house.

“You two ever… you know?” Cam, reading my mind, made a hip thrusting motion from her chair. The gesture was incongruous with her impeccably tailored suit.

Daisy laughed and slapped the pool tile with her ringed hand. “I would have but he was very clear on the ‘no personal relationships with clients’ thing. He missed out on all this.” She gestured at her breasts.

Against my will, I perked up. So he didn’t turn on the charm and pheromones with every client? Was I special?

For the love of strong women everywhere, pull yourself together, I told myself.

“So what’s with him showing up naked in my house?”

Daisy pursed her raspberry pink lips. “He’s an unorthodox kind of guy. My guess is he was trying to get your attention in a way that wouldn’t allow you to just cold-shoulder him.”

“I don’t cold-shoulder people.”

My friends, comedians that they were, mimed shivering.

“Hilarious, jerks.”

Cam checked her watch. “We have to go, jerks.”

“I don’t want to,” I groaned. Whining was very un-Stanton-like, but I felt like indulging just this once.

“Last time we were late, they got all hopped up on the smoothies, and now Bluewater has an eight-foot carved parrot next to the disco since the residents decided the rooster statue was lonely. Also, we had to rename the nightclub the disco,” Luna pointed out.