Eliza Starts a Rumor(70)
She made her feelings evident. “OK, no more jokes. We have one shot. This is what has to happen. Spencer will get into her car. You are to wait for them to go at it.”
Alison was suspect. “How do you know they will?”
“I’ve been doing this a long time. Trust me, they will. Don’t jump right out; give it about thirty seconds, then one of you has to approach the car. Who’s going to do it? Decide now.”
“I’ll do it,” Mandy said. She felt good about it, like she was doing it for the women who came out against Carson. “I got this.”
Alison shot her a look of confidence.
“OK. Open the camera on your phone and switch it to video. Do you have enough battery?”
“Yes, I’m at sixty percent.”
“Great. Make sure it’s on record before you get out of the car. Walk directly there with the phone facing forward. Record them until they notice you; as they do, keep it on record but motion for them to pull down the window. Look right at your phone, like you are reading an address, and ask them directions. Got it?”
Alison interrupted. “Look, they’re already on top of each other. Sorry, Olivia.”
Mandy jumped into action as Alison reported her every move. She held the phone steady in front of her, alternating between looking at the car and watching the seconds rise on the counter. She stood at the window and recorded them. They were all over each other. She could see that Ashley’s blouse was open and that she looked like she’d been crying. She couldn’t believe they didn’t notice her. It felt like minutes, but when she looked down at the timer, she saw that only thirty-four seconds had passed. She waited a few more, then knocked on the window. She watched as Spencer flipped around toward her. As he rolled down the window, Ashley straightened herself out.
“Can I help you?!” he barked.
Mandy looked down at her phone as if reading from it. She saw that she was still recording. She knew it was priceless, albeit the footage was a little shaky from her nerves.
“I’m sorry. I’m having car trouble. I’m looking for Wally’s Garage.”
Spencer was furious. As if being caught on tape with another woman wasn’t enough, he was quite rude. “I don’t know, lady. Look at your GPS and get the hell away from our car!”
Mandy murmured an apology, but couldn’t help the grin bursting from her lips. His glare turned to confusion.
You’ll figure it out soon enough, she thought, as she hurried back to the car.
CHAPTER 38
Alison
Being a part of the big sting wiped out any lingering doubt in Alison regarding whether she was a fairy-tale girl or not. Until then thoughts of Jack—and Jackie—kept running through her mind. She had wondered how it was possible to miss someone she barely knew, or more accurately, didn’t know at all. After witnessing what she had with Olivia and Spencer, she was more sure than ever that there was no room for dishonesty in a relationship. She junked his last email attempt at an apology without even reading it and wrote one to Marc, asking him to come up to see the baby.
She fussed around the house a bit, straightening up before Marc got there. With rush-hour traffic and the rain, she was sure that it would be close to eight o’clock when he arrived. Eliza, who was now her second-best friend in town after Olivia, suggested making a lasagna and saving the last ten minutes of baking time for his arrival. She wasn’t sure why she was acting like the happy homemaker, or why she was so quick to forgive Marc for being such a colossal prick regarding her pregnancy. For a second she wondered if she was creating a charade to distract herself from the one she’d unknowingly gotten caught up in.
The doorbell rang at ten past eight. She looked in the mirror, straightened her hair, and waved a coat of pink gloss over her lips. “Who are you?” she said out loud to her image, as she wiped the gloss off on the back of her hand.
Clumsiness always crept in when she was casually conversing with Marc Sugarman, and having delivered his offspring hadn’t made it any easier. In fact, his lack of emotional intimacy became more obvious in the emotionally intimate state of parenthood. His recent mushy revelations aside, he was not a people person and certainly not a baby person. On the plus side, he was refreshingly self-aware about it all.
“I think I’ll be better with Zachary when he’s more sturdy,” he said hopefully, looking down into the baby’s crib.
“You’re fine, Marc. Don’t worry about it.”
“Wait, I brought him something,” he whispered, opening his briefcase and pulling out a pile of books. Not just any books, but a very thoughtful collection of childhood classics. Alison knew that Marc could not have selected the books on his own; in fact, he may not have even gone to the bookstore himself, but when she flipped through Ferdinand, Where the Wild Things Are, and Caps for Sale, and landed on Guess How Much I Love You, she was touched. As they left Zach’s room and passed her open bedroom door, something stirred in her. I never mind a crispy lasagna, she thought as she led Marc into her bedroom.
Sex between Alison and Marc Sugarman had been molded to perfection over the years—each of them getting great pleasure from pleasuring the other. Alison knew that it was more about ego than anything else. They had established a rhythm, much like two Olympic figure skaters going for the gold. She could almost imagine the judges calling out their perfect scores for technical merit, required elements, presentation, and grade of execution. If emotional connection were part of the criteria they would have fallen flat. No triple axels in that category, for sure.