* * * * *
Just hearing Jack Wade’s deep voice on the phone the next day had made Liz wet, even as she sat in her cubicle at the downtown ad agency where she worked, surrounded by other co-workers.
“I need to meet with you,” he’d said.
She’d attempted to still the heat flowing through her veins and tried to sound halfway professional. “At your office? I could come at lunch.”
“See you then.”
Now she stepped out of the taxi she’d hailed a few blocks away, in too much of a hurry to walk. Anxious to see what Jack had learned about Todd’s whereabouts last night, she nearly burst through the door of his office, but stopped short, remembering how sexy she knew Jack had thought her yesterday afternoon, and wanting to be that way for him again.
She was wearing a business suit, but fortunately the white blouse beneath was rather sheer, enough that she kept her black jacket buttoned all day whenever she wore this particular piece of apparel. Now, standing on Royal Street, she slipped the jacket from her shoulders and looked down to glimpse the white lace of her bra showing through, the fabric clinging nicely to her curves. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs a bit in the cab, but she didn’t tug it down. Finally, taking a glance at herself in the shop window next to Jack’s door, she pulled the clip from her chignon and let her hair fall wild and wavy about her shoulders.
Feeling adequately sexy and nearly as anxious to see Jack Wade as she was to find out about Todd, she went inside.
He sat with his feet propped on the corner of his desk eating a sandwich. As the door closed behind her, he lowered his feet to the floor, set the sandwich on a paper plate, and sat up straighter.
“Hello, Mr. Wade.”
His look bordered strangely between lustful and gentle. “Call me Jack.”
“All right, Jack.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “What have you found?”
He let out a long sigh. “I know where Todd goes every night and what he does. I took pictures for you.” He handed a stack across the desk to her. “Unfortunately, they’re not very good quality. The room was dark, but the camera I used should’ve worked anyway. I can only guess I got a bad roll of film.”
Liz thumbed through the photos. At first she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing, but through the shadowy lighting, she soon made out bare breasts, nipples pointing, and realized she was seeing a naked girl in a man’s lap.
“I know it’s hard to tell,” Jack said, “but the guy in the picture is Todd. I followed him to Club Venus on Bourbon last night. He got lap dances from several strippers before takin’ two of ‘em to a back room for a private dance.”
Liz blinked and looked at the picture again, trying to absorb what Jack was telling her. The guy in the picture didn’t look like Todd to her. Of course, she could barely see his face, hidden in shadow—it could have been any man. But Todd wasn’t the type to patronize a strip club. If anything, he was Mr. Straight Arrow, as clean cut and straitlaced as a guy comes. The very idea that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to had been a hard conclusion to reach, but now that she had, she’d expected to discover he was seeing some urbane executive like himself—some thin-faced, thin-lipped, glasses-wearing, briefcase-toting, hair-in-a-severe-bun, high-powered woman who’d turned Todd on by climbing the corporate ladder at a record-setting pace. Or maybe seeing someone like her—the regular her, not the lusty, sexy, see-through-blouse her that Jack Wade knew, but someone with even more of the prim and proper qualities Todd valued. In fact, she’d even convinced herself that was why he’d strayed—because she wasn’t sophisticated enough, or prim and mannered enough.
“Are you sure it was him? Because this isn’t Todd’s style.”
Jack appeared to be pained on her behalf. “I’m sorry, chere…but yeah, I’m sure. I followed him every step of the way from his building.”
“Did you see him come directly out of his office inside the building?”
He blinked. “Mais, I saw him come out of the building, not his exact office, but I recognized him right away from the picture you gave me.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Because a lot of men look like Todd. He’s not exactly unusual—your basic suit and tie guy. And in a building that big, a lot of men could look like him at a glance.”
Jack slowly tilted his head. “Darlin’,” he said gently, “I really am sorry. I know this must hurt, but I’m sure that’s your fiancé.”
Liz pursed her lips. It wasn’t that she was hurt, exactly—it was simply that she didn’t believe him. Lynda had promised her he was good at his job, but what if he’d slipped? If Todd was spending every night with strippers grinding in his lap, well, that was more than enough reason to call off the wedding, but the photos were so dark and this behavior seemed so uncharacteristic…
“I’m sorry, too, but I’m afraid it’s going to take more than a set of dark pictures to make me believe this is him.”
Across from her, Jack sighed. “When I saw how the pictures came out, I was afraid you’d feel this way.”
“I don’t mean to doubt you,” she said quickly, “but…”
“Oui?”
“Given how unlike him this seems, I’m just not sure I’d believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Mais, then,” Jack said slowly, appearing to be thinking through the situation. “I’m busy tonight, but presuming Todd ‘works late’ tomorrow night, why don’t you meet me at, say, nine o’clock, outside the Blue Moon Café, and we’ll go to Club Venus together.”
Something in Liz withered. “Me, in a strip club?”
He raised his eyebrows. “If you wanna see for yourself.”
“Well, I’ve never…” She decided to
