Page 22 of Mr. Strategic

But I had learned from experience if you waited long enough, eventually the other person would talk.

“You aren’t really going to have sex with my husband, are you?” she asked, her fingers worrying the edge of the tablecloth.

“Yes, I am,” I said composedly.

“But why?”

“Well, that would make it true, wouldn’t it? What Michael said? That we have an open relationship and that’s why he’s having sex with you.”

She squirmed. Her eyes looked red-lined and heavy, like she hadn’t been sleeping well.

“We aren’t having sex anymore! Michael told me days ago that he didn’t want to.”

I felt a little flicker of heat in my chest.

But I said nothing.

“Come on, please don’t have sex with my husband. I’m not going to have sex with Michael again, I swear. It was a mistake.”

“Hmm,” I said non-committally.

Alix was darting her eyes around.

“If you don’t want your husband to have sex with me, you should take this up with him,” I said.

“But he wants to,” she whined. “He says it’s only fair.”

I shrugged.

“Come on, please, Lavender. I know you don’t really want to.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t care what I want.”

Then I moved away to arrange flowers with the other ladies as she made a desperate, beseeching noise deep in her throat.

But my heart was hardened.

I was stronger than I thought, I was braver than I thought.

On my way home I stopped by an estate sale and randomly bought a faded old floral chair with pretty dusky pink roses and I hauled it awkwardly into the house myself.

By the time Michael got home, I was sitting in a warm corner of the kitchen and was reading with a cup of tea.

I didn’t look up when he came in, but I smelled the flowers, heard the crinkly sound of the paper. An armful of them, long-stemmed red roses.

Red for love. Red for devotion.

“What’sthat?” he asked as he set his keys down.

“My new chair,” I said neutrally, turning another page.

Michael would hate it. I knew he would hate it. He hated anything fussy, or too feminine, or frilly.

But he said nothing.

Instead, he set the flowers down on the table, and I felt him look at me.

“Buy whatever you like, sweetheart. Where’s dinner?”