Page 47 of The Price of Scandal

“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. “Iwouldhave 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 hedidn’tturn 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.