The Penny Pinchers Club (10 page)

“So, if I didn’t reach the credit limit, why did they call?”

“Just a routine fraud alert, one of those things the computer generates randomly.”

Like when your wife is racking up thousands of dollars in merchandise over a three-hour period
, I thought, fighting a renewed spike of anxiety.

Hold on!

“How come Visa was able to call you at work and I wasn’t? I thought Janice was off.”

“They left a message.” Griff cocked his head. “Did
you
leave a message?”

“No.” I hadn’t, come to think of it.

“Let me get this straight. You tried me all day at work and instead of leaving a message and waiting for me to call back, you got all upset about where I was, is that right? I mean, I called you on my cell. What more did you want?”

He sliced off a piece of Swiss and let it fall to the cutting board as I weighed what to say next. Toni Feinzig’s advice to Viv was that I should avoid confronting him until I’d met with her, but that was a bit drastic. This was my husband, after all.

“The reason I didn’t leave a message,” I said, gripping the oven handle for support, “was because of what I found when I unpacked your suitcase from San Francisco today.”

He placed the slice of cheese on top of the cracker, completely unperturbed. “And that was . . . ?”

I took a big breath and let it spill. “Two condom wrappers in the pocket of your khakis and a bill for $236 at a restaurant on the night I was trying to reach you about Laura’s accident. How could you, Griff? How could you be having an affair with . . . Bree?”

There. Done. Out in the open. Suddenly, I felt dizzy.

He carefully put down the cracker and stared at the rooster timer by the sink. This was vintage Griff—mature, steady, unflappable—and I hated him for it. “You mean to tell me you seriously think I’ve been having an affair with Bree.”

I remained silent. Years of fighting had taught me that if I answered, I’d be caught in his powerful rhetorical vortex in which he’d suck out all the meaning of my words and trivialize my concerns.

“Bree,” he said, “who’s getting married.”

Again, I stayed mum.

“All because you found a couple of condom wrappers in my pants and the receipt from my dinner with Walter Maddox, head of economic research at the Federal Reserve in San Francisco and definitely not my type.”

Walter Maddox?
“But last Thursday when I tried to reach you and couldn’t, you claimed you were asleep.”

“I was
.
On
Thursday
night. However, I believe if you check the receipt you’ll see that dinner happened the night before. In your eagerness to prove me an adulterer, you must have forgotten to consult your calendar.”

I counted back the days and then thought about the receipt. Today was the twentieth. Friday was the nineteenth. Thursday was the eighteenth. Wednesday was the . . .

Curse that Viv. Never trust an English teacher with even the simplest numbers.

“Don’t you remember me telling you about the dinner with Walter to thank him for giving us so much help?”

Flames of red shot up my neck. He was too clever by far. I would have to change course in order to set a new trap. “Okay, so maybe I was off about the dinner, but where
did
you get those condom wrappers?”

“From underneath the seat of our car, darling. Your Lexus, in fact.” He turned and frowned. “Sorry. I was trying to spare you.”

“Our car?” That was shocking. “Why would there be condom wrappers in our car?”

“Our daughter. She drives the Lexus more than you these days.”

Laura? But she was so . . . perfect. “She told me she wasn’t having sex.” And with
Todd Wilner
? He with the pet tarantula and Guitar Hero collection? Why in a million years would she have lost her virginity to
him
? “She promised she’d wait.”

“Come on, Kat. Don’t be like that.” He pulled me to him, pressing my head to his warm chest. “She’s almost graduated from high school and she’s a big girl now. Let her go.”

I would not let her go, not Laura. Laura, who, just yesterday, I’d wrapped in a pink blanket and played “little piggy” on her teensy-weensy toes to make her chortle and laugh. Laura, who used to build fairy gardens in the backyard with moss and acorn hats.

“You should be proud of her for being smart enough to protect herself.” He kissed the top of my head, and, reluctantly, I returned his gesture with a hug. It was so comforting to have him hold me at a time like this that I didn’t care about the money stuff. I needed my husband. I needed the father of our daughter to assure me everything was okay, that we would get through this together.

He bent down and kissed away my tears, pushing back my hair and tilting my chin so he could have my full attention. “Don’t cry, Kat. We’ve done a good job. Laura’s a great woman who will go on to do great things and you know you will always be her mother no matter how much sex she has.” A smile played at the corner of his mouth.

That was the annoying thing about Griff: He knew exactly the right thing to say. Even more than his eyes or those sexy lips, it was this quality about him that I found most alluring.

“As for whatever insanity I inadvertently put you through earlier today by the crime of not answering my office phone, don’t be silly,” he said simply. “From the first moment you wandered into Barb Gladstone’s stuffy library, I have always loved you and I always will. No cute assistant will ever change that. Well—” he grinned—“depending on how cute. . . .”

He laughed, and I punched him gently on the chest. “How cute my ass.”

“Yes. I like that, too.” To drive the point home, so to speak, he reached around and playfully squeezed my butt, bringing me to him as hard as he could, his lips trailing down my neck and sparking an unexpected urgent craving.

There was a party outside, but it was impossible for us to go back to it when we’d headed down this path. We’d been together long enough to recognize the signs, the signals, even the smells of unstoppable passion. “The laundry room,” I gasped. It was our old safe haven, where we used to flee when Laura was small and we were hit with sudden bouts of lust.

“But,” he tried to protest as I kissed his rough neck,“we’ve got . . .”

“Now!”

Wordlessly, Griff lifted me and, with the strength of a man half his age, carried me across the kitchen to the door. Kicking it open, he gently set me on the folding table and closed the white shutters to the outside window as I madly yanked the shirt over his head.

“Lock,” I whispered, sliding out of my underwear and fumbling at the zipper on my dress.

“No time.” He meant the dress, not the lock, as he undid his jeans, the hardness of him unmistakable under his boxers.

Please
, I begged, crazed as usual by the overwhelming physical madness he could inspire, the almost animalistic urge to have him inside me. He pulled up my dress and, kissing me softly, slid himself in, pumping with masterful, determined strokes. Our mutual explosion was almost instantaneous and immediately cleared my head—a leaden accumulation of worry and fear rapidly dissipating into nothing.

Of course he loved me, I decided calmly. How could I have ever thought otherwise?

“Wow.” He pretended to be embarrassed, clearing his throat as he zipped up his jeans. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Griffiths. I have no idea what came over me.”

I playfully tapped him on the nose. “Oh, I think I know what came over you.”

He rearranged my dress and kissed me once more. “Happy anniversary, my love.”

“Ditto.”

We composed ourselves as best we could, careful to return to the party from separate entrances. I stalled by going to the bathroom to finger-comb my hair and carefully redo my lips in the emergency Pink Plum lipstick I kept in the downstairs medicine cabinet, trying not to laugh at how spot-on Buster had been about the room rocking.

When I was through, I looked matronly, not at all like I’d been banging my husband on the laundry folding table minutes before. Viv would know, though. She always did.

Done, ready to face the party, I opened the door to find a very small, very strange woman with jet-black hair and cat-eye glasses tapping a foot impatiently. “Oh,” I said, searching to place her. Perhaps someone’s new girlfriend. “I had no idea you were waiting. Sorry.”

She reached in her purse and pulled out a business card. “I was waiting for
you
, not the bathroom. I saw your husband outside and thought this might be my chance to introduce myself.”

I glanced at the business card.

So this was the famous Toni Feinzig.

“Actually,” I began, embarrassed that Viv had been so bold as to invite her to the party,“I don’t think I’ll be needing your services after all. My husband and I are fine.”

“I thought you might say that. It’s hardly usual for these matters to proceed in a linear direction. However, if circumstances should change, my cell is on the back of my card. Don’t hesitate to call me at any time of day or night.” She glanced at the laundry room. “I find it so pathetic, the extremes some men will go in order to buy themselves more time, their superficial attempts to fool the women they no longer love with presents, jewelry, extra attention.” She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “Sex.”

I forced myself not to blink.

“Of course, I expect you’re too smart to fall for those tricks. After twenty years you’d know when your husband is being manipulative, wouldn’t you?”

It was definitely a trick question. There was no way to answer it. All I could do was shrug.

“Interesting.” She smiled thinly and tapped the card in the palm of my hand. “Just remember, don’t say anything to him until you talk to me. Better not to shoot yourself in the foot at the start of the race.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Y
es, what Toni had said was haunting.
She
was haunting with her drastic red suit and those rhinestone cat-eye glasses and jet-black hair—Kelly Osbourne meets the Wicked Witch of the West. As she minced away in her stiletto heels, I ripped up her business card and tossed it into the wastepaper basket, vigorously washing my hands afterward to remove the poison.

It was Adele’s fault for jumping the gun and impulsively contacting that awful, awful ambulance chaser. Or, rather, in the case of divorce,
moving van
chaser. I hoped Toni wouldn’t continue to bug me with spot visits. I wasn’t exactly sure how these divorce lawyers worked, but I’d heard stories that they could be ruthless in their quest to beat out the competition and drum up business—following women to the ladies’ room and such.

Shaking off Toni’s bad vibes, I returned to the party, where the tiki torches were flickering and our guests were enjoying themselves in the cool late-summer night. For once I’d thrown a decent gathering, I thought with pride, snatching a flute of bubbling champagne and drinking in the heady elixir of perfume and forbidden cigarette smoke.

Over the glass rim, I caught Griff smiling at me from across the patio and I went all squishy. Too bad Bree wasn’t around to witness us in top form. Then she’d back off—she and her tiny A-line skirt.

Turned out, the only drawback to the evening was Viv, who, tipsy on chardonnay and erroneously believing I’d confronted my husband about having an affair, stuck out her lower lip and offered her services as amateur psychologist/confidante.

“How are you holding up?” She darted her eyes at Griff with new loathing. “You wanna go someplace and talk? That’s what sisters are for, you know, to lean on. You don’t have to put on a brave face with me.”

I gently removed her hand from where it was stroking my hair. “Thanks,Viv. But nothing happened. It’s over.”

“Don’t say that. You and Griff can get counseling and . . .”

“My marriage isn’t over. I mean . . . this misunderstanding.” Elaine and her husband, Gerry, were getting ready to go, providing a welcomed escape from Viv’s hovering. “Excuse me. I have to thank Elaine.”

But my older sister would not be so easily dissuaded. Lingering in the kitchen until the last straggler had left, she handed me a cup of decaffeinated coffee, put her arm around my waist, and said, “Finally, we have some girl time. Let’s talk.”

It was past midnight and I was so tired of talking. Period. It had been a stressful day, what with finding the condom wrappers and then dealing with Chloe, shopping, being told that my husband had a secret bank account and MasterCard, throwing a party. All I wanted was to fall in bed and slip into the deep, dark abyss of blissful unconsciousness.

“Tell you in the morning.” I took her cup of coffee and gave her a hug. “I promise I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

She hesitated. “At least tell me what you two were discussing here in the kitchen.”

“I can’t.” I willed my lips not to smile.

“Why not?”

“Because we weren’t exactly . . .
discussing
.”

She snapped her hand off the kitchen counter as if it had been contaminated. “Oh, no, Kat, you didn’t.”

“We did, and I’m glad. I have absolutely no doubts about Griff now.” That wasn’t completely true. I had plenty.

“That explains why you two were so lovey-dovey later. And here I assumed you were putting on a noble act.” She hooked her purse over her shoulder and regarded me with grave disappointment. “That’s only going to make it worse, you know, in the long run.”

“He’s my husband. I love him.”

“I know. That’s why I despise him, because he knows that and he’s using your unquestioning love for him to take advantage of you by sleeping with that hottie assistant of his.”

“Shhh.” I did not want Griff overhearing.

She held up a finger. “Remember, men might lie, but the numbers never do.” Clearly,Viv was proud of that line because it was the second or third time she’d said it that day.