Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

“It’s Monday morning. She’s mopping and waxing. Plus, she says someone dropped something sticky on the floor and she suspects you to be the guilty party.”

Biff laughed as he stepped toward me. “Guilty as charged.” He stopped flush against the desk, reached across and, with his fingertips, brought my chin up a fraction of an inch. “What’s that I see in your eyes? Who has made this little cupcake so sad?”

I pulled back; one light touch affecting me more than it should. A shock vibrated within. A desire. The need I’d felt for weeks—the one I’d suppressed while working and while tending to Michelle—rose up, demanding to be noticed. But not with my husband; with this man. A man I was not privy to. A man not Westley. “I don’t know what you mean,” I whispered.

He strolled to the wingback chairs, opened the drawer of the table between them, then sat back and lit a cigarette. “Care for one?” he asked, one brow cocked.

“No, thank you. I don’t smoke, remember?” Although, on occasion, Miss Justine and I indulged as we talked over life’s problems, swearing later we’d done no such thing. The smoking. The solving world issues we admitted to.

“Sure?”

No. “Yes.”

He chuckled, stood, walked over to me and, as though he had every right, slipped the cigarette between my lips, his fingertips brushing against them, caressing as they curled. “Go ahead, sweet cheeks. I won’t tell.”

Biff returned to his chair to light another; I followed behind him, found the ashtray, settled it on the table, then sat in the vacant wingback. “I really shouldn’t,” I said, unsure as to my meaning. Shouldn’t smoke? Shouldn’t sit next to a man I found so uniquely and strangely attractive, although—oddly enough—I rarely thought of him when he wasn’t around. Not even his portrait in the family room raised cause for alarm, perhaps because I’d never been able to catch his true essence. The scent of him. The electrical aura emanating that left me dazzled. Like a schoolgirl awed by her teacher. Or a sixteen-year-old who, once upon a time, had gazed at glossy posters of dreamy idols and imagined being with them. For an hour. Or a day. Or a single blessed night.

I let out a sigh and silently thanked God as the Hoover began buzzing over carpets—the familiar sound of Ro-Bay working in the back of the house. Had I been alone with this man—especially at that moment—I wasn’t sure what might happen next. Or how I would justify my actions.

People have affairs all the time, don’t they?

But what if only once … would one time constitute an affair?

If Westley would only—

“So tell me what’s going on in your life. Because I can tell something has happened since last I saw you. When was that? Christmas?”

“Yes.” He’d brought a leggy beauty with thick brunette tresses to his mother’s dinner party and I’d found myself inexplicably jealous. I took a long draw of the cigarette. “I guess you heard that Westley had a heart attack just after the first of January.”

He studied me, his eyes primarily on my lips. I chewed at them, then took another draw from the cigarette, noting that the shake in my hand had returned. “I did,” he said. “Mother, of course. DiAnn, too. How is he?”

“Fine, thank you. Recovering. It … it’s going to take a while, but … he’s good. He recently bought a motorcycle, which he seems to enjoy. And … we went skiing in Boone. Well, he and Michelle did … I sat in the lodge and sipped on mulled hot apple cider and buttered rum.”

“Not one for skiing?”

I stubbed out the cigarette and wished I could ask for another. My request would be a telltale giveaway of how he’d set my nerves on fire. I hadn’t smoked many cigarettes in my life—Westley would be furious—but when I did, I honestly enjoyed the experience. This had been no different, except for the tension running on a taut wire between Biff and me. So different than chewing the fat with Miss Justine. “I honestly don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve never tried it and, well, Westley seemed so intent and in such a hurry to get Michelle on the slopes that I—I guess I just opted for …”

“Hot cider and rum by a roaring fire in the hotel lobby while people-watching and daydreaming the hours away.”

“More or less,” I admitted, wondering how he could have possibly known. “I also read a pretty good novel.”

“Did you now?” he asked, his eyes hooded. “I get a sense that things are finally waffling in paradise. Seven-year itch? No wait, it’s been longer than that. Trust me, I’ve been counting.”

I stood, more aware of where this was heading than before. If I admitted that, yes, our marriage was in trouble—or seemed to be—Biff would suggest that what I needed was a fling on the side. One with a discretionary partner. And then he would suggest himself. I knew the lines by heart; I’d read them in too many books. “I need to get back to work,” I said, all the while wanting to play out the script.

Biff crushed his cigarette, then stood and took my hand. The current intensified enough to send warm honey through my veins, set my head spinning, and I inhaled deeply. “If I’d been there, no way would you have been left to your own devices, sitting alone. Hot drinks and good books or not.”

“Biff,” I whispered, hoping he couldn’t feel my resolve nearly giving way, the jerk of my free hand.

“I like the new hair … your eyes … You’re beautiful, you know that?”

The Hoover shut off, alerting me, and I slid my hand from his. “I’m also Westley’s wife. And I love him.”

Biff crooked an index finger, brought it to my cheek, and gently rubbed. “More’s the pity.”

“I don’t know what you mean by—”

“Allison,” he said, speaking my name with such authority that it forced me to bite down on my