Page 19 of Opening It Up
“Bye, Harley,” she said, giving me a quick wave over her shoulder before she danced lightly through the grass toward him.
“What about a kiss?” I called, but she didn’t even hear me over the sound of the chopper, and I felt a sudden spasm of jealousy as he gave me the merest nod of acknowledgement before his craggy face split into a huge grin at the sight of Lily-Mae.
Well, of course, who wouldn’t smile at her? She was like a little bottle of sunshine with all those strawberry-blonde curls and the light blue eyes with long lashes.
Leopold put both hands around my wife’s waist to lift her into the helicopter, and jealousy roared through me then.
I must not be as evolved as I had thought, because I didnotlike this.
Moving down the steps, I thought I might say a few words to them, just something casual like “for God’s sake be careful with my wife,” but Leopold clearly was in a hurry because before I even got there, the chopper was up and away, the air blast knocking me flat on my ass on the lawn.
The automatic sprinklers went off and the last thing I saw was Leopold looking down at me, raising a finger in salute in a goodbye that felt offensively smug.
I had never seen the old bastard smile like that a day in my life.
He was a notorious hard-ass and tough businessman, so what was he doing with my warm, bubbly wife?
As I picked myself up in my wet pajama pants, I tried to get my mind right.
It was good for us to have new experiences.
Right?
This was what this whole open marriage had been about.
Us dating new people.
Right?
Then the contents of my stomach suddenly heaved, and I bent over the bushes and threw up my supper as the chopper scythed gaily away into the night sky.
What had I done?
CHAPTER 8
Lily-Mae
“Where are we going?” I asked breathlessly.
There was something undeniably sexy in how Leopold piloted this helicopter into the air, my initial white-knuckled fear soon gone in my excitement over how high we flew over Santa Rosa and the bay beyond.
“I thought you might like a bite of sushi. . . up in the stars,” he said through our matching headsets.
“Up in the stars?” I wondered, but he only grinned that gleaming smile at me.
“You’ll see.”
It was an unfamiliar, and naughty sensation, to feel a prickle of heat between us as Leopold carefully brought us down onto a heli-pad on top of a skyscraper.
He hopped out and came around to my side, taking my hand and helping me carefully out.
Once again, the feeling of our hands connecting, even for a few seconds, was electric, and I shivered in the cool September night air.
Leopold led me toward the shiny building, his hands just skimming my waist, then he raised his arm high.
“If you’re brave enough,” he said. “It’s up top.”
I looked past all the attendants in tuxedos to see a series of handholds up the shiny building, barely visible in the night sky.
