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He raised his eyebrows, a crazy grin cracking his face, and gave me a playful cuff on the arm.
"I told you she would. Did she send you a photo? She's pretty, isn’t she?"
I shook my head. "No, she didn't send one." I stood beside him at the hotdog cart, loading my sausage with sauerkraut.
"Well, she's beautiful, " he said as he skillfully squired mustard on the sausage. "I would have thought she'd send you a risqué picture at least. Believe me, she's hot." He turned to me, smiling like an idiot. His smile was infectious, and his excitement at my upcoming plan to teach my cheating bastard of a brother-in-law a lesson lifted my spirits. I'd been working like a dog for months, getting the financing in order to take our startup Chatter to the next level. It had paid off big time and soon, we'd be former owners, and richer each by a cool billion dollars.
The deal was the talk of Wall Street. The two of us were its darlings du jour. I'd been interviewed in the Journal and John had appeared on a segment CNBC about young entrepreneurs under thirty-five.
We were considered boy geniuses. Everyone loved a wildly successful success story and that was us.
"So, it's all set for Saturday?" James asked as he finished layering on mustard and sauerkraut in his meticulous way. "You're going to take Lexi to Cipriani's and scare the bejesus out of Eric?"
"It is and I am," I said as we walked to a bench and sat to eat our lunch. "I can't wait until Eric lays eyes on her."
"What do you think the bastard will do?"
I shrugged. "He's such a bullshitter, he'll probably smile and kiss her knuckles."
I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. In truth, I had no idea what Eric would do. Once upon a time, I thought I knew the man, but I was wrong. Instead of a loyal h
usband and hard-working executive in my family's business, he was a cheating lying bastard. Whatever he did, it couldn't make me happy, but seeing fear in his eyes would be something.
"You got a lot of balls to do this," John said. "What if he punches your lights out?"
"Nah. He's more likely to slither off like the snake that he is."
"I'm surprised you didn't go over there and punch his lights out."
"Me?" I said, all innocent. "Resort to violence? I'm all about forgiveness."
John snorted and gave me an I don't believe you look. "Yeah, right."
I laughed ruefully. John was right. I wasn't all about forgiveness – not anymore. I usually could forgive a lot in a person, but cheating was the one thing I could never let go.
I had good reason to feel that way.
Since I discovered he cheated on my sister – my very pregnant sister – I'd come to know a different side of Eric with the help of a private eye I hired. He tailed Eric to see what he got up to on all those late afternoon meetings and out of town business trips. I came to know the Eric who spent lunch hours in the bar flirting with various women, or in the bathroom snorting coke, or getting blown by Lexi 911 when he was supposed to be out of town taking care of customer relations in my family's century-old investment business.
Eric was such a bastard, I doubted if anything could faze him. If he could cheat on my very pregnant sister, taking an escort to a trendy bar while his wife — my sister — was at home alone suffering from unrelenting morning sickness, he had no moral substance.
It made me so mad I could explode, but the marriage therapist I'd contacted about how to handle the issue said my sister would not appreciate me being the one to tell her that her husband was cheating. That I should take Eric aside and tell him I knew and that he should tell my sister or I would.
I couldn't – couldn't – face being alone with the bastard for fear I would lose control and choke him to death so I decided to show him I knew. I'd take the very same escort to the dinner and shove her in his face. I wouldn’t say anything, I wouldn’t make a scene, but he'd get the message pretty damn quickly…
John took a bite of his dog and chewed, his eyes narrowed. "Do you want me to come?" he asked when he was finished.
I shook my head. "Better not," I said. "I don't want to get this girl in any trouble. When she sees Eric, she'll recognize him, but I'm sure she'll be discreet."
"He'll be shaking in his boots that you'll tell Dana and that'll be the end of his life posing as one of Manhattan's rich and famous."
I shoved down the last of my lunch. "As far as I'm concerned, he can fuck off right now, but I don't want to ruin Dana’s whole experience of pregnancy and birth. Plus, new parents are totally jammed for a couple of months adjusting. After that? She can divorce the son of a bitch for all I care. In fact, I hope she does."
"It's hard being a single parent."
"She's all set up to live comfortably. They had a prenup. He'll get some cash, but not much because they've only been married for a couple of years."
We watched the pedestrians strolling through the park. It was still pretty hot in the last days of August.
