"Is it showing on my face?" Melinda asked. She supposed it was. There was an ashy, foul taste in her mouth and she wondered how she could crawl into bed with Neil tonight, trio wing what she now knew about how he spent his evenings. "Yes," she said. "I think I would. Some dry sherry, if you…"
He went to his desk, opened a drawer. "This is all I have," he said, holding up a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel's. "Besides… I've been through this scene with other ladies. What you need is a shot of Old Jack." He pulled a pair of glasses from the desk drawer and filled them with amber whiskey. Melinda took the one he offered, and she sipped until her mouth was warm and the rotten taste was gone. Hammett came around and sat on the edge of his desk, swirling whiskey in his own glass.
"Why?" Melinda asked, astonished to hear herself addressing the question to a stranger. "Why would my husband do something like that?"
Hammett shrugged, that poured down his whiskey. He filled his glass again. Melinda shook her head, thou nodded, and he refilled hers as well. "It happens," he said. "A guy works all day in an office, he sees this cute young thing from the secretarial pool, she sees him. Next time he needs some dictation or something, he asks for her. I gather that your husband is a mw on his way up with the company. She might figure he's a good catch. Or maybe he just wants some strange…"
"I mean," he went on, "it happens. Men are like that. Somebody said once that women are basically monogamous while men incline to polygamy. Hell, I go through this, two or three times a month. I've gotta admit, though, the wives who come in here wanting the lowdown on hubby usually aren't in your class, Mrs. Stills… They're usually fat and gone to seed. Half the time I can't blame the old man for chasing after a fresher – I'm not being very professional, am I? Well, if I was in your husband's shoes I don't think…"
Dave Hammett finished his second helping of Jack Daniel's, then put down the empty shot glass, shaking his head. "I'd better shut up while I'm ahead. So. Do you want me to deliver the videotape to your lawyer, or would you rather take it yourself? The fee entitles you to a signed deposition from me, as to the facts I've turned up. If I should have to testify in court, there'd be an extra charge…"
Melinda wasn't really listening. Lawyers? Court? Did she want that? "I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I want to do." She stood up. "How much do I owe you?"
Hammett picked up a file folder and extracted a sheet of paper. "Two days' work at one-fifty per comes to three hundred, plus expenses. Rental on the camera was twenty-eight-fifty. Gasoline and meal is eight-twenty-five. And I had to pay the doorman at Ms. McDonald's building fifty bucks to get into her apartment, to set up the camera, and seventy-five to get in this morning and get it out. Doormen's bribe scales are inflationary as hell. Last year I could have gotten by for twenty bucks flat, but… the grand total is $461.75."
Melinda took her checkbook from her purse. "Is a check all right?" she asked. Hammett nodded. She set it on the desk beside his thigh and began to fill out a blank. This was the household expense account. She'd have to come up with a good story when the account ran short before the end of the month. Unless she simply laid it out in front of Neil and told him that she knew about his secret life, that she'd spent four hundred dollars to unravel the lies he'd spun for her. Oh, she didn't know. She just didn't know.
She signed the check and handed it to Dave Hammett. His pale blue eyes seemed to fix upon hers and she couldn't break her own out of the interlock. She felt his fingers brushing her hand as he took the check, and there was a tingly sensation in her skin. Suddenly, instinctively, she knew that he was going to put his other arm around her, that he was going to pull her to him, that he was going to… Just as his lips touched hers and her eyes went shut, Melinda remembered. The name of that movie was The Thomas Crown Affair. As if it mattered.
CHAPTER FOUR
He slipped off the edge of the desk as he kissed her, so that he was standing up too, and Melinda felt herself leaning against his limber wiry frame. Her first impulse had been to push him away, but her second impulse was to fold her arms around him, and her second impulse was by far the stranger. Dave embraced her too, both his arms encircling Melinda, and she felt one hand cupping her shoulder, the other planted just above the generous swell of her ass.
His mouth was hot and wet upon hers, his tongue sucking across her lips. In another moment she'd opened her lips and his tongue was inside, finding hers awaiting him in clever ambush. She hadn't been kissed this passionately in a long time – not since Neil had begun to play around, she realized – and a warmth began to spread through her body, a warmth that smoldered from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. She pressed against him, wanting only to make that smoldering burst into flame.
"Mmmmm…" Melinda purred, as his lips ground upon hers, and she made her crotch do a little grinding, too, a sensuous bumping, pressing. Dave's hand slid lower, clutching one buttock, dragging her into him.
He wasn't a tall man. She had only to tip her head back slightly to make her mouth available, and her cunt was almost on a direct line with his loins. She worked her cunt on him, too, until she felt a response stirring inside his pants. A hard-on, she thought. He's hot and horny. He'd fuck me. If I would let him.
They came apart, and she stepped back, her eyes going down to examine the growing bugle in his pants. Even though she wasn't touching him now, he was still hardening as blood rushed down to engorge his pecker. A pleasant-looking bulge, she decided, her lips curling slightly.
He laughed, and she looked up. "You know," he said, "the main reason I got my private investigator's license? All those books and movies and TV shows. Bogart, mostly. Sam Spade. Philip Marlow. Figured I'd be solving murders and having women crawling all over me, just like Bogie or Joe Mannix or whoever. But I never put the make on a client before, Mrs. Stillman. I guess I never wanted to before. If I offended you, I'm sorry, but I'm glad as hell I did. You taste like fresh honey." Melinda rubbed her lips with the backs of her fingers. They tingled. So did she. Everywhere. Her tit felt heavier, swollen, the nipples itchy inside her brassiere. There was a wetness in her crotch, too, as if he'd already stabbed his cock into her pussy and filled it so full of his cream that the hot sticky stuff had no choice but to overflow her tight red-lipped gash and seep down the sleek creaminess of her thighs.
A breath caught in her throat and her head felt very light and dizzy. She started to take another step back, but somehow she lost her balance. At least it seemed that she was losing her balance. All she really knew was that suddenly her tits were nabbing Dave Hammett's chest and her lips were nibbling at his neck and if he liked the smell of female hair, he was in good shape because he had a face full of brunette locks tinged in auburn.
"Hey, lady," he said in a light, rather tense voice, but he had his hand on her ass again, and before Melinda could get her second wind she was rubbing him up and down with her body and his hands were stroking everything within reach, and that hard-on in his pants was getting birder by the moment, each pulse of fresh lust-carrying blood hammering on Melinda's flesh whore she kissed him with her crotch.
"Your husband ought to be shot," Dave whispered into her ear. "Unless you can't deliver."
"I can deliver," she promised. "Oh, God, can I deliver!" She reached between their bodies and her fingers caressed the swelling in his trousers. He moaned a little and pushed himself toward her hand. Somehow she managed to get his pants unzipped and her fingers inside, and it was worth the effort. His shorts were full of pecker, and soon her hand was full of pecker, too. "Mmmm," she cooed. "How about you, Mr. Hammett? Can you deliver? Because if you can't, I'm going to be very disappointed. Maybe I'll shoot you!"