Treacherous Secrets novel Chapter 4

Ashley shrugged. "It is what it is." She looked over at Damon who was smiling at her patiently. "We better go talk with Walter for a little while." She dug a card out of her purse and wrote her cell number on the back of it. "Give me a call, and we'll get together for lunch or something."

"Absolutely," Emily said and hugged her. "I'll call you next week for sure. I can't wait to meet Kim. She must be something special to have finally tied you down."

Ashley laughed. "She is. You'll love her."

Damon took Ashley's elbow and led her to where Kenton was talking with Walter and Frank.

Emily found Carol in the kitchen. "If I had known it was Ashley Sjveck you were talking about, I could have assured you that Damon wasn't lying to you."

"I can't believe that you know her, and that she really is gay. He is still texting and receiving texts from someone he is having an affair with, someone who is supposed to be here right now."

"Seriously?" Emily said, looking around at the other women sitting at tables and standing around talking. There were several very pretty women, most of whom were married from Emily's understanding. Of course, that didn't mean anything.

"He got a text from whoever it is right before we came. It read, 'See you tonight. Hope we get a few moments alone. I want to touch you.'" Carol looked at Emily, "Now, you tell me, is that not something a lover would write?"

Emily let out a deep breath. "Let me see the text." She didn't agree with the way that Carol was getting this information, but she had to admit that sounded pretty incriminating.

Carol found the text and handed Emily her phone. The text read: 'C utnithpe we gt few momnts lone. want to tch u." It was from sjk. The initials were written in lower case, as was most of the message. "Who is sjk?" Emily wondered out loud. "I can see why you would have thought it was Ashley. It has some of the letters from her last name in it."

"Yeah, I just thought he'd shortened Sjveck to throw me off if I saw it on his phone," Carol said. "He's only talked to a few women tonight, none of whom have a name with these initials in it. And I haven't let him out of my sight."

"What if he's not planning on seeing her here?" Emily asked.

"Where else would he meet her? We will be here until the last minute, which will probably be tomorrow morning."

Emily caressed her chin thoughtfully. "I don't know, Carol. Maybe he called her from the house phone and told her he couldn't see her tonight."

"No, I have the house phone wired, too. What?" Carol said at Emily's raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, I would have had her be the maid of honor at our wedding but she couldn't come over here on the weekend we were getting married," Emily said.

"What a shame," Kenton said, smiling smugly. "We'll just be a little longer."

"Yeah, our driver should be back anytime," Walter said. "He took Frances and Cecelia back to our hotel earlier."

"Yes, they had told me they were going to go ahead and leave," Emily said. "Well, I hope you gentlemen had a good time tonight."

"We did," Walter assured her.

Emily went back into the house with the glasses. She set them down in the kitchen, and then went back to look at the men. Frank apparently didn't talk much or couldn't get a word in edgewise. Damon and Kenton seemed to be doing all the talking. Frank also seemed to be brooding. She wondered if his wife and he had had words before she left. Emily couldn't help but wonder about the text message Carol had shown her earlier. Damon was a very good looking man. His dark hair was cut short with the front spiked up in the popular style men were wearing. He was always clean shaven and smelled heavenly. She had noticed tonight that he was wearing cologne similar to Kenton's new one, but his was a little muskier. Damon had always been very charismatic, even when they were kids. He'd had girls falling all over him in high school and college, but he'd never been a player. If he was dating a girl, he stayed loyal to her, at least Emily had never heard of him being a cheater, until Carol.

Shaking her head, Emily turned away. Maybe Carol was just paranoid. Who knows who sent that text and maybe it wasn't even meant for Damon. She had accidently sent a text to the wrong number before. He was still here, and all the other women had left. Emily had not seen him talking to any woman in particular all night. Maybe Carol was wrong.