Read Online June (Calendar Girl #6) by Audrey Carlan - Free Book Online Page B

don’t like sharing the limelight, do you ladies?” She puckered her lips and sneered then lifted her hand to shake mine and nearly blinded me with the size of her diamond wedding ring.
    “That’s a serious rock!” I exclaimed grabbing at her hand, lacking total grace or tact. I really had never seen a diamond quite so large.
    Her entire face lit up as she held her hand aloft. “I know right? My Daddy takes good care of me. Five karats on top another five surrounding my princess there.” She pointed to the square cut diamond blinding me. I needed a pair of sunglasses to view the thing; the rays of light bouncing off seemed to have their own zip code.
    “Shut it, Christine. Just because old man Benoit finally put a ring on it, doesn’t mean you need to rub it in our faces.”
    I looked over at a scowling brunette. Her ring finger was, not surprisingly, bare of giant jewels. I’m guessing her attitude had absolutely nothing to do with it. I rolled my eyes covertly, pretending to fawn over the ring some more.
    “It’s beautiful, Christine. You said you’re married to Mr. Benoit? You’re visiting from Canada right?”
    A huge buzzer went off in my head.
    Ding. Ding. Ding.
    Benoit was one of the names that Warren wanted to talk up. Apparently, the man had ships set all along the Eastern side of Canada. A port in Yarmouth he said was located on the Gulf of Maine in Southwestern Nova Scotia. It was the perfect location to transport supplies from Canada to the United Kingdom, where they’d be loaded into freight vehicles that could run all the way down to Mali, one of the poorest countries in Africa. I knew this moment was not fate. My opportunity to help just hit me upside the head in the form of a ten-karat diamond ring on a tiny little blonde.
    Christine’s surgically enhanced lips widened. “Yes! We’re from Canada. My Frances is here on business. I saw you were with Mr. Shipley.” She nudged my shoulder.“ He’s probably the most handsome of all the men here…aside from my husband.” Her head tipped up gesturing to a man who couldn’t be more than five foot eight on a good day. Thank God, she was petite. In my heels, I’d dwarf the guy. He had a gray mustache and thick gray hair. At least he had hair. The ratio of hair to men was about fifty-fifty in this crowd. I tipped my head to the side and looked at Mr. Benoit and back at the woman who had to be at least thirty-five years his junior.
    “If you don’t mind me asking, how old is your husband?”
    Her eyes glittered as much as her diamond. No concern with my question showing on her pretty face. “He’ll be sixty-six this year.”
    “And you are?”
    “Twenty-five.”
    I chewed on that information and sipped at the full glass of champagne I’d tagged before Warren handed me off to the wolves. “And forty-one years difference in age doesn’t bother you?”
    She shook her hand. “Gosh, no. He’s so good to me. Pulled me right off the streets, set me up with a place to live, helped me get my GED then put me in college. Now I have a bachelor’s degree and work at Benoit Shipping Inc. our headquarters.” I nodded, once again unsurprised by her story. “I run all the new marketing campaigns. We share an office, play a little hide the pickle when we’re stressed, and then get back to it.”
    Hide the pickle.
    “Did you just say hide the pickle?”
    She nodded without any concern for who heard our conversation. The phrase ‘an open book’ rang true with this one. “Yeah, when we get tired, bored, or you know, just want to fuck, he bends me over my desk or his, then fucks me stupid. He’s crazy good and makes me come harder than any partner I’ve had before. I think it’s because he, like, takes those little blue pills. Makes him rock hard all the time. I’m happy to oblige. And you want to know a secret?” The lovely thing was alight with energy and excitement.
    A secret. From the woman who fucks a man almost old enough to be her