Free The Other Other Woman by Mallory Lockhart Page A

piece, Matthew.”
    He smirked proudly as he zipped up. We started to kiss each other goodnight when he suddenly remembered he had a gift for me. So, we sat together on the edge of the bed and he handed me a little card. Inside was a very generous gift card to Nordstrom. When I looked over at him, he was smiling at me like a little kid.
    “Thanks sweetie, but what is this for?”
    “Well, when I was in the Memphis store a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about you and just wanted to get you a little something. I know you love shoes, but I wasn’t sure what kind you would like…”
    “Aww, thanks baby, that was so sweet of you,” I said. I leaned over to kiss him to show my appreciation. “You didn’t have to do that.”
    “I know I didn’t… but I wanted to.”
    Wow, he can drive six hours to visit me anytime, I thought. But I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable about him spending that kind of money on me, especially in addition to the hotel room. I knew he had the means, but I’d never had anyone spend money like that, just to see little old me. Honestly, a small part of me felt a little hookerish. But I had never been with anyone wealthy before, so I assumed it was just something I’d have to get used to.
    It was getting late and I really had to go. I got another incredible goodnight kiss in and headed home. My body was practically on fire wishing I could spend the night with him. At the same time, I was also looking forward to tomorrow, knowing it was going to be the absolute best. day. ever. If he thought he’d had 25 years of the same old same old at home, I was going to completely blow his mind. There was one tiny issue, however, that lingered in the back of my mind. It bothered me just a little bit, like a nagging voice of concern.
     
    As part of my job, I monitored all emails for my branches. This, just recently, included Atlanta. All employees were well aware of this, as they were constantly getting reminders from us to “Make sure you encrypt personal client information before sending it out,” or “This is not business related, please use your personal email to forward chain emails.” Email surveillance was a rather annoying part of my job. I didn’t want to read some broker’s ramblings about interest rates or why they thought metals were the place to be right now.
    Periodically, however, we’d see some horrifically bad jokes come through or catch a fight between a broker and his wife, that sort of thing. We used to see porn being forwarded around all the time, but they’d really cracked down on that as of late. Basically, any email that contained certain keywords (which could be anything, they were often benign words like “loan” or “ticket”) got flagged and I had to read through them to determine whether or not there was an issue.
    Matt rarely got in trouble with email. He was pretty abrupt in general on both text and email because, truthfully, he just wasn’t that good at typing. His communications were short and to the point, occasionally forgetting to add product disclaimers was usually his biggest offense.
    But I couldn’t help but notice that the man knew a lot of women. His real estate agent, Sofia, was a woman. His attorney was a woman. His travel agent was a woman. He had cyclist pals, some were lesbians, but they were women. He had several friends who got involved with his trips back to Ukraine, all women. I could see why he would be very popular with the ladies. He was a remarkably handsome, successful, witty man with a magnetic personality and a fat wallet. I’ve never been a particularly jealous person by nature, but I am nosy. And I like to know things. I thoroughly research subjects when I don’t understand them. It’s probably one of the main qualities I possess that makes me so good at my job.
    So, I wouldn’t say I was jealous, but I was sort of flummoxed when I began to see flagged emails to Matt from someone named Katya. Katya Batsevich. You