He gently set down the phone and turned to Sharon.
“Haven’t you been paying into her fund?”
Sharon shrugged. She had been caught and she knew it.
“Why should I?” she retorted.
Barb felt herself lunging. She wanted to slap the smug look off her mouth. Instead, she pulled herself together and made her way toward the door.
“You bitch,” she called out, hating that she had been provoked to use such language. Sharon always brought out the worst in her. She brought out the worst in everyone.
Perry ran after Barb, telling her how sorry he was for what his wife had done. He had never meant for things to turn out that way. Barb, as angry as she had ever been in all her life, let her good sense take control once more. As she put the useless letter back into her purse, she shook her head and let out a deep sigh.
She knew the answer before she even asked the question: “Oh, Doctor, what did you get yourself into?” Barb knew the answer was the she-devil in a tube top with an attitude that the world was hers for the picking sitting back in the doctor’s office, scratching her claws on a tabletop as she ranted about Barb Ruscetti as if Barb had been the one who’d done something wrong.
“Yeah, I know,” was all the man could say. “I know.”
It had been Sharon’s idea. She had wanted to preside over a party in her beautiful new home for months. She had wanted to show the locals that despite all that had been said about her, they would love her. They had to love her. She invited about twenty friends and neighbors to a Halloween costume party. Perry was a guru in a long robe. Sharon wore a long ecru dress and a big, wide-brimmed hat that made her look like some kind of Scarlett O’Hara of the Rockies. Her accent dripped southern hospitality. She even hired Sam Bachicha, a local legend of a one-man band, to perform for the evening.
Sharon set out a beautifully frosted cake, decorated with the words Play it Again, Sam.
And while neighbors and friends gathered to dance under the high ceiling of Round House’s living room, the hostess had her eyes on the man she had wanted from nearly the first day she saw him at her front door asking to borrow the wheelbarrow. His blue eyes called to her.
Gary Adams was the man of the hour. A man, Sharon told herself, whose time had come. Gary dressed as a mountain man, in a fringed leather shirt, leather pants, hat and a fake beard. He chatted with Perry for a while as Sharon played hostess with the mostest. A few rum and Cokes later, Sharon “borrowed” Gary from his wife, Nancy, and asked him to dance.
“Oooh,” she said, her breath warm against his ear and neck, “I love the smell of leather.” As the music played, as it became more apparent that no one was paying much attention to them, Sharon pressed her breasts against Gary’s chest.
“Why don’t you come in the office on Thursday and get an eye exam and we’ll get to know each other a little better?” she asked, her words slipping deeper into a sexy, southern accent.
Gary Adams knew Thursdays were days when Sharon left her husband at Round House with their son and daughter while she presumably did some office work. No eye exams were given on Thursdays. Even so, Gary planned to go. He was intrigued.
“At first [her advances] kind of embarrassed me. My wife’s right there. My wife’s dancing with a friend. They’re dancing one way and Sharon and I are dancing very close. I thought maybe it was just the liquor. She’d been drinking. I’d been drinking some, too,” he told a friend.
The Robinsons and the Parsons were among the group at the Halloween party. None of them would leave with any indication that there had been any romantic sparks between Sharon and Gary. Maybe it was that Sharon was discreet? Maybe it was that everyone was having too good a time to notice?
Dr. Nelson was among those who paid no mind to his wife’s attentions toward the leather-clad guest. As smart as he was, when it came to his wife the eye doctor was blind. Especially when it came to other men. Men liked the doctor’s wife and she knew it.
“I think she intimidated a lot of people, especially women. She was gorgeous. She could get a man. Just walking into a room men were attracted to her. They were intrigued… the way she carried herself. The way she walked…” one of Sharon’s admirers later recalled.
The following Thursday, Gary Adams found Sharon sitting at her desk in tight black pants and an orange, red and white long-sleeved sweater. Her outfit covered her form without leaving anything to the imagination. She looked good. Gary smiled and said hi.
“Hello,” Sharon said, looking up with a warm smile. “How you doing?”
Before he could give much of an answer, Sharon invited him to come into a back office where they could talk and “get to know each other.”