A while later, he pulled up in front of the house and saw a little green car in the driveway. He frowned slightly, wondering why it was there and he headed to his office to get the flash drive. He had it tucked into his pocket and was just about to leave when he heard Agnes on her cell phone, complaining about something and he knew he wouldn't be able to get to the front door without going past her. He gave it a quick thought and decided to go through the back of the house and around the grounds to the front, to get to his car. It would take an extra couple of minutes, but he was glad to sacrifice those to avoid his mother-in-law.
He slipped quietly through the house and out of the back door. He was just walking past the pool house when he heard people inside it and he stopped in his tracks. There shouldn't be anyone in his pool house. He walked over to the door and opened it, stepping inside and stopping dead in his tracks when he saw what was going on.
Roman was standing at the door that opened into the living room area of the pool house, and in the center of the room was a folding massage table opened up and laid out, and beside the table was an armless chair. And seated on that chair was a young muscular man with long black hair. His body was bare except for his shorts, which were sitting in a pile at his ankles as he leaned back at an angle on the chair.
Sitting astride him, wearing nothing at all, was Denise, her hips rocking wildly over his, her fiery red curls bouncing with abandon as she rode him, and her hands clamped to the back of the chair behind his head. The man's hands were grasping her hips, holding her down onto him, and his mouth was filled with the tip of one of her massive breasts.
Because of their loud moaning and raucous sex, they had not heard him come in, nor did either of them see him until he had almost reached them.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted as he got close to them. They both stopped moving instantly and turned in a flash, staring at him. Denise hopped off him, leaving him sitting in the chair, nude and fully aroused, staring in shock at Roman.
"Get your damn clothes on and get the hell out of here now!" Roman yelled at the man.
"Armando!" Denise called out, reaching her hand toward her lover. "Hurry! Before he does something awful to you!"
Armando jumped up swiftly from the chair and reached down to his ankles, yanking his shorts back up over his hips to his waist. He glanced momentarily at Roman, his eyes wide with fear, and he quickly folded up his massage table as Denise ran to Roman and stood between him and Armando.
Roman looked down at her in disgust. "I'm not going to do anything to him except call the police to arrest the trespasser on my property if he doesn't get the hell out of here right now!"
Armando had his table folded and was edging along the wall past Roman toward the front door in record time. He vanished and Roman had a feeling the little green car would be gone when he got back to the front of the house.
He turned and looked at his wife. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" he repeated, yelling at her.
She shook her head and held her hands up to him. "Nothing! It was nothing, he was just massaging me and it got a little... uh... it just sort of happened, but it was just this once and nothing like that has ever happened with anyone else before, ever!" She nodded and stood there nude before him.
He was thoroughly disgusted, but he knew in his heart that he had no room at all to pass judgment on her. She didn't have a child outside of their marriage. Something that her friend Amanda had said to him at the party when she tried to seduce him, came back to him then.
Roman took a step toward her, his eyes sharp and piercing as he watched her face. "I heard from one of your friends that we have an open marriage. I heard that you sleep around quite a bit. Is that true? Are you seeing anyone outside of our marriage? Are you sleeping with other men?"
She paused for a long moment, looking as though she was carefully weighing her answer, but then she shook her red curls and said softly, "No, of course not. No. It's like I said, it was just this once. We didn't even really do much, it just happened right when you came in."
He looked at the floor where the massage table had been and then looked back up at her. There were three used condoms lying there, and none of them had been the one that Armando was wearing when Denise hopped off him.
"Just this once, huh?" he asked in disgust. "Don't ever do it again."
He turned and walked out of the pool house, leaving her standing there speechless, looking after him.
He got back into his car and drove to his office with a million thoughts and feelings rushing through him. She'd been screwing her masseur. It obviously wasn't her first time with him. No man goes around with four condoms in his wallet.
Armando had known he'd be busy with her for a while, and if Denise had provided them, that meant that she had a box of them there at the house. Condoms were something she didn't use with him because they never had sex anymore, and when they had been intimate during their early years of marriage, she'd been on the pill, so they didn't use condoms then, either.
There would have been no reason for her to have a box of them at the house, unless she regularly had lovers there. Whatever the truth of it was, it wasn't their first time together. Roman was thoroughly sickened by it, and more than anything, he wished that he could have found out some other way than by catching them in the act, because he knew he would never get that memory or scene out of his head, and it was one he wanted to forget as soon as he saw it.
He wondered if Amanda had been right, and if Denise had been screwing around with other men for a while. She wasn't going to tell him, so that only left him wondering, and angry with her.
He realized that he couldn't get angry with her or try to chastise her in any way, because of Cami and Emma, and it filled him with doubt and regret that he was in such a sham of a marriage.
It stayed on his mind all afternoon as he worked, and when he went home that night, she met him in the foyer and asked him to talk with her. At first, he didn't want to, but then he knew that if he was going to have to ask her to understand about Emma, he was going to have to take as much as he gave. He followed her into their library and closed the door behind them.
They sat across from each other on the chairs in the large room, and Denise started talking to him right away.
"Roman, I'm sure today was hard for you, but we need to work this out." She looked at him with wide eyes and some emotion that closely resembled fear and panic.
Roman wanted to yell at her. He wanted to be angry with her and shake her, he wanted to express his confusion, hurt, and anger at her, but all he could think of was how he was going to tell her about Emma, and he knew that he had no right at all to any of what he wanted to do.
"How long has this been going on, Denise?" he asked quietly, trying to keep his emotions in check.
She shook her red head adamantly. "Just this once!" She spoke in a rush.
He leveled his gaze at her. "Denise, I'm not stupid."
She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap. "Well, maybe one other time."
He turned his face from her and sighed loudly. "We aren't going to get anywhere with this conversation if you don't start telling me the truth,” he said in a monotone.
Denise rolled her eyes and slumped her shoulders.
Roman looked directly at her again. "How long have you been sleeping with the masseur?”
She bit her lip. "A couple of years," she answered quietly.
He was shocked. He stared at her in amazement. "Were you sleeping with him while you were still sleeping with me in my room?"
She paused and then shook her head. "No."
He felt almost certain that she was lying.
Roman leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "Are there others? Have there been others?"
She shook her head again. "No!" She said it too quickly.
He stared into her relentlessly.
She sighed. "Yes."
Roman didn't look away or flinch at all. "How many?"
Denise continued to chew on her lower lip. "Just... a few."
He shook his head slowly. "Anyone I know?"
She shook her head. "No one you know, really."
He leaned back into the sofa and sighed. "Why?" He eyes were steady on her.
"I don't know. It just kind of happened, I guess."
He shook his head, wondering again why they were still married. "Perhaps we should think about just ending this marriage. You don't love me, you don't want to be with me, and you're obviously interested in other men. I can't imagine there's any reason at all why we should stay together." Roman rubbed his hands over his forehead and closed his eyes for a minute as a headache began to form at the front of his head.
She almost jumped off the sofa toward him, stretching her hands out in front of her, waving them at him. "No! No, Roman, I don't want to do that! I want to stay here with you and be your wife. We need to try to work on things! We need to try to save our marriage! I just made a mistake!" She got off her sofa and rushed over to him to sit beside him.
It had been ages since she was so close to him and he turned his head sideways and looked at her a little awkwardly. "Why should we save it?" he asked with a wary sigh. "It doesn't seem like it's worth saving."