S.E.C.R.E.T. Shared (Secret 2)

We dressed stealing soft glances at each other. And then we slipped out the back door of the club, where the same long black car that had dropped me off now took on an extra passenger. He held my hand in the back seat, and somehow this gesture was more intimate than what we’d just done to each other with our mouths at Tipitina’s.

“That Margaret Lewis song … so good,” I said.

“You know her?”

“Know her? I have all her records. Vinyl.”

“Who would have thought this is how I’d meet my dream girl,” he said, raising my hand to kiss the back of it.

His dream girl?

He noticed my bracelet for the first time. “You earned them all, right?”

I nodded.

“I think you get some do-overs tonight,” he said, kissing my fingers.

Matilda was right: this fantasy was unrolling in a way that I could not have imagined myself. We kissed the rest of the way there, coming up for air only when the limo glided through those ivy-covered gates. The Mansion was dark, one window lit on the second floor.

“This place is so freaky, don’t you think?” he said, exiting the limo in front of a small fountain with little angel statues.

“You’ve been here before?”

Mark looked at me.

“Right,” I said.

“I’m going to assume you’ve been here before too.”

“Once, and only back there,” I said, pointing over the crest of a hill to the garage at the end of the driveway.

“What were you doing back there?”

The look on my face told him it was best not to ask.

“Right. This is so insane,” he said, grinning widely. “I fucking love it.”

The side door was open, and instead of taking me to the right, where I assumed the front foyer would lead us upstairs, he tugged me to the left, down a long, black-and white-tiled corridor with swinging oak doors at the end. We were quiet as mice, creeping hand in hand into the massive kitchen. A single light over a stove cast shadows on appliances the size of cattle. The pots and pans hanging from the ceiling were big enough to prepare meals for Vikings.

Mark pulled open an industrial-sized fridge stocked with enough food to feed an army. Snatching a large serving tray from an upper cabinet, and a box of crackers, he bent into the fridge to scoop up handfuls of chocolate truffles, grapes and cheese rounds.

“All they have is romance food,” he said as he handed me the tray so he could continue to load it up. “They need to start buying cold cuts and bread.”

“Ahem. Hello.” The voice came from the kitchen door.

In my fright I screamed rather loudly, and Mark tossed the box of crackers in the air as a diminutive woman in a starched maid’s uniform turned the lights on full force.

“I’m so sorry to have frightened you. I’m Claudette. We waited for you earlier, but the driver told us there was a slight delay. Are you finding everything you need?”

“Yes. Thank you,” I said, trying to calm my heart.

“I’ll show you to your suite,” she said, taking the tray of food from my hands. “I’ll carry this, my dear. We’ll send up some drinks as well.”

We were like a couple of school kids caught breaking into the cafeteria, but instead of getting punished, we were being offered keys to the whole school.

The Domino Suite was up the side stairs and down a wide hall in the west wing. It was, as its name implied, entirely decorated in black and white, its key feature a marble claw-foot tub at the end of an all-white platform bed dotted with round black pillows.

Claudette placed the tray on a glass-topped banquette that faced a floor-to-ceiling window framed with black velvet curtains. A second later, another woman, also dressed in uniform, dropped off a bucket of chilled champagne and several bottles of sparkling water.