In less than an hour, I'm going to seduce someone, who is not my spouse...and I can't wait to get there.
It is difficult to tell a story about seduction, and be truthful, without being able to see how each of them caused or allowed the seduction to happen. A third party cannot tell a real seduction, because that party is not privy to the conversations and interaction between the man and the woman. Nor is the third party present during their most intimate moments. Even if both the man and the woman tell their story to another person, one of both of them may lie, or try to place some of the blame elsewhere, when they should accept responsibility for what they did. However, the reader deserves to know the truth and this is an effort to provide it.
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MARY
-- I joined Sue, Carol, and Polly for our usual Tuesday lunch, as we had done almost every Tuesday for the last two years. All four of us usually managed to get an extra hour for lunch and we made the best of the time we had, catching up with what each other had done during the past week. Sue, Carol, and I had husbands, but Polly was single, or rather, she was divorced, which meant she was single. The rest of us were on the watch for all eligible men for her, even though she had no problem finding them for herself.
For the various weeks of our individual vacations, one or more of us would miss the lunch, but if we were not out of town, we were just as likely to make the lunch date. Although there was a wide disparity in our incomes and lifestyles, all of us were about the same age, a year, or a few years, under thirty. We seemed to enjoy the two hours of being confidants and thus confined our conversations to things purely female, meaning women's health issues, emotions, interaction with our co-workers, and the men in our lives, or in Polly's case, the occasional lack thereof.
Sue and Carol were blonde, but only Sue's was natural. Polly was a redhead and exemplified all the things you think about a woman with red hair, freckles, easy temper, and jealousy. I'm a brunette although I occasionally indulged the man who cut my hair and consented to letting him give my hair a light frost, around my face. Most of the things that really made us laugh were jokes or a story having something to do with one or another's individual hair color with the blondes usually suffering from the current most popular blonde joke. If any of us had a joke about a redhead, we waited for a quiet moment to tell it and were prepared to defend the joke teller from Polly's tossed paper napkin, or whatever else she could lay her hand on that wouldn't do permanent damage to the target.
Our favorite restaurant was a steak house, which offered lunch specials and a well-rounded menu with enough choices to please any appetite. If it was available, we liked to sit at one of the corner booths that had a big padded circular bench. It was our usual custom that the first to arrive slid around to sit in the middle leaving room on the ends for the late arrivals.
"My God, who is that gorgeous man over there?" Polly's question caused all of us to look across the restaurant in the direction she was staring. We saw two men sitting at a table against the opposite wall. One man was in his mid-thirties and the other was at least 50, or maybe a little older than that. I have never been very good at guessing a man's age.
"Bob Baer," Sue answered easily, which caused the rest of us to look at her. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "He works with my husband. I think that's his father with him. They look a lot alike and I know they often eat lunch together."
I'm sure all four of our heads swiveled back to the table across the room to see if there was a strong resemblance between the two men. Certainly, there were three, if not four, heads nodding. The shape of their heads was the same, they had the same upright posture in their chairs, and Carol commented that their earlobes were the same, too. We were not close enough to see eye color, but I could tell, just from seeing their profiles, that their noses were a lot alike.
As if Bob Baer knew we were looking, he turned his head, saw Sue, and lifted his hand in recognition. He turned his head back to his lunch companion and appeared to be explaining why he was waving at a woman across the room. Both men looked at us, with the older man giving each of us a good look, probably even our shoes and legs under the table. I knew when he looked at me; he gave me a slight nod. Good grief, I felt myself blush, something I didn't do often, but it wasn't that unusual. I thought he was a very good-looking man.
Loudmouth Carol commented, "Daddy likes you, Mary." She turned to our other table companions and lowered her voice, "Did you see the way he looked at her?"
"Carol," I tried to stop her expounding on her observation, "He looked at you, too."
"Maybe so," Carol agreed. "But not the same way he looked at you. Whooee, I could feel the heat all the way across the room. I bet Bruce hasn't looked at you, like that, since you'll got married."
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JOHN
-- My son Bob and I tried to have lunch together at least once a week. His mother died when he was nine years old and I didn't remarry until he was almost finished high school, so we were always a little closer than a father and son usually were.
We had already discussed the possibility that he was about ready to look for another job, if he was ever going to have a chance at advancement. We were sitting with our tickets in our hands and had just agreed to talk on Friday to develop the final details of our plans for a fishing trip on Sunday afternoon. I happened to look across the room to see whom Bob had recognized and waved at, a little surprised to see he was waving at four women sitting at a corner booth. I had thought his recent marriage to Elaine was because he was just tired of waiting to find a woman he could really love and I was not really surprised he would pay attention to four pretty women.
I looked at all four women, trying to figure out which one interested him and immediately dismissed the redhead. I thought it might be one of the blondes, but when I looked at the brunette on the end of the bench seat, I forgot I was looking at them for Bob. I was immediately interested in the brunette, but for myself. I liked her. Oh wow, she was something else.
When I raised my eyebrows about Bob's friendly greeting to a woman in a public place, he explained, "The dark blond in the middle is George Herman's wife, Susan, or Sue."
I tried to ask my question with bit of non-nonchalance, and hoped Bob didn't read anything into my interest, "Do you know any of the other women?"
"No, but I'd like to talk to Sue a minute. Come on," Bob encouraged and was halfway across the room before I could get out of my chair.
Bob said hello to Sue and asked her a question about the new company in town her husband had mentioned might be looking to fill a couple of executive positions. At Sue's invitation, he sat down beside the redhead to finish his conversation. I happily sat beside the brunette and listened as Sue rattled off all the names of her friends, learning the brunette was Mary Benson. It was a little difficult to shake hands with all four women. I ended up with a simple wave to the redhead and the wife of Bob's co-worker, but I did manage to lean over and shake hands with the other blonde, Carol, and I shook hands with Mary. In fact, I held Mary's hand a little longer than I should have and watched her smile of understanding that I was flirting with her as she slid over a little so I could sit on the end of the bench seat.
I'm not really a bold man. I am friendly, often thought of as a harmless flirt who can compliment a woman and leave them feeling good about themselves. But I had to let this woman know I was interested. I kept my thigh pressed to hers, and felt comfortable that she might think I was doing it because of the closeness of all six of us in the booth.
I leaned my head a little closer to Mary to ask, "Do all of you work together?"
