The Adultery Club

Chapter One

Nicholas

Divorce is a difficult business. Never more so, may I suggest, than when your client authoritatively declares all men are bastards, and you're left shifting uncomfortably in your seat.

Not all men, Mrs. Stephenson, I venture.

My client ignores my genial smile, gray eyes flicking dismissively around my oak-paneled office. Her gaze briefly snags on the silver-framed photograph of my wife propped beside the leather blotter on my desk; her expression of pity for my spouse places me foursquare with those unfortunates whose parents neglected the legal niceties before bedding down together. Since I have just secured her an extremely generous seven-figure settlement from her ex-husband, I find her disdain for my sex in its entirety a little unfair.

She stands and I rise with her, straightening my silk tie. She extends a scrawny pink tweed arm; her hand sits like a wet fish in mine.

You may be right, Mr. Lyon, she says dryly. “Maybe it's just the men I marry.”

Her scent is pungent and overpowering: synthetic cat piss. Far too much makeup; I can't imagine kissing those jammy red lips. She’s the kind of woman one would find smeared all over the sheets in the morning, the pillowslip imprinted with her face like the Turin shroud.

Good legs, though. Slender, neat calves, with nicely turned ankles. But no meat on her bones, and breasts like a boy.

My professional smile does not slip as I escort her to the door. I endeavor not to morally judge my clients; it's distracting and unproductive. There’s no place in the context of divorce law for emotion or sentimentality; one has quite enough of that kind of thing from one's clients. My wife, of course-being a woman—begs to differ. I consider myself merely objective. Malinche, however, asserts that my brutal kind of truth, as she emotively puts it, is akin to judging a woman's skin only in the harsh glare of daylight, rather than by the softening glow of the fire. I can’t quite see her point.

My client stops suddenly in the doorway; I almost run into the back of her. Her head dips as if in prayer, exposing pale, downy vertebrae beneath the stiff blond bob.

The nape of a woman's neck-so vulnerable, so quixotically erotic.

I always thought—hoped— she chokes back a sob, “he’d change his mind.

I'm at a loss. I certainly did not have this woman pegged as a clinger. Still the right side of forty, she has already acquired a remunerative trio of wealthy ex-husbands, which-despite every effort at objectivity—leads one to make certain assumptions. Put simply: The last thing I expected was for love to come into it.

The woman's skinny shoulders start to shake. Oh, Christ. I'm so hopeless at this kind of thing. My arms twitch uselessly. Inappropriate in the extreme to hug, but what to do if-God forbid—she starts weeping?

Suddenly her head comes up and she squares her shoulders, reminding me of my eldest daughter Sophie on her first day at school. Without another word, she marches through the open-plan secretarial pool and into the hallway beyond. I breathe a hefty sigh of relief. Thank God. What on earth was that all about?

As I move to close my door, my secretary, Emma, waves.

Mr. Lyon, it's your wife on l

Happily married to a beautiful wife, cookbook writer Malinche, with three young daughters, lawyer Nicholas Lyon never expected his growing passion for Sara Kaplan, a vivacious young attorney in his law firm, or that his wife will also be confronting her own temptation in the person of an ex-lover, in a candid and witty novel of modern relationships. Simultaneous.

Nicholas Lyon is the perfect husband—a handsome divorce attorney who dotes on his wife and family. Sara Kaplan is the perfect seductress—a vivacious young lawyer tired of being single. And Malinche Lyon is the perfect wife—a still-beautiful cookbook writer and mother to three darling daughters. Now, in this smart, wickedly sexy novel, Nick, Sara, and Malinche are all about to join…The Adultery Club

Suddenly Nicholas—a man totally in love with his wife—is fantasizing about Sara. Sara is toying with Nick. And Malinche is facing temptations of her own. While appetites are whetted and sated from London to the English countryside, what began as instant animal attraction is spinning wildly out of control, turning lives upside down—and hearts inside out. And now one heretofore happily married man and two very different women are about to discover the difference between fulfilling your wildest desires—and getting your just deserts.

Tess Stimon is the author of three previous novels and one biography, and writes regularly for UK newspapers and women’s magazines. Born and brought up in Sussex, England, she graduated from Oxford University before spending a number of years working in Europe, Cyprus, and Lebanon as a TV news producer with ITN (UK) and CNN. She now lives in Florida with her American husband, their daughter and two sons.